Bush Maintains ending US Occupation of Iraq will Infuriate Terrorists
Bush says that ending the Iraq occupation will open America to a terrorist attack.
I can't imagine why he says that. If we weren't occupying Iraq, how would that infuriate al-Qaeda and the Muslim radical fringe?
Can you imagine the discussions in the cave in Waziristan?
"They got out of Iraq!"
"Damn them, this is unacceptable."
"How dare they leave a Muslim country alone?"
"They are imperialists,aren't they? Why don't they imperialize? I am confused."
"The Iraqis are rejoicing, saying that they are independent and can practice Islam freely."
"It is horrible, I tell you, horrible."
"It cries out for vengeance! It is not acceptable for them not to colonize us!"
"I say we hit them where it hurts."
For a peak at the real world, try here.
Or you could try here. Robert Pape is a social scientist and has crunched the numbers.
As for the argument that withdrawing from Iraq will encourage the terrorists and make them feel victorious, we can turn Cheney's argument around. What had we withdrawn from in the mid to late 1990s that precipitated 9/11? Bin Laden cited Beirut (two decades earlier!) and Yemen (where we just stopped refueling). This was a pitiful attempt on Bin Laden's part to convince himself that the US is a paper tiger, not a realistic accounting of strategy! Do Bush and Cheney really want to rely on al-Qaeda propaganda in making their own policies?
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/31/2006 12:30:00 AM
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17 Comments:
Re. Bush says that ending the Iraq occupation will open America to a terrorist attack.
Prof Cole date you have outdone yourself. I cannot stop laughing.
Perhaps the President's rejoinder would be one that he gave yesterday at a fundraising event in Arkansas:
“We face an enemy that has an ideology. They believe things. The best way to describe their ideology is to relate to you the fact that they think the opposite of the way we think.”
From "Bush Shifting Public Focus to Terrorism and Iraq War" By ANNE E. KORNBLUT, 8/31/06 New York Times.
"Bush says that ending the Iraq occupation will open America to a terrorist attack. I can't imagine why he says that. If we weren't occupying Iraq, how would that infuriate al-Qaeda and the Muslim radical fringe?"
Perhaps it is because their hostility toward us did not begin when we entered Basra?
The "Muslim radical fringe" was already sufficiently inflamed when the US took down the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saddam's regime members were sufficiently inflamed against us (for kicking them out of Kuwait, keeping them from bombing Kurdistan and southern Iraq, and debilitating them, insufficiently, with sanctions) to invite Zarqawi, already a famed murderous Muslim fringe extemist fleeing Afghanistan with injuries, into Iraq for medical treatment.
Before all that it was sufficiently inflamed to stage 9-11, bomb the US Cole and the Khobar Towers, and to bomb the WTC in 1993. It was sufficiently inflamed to attack US forces in Lebanon acting as peacekeepers.
As we have seen in Europe, it only takes the implentation of free expression far outside of the Middle East to inflame the Muslim extremist fringe...Or merely rumors of a single Quran being mishandled on the other side of the planet.
Do you really believe that after we abandon the Iraqis to the "Muslim radical fringe" there is a geographical limit to their aspirations? If so, I'd like to know where that line is so we can immediately retreat behind it.
Our Dear Leader knows that fighting in Iraq has nothing to do with keeping our nation safe from terrorism.
Our Dear Leader knows that cessation of hostilities will end the cash flow to large segments of his base- and possibly even to his own pocket.
If a Democratic majority in Congress in 2007 forces a withdrawal from Iraq, do expect an increase in terrorism here at home- along the lines of Operation Northwoods.
After all, all the mercenaries, excuse me, private security contractors that used to be in Iraq will have to find something to do with themselves.
Perhaps this Bushism, as many Bushisms, contains within it a secret signal of things to come... Perhaps the withdrawal of troops from Iraq will encourage terrorists becasue the troops will be redeployed to Iran.
Professor, I have a feeling that Bush and Company are using "Islamic Fascism" to prepare an intellectual space to expand the war on terror to include attacks on Iran. I believe they conceive of wilayat al-faqih, practiced by Ayatollahs and Hezbollah, as the Islamic equivalent of fascism. I write more about this on my blog. Thank you.
Hilarious. The sheer idiocy of this administration begs for continuous mockery. Hopefully I'll be able to take one of your classes before I graduate the U.
this maddeningly pointless AngloAmerican occupation of IRAQ will persist so long as President Bush lives in dread of his father's "Wimp Factor" legacy, and the impotency implicit of not having War-Time Presidential Powers.
it becomes increasingly absurd for proponents to attempt any rationalization of what is, in fact an irrational military deployment; to be sure, it seems almost as absurd for occupation opponents to keep pointing out things like "reason" and/or "reality"...
