Jessica Stern--who knows what she is talking about--has concluded that, because of the incompetence of the Bush admnistration, the Bush attack on Iraq has been a significant strategic defeat for the United States in its War on Terror:
Posted by DeLong at April 7, 2004 08:33 AM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postSalon.com | How the war in Iraq has damaged the war on terrorism: Richard Clarke's argument that the war in Iraq was a distraction from the war on terrorism deserves extremely careful examination. He and other analysts are right in their assessment that the troops and focus needed to fight al-Qaida in Afghanistan were transferred to Iraq. Even more troubling, attacking Iraq strengthened the terrorists at our expense.
The Bush administration justified the war, from a national security perspective, with three principal arguments. First, there were the purported links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein and the notion that the global war on terrorism required getting rid of those two threats. President Bush explained in September 2002: "You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam when you talk about the war on terrorism. They're both equally as bad, and equally as evil, and equally as destructive." Second, there was the problem of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which Bush felt were so dangerous that they had to be taken out with a preventive war. "The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, showed what enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what ... terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction," he said. Bush warned that waiting until Saddam attacked would impose immense and unacceptable risks to the free nations of the world. Finally, there was the danger that Saddam would turn those weapons over to al-Qaida. Bush raised the danger that "al-Qaida becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world."
There are several problems with the notion that a war in Iraq could in any way reduce these threats. Setting aside the argument that Saddam was attempting to forge some kind of an alliance with al-Qaida, an idea whose veracity has not been proven by U.S. intelligence, there is the broader question of whether attacking a rogue state could further our goal of wiping out a terrorist movement. Terrorist groups and rogue states should not be conflated, as military strategist Jeffrey Record argued in a report published by the Army War College. Terrorists -- especially suicidal ones -- have no return address and cannot be deterred, while rogue states have to worry about retaliation. The claim that rogue states are likely to be more easily deterred than terrorists has been argued by many academics, one of whom happens to be serving as the national security advisor. In her January 2000 article in Foreign Affairs, Condoleezza Rice argued that Iraq in particular could be deterred because any use of weapons of mass destruction would mean "national obliteration."
But the greatest threat America faces today does not stem from "rogue states" but from weak ones and the terrorist groups and purveyors of WMD that thrive within their borders. This has been clear to some of us who have dealt with terrorism for a decade or more. After 9/11, the fixation on enemy states as the most important threat to U.S. national security can no longer be seen as just quaintly old-fashioned. It is now a dangerous fixation. Rogue individuals and groups are not only the most important source of danger with regard to terrorist threats to American civilians, but -- as the case of Dr. A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb who traded his knowledge to the North Koreans and others, makes painfully clear -- they are also important sources of weapons of mass destruction and expertise.
Moreover, by attacking Iraq without sufficient preparations for creating a functioning state, we have created precisely what the Bush administration had identified as a major threat to world security: a weak state unable to police its borders or to maintain a monopoly on violence. Failed and failing states can no longer be viewed exclusively as humanitarian crises, but must be seen as threats to international security because of the opportunities they offer to terrorists. The Bush administration claimed to have learned this lesson from the events of 9/11. The 2002 National Security Strategy declared that the events of that day "taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders." But the decision to attack Iraq, ignoring all efforts by the State Department to create a blueprint for a functioning state, suggests that the lesson was learned only in a theoretical sense.
The false idea that the United States is engaged in a crusade against the Islamic world is a critical component of the Islamist nihilists' worldview, and spreading this idea is critical to their success. The unprovoked attack on Iraq, followed by an occupation that is widely perceived as inept and arbitrary, even by our British ally, has confirmed this view among potential sympathizers. Every time American troops shoot into a crowd, even in self-defense, the image of America as a reckless, ruthless oppressor is highlighted. Televised pictures of American soldiers and their tanks in Iraq are a "deeply humiliating scene to Muslims," explained Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih, who calls the war in Iraq a "gift" to Osama bin Laden. Unsurprisingly, terrorist recruiters are using the war and the continuing occupation to mobilize recruits -- not only inside Iraq but outside as well. Intelligence officials in the United States, Europe and Africa have reported that the new recruits they are seeing since the war became imminent are younger, with a more menacing attitude.
