I can't honestly say that Bush and Blair caused the terrorists to attack London. I CAN say they obviously did nothing effective to prevent it and a great deal to set up the conditions that led to it. 9/11 was an al Qaeda success and a U.S. Government failure. Similarly, London was an al Qaeda success and a British Government failure. The 3/11 bombings in Madrid can be similarly described. So what were the conditions that set up the attacks? How does the Iraq War fit into the considerations? What does al Qaeda expect? Finally, how will America and the West deal with al Qaeda?
The conditions
Iraq under Saddam was a really nasty totalitarian dictatorship that was supported by a large lake of oil that it sat on. It was a local problem, and when Saddam threatened the Kuwait and Saudi Arabian oil fields, Iraq became a problem for the industrialized world. Except for the threat to world-wide oil prices, however, Iraq was not a threat tto the west or to the United States. It was merely a local festering political problem.
Israel and Palestine are different. They have been a major cultural problem between the West and the Muslim nations since the British controlled Palestine, and they continued to fester. But the problem is still localized.
A much wider problem is the reaction of the Muslim nations to the Imperialism and global trade brought by the West over the last two hundred years. The forces unleashed by western invasion and global trade caused a Muslim reaction in the form of Islamic Fundamentalism. This shouldn’t be a surprise, since the modernization of America also caused American fundamentalist religions to occur. The failure of earlier religious practices to protect people from the disruptions of military and economic change caused religious leaders to go back and search their Holy Books for the essence or the fundamentals of their religion. Fundamentalist religion is one relatively normal modern reaction of a culture that sees itself under attack by an arrogant and economic or militarily more powerful culture. Wahabism and Islamicism are such reactions to the invasion of the West beginning with Napoleon. Both movements represent the beliefs of traditional Muslims that they should restrict themselves to literal and traditional interpretations of their sacred texts, the Qur'an and Hadith.
Al Qaeda is a militaristic pan-Arab version of the same cultural trend. Al Qaeda grew out of the military response of the Muslim culture to the military invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. Al Qaeda combined the philosophy of fundamentalist Sunni Islam with the military techniques of asymmetric warfare to fight the otherwise overwhelming military power of the West – in Afghanistan the West was the Soviet troops. But the retreat of the Soviets and the collapse of the USSR, while being a local victory for the Islamic fundamentalists, did not end the pressures on Muslim nations to modernize. They saw that as abandoning their ancient culture.
As you would expect of any fundamentalist thinker, bin Laden looked at the threats to Muslim culture and searched for the fundamental source of those threats. His conclusion was that America was that fundamental source of the threat. His attack on America on 9/11 was a rational use of the techniques of asymmetric warfare to attack the source of the largest threats to Islam.
The U.S response to 9/11.
Invading Afghanistan was a completely appropriate response to being attacked by al Qaeda and was accepted all over the world as both justice and a proper response. Like the earlier defense of the Saudi oil fields and the removal of Saddam from Kuwait, it was not viewed as a direct attack on Muslim culture except by the most extreme.
Remember, though that that Bush really did NOT want to go into Afghanistan. He specifically wanted to attack Muslim culture at its heart, remove Saddam Hussein, and replace his government with a modern western democracy and laissez faire economics in the form of Republican crony capitalism.
Bush had to be convinced to go after al Qaeda in Afghanistan before Invading Iraq. He did the absolute minimum in Afghanistan before switching the focus to Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was based on the assumption that American democracy and laissez faire economics are THE Universal solutions to all the world's problems. The clearest statement of this idea is given by the Project for the New American Century. Invading Iraq was itself utter blind ideologically based stupidity in defiance of facts and history.
The initial invasion happened in spite of all warnings against it. We were locked into the occupation as a result. The invasion was then followed by the total incompetence of the ideologically-driven plan-free occupation after the invasion of Iraq. (Go to the right side of this blog and click through the listing for "Losing Iraq: Inside the Post War Reconstruction Fiasco" for a description. Also look at the Downing Street Memos for a description of the ideological basis for the preemptive doctrine and the invasion planning.)
The invasion of Iraq was an effort to conduct cultural warfare in which we used our military to place western-style democracy and laissez faire economics into the heart of cultural Islam. It combines the worst of Wilsonian foreign policy with an unreasonable belief in the inherent superiority of American culture over all other cultures then combines that with a militaristic view of American nationalism. It has failed.
