Wednesday, March 21, 2007

The Surge, Al Qaeda, & The Dems Disconnect

Rich Lowry has an insightful opinion piece in today's New York Sun pointing out the obvious (which, as often happens, had completely bypassed me). The Democratic talk of civil war in Iraq is kind of tough to sustain as this point, since only one side seems to be showing up for it. The Shia are gone to ground. Al Qaeda in Iraq, according to captured documents, intends to contest security operations in Baghdad. Most of the Democrats who decry the surge nonetheless still say that we should be fighting against Al Qaeda in counterinsurgency operations. Hmmm, are you starting to see the disconnect between what the Dems say they want, what is happening on the ground, and their current effort to pull the rug out from under everything with their coalition of the bribed. Read the article here.

Posted by scott at 2:47 AM

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Proposing the question, “What happens to a civil war if only one side shows up to fight it?” was a brilliant entry for Lowry to expose the Democrat’s lack of understanding of the situation in the Mideast and their actual attempts to subvert progress towards a solution.

Time and time again the democrats have shown themselves to be poorly educated on the facts and history of the region, the players and their motivations, and outcomes of our actions.

Case in point, Nancy Pelosi stated on 60 minutes that the war on terror is in Afghanistan, not Iraq. This is contrary to what Zyman al Zawahiri stated in Al Qaeda’s mission statement.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/20/60minutes/main2111089.shtml

One issue that she is fighting about here is Iraq. She opposed the war from the start and now, like her, most Democrats support a phased withdrawal of troops beginning later this year.

"Does that not open you up then to that charge of cutting and running? This is just what they're saying," Stahl asks.

"The issue is them. The issue is the war they got us into," Pelosi replies. "If the president wants to say the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror, he's not right."

"Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror?" Stahl asks.

"No. The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan," Pelosi says.

"But you don't think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?" Stahl continues.

"They have," Pelosi agrees. "The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn't mean we stay there. They'll stay there as long as we're there."

Here’s Zawahiri’s letter to to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (10/12/2005)


A-I want to be the first to congratulate you for what God has blessed you with in terms of fighting battle in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam's history, and what is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era, and what will happen, according to what appeared in the Hadiths of the Messenger of God @ about the epic battles between Islam and atheism. It has always been my belief that the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established in the manner of the Prophet in the heart of the Islamic world, specifically in the Levant, Egypt, and the neighboring states of the Peninsula and Iraq; however, the center would be in the Levant and Egypt. This is my opinion, which I do not preach as infallibile, but I have reviewed historical events and the behavior of the enemies of Islam themselves, and they did not establish Israel in this triangle surrounded by Egypt and Syria and overlooking the Hijaz except for their own interests.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/203gpuul.asp



It doesn’t stop there, and this is more important to the Democrats having a lack of understanding of the components and forces at work. They repeatedly use the term “civil war” as if to stake out a foreign policy intellectual high ground. In actuality this marks them as ignorant. Those who live in the Mideast and have decades of experience observing these components, forces, and players know there is something else at work here.

Amir Taheri, an Iranian, and and even other Arab writers who have forgotten more about the Mideast than most of us will ever know dismiss the claims of “civil war” as mistaken. Succinctly put, Taheri says, “What is happening in Iraq, however, is neither a civil nor a sectarian war (although elements of both exist within the broader context). This war is a political one - between those who wish Iraq to succeed as a new democracy and those who want it to fail.”
Elucidating further, he states,
“The government in Baghdad is a coalition of many different parties and groups: Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish. True, some members of this government are sectarians. But even then, their sectarianism comes in the form of nepotism and clientelism - designed to favor families and clans. Their rivalries are motivated by social, economic and political considerations, rather than religious differences.
Unlike the unraveling Yugoslavia of the '90s, sectarianism hasn't consumed Iraq at the grass-root level. Grandmothers don't say special prayers, asking God to destroy the rival sect. Poets don't write sectarian verse. Artists don't portray members of other sects as devils incarnate. Not one of the gangsters who destroyed the golden-domed shrine in Samarra was Iraqi.
Anyone closely familiar with the situation, rather than making judgments from thousands of miles away, would know of countless cases where Sunnis and Shiites protected one another against the violence of sectarian terrorist groups. In Anbar province, where Arab Sunnis are more than 95 percent of the population, several Shiite pockets owe their survival to the protection of local tribes. In some cases, Sunni tribes have fought al Qaeda terrorists to prevent the massacre of Shiites”
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/20553

March 21, 2007 at 12:44 PM

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