How BUSH Created a Terrorist Haven

“From today's NY Times Op-Ed piece,
How America Created a Terrorist Haven
By Jessica Stern

Yesterday's bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was the latest evidence that America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one.

Of course, we should be glad that the Iraq war was swifter than even its proponents had expected, and that a vicious tyrant was removed from power. But the aftermath has been another story. America has created — not through malevolence but through negligence — precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens' rudimentary needs.

As the administration made clear in its national security strategy released last September, weak states are as threatening to American security as strong ones. Yet its inability to get basic services and legitimate governments up and running in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq — and its pursuant reluctance to see a connection between those failures and escalating anti-American violence — leave one wondering if it read its own report.

For example, the American commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, has described the almost daily attacks on his troops as guerrilla campaigns carried out by Baathist remnants with little public support. Yet an increasing number of Iraqis disagree: they believe that the attacks are being carried out by organized forces — motivated by nationalism, Islam and revenge — that feed off public unhappiness.

According to a survey this month by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, nearly half of the Iraqis polled attribute the violence to provocation by American forces or resistance to the occupation (even more worrisome, the Arabic word for "resistance" used in the poll implies a certain amount of sympathy for the perpetrators). In the towns of Ramadi and Falluja, where many of the recent attacks have taken place, nearly 90 percent of respondents attributed the attacks to these causes.

Why would ordinary Iraqis not rush to condemn violence against the soldiers who liberated them from Saddam Hussein? Mustapha Alani, an Iraqi scholar with the Royal United Services Institute in London, gave me a possible explanation: even in the darkest days of the Iran-Iraq war, most Iraqis (other than Kurds and Marsh Arabs) did not have to worry about personal security. They could not speak their minds, but they could count on electricity, water and telephone service for at least part of the day. Today they fear being attacked in their bedrooms; power, water and telephones are routinely unavailable. As Mr. Alani put it, Iraqis today could could care less about democracy, they just want assurance that their daughters won't be raped or their sons kidnapped en route to the grocery store.

Blaming the violence on isolated Baath loyalists was perhaps more plausible when the violence was centered in the Sunni heartland. But the recent riots in the southern Shiite city of Basra, and the sabotage of a major oil pipeline in the Kurdish north, make clear that other regions may not be peaceable indefinitely.

Shiites widely supported the operation to remove Saddam Hussein, but they are furious about what they see as American incompetence since the war. This set the stage for religious extremists. Moktada al-Sadr, a vitriolic cleric in Basra, says he has recruited a 5,000-man Shiite army to take on the occupiers. In public he is urging his followers to engage in "peaceful" resistance, but some have told Western reporters that they are prepared to carry out "martyrdom operations" if and when they receive orders to do so.

In addition, in the run-up to the war, most Iraqis viewed the foreign volunteers who were rushing in to fight against America as troublemakers, and Saddam Hussein's forces reportedly killed many of them. Today, according to Mr. Alani, these foreigners are increasingly welcomed by the public, especially in the former Baathist strongholds north of Baghdad.

As bad as the situation inside Iraq may be, the effect that the war has had on terrorist recruitment around the globe may be even more worrisome. Even before the coalition troops invaded, a senior United States counterterrorism official told reporters that "an American invasion of Iraq is already being used as a recruitment tool by Al Qaeda and other groups." Intelligence officials in the United States, Europe and Africa say that the recruits they are seeing now are younger than in the past. Television images of American soldiers and tanks in Baghdad are deeply humiliating to Muslims, even those who didn't like Saddam Hussein, explained Saad al-Faqih, head of Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, a Saudi dissident group in London. He told me that some 3,000 young Saudis have entered Iraq in recent months, and called the war "a gift to Osama bin Laden."

Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, told a crowd of 150,000 in a March religious observance that the United States was trying to create a "tragedy for humanity and to spread chaos in the world" and predicted that the people of Iraq and the region would "welcome American troops with rifles, blood, arms, martyrdom."

The occupation has given disparate groups from various countries a common battlefield on which to fight a common enemy. Hamid Mir, a biographer of Osama bin Laden, has been traveling in Iraq and told me that Hezbollah has greatly stepped up its activities not only in Shiite regions but also in Baghdad.

