I’ve long been of the opinion that the argument that the war in Iraq would create a hotbed of terrorism was misguided. That Muslim jihadists from all over the Middle East are coming to Iraq to attack American forces is, in some respects, not necessarily a bad thing. Clearly these fanatics want to kill American’s and don’t much care where they do so. They’re out to get us, the only question is on whose turf the battle will be fought. At least in Iraq we have our trained military on the offensive against them.
Via The New York Post reports on a new analysis of terrorist activity in Iraq which indicates a majority of the jihadists are not Iraqis.
June 1, 2005 — WASHINGTON – More than 40 percent of the suicide bombers dispatched by al- Zarqawi to attack Iraqis and U.S. troops hailed from Saudi Arabia, according to a new study. Only 9 percent of the bombers were Iraqis, said the report by the SITE Institute, a counterterror group.
The SITE Institue recently discovered a “Martyrs’ List” that [ terror leader Abu Musab] Zarqawi posted on a Web site to commemorate the fanatics who were recruited as foot soldiers in the group’s deadly campaign of car bombings and other attacks to undermine Iraq’s transition to democracy. An analysis of 107 bombers whose names and backgrounds Zarqawi’s group published revealed that 45 of the dead extremists, or 42 percent, came from Saudi Arabia, said Rita Katz, SITE director.
Many other bombers were Syrian, Kuwaiti, Palestinian, Afghani, Libyan and even French, while only 10 of the attackers, or 9 percent, were Iraqi-born.
“What we see here is there are a lot of people who appear to be quite well educated leaving universities, good jobs and families to go to Iraq to fight the jihad,” Katz said.
The good news is that the Iraqi-led anti-insurgent Operation Lightning appears to be having some success.
The Associated Press has obtained Iraqi summaries of the operation from a U-S military source. The documents say more than 700 hundred arrests have been made, most of them last week before the operation was officially announced.
Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior numbers break the arrests down this way: 627 “suspected terrorists,” eleven “suspected foreign fighters,” and 82 others who are classified as “wanted by judicial authorities.”
The documents also report the seizure of scores of explosives.
The summaries say at least two car bomb attacks have been foiled and more than more 860 false documents have been confiscated along with Syrian currency and fake military uniforms.Also the return of the death penalty in Iraq is very popular among the Iraqi public who’ve become the target of least resistance for insurgents.
The highly trained Iraqi Army is now over 200,000 strong, and this will soon remove the need for the US military to be the one to enforce Democracy and Freedom in Iraq.
There are only a few dead-ender’s left now that we have broken the back of the insurgency. When we captured Saddam their will to fight began to fade, and as soon as Uday and Kusay were killed they lost their only remaining leadership. Once we destroyed Fallujah there was no longer any real center of resistance to speak of, and as soon as the Iraqi elections were held things started to improve dramatically.
Is Minnie’s post sarcastic or simply just “divorced from reality”?
…200,000 “highly trained” Iraqi troops…that’s a good one.
Military doctrine dictates there are only three ways to defeat a guerilla type war. Whether one argues they are “insurgents” or “terrorists” all can agree the tactics are guerilla style.
First way is to remove the cause of the fight. ie, give the guerillas what they want. Since they want a return to 7th century Islamofacism, destruction and genocide of Jews, and the collpase of America I doubt we are entertaining that one–well, maybe the liberals are but thank the gods they aren’t in power.
Second way is to destroy them through technical superiority. We are doing that to an extent but in general that means to simply lay waste to the entire area. We are interested in destroying Iraq, just the terrorists.
That leaves option three: Narrow the field of battle. Prior to the Iraq war the world was the terrorists battlefield. Now, it’s been narrowed to Iraq. Allow them to roam freely in that area and you know where they are and then you slowly start closing the noose.
Look at the area of operations within Iraq over the last two years and the ever tightening noose.
One needs only to read Sun Tzu, Boyd (of who Cheny was a student) or even Clauswitz to see this strategy playing out.
Prior to the Iraq war the world was the terrorists battlefield. Now, it’s been narrowed to Iraq. Allow them to roam freely in that area and you know where they are and then you slowly start closing the noose.
