[Vision2020] Iraq: Most Effective Recruiting Tool For Islamic Militants

[Ted Moffett]

Dick et. al.

Since you are concerned with the killing of innocent women and children,
which everyone is, of course, I have a question for you about this shameful
loss.

What do you think the impact of the loss of innocent civilian life in Iraq
has on the war on terror?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-deathtoll25jun25,0,4970736.story?coll=la-home-headlines

War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000
 Higher than the U.S. estimate, the tally likely is undercounted.
Proportionately, it is as if 570,000 Americans were slain in three years.
-----------------------
Given that Iraq was not connected to Al Qaeda and 9/11, as the US 9/11
Commission concluded, and that Iraq had no WMDs when we invaded, coupled
with the rather obvious and well known limited chances of entering the ethic
and religious conflicts in Iraq and establishing a democratic government
from scratch, was this invasion a wise approach to fighting the war on
terror, with the massive loss of civilian life?  Isn't this massive loss of
civilian life inspiring Islamic terrorism on a global scale?  Let's examine
this basic question:

The US invasion so destabilized Iraq that Iraq has now become a training
ground for Al Qaeda motivated terrorists, and is now more influenced by
Iran, a virulently anti-US Islamic state which in the long run is probably
the greatest threat from an extremist Islamic nation.  Before with Saddam in
power Iran's influence over Iraq was kept at bay.  Bin Laden, it was well
known, hated Saddam, who represented a corrupt and secularized form of
Islam.  Before the US invasion, Iraq's military capabilities were limited,
having been devastated in Gulf War I, and were continually subjected to
ongoing bombing raids by US war planes, while the Kurds in the north and the
Shiites in the south were protected in the so called "no fly zones," also
subject to overflights by US war planes.  Saddam was a brutal dictator, we
all know, but what has now replaced him in Iraq?

In Friday's August 11, 2006 Spokesman Review newspaper at the top of page
A4, an article with the headline "Officials See Signs Of Al Qaeda In Bomb
Plot," it is stated: "US intelligence officials now identify the war in Iraq
as the single most effective recruiting tool for Islamic militants."

I find the death of innocent civilians horrifying no matter where it
happens or who causes it.  And I don't like ideological extremists of any
kind who feel their ideology justifies the taking of innocent life, whether
it is via a terrorist attack, or via the so called "collateral damage" of US
military action, whether they be extremist Islamic terrorists, or Neocons
supported by Christian Right Wing ideologues who hijack US foreign policy
and manipulate the US population by use of lies and fear to justify invading
a nation based on misguided assumptions about the wisdom of remaking the
Middle East by the use of massive military force that will cause a large
number of innocent civilian deaths.

Perhaps you can pause to stop oversimplifying the views of those who think
the Iraq war was a big mistake, both in terms of the realistic chances of
the invasion achieving its stated goals, and also for the impact the
invasion has had on fighting the war on terror.  Some serious and well
informed thinkers involved with US anti-terror intelligence, who support an
aggressive and forceful approach to the war on terror, who are not "liberal
crackpots who still believe we can love them into liking us," as you so
glibly phrased it, believe the invasion of Iraq weakened US efforts to stop
terror attacks by Islamic extremists.

The loss of innocent civilian life in Iraq since the US invasion is
horrific!  I'll give this link again, for emphasis, because it seems those
who supported the war in Iraq and/or continue to support it don't grasp the
scale of the death in Iraq, most of them innocent civilians:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-deathtoll25jun25,0,4970736.story?coll=la-home-headlines


 THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000 Higher than the U.S. estimate, the tally
likely is undercounted. Proportionately, it is as if 570,000 Americans were
slain in three years.
By Louise Roug and Doug Smith, Times Staff Writers
June 25, 2006
-------------------------

And just as the Spokesman Review article implied, and should be obvious to
even a casual observer, this loss of innocent life enrages Islamic people
around the world, just as US citizens are enraged over our loss of life from
9/11, and motivates Islamic extremists to take up arms.  This makes fighting
the war on terror more difficult.  This is part of the reason the CIA
analyst who wrote "Imperial Hubris" called the invasion of Iraq by the USA a
"Christmas gift to Bin Laden."

Can you see the logic behind this reasoning?  I'm not expecting you to
agree.  I'm just wondering if you can understand.

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/03949394.asp

*He also published another anonymous book two years ago, Through Our
Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America*,
which analyzed the structure and motives of Al Qaeda. Anonymous is not
squishy: both *Hubris* and *Eyes *seem sufficiently apocalyptic to warm the
heart of someone as anti-Islamic and bloodthirsty as, say, Ann Coulter. So
if liberals seem ecstatic that yet another career national-security official
is blasting the Bush administration for unnecessarily invading Iraq and
bungling the so-called war on terror, they're also horrified by Anonymous's
apparent advocacy (largely rhetorical, actually) of a military campaign that
includes "killing in large numbers" and "a Sherman-like razing of
infrastructure" as part of "relentless, brutal and blood-soaked defensive
military action until we have annihilated the Islamists who threaten us."

------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett



>
> It is time to wake up and taste the coffee, we are involved in a real war
> with real people who hate us real bad!  These people will kill innocent
> women and children and dance with glee over their success.  They will even
> kill all the liberal crackpots who still believe we can love them into
> liking us and that they are less a threat to our country than our own
> government.
>
> Dick S.
>
>
>
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