...
In addition to the purported links between al-Qaida and Saddam, the Bush administration claimed that the war was necessary because of Iraq's weapons-of-mass destruction program. Even granting the Bush administration its arguments, there were still serious problems with their case for invasion. The notion that Saddam might try to cultivate links with al-Qaida might have been a plausible theory, though no intelligence has been revealed to support it. And yet it seemed more than a bit far-fetched to envisage Saddam giving over weapons of mass destruction to an Islamist group with ideological links to local Salafists who aimed to destroy his regime. Indeed, attacking Iraq, without protecting its borders, has made it more likely that WMD components and expertise would end up in the hands of terrorists. Capt. J. Ryan Cutchin, the leader of the inspection team known as MET Bravo, told the New York Times that his team often arrived at sites identified as housing WMD after looters had stolen everything of value. We may never know what the looters -- or Baathist elements pretending to be looters -- managed to ferret away, he said. Once scientists know how to grow and disseminate biological agents effectively, new stockpiles can be rapidly rebuilt. Perhaps the most frightening prospect would be if some of Saddam's weaponeers provided their expertise to our terrorist enemies.
The war in Iraq has split the allies, not the terrorists. It has turned Iraq into a Mecca for international terrorists, and mobilized local Shiite and Salafi jihadist groups that had previously posed a minimal threat. It has facilitated connections between terrorists and those with formal military experience in Saddam's army, the lethal nightmare that the invasion was supposed to have thwarted. Antipathy toward the United States, not only in Iraq and throughout the entire Islamic world, but in Europe as well, has become a dangerous trend exploited by terrorists. Even as we tout our successes in rounding up al-Qaida terrorists, the broader movement inspired by bin Laden and ignited by the invasion of Iraq is recruiting new nihilist minions throughout the world. The war in Iraq has not only been a distraction from the war on terrorism; it has strengthened our enemies in ways that continue to surprise and horrify us. Where will we be surprised next?
Brad,
What's your opinion on copyright? Does a 1,300 word "quote" fall under fair use?
Posted by: KevinNYC on April 7, 2004 08:54 AMDaniel Davies has long been a proponent of the view that even if you believe that we eventually needed to invade Iraq, there was a good argument for waiting:
http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2003_12_07_d-squareddigest_archive.html
First, despite being highly sympathetic to the noble sentiments of Thomas Jefferson regarding intellectual property...
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
... I'm afraid I must second KevinNYC's reminder about fair use. I'm no lawyer, but I doubt it's legal to disseminate on a free website 1300 words of a 2100 word article of a paid-subscription website. (Prof. Stern's article was a "Salon Premium" article, and thus Salon made available for free only the first paragraph, the first 55 words.)
Second, while it's all well and good to listen to a scientifically trained (Stern's academic training was as a chemical weapons expert.), empirically minded (What do terrorists think? Well, why don't you *ask* every captured terrorist you can?), bookishly beautiful (sigh), Kennedy School of Government Goddess (I repeat... sigh), some of us are fighting EVIL dammit. Only a fool WOULDN'T rush in. :)
Posted by: Bill on April 7, 2004 09:55 AMThe Bush II administration has done more damage to our national security than any other in my lifetime (i'm 64), including Johnson and Nixon in Viet Nam. Indo-China had (and has) little strategic import in and of itself; it was important then only in the context of the Cold War. Michael Lind, in "Vietnam: The Necessary War" has made a case that it was strategically necessary in the Cold War context (sort of, but...) but tactically grossly mishandled (no argument there). Iraq, however sits on top of or within 500 or so miles of half or more of the world's petrol reserves. Yes, the strategic significance of the Iraq and environs is about oil. It is profoundly against our national interest to do anything that would put at risk the West's access to that oil. Yet that is exactly what the Bush II administration has done through its breathtaking incompetence.