Most ominously, Al Qaeda's influence may be growing. It has been linked to attacks as far apart as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. One suspect in yesterday's attack is Ansar al-Islam, a Qaeda offshoot whose camps in Northern Iraq were destroyed early in the war. In recent weeks American officials acknowledged that members of the group had slipped into Iraq from Iran, had begun organizing in Baghdad and were suspected of plotting bombings, including the Aug. 7 attack on the Jordanian Embassy. In addition, Mr. Mir reported that Al Qaeda was carving out new training grounds in the border region between Iraq and Syria.

While there is no single root cause of terrorism, my interviews with terrorists over the past five years suggest that alienation, perceived humiliation and lack of political and economic opportunities make young men susceptible to extremism. It can evolve easily into violence when government institutions are weak and there is money available to pay for a holy war. America is unlikely to win the hearts and minds of committed terrorists. After some time on the job, it is hard for them to imagine another life. Several described jihad to me as being "addictive."

Thus the best way to fight them is to ensure that they are rejected by the broader population. Terrorists and guerrillas rely on getting at least some popular support. America's task will be to restore public safety in Iraq and put in place effective governing institutions that are run by Iraqis. It would also help if we involved more troops from other countries, to make clear that the war wasn't an American plot to steal Iraq's oil and denigrate Islam, as the extremists argue.

The goal of creating a better Iraq is a noble one, but a first step will be making sure that ordinary Iraqis find America's ideals and assistance more appealing than Al Qaeda's.

Jessica Stern, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is author of "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill."”

“Most ominously, Al Qaeda's influence may be growing. It has been linked to attacks as far apart as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Morocco

LOL! What a disingenuous piece of propaganda. AQ was already in these places, and there's been significant clamp-down, particularly in Indonesia. If AQ was truly growing in power, then we would have seen at least one 9/11-scale operation. Nothing remotely close to that level of organization/sophistication has emerged from AQ.

Now, to address the article as a whole:

I don't know why she thinks concentrations of AQ is a bad thing. Dispersal is bad for the U.S. - how does a military effectively take out a dispersed network? If AQ is concentrating in Iraq - that's great! Our military can act on that relatively easily. If extremists are coming out of the wood-work to go into iraq to attack American soldiers - great! Our military can act on that as well.

The whole premise of her argument is fallacious. Obviously, in her opinion, we should have appeased the terrorists and tyrants.”

“no, that was disgusted sarcasm. Note I didn't use that statement as a refutation of her argument. That would have been a strawman.”

“I think what she is arguing is that by bungling the occupation, we have made matters much worse in Iraq and worse elsewhere. An attack against UN humanitarian functions is unprecedented. She clearly states that the best way to fight them is to ensure they have no popular support. Twist that into appeasement if you want but you don’t make much sense.”

“I think what she is arguing is that by bungling the occupation, we have made matters much worse in Iraq and worse elsewhere.

I think it's still too early to tell. Perhaps in two years we'll have a better picture of the effects of the war.

She clearly states that the best way to fight them is to ensure they have no popular support.

Yes, and one way to do that is to re-instill the feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness that once pervaded the Arab Street. If they perceive that they're powerless to attack the West and hopeless about surviving an attempted attack, they won't get much support. This worked for decades.

Twist that into appeasement if you want but you don’t make much sense

No, I meant she probably would have preferred the war hadn't have taken place and that the U.S. should have been friendlier to the Arabs in order to win them over.”

“From her op-ed "my interviews with terrorists over the past five years suggest that alienation, perceived humiliation and lack of political and economic opportunities make young men susceptible to extremism. It can evolve easily into violence when government institutions are weak and there is money available to pay for a holy war."

I can't speak for her but it would seem she would strongly disagree that by humiliating the Arab Street, as you suggest, we would cut popular support for terrorism. Just where has this worked? Israel?”

“...and yes, these are strawmen. She didn't say any such thing.

she probably would have preferred the war hadn't have taken place and that the U.S. should have been friendlier to the Arabs in order to win them over.

Obviously, in her opinion, we should have appeased the terrorists and tyrants.

It would also seem that you are continuing to equate "Arab" with "terrorist".”

“Just where has this worked?