This argument always cracks me up due to its total lack of understanding of the enemy we face. The planners of the embassy bombings in ’98, the Cole, and the WTC were of the Zawahiri/Bin Laden group. These types of attacks, the ones we need to worry about, take time and planning and are performed by small, relatively independent cells. Since there seems to be no shortage, especially from Saudi Arabia, of men willing to give their lives for their cause, it is silly to assume that the non-Iraqi fighters/insurgents/terrorists in Iraq are somehow taking manpower away from operations elsewhere (or for that matter, your preposterous suggestion that we have narrowed the battlefield to just Iraq). And from what we know about the 911 hijackers, terrorists recruited for such operations tend to be more educated and wealthier than your garden variety jihadist, and less likely to just pick up their AK and run to Iraq to fight us evil Americans. While you sit there thinking “better there than here”, the people planning the next attack on American soil are thinking “better there and here,” on into the foreseeable future. I seriously doubt we will ever defeat militant Wahabism/Salafism by invading Muslim countries (I guess we’ll see in about a decade or two). So if you are truly worried about protecting “here” from terrorists, you ought to focus on intelligence agencies, immigration, and our borders instead of Iraq.
And as far as your “ever tightening noose” goes:
Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said insurgents are staging about 70 attacks nationwide per day.
Defense analysts said the recent violence was the latest evidence Iraq remains an uncertain project for the United States.
“Those who believed that the elections would be a decisive turning point undermining the insurgency are disappointed yet again,” Cato Institute defense analyst Ted Carpenter said. “The insurgency seems as capable as ever.”
Thankfully Iraq is nothing like Vietnam, right?
Of course, the Cato Institute folks are just a bunch of Bush hating liberal elitists…
You’ve got to commend Bush and Company’s plan of putting the fight on their turf, consequently removing it from ours.
Minnie, here’s the deal: the WOT is going to take a long time to end in many places and under various circumstances. It’s not as simple as a tv series. Is that too complicated for you?
That Muslim jihadists from all over the Middle East are coming to Iraq to attack American forces is, in some respects, not necessarily a bad thing. Clearly these fanatics want to kill American’s and don’t much care where they do so. They’re out to get us, the only question is on whose turf the battle will be fought.
I must strongly disagree. It’s NEVER a good thing to have attacks on our Americans overseas, whether they are Military or civilians employed in the reconstruction efforts.
You seem to share President Bush’s incorrect ‘bring-it-on’ attitude that the more insurgents pour over the borders into Iraq to create chaos, the more opportunity we will have to kill them until eventually there will be none left. That is incorrect. In truth, the longer our people occupy their land, the more young NEW insurgents from all over the Muslim world become inspired to enter Iraq to try to kill our people over there, as well as kill any Iraqis who ‘collaberate’ with Americans.
You’re ‘better-there-than-here’ attitude shows disrespect for our people THERE! Do you feel they are expendible or something? They aren’t. They are human beings. What Bush in his incredible lack-of-planning has created is a situation where our people cannot leave, because the insurgents will take over, but our people cannot stay either because it inspires more and more young insurgents to pour into Iraq.
In short… it’s an unwinnable, perpetual war going in circles with no end.
Except, there IS one conceivable end, and sadly that end is the Vietnam style end of eventual withdrawal in discrace. In Vietnam the numbers of U.S. deaths became too much to bear, so that War had to end. But in Iraq it’ll be because young people are just NOT volunteering for Military service anymore. They simply aren’t. They dont’ want to die in an Iraq war without an exit strategy.
So unless there’s a draft, we’ll simply run out of soldiers eventually. We’ll have no option but to withdraw anyway.
The only question remains how many more will have to die before we end up eventually withdrawing from this circular war without end.
You have to understand there was only ever one reason why Muslims wanted to attack us in the first place. It’s always been because we’re inside their borders. We’re in Saudi Arabia, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, etc, and they want us totally out. It’s our mere ‘infidel’ presence on their soil that offends them. So I personally never understood why we’re so hell-bent to remain within their borders, (except of course for Oil and corporate business reasons-but why can’t those can be done by hiring Muslims to work for our business interests?)