Bush II has made two collossal strategic blunders and at least one collossal tactical one. The first was to walk away from the Israel Palestine peace process. This was bad enough but then they exacerbated the damage by lining up with the Sharon government, thus eschewing even the pretense of honest brokerhood. The second strategic mistake was not to throw the kitchen sink at exterminating Al Quaeda from AFghanistan, in addition to taking down the Taliban regime, and then following that up by throwing the resources necessary into a genuine nation building exercise there.
REgarding Iraq, I had read Kenneth Pollack's "The Threatening Storm" in late 2002 and felt that he made a good case that Saddam posed a serious medium or long term nuclear threat, and that eventually the US and its allies would have to do something about it. Pollack struck me then, and still does in his recent public appearances and utterances, as a fact-based analyst. Therefore I was not a vehement opponent of the war per se at the outset, although I was opposed to the unilateral way in which we were going about it. Subsequent events have shown that there genuinely was a huge intelligence failure in the 1998 to 2002 time frame on the Iraq nuclear issue. What I think is important for the Commission to find out is, in the run-up to the war, "what did the administration know and when did it know it". To expand on Howard Baker's phraseology re Watergate, we also need to know specifically who in the admin knew what and when.
The collossal tactical blunder was to try to conduct the conduct the Iraq war on the cheap. We had enough force to take down the Iraqi Army quickly, even without being unable to get the 4th ID into northern Iraq through Turkey because of blowback from our unilateralism. But we didn't have enough force, nor the right forces, to prevent the country from descending into anarchy. This blunder was a direct result of the active fantasy life of the neocons who were running the war. They expected our troops to be greeted with rose petals strewen on the roads. They also expected that Iraq's command economy, devastated by years of sanctions, would some be reborn overnight in Frederick Heyek's image.
As far as I can tell, Bush II's wars on Iraq and on terrorism have accomplished two things: They have painted larger, more brightly colored bulls eyes on New York City, Washington and the other major cities and landmarks of our country; and they have recuited uncountable thousands of potential new terrorists to begin aiming at them.
This REALLY pisses me off. I have two daughters living in New York City, and one of them worked at One World Trade Center. I still get chills down my spine whenever I think back on the random occurrences that led to her being late leaving for work that day, and thus still on the bus on East Broadway less than a mile away when American Airlines flight 77 hit her building. Had she caught her usual bus she probably would have been on the elevator when hundreds of gallons of flaming jet fuel poured down the shafts. The leaders of this country had a moral duty to destroy Al Qaeda and do so in such a way as to minimize the likelihood of a repeat performance. Instead they intentionally let them get away (see the last chapter of Richard Clarke's book, as well as Sen. Bob Graham's recent address to the Council on Foreign Relations), and they've put us at even greater risk, all the while trashing our civil liberties.
Contrary to what she says, it's not clear that terrorits w/o a return address can't be deterred. (In response to potential use of WMD here, I can think of two targets that would deter any jihadist.) It's simply that the moral implications of credible deterrence are unacceptable.
Posted by: Matt on April 7, 2004 10:16 AMThe absurdity of needing to debate whether creating civil war in the Middle East in the hope of replacing a secular dictator with an Iranian born Ayatollah (Sistani) as a way of rolling back Islamist fundamentalism is a testimony to the Bush administration's spin-control.
Pity reality insists on showing its ugly face.
Posted by: epistemology on April 7, 2004 10:21 AMWell, yes, Matt, we could kill everybody...
Daniel Davies doesn’t mention what may be the most important point, which is that getting as many allies on your side as possible, even if it means waiting a while, is a necessary tactical component to help stem the tide of new recruits to terrorism, which is the only way to fight the problem long-term.