Arabian Peninsula, 70's - early 90's. Certainly there has existed animosity toward the West for God knows how long. But, that alone will not coalesce into terrorism (on the scale we've seen it recently) if people don't believe the U.S. is vulnerable and if they don't believe they'll survive the counter-assault. This perception shifted in the early 90's due to foreign policy bungling.

"...and yes, these are strawmen. She didn't say any such thing

You're misusing the word, as I already pointed out. I refuted two of her arguments (quoting her exact words), and then ended with a snide aside. You seem to think I've misquoted her and then tore down my fabrication (aka strawman fallacy). Your motivation for persisting on this point is unclear, particularly when it's so trivially refuted (twice now).”

“Well my motivation is that you consistently set up these ridiculous positions for others in order to distract from an honest discussion.


If you’ve read the declaration of war against America by bin Laden, you’ll know that humiliation and confiscation of human rights by Saudi authorities as well as the poverty of the masses there are among his chief grievances. While our less than vigorous response to the Cole bombing, the attacks on our African embassies, Saudi barracks and Somalia were surely signs of weakness that emboldened these fanatics, their contempt for our resolve goes back at least as far as our decision to cut and run from Beirut in 1983.”

“Well my motivation is that you consistently set up these ridiculous positions for others in order to distract from an honest discussion.

Good grief, it's called the bait-and-switch fallacy, violin. And that was not my intention, although I see why you might think otherwise. But you're putting too much emphasis on one sentence and ignoring the rest. That's not exactly intellectually honest either.

If you’ve read the declaration of war against America by bin Laden, you’ll know that humiliation and confiscation of human rights by Saudi authorities as well as the poverty of the masses there are among his chief grievances

I'm not saying they aren't. In fact, I already said this kind of resentment had been in place for some time (probably since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire). But I don't believe for a second that the top echelons of AQ are in it because of religious convictions. They are seeking power, and they will use religion to get it.


their contempt for our resolve goes back at least as far as our decision to cut and run from Beirut in 1983.

But it didn't result in a sea-change until the early '90's when the movement coalesced.”

“200 people are killed every month in the people's republic of grey davis(california). where is the outrage? should we not send in police? it might make matters worse. the bad guys might get mad and kill more people. 200 US citizens turn up dead every single month, in one state. quagmire you say?


the UN building was massively detstroyed. this was achieved using a weapon of mass destruction by evil people who are worthy of our military attention. death is the only thing that will stop them. that death can come by our hands or theirs. no words, no reasoning, no amount of good will will ever change the fact that they want us to die so they can rule the world. they are willing to die to achieve this. we must be willing to die to stop them or we will die when they take over.

2/3 of top AQ leaders have been captured or killed, as well as many many underlings. to say that they are better off now is the stupidest thing i've ever heard.

if i was prime minister of isreal, i would call yassar arafat tonight and say...one more israeli get so much as a scratch and i am sending the helicopters to your house and you will die. the next day i would call the palistinian prime minister and tell him the same thing.

this is the real deal folks. better quit wishing everything was all candy and lace and get real and think this through, instead of feeeeeeling your way through every problem you see.


order as chaos, take your pick.........


liberals are the problem, not the solution. ”

“ok forrest, you've convinced me. we should try to reason with them. we should give them whatever they want. we should let them kill 3,000 more americans. we should hope that they will stop being violent to achieve their goals.


they didn't bomb arafat. they destroyed his building all around him and kept him in there for a few weeks. the could have easily killed him with the first bomb, or at any time during the whole ordeal. sorry forrest, you seem sincere but i can't agree with in this one either.”

“More dead and still no WMD.”

“tilt, you didn't hear me. that was a WMD that took down the UN building. do you disagree? was it a weapon of small destruction? a weapon of mediocre distruction?

200 people murdered every month in california. what do you think of that? don't you see the bass akwards irony here? can't you see how blown out of proportion the iraq situation is? that's 2400 murdered every year in one of our own states. we're up to what in iraq...bout 200 so far, in a major combat zone. do the math man. it don't add up.”

“I think the title of this thread pretty much says it all. Where once the connections between Iraq and terrorists were tenuous, now Iraq could become a magnet for the dangerous fringe of the Moslem world. And our soldiers are the bait.