America’s failure in Iraq
Look at what was intended. The Neocon view was that by invading Iraq and converting it to “modern” American cultural values that we would establish a showcase for the superiority of those American cultural values over those of the Muslim world. The result was that the average Muslim citizen would see the obvious superiority of the American system and force their governments to adopt it. Bush had bought into this general idea before he became President in 2001, and found in the atrocity of 9/11 an opportunity to use the U.S. military to implement the idea. This seems to be the genesis of the invasion of Iraq. It is a direct military attack on the Muslim culture by representatives of modern American culture.
The utter stupidity of invading Iraq to convert the Muslim nations to modern western-style nations is demonstrated by the fact that Wahabism, Islamism, and al Qaeda are all reactions to Western Imperialistic invasion and western-driven economic Globalism in the first place. The British tried to force Egypt to become a modern western-style nation from the 1880’s and failed. They attempted the same thing in Iraq after WW I, and again failed. For the NeoCons to believe that America could succeed in the Middle East where the British failed combines a grandiose Nationalism with a total misreading or even ignorance of history. The Sunni Iraqis found themselves attacked by the clearly superior American military and had the choice of giving up their culture to the American invaders or fighting back. They chose to fight back. Asymmetric warfare was the only form of combat available to them. They have logically chosen to ask for support and training from al Qaeda where such techniques are already well developed.
The Muslim cultural response
Such a military invasion into the heart of Middle eastern Muslim culture with the specific intent to replace it with modern, secular American culture cannot help but cause a violent reaction. The Sunni insurgency was completely predictable. So was their use of asymmetric warfare against the clearly superior conventional American military. It has been shown that the al Qaeda was not active in Iraq when we attacked, but the insurgents quickly allied themselves with the al Qaeda. They needed the military skills the al Qaeda had already developed.
The predictable outcome
The outcome in Iraq is as predictable as was the insurgency. The Shiites in Iraq are using the American military to protect themselves from the more militarily experienced Sunnis, but they will get rid of the American soldiers as soon as they can safely do so. The Kurds are using the distant Americans to protect them from their nearby Sunni enemies.In the surrounding nations, the Iranians have just elected a new President who promised to protect Iran from the American invaders. The invasion of Iraq and Bush’s ignorant anti-Iranian bellicosity just prior to the Iranian election have thoroughly undermined the Iranian moderates politically.
The Syrians are covertly supporting the insurgents for the same reasons. They don’t want to be taken over by American cultural values either. In Egypt if there were truly democratic elections held the Islamic Brotherhood would control the nation in a heartbeat. Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are battling Islamic fundamentalist efforts to take control of the government. The battle between Islamic Fundamentalists and more modern Muslims has been going on since before WW II. The Invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR and of Iraq by the US have merely made the battle more violent. It is this violent response to western military invasions which fuels the al Qaeda international terrorism.
Al Qaeda’s role
Al Qaeda is glad to help the Iraqi insurgents because the insurgency in Iraq damages al Qaeda’s main enemy, America. Operating in Iraq against the American also allows al Qaeda to develop their asymmetric warfare techniques further.The two groups, al Qaeda and the insurgents, are ‘bleeding’ the American enemy much as the picadors in a bull fight bleed and weaken the bull prior to the main event. The attacks on Madrid and London are intended to weaken the will to fight in Spain and Great Britain and create dissention between European nations and America.
What does the U.S. do now? America lost in Iraq when the military invasion was started, and the utter stupidity of the ideologically-driven operations there since have contributed to the price that we will pay when we finally abandon the war. As happened when we similarly abandoned Vietnam, it will be at least a generation before we stop paying the price for the Bush folly.
For the U.S., there is no upside in Iraq. There is only the question of how we can get out at the lowest cost with the least damage. The attacks in Madrid and London may cause the Europeans to take a more realistic view of Islamic terrorism, which holds the promise of a more effective international war against terrorism.
Since the Bush administration is inherently unable to work with other nations (John Bolton as U.S Ambassador to the UN? Gimme a Break!) such a European awakening is not going to help America much. The Republican unilateralists will not let America do what needs to be done.
The Bush administration is a greater danger to America than al Qaeda. Bin Laden and his followers are motivated, dangerous and well-trained. The Bush administration is blind, stupid, nasty, aggressive, enamored with the use of military in any and all circumstances, and too self-centered to listen to good advice.
We are going to have to get rid of the Bush administration before we can get control of al Qaeda.
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