I’m with Chuck on everything, and we shoulld send his posting over to Salon right now, except about the “huge intelligence failure” on the nuclear issue. Domestic and foreign intelligence, and the U.N. weapons inspectors, all indicated we had more time, any Powell and Rice have said so on television. I too was convinced by Pollack’s book, although a couple of political scientists have told me that even before that, he was always considered to be a hot dog, tooting his own name.
Stern’s article is a decent try, although as Swift might have said, it leaves out the beginning, and any thoughts about the end, and gets some of the middle confused. Somebody writing to this website once observed that the U.S. mind is several months or years behind reality, so it remains to be seen whether catch-up can be played fast enough.
Indeed, next question in the public debate seems to be “Darn it, why do they hate us? Don’t they see we’re tryin to help em?” as evinced on Charlie Rose yesterday. Putting yourself in THEIR shoes seems to be beyond the capability of most people: “The U.S. has installed fumblers and crooks in the governing council; they are rehiring some members of the old Mukhaberat; they are building impregnable military bases on our land; and our spiritual leader Sistani is against the interim constitution, some clauses of which are mandated to remain law even after the transference of power and elections.” Hardly a complete list, yet not one of them mentioned in Stern’s article, which is presumably about how invading Iraq has exascerbated the “War on Terrorism”! However, as Stern properly predicts, the additional killing will add fuel to that fire.
As for the “end”, how to really get out of this, it’s going to take some major religious humility on our part.
Posted by: Lee A. on April 7, 2004 10:23 AMThe recent rushing together of militant Sunni and Shiite factions has reminded Billmon (http://www.billmon.org/), among others, of a time when ham-handed British tactics helped turn Iraq from a post-Ottoman gaggle of competing ethnic and religious groups into something resembling a nation. That unity was in service of getting the Brits out of Iraq.
At the same time, this is very much the urban war we all told ourselves would be the worst part of an Iraq invasion. It is the fight we had not yet had to fight when an "end to major hostilities" was declared. We have now blown up a crowd at a mosque, used live ammunition for crowd dispersal, and terrorized the non-combatant residents of urban areas.
I wonder if it is a coincidence that Iraqi Shiites are engaging in combat with US troops now. The renewed effort in Afghanistan is producing a strain on our military, the US is thinking about upping its troop count in Iraq, and the US death toll in Iraq is now over 3 times what it was prior major hostilities being declared at an end. Iranian leaders must be thinking that the risk of invasion now is down from what it was a month or two ago. Why not sick some fighters on us and see if Iran can earn a greater claim to influence in a sovereign Iraq? Plenty of time for apologies now before the US can get around to thinking about invading another country.
Posted by: K Harris on April 7, 2004 11:00 AMBill wrote, "I'm afraid I must second KevinNYC's reminder about fair use."
I looked into this a little bit after launching my own website project. My impression is that there are a few principles behind fair use that one can claim, such as the length of the quote, what the purpose was (educational and not monetary profit, etc)...but that nothing is hard and fast.
There are all sorts of places on the web where "educational use" is claimed, and that just repost entire articles. Common Dreams is one (last I checked, many months ago). I personally don't think "educational use" would win in a court, in that context. Of course, the likelihood of a suit and heavy damages is pretty small.
The alternative of course is smaller quotes and more summarization/commentary, which adds more value. (Note to our gracious host: no implication that you're not doing that already.) I try to do that on my site. It's a lot more work, of course. Good example is this post
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/html_gen.php?entryId=76
which is intended to be authoritative on the issue of the final cost of the S&L cleanup.
Where is the surprise? The Bush administration may be surprised, but Alterman already told us so a year ago.
Posted by: bakho on April 7, 2004 12:52 PMK Harris, U.S. military personnel have stated on news shows that Iran was never seriously considered for an invasion. It's impossible, due to size and terrain. It's probable that Iran has long known this, too. That "axis of evil" rhetoric must have been entirely for domestic U.S. consumption, especially as a bit of red meat for the Right.