Remember how Afghanistan became the epicenter for Islamic youth to prove their manhood in the 70s? I don't like the looks of this At All.”

“Better to have the terrorists in one area, than spread out all over the world. Hooray for Bush.”

“Hooray for Chrétien?”

“HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD

Hooray for Hollywood
That screwy, ballyhooey Hollywood!
Where any office boy
Or young mechanic
can be a panic
With just a good-looking pan
And any barmaid
Can be a star maid
If she dances with or without a fan
Hooray for Hollywood!
Where you're terrific
if you're even good!
Where anyone at all from Shirley Temple
to Aimee Semple
is equally understood
Come on and try your luck
You could be Donald Duck
Hooray for Hollywood!

Hooray for Hollywood!
That phony, super Coney, Hollywood
They come from Chilicothes and Padukahs
with their bazookas
To see their names up in lights
All armed with photos
From local rotos
With their hair in curlers
and legs in tights
Hooray for Hollywood!
You may be homely in your neighborhood.
Still, if you think that you can be an actor
See Mister Factor
He'd make a monkey look good!
Within a half an hour
You'll look like Tyrone Power
Hooray for Hollywood!”

“Saw "Witness For The Prosecution" again Tuesday night. Ol' Tyrone Power Got His... Marlene Dietrich gutted that boy like a smallmouth bass right there in the courtroom, yessireebobtailcat!”

“nice segway tilt[eyeroll]


so you don't think it is possible that bush was right all along that it already WAS a terrorist haven? it's not like iraq was a stable place. these people were terrorizing their own citizens. the UN count of bodies found in mass graves is over 300,000. you haven't heard that little fact on NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NPR or CNN....

i think it is interesting that we offered to guard the UN building and set up a more defendable perimiter for the building and they(the UN) refused.

you don't like the looks of terrorist, which is why you didn't want to go in. you are afraid of danger and want to run away and pretend it doesn't exist and let somebody else worry about it and get killed.



IMHO, that is.....”

“strat -

How many Iraqis were on those planes on 9/11? You're quite mixed up.”

“Come on Strat, we can't be surprised by these types of attacks. Bush can't land on a frickin' aircraft carrior without being attacked by the left. They blame him for EVERYTHING, war, famine, blackouts...throw enough shat at someone and something (ANYTHING) is bound to stick sooner or later.”

“yup nige, they are relentless. the bush jihad is like nothing i've ever seen. their seething hatred of this man far surpasses the clinton bashers of the 90's. it's really telling.

violin, i am mixed up allright. i can't for the life of me see how you can think that terrorism knows international boundrys. that it can be contained. as tony blair said, terrorism thrives in chaos. order will bring it to it's knees. funny how liberals want chaos here at home too.....correlation? me thinks yes. you are standing up, in the end, for the bad guys and attacking the good guys.


find a solution for every problem, not a problem with every solution.....


we just caught CHEMICAL ALI, hussiens cousin. i'm sure this is viewed as a bad thing by liberals....


"The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his
memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very
imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are
so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of
our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play,
we march always in the ranks of honor." --Sir Winston S. Churchill”

“"In larger part, the sleepwalking Clinton administration was just a
reflection of the emptiness of the Nineties, with its assumption
that history was over and all that remained was the tidying
up. The country had simply fallen back into its traditional,
perilous forgetfulness. Which seems to precede every December
7th and September 11th." --Paul Greenberg”

“The point of my cut & paste was that terrorism does thrive in chaos, as you say, and that by bringing down Hussein without committing sufficient troops to keep order, we have inadvertently created a terrorist haven - Got it?

Do you have any knowledge of how old those mass graves are or how they got there? Millions died in the Iran-Iraq war (while we supplied both sides), after Bush I’s urging the Shiites to revolt, we allowed Hussein to slaughter them, even though we had troops there to stop it because we feared an Islamic theocracy. Perhaps some of the mass graves were created by the US?”

“I'm not claiming any special knowledge. Perhaps Saddam was responsible for each and every body in those graves. I don't know and neither do you.”

“As a side note, Josh Marshall is reporting that the attacks on the UN could have been carried out by Saudi militants pushed out of Saudi Arabia by the crackdown underway there now.”