...when, indeed the basis of the Administration's "Borrow & Bleed" policy all boils down to the Politics of Anxious Masculinity.
terrified of "Cut & Run" = weakness we begin to get the uneasy impression that, not unlike, say ~ Stalingrad 1942, AngloAmerican leaders would prefer to mis-lead, even sacrifice an entire Army, rather than lose face.
as all raisons d'etre peter out, even the hideous casus belli tautology of "we must continue to Bleed & Borrow to honour all those who have bled and treasure debt before" fails to inspire all but the most desperate electorate ~ the mis-leaders vent their anger...
...but in these invectives, ironically, at last we begin to see revealed truth: We come to a phenomenon called "projection."
The most common way that we explain human behaviour is to use our beliefs, our motives and our behaviour patterns as a template. So if the leaders tell you that; eg., "they have evil in their hearts" and "they respect no laws or conventional ethics; they will stop at nothing to achieve their purpose," what the AngloAmerican leaders are really telling us is that a candid examination of their inner motives reveals that they would most likely destroy all to save self, if they must; and that urge scares them; so they will project their urges onto others ~ and announce that, "I have discovered reality and this is what it looks like."
not unlike most petty salesmen or extremist socio-paths, they are invisible unto themselves : they can only see their self in our reactions to what they say and do. Listen closely to them now, for in a perverse sense, in their desperate anger they are finally telling us the truth :-/
The Iraq war is the best thing that happened to "Al Qaeda." Of course they'll be upset if Bush pulls the troops out of there. It's a recruting poster for them. They thought they could count on Bush and I know he won't let them down.
Pape addresses only suicide bombings. He does not hazard a guess about the overall prospect for the survival or dissolution of Iraq. People like Vali Nasr claim the US cannot just plain walk away and whistle dixie. A "so what?" posture has little value if its one "consolation" is that failure and collapse will makes Bush or the neo-cons look bad? There has to be a formula to leave behind some sort of order. If would be no sin, and perhaps assure more rapid adoption, if that formula also gave Bush's people a way to save face. Isn't a James Baker team supposed to be forging something precisely of this sort? R. Dreyfus reported this in Washington Monthly, but no one else mentions it. A bogus story?
So long as the American Legion, NASCAR fans, fundamentalists, Fox viewers, exurbia pickup owners, and talk radio listener go on applauding devoutly, and so long as the alternatives are vague or scary, a Karl can asure W that the "stay the course" remains the best bet, even if it goes all the way to Tehran. Watch congressional candidates of both parties try to outdo eachother to look and vote tough against Iran.
Michigan's 8th District Congressman, Mike Rogers, is fully on board with the plan to rid Iran of nukes and mullahs. Challenger Jim Marcinkowski seems to face a daunting uphill fight. Watch Rogers nail down victory with a strategy to sow fear and look tough.
We don't have to withdraw from Iraq for the world to think we were beaten there. The world already knows that. They're just waiting for the US to realize that.
Dr. Cole:
I believe that there was a small withdrawal in June 2001 that bin Laden may remember. The CIA intercepted a phone conversation between bin Laden operatives discussing a possible attack, and the US military in the Middle East went on maximum alert. However, this alert did not lead to an aggressive posture, but only retreat. The Navy immediately pulled all of its ships out of the harbor in Manama, Bahrain, to open waters so that suicide boats would have a harder time attacking. A group of Marines were conducting joint military exercises with the Jordanian Army, but with news of the threat they immediately stopped the exercises and left the country as quickly as possible.
The only reference to this event that I can find on the internet now is:
www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/infinite-moonlight.htm.
See the section for Infinite Moonlight '01.
I read at the time that many people in the Middle East wondered about the Bush administration and its unwillingness to suffer any military casualties, to the point that it would not let even the U.S. military, with all its might, face down the terrorist threat.
Whenever I read a Republican talking about all the military withdrawals that emboldened the terrorists, I think of this. This withdrawal by the courageous President Bush never ever gets mentioned.
That fictional terrorist conversation as truly hilarious.
Encore, Dr Cole.
Eric Margolis demolishes Bush's Big Lie About "Islamic Fascism" hoisting the real fascists by their own petard.
Al Qaeda leaders would probably despair to see that we were putting an end to our self-destruction in Iraq, and putting our resources to better use in the struggle with them.
Trackback: Would getting out of Iraq make us safer?
President Bush is wrong to inflate the threat religious cults pose by calling them Islamic fascists. Because he does not understand the threat, he's trying to fight a totally new kind of war with a conventional army trapped in another Vietnam. You can't stop a religious cult from killing themselves and murdering others by invading Iraq. Only good intelligence and police work will prevent attacks like those recently thwarted in London. Beyond that our military can only help by chasing them down with small units designed, equipped, and trained for short sudden strikes.
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