But your question is a good one, and needs an immediate answer: why did Muqtada al-Sadr wait this long to start an Shiite uprising which he had implicitly been threatening since at least early last fall? I think we are still missing a piece or two of the puzzle, and God knows whether we will get them from the U.S. media, presently misleading us with partial truths. His following is much larger than they say (although maybe the fighting militia is only 10,000), and it could be that he and Sistani are actually in close agreement. After all, they are at this moment living one block from each other in Najaf--a holy city which the Coalition has so far (it is 12:57 p.m. Pacific Time, April 7) agreed not to enter.
Posted by: Lee A. on April 7, 2004 01:03 PMLee A.
They're playing "good Imam, bad Imam"?
I agree that there was no invasion list based on the "axis of evil" since that was just a notion made up for a speech. Iraq was the target. However, Iran's behavior has been a bit of a wonder. Yes, within Iran's borders, there are real worries, and yes, Iran trucks with terrorists, but its proxies and allies in Iraq have, till just lately, behaved peacefully. Pretty obviously, they had other things in mind as well. Those weapons didn't find their own way into al-Sadr's arsenal. My guess is, Iran wanted to see whether US plans fit into their own thinking. Sistani didn't make as much headway in turning the place into a majority ruled state as Iran hoped, perhaps?
Posted by: K Harris on April 7, 2004 01:22 PMBy the way, as Billmon indicates, the animosity between Sunni and Shiite has been overblown by the U.S. media. The idea seems to have come from the fact that Sunnis held predominant positions in Saddam's regime, and no doubt some of them were terrible people. But right after the invasion it was possible to find out from Riverbend that intermarriage was widespread, at least in Baghdad. We should have expected them to band together to fight infidels.
Posted by: Lee A. on April 7, 2004 01:23 PMK Harris, I guess my first question should be, why do you think Iran is majorly implicated in Iraq?
Posted by: Lee A. on April 7, 2004 01:28 PMLee, I've not heard anything which says that Iran is implicated. Although that might change; it's got to be really tempting for elements in Iran now, to throw some gasoline on the fire that's already burning.
As for:
"But your question is a good one, and needs an immediate answer: why did Muqtada al-Sadr wait this long to start an Shiite uprising which he had implicitly been threatening since at least early last fall?"
The reason that I've heard is that the CPA shut down his newspaper and attempted to serve some warrants which had been sitting around for a while. So the reason is probably that the US decided to force a showdown.
Posted by: Barry on April 7, 2004 04:05 PM"Indeed, attacking Iraq, without protecting its borders, has made it more likely that WMD components and expertise would end up in the hands of terrorists. Capt. J. Ryan Cutchin, the leader of the inspection team known as MET Bravo, told the New York Times that his team often arrived at sites identified as housing WMD after looters had stolen everything of value. We may never know what the looters -- or Baathist elements pretending to be looters -- managed to ferret away, he said."
The WaPo did a story about looting of prospective WMD sites last May 11: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A40212-2003May10¬Found=true
Quite honestly, I think this is grounds for not only an impeachment trial, but quite possibly a charge of high treason. And I've been saying this ever since I saw this story last May 12.
What was our supposed objective in invading Iraq, after all? It was **to keep Saddam's WMDs from falling into the hands of terrorists.** And what did our actual war plan do? It treated Baghdad as the objective, and treated the WMD locations as something that could be left unguarded for days, once they were behind our front lines - the ideal time for terrorists to get their hands on the WMDs.
The risk of WMDs being grabbed by terrorists in the 'fog of war' had been repeated ad nauseum in the run-up to the war.
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld kept cutting troop strength, to make a point about being able to take **Baghdad** (which wasn't the real objective) without massive quantities of troops.