“

My main complaint about the Bush dynasty (and their cronies) is that their behavior in the Middle East over the last twenty-five years has been motivated by personal gain, leading to the arming of our enemies who we then later have to take down.











Rumsfeld and his "buddy" Saddam in 1983

”

“The point of my cut & paste was that terrorism does thrive in chaos, as you say, and that by bringing down Hussein without committing sufficient troops to keep order, we have inadvertently created a terrorist haven - Got it?

What thriving terrorism? Are you referring to the guerrillas?

And what "terrorist haven"? Terrorists need real estate to organize and train and be effective on a regional scale. Don't you think the military might notice such a training camp and, you know, ask them to disperse or something?

You are full of ridiculous hyperbole today, violin.”

“Thanks. I really, really try.”

“"the bush jihad is like nothing i've ever seen. their seething hatred of this man far surpasses the clinton bashers of the 90's."

Well now we on the right did our fair share of slinging s h i t at Clinton. The big difference is Clinton was stone cold busted on purgery and he broke the law. The left doesn't have this on Bush...yet.”

“It’s a fair comparison (Clinton bashing v. Bush bashing) and an indictment of what political debate in this country has devolved into. I’ve made a resolution to try to keep to issues and avoid the impulse to personalize my opposition to Bush policies. Its not the man I oppose but the direction he is (mis)leading this country. I really have a tough time not tweaking the wingnuts for sport though.

I don’t think I’ve seen the equivalent of the Clinton body count crap, conspiracy theories about the deaths of Vince Foster and Ron Brown and the intense hatred many seemed to display toward a centrist and popular Bill Clinton. It may all be a matter of point of view though.”

“Oh sweet honey mustard!

Liberals can't even keep their sorry-assed bias out backpacking forums?!!

I was hoping to find a truly unbiased source for backpacking information or... anything at all for that matter!

Liberal filth has even found it’s way even here.”

“This thread sucks.”

“This thread sucks.

Because you know I'm right as usual. ;-)”

“Someone else please explain to Stratdoodoo that the "people die all the time" argument has never worked.

I'm tired of telling him. someone else do it.”

“And someone else please exlain to Mutt that he argues well, and has thoroughly convinced himself that he's right.

I can't do it any more.”

“Oh, and if anyone wants to mention to Nigal that he hates political threads... oh nevermind.”

“lol!”

“Going after Hussein didn't further that cause, but rather shifted attention away from the REAL problem: Al-Qaeda and the Saudi aristocracy

Oh, I don't know. There have been several reports of Iranian cooperation on al qaeda after the Iraq war. They never helped before the war. Syria has been quietly cooperating, too. That's quite the about-face. And apparently, the House of Saud is fracturing and probably going to collapse in the not-too-distant future! Ha ha!”

“i agree muttly....but i knew that way before you did...it's obvious that i'm right more than you are


nice retort phaed, you really burned me that time!


violin, you have opposed every single thing we've done to fight terrorism. you criticize evry move and justify every terrorist action. pretend you aren't biased, but i'm not fooled. it's the same thing as peter jennings saying he's not biased. he doesn't think he is, but everything he says proves he is.


meanwhile, the UN says it will not retaliate for the bombong of their building....whatta surprize. and liberals want them to dectate our national security actions....


the defence rests...”

“Actually all you’ve won strat, is the contest to prove yourself an idiot and a liar. If you’d care to search back through the threads, you’d see that I supported a limited war in Afghanistan and have spoken out against the Palestinian use of terror as a political tool.”

“Stratdewd, you never seem to realize WHEN you've been "burned".

How's the reading?”

“i agree muttly....but i knew that way before you did...it's obvious that i'm right more than you are

Huh? What is that in response to?”

“Actually all you’ve won strat, is the contest to prove yourself an idiot and a liar

Like you did with your "strawman" faux pas, violin?”

“phead the reading is going fine. actually i find it to be rather boring and rudamentary. pretty much commen scense stuff. i'm on CH7. i think they should rename the book though. it should be called....how to make it look like conservatives are liars and confuse the reader with doublespeak and gobbledegook.....kind like you try to do alla time......heh heh



JIHAD BUSH!”

“A passage from the bible occurs to me... something about pearls before swine... I'll get back to you.”