Not only did this leave us unprepared to win the peace in Iraq, but had there been WMDs, this cutting of troop strength (along with the focus on Iraq) left the WMDs totally unprotected from terrorists.
There are two possibilities:
1) The Bush Administration knew all along that Saddam had no WMDs; or
2) the Bush Administration's war plan was a criminally irresponsible act, betraying the country by knowingly leaving it open to the very threat it was supposed to protect us from.
I can't see a third possibility here.
It's the war plan, stupid.
Posted by: RT on April 7, 2004 04:37 PMPlease acknowledge that there is an argument FOR the war, even if it is poorly made by Bush in public. For example, see the outline by Steven Den Beste at http://denbeste.nu/essays/strategic_overview.shtml
Posted by: J R M on April 7, 2004 07:58 PMSuccessful counter-insurgency strategy always relies on two interrelated elements: a military campaign aimed at the perpetrators of violence, and a political campaign designed to isolate them from the wider population. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration violated both principles simultaneously.
Posted by: bakho on April 7, 2004 09:20 PMThanks for the link. As a list of all the U.S. reasons, and the chain of logic that went into them, Steven Den Beste’s outline is comprehensive and instructional, a very good place for anyone to start to dissect this mess.
Posted by: Lee A. on April 7, 2004 09:26 PMhttp://riverbendblog.blogspot.com: And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad...
Welcome home, troops. Another war just been ... won.
Posted by: bubba on April 7, 2004 11:05 PM"Rogue individuals and groups are not only the most important source of danger with regard to terrorist threats to American civilians, but -- as the case of Dr. A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb who traded his knowledge to the North Koreans and others, makes painfully clear -- they are also important sources of weapons of mass destruction and expertise."
Recall that the chief difference between, say, Richard Clarke and Laurie Mylroie is whether terrorism has indeed entered a new era dominated by stateless terrorist networks, or whether states, acting clandestinely, remain the most important actors in the terrorist world.
Is Jessica Stern now extending this mode of thought into the realm of WMD proliferation? I thought hardly anyone took seriously the contention that A.Q. Khan acted independently of the Pakistani state. (See paragraph 2 of the following article.)
http://www.saag.org/papers10/paper931.html
There was a case to be made that the invasion of Iraq would be a strategic good. The problem is a) the timing (before we squashed al Qaeda) and b) the planning (which was Mayberry Mafia all the way, apparently Barney Fife did the planning for the peace and reconstruction).
So, there's a case to be made that this was the right war, at the wrong time. But there's no case that can be made that this was the right war at the right time with the right plans for the aftermath. Reality just bit that notion on the ass.
- Badtux the Realist Penguin
Posted by: BadTux on April 8, 2004 01:19 PMBush is a fool and he did rush in.
Posted by: Dubblblind on April 8, 2004 01:32 PMAnother blogger who quotes full articles. I expected more over here.
Posted by: Jason on April 8, 2004 06:36 PMI heard Jessica Stern speak at a closed (to the public and press) briefing several weeks ago. She indeed thinks that the war in Iraq has detracted from the war on terrorism, but she did not elaborate. She says all her direct information on terrorists comes interviews with a non-representative sample of terrorists. She selected people who she thought would not kill her and agreed to be interviewed. The interviews included some members of the American ultra-right community who are very scary individuals. One was extremely intelligent well informed, went to MIT and was the most scary of all the Americans. I was not surprised to hear that many of the Islamic terrorists are in it for the money. She says that many members of the al-Qaeda network are extremely jealous and resentful of the pay and perks of other members—there is much infighting. It almost seemed like al-Qaeda resembled the fictional SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) organization in Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories.
I found her an engaging and generally well-informed speaker, but she had no grand theories or models. She does not seem to have the analytical outlook you would find in someone like Anatole Rappaport. I detected some gaps in her knowledge about Islamic beliefs. Finally she said Clarke has a reputation in Washington as the consummate bureaucratic infighter. Rice crossed him and now it’s payback time.
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