Yes, if it were up to me, I’d leave them to handle their own affairs and get every American out of their world. It’s not worth all this death and destruction, just to watch Bush hold-hands with the Saudi Royal Prince as if they are schoolkids in a playground. If the Jihadists hate our presence that much, why remain there to creat more Jihadists and increase their hatred? What good would come of it?
There comes a time when hard-cold logic must overcome foolish pride. That time is coming.
Now here is another fact we don’t hear about much
not only are few of the so called insurgents actually Iraqis, in which case they aren’t insurgents at all, just jihadis looking for action,
but apparently some of the so called suicide bombers, esp Iraqis are not “volunteers” – they have been forced into the situation by threats to their families or in some cases, they are told to deliver the bomb to a set location and are not told that someone is going to remotely detonate the bomb with them still in the vicinity of the bomb
apparently the US troops call these unlucky guys “Kevorkians”……
I don’t think the resistance/underground ever pulled surprises like that on their fellow “resisters” during WWII,
“Our turf” OR “their turf”… it’s so comforting the fanaticists decided to accomodate us in the choice of venues! What an elegant and simple universe we live in!
Thanks to Tony-man and mantis for making the points that immediately sprang to my mind. And better than I would have done, I might add. However, in her own way, minnie surpasses us all… bravo!
An item from MSNBC:
The death toll for American troops in Iraq rose in May to the highest level since January, with the U.S. military saying Tuesday that insurgents have doubled their number of daily attacks since April.
“apparently some of the so called suicide bombers, esp Iraqis are not “volunteers” – they have been forced into the situation”
What you are basing this post on is info nearly a year old. It comes from a CNN report dated July 27 2004.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/26/iraq.bombers.force/index.html
If the majority of extremist attacks were carried out in this desperate manner it would be safe to say the terrorists wouldn’t be able to prolong the insurgency for very long at all. The fact that attacks have only INCREASED rather than decreased in sophistication and effectiveness since July 27 2004 suggests any attacks carried out in this forced-manner were an exception rather than a rule.
“Of course, the Cato Institute folks are just a bunch of Bush hating liberal elitists…”
The same Cato Institute that’s entirely in favor of ANWR drilling?
didn’t anyone hear about the five israelis who were arrested on sept 11 2001 in northern new jersey who supposedly worked in a ‘furniture store’. they were reported to the police who found camcorders with recordings of the planes crashing into the twin towers. they were released and nothing was heard since. Mossad anyone? shouln’t they, like the jihadists stay on their own turf also? and out of liebanon as well.
didn’t anyone hear about the five israelis who were arrested on sept 11 2001 in northern new jersey who supposedly worked in a ‘furniture store’. they were reported to the police who found camcorders with recordings of the planes crashing into the twin towers. they were released and nothing was heard since. Mossad anyone? shouln’t they, like the jihadists stay on their own turf also? and out of liebanon as well.
Anyone and everyone with any kind of camera available was photographing the twin towers on Sept. 11th. What makes these five more sinister than any other New Yorker with a camcorder? Because they’re Isreali Jews? Do you have you any idea how many Jews live in New York City? Do you think they’re ALL Mossad? Imagine it! Jews supposedly working in “a furnature store!” Why of course they must be spies! after all, who’s ever heard of a Jewish merchant?
Re the five 9/11 israelis:
If you look at what I said in my posting, you would have noticed that i mentioned ‘planes’, as in plural. Sure, the second plane was captured by hundreds of cameras, if not thousands. How many have an image of the first plane hitting? why has it been buried??
PS. do you believe Syria assasinated Rafik Hariri?
I don’t think so!
isn’t it extraordinary that all of Israel’s enemies in the region are America’s enemies. How does America’s foreign policy in the middle east help mr x from Kansas city or mrs. Y in St. Louis . It doesn’t, yet they are told anmericA IS UNDER THREAT BY ‘LILY-LIVERED NEOCONS’ OR AS i REFER to them; NEOGOONS.
I know there are many who are aware of this fact but believe it is in Israel’s interest in the long term so they allow it to continue. this is where they are wrong. America due to it’s actions has become and will increasingly become weak (politically , socially and most devastingly; economically)
Respect and Fear are no longer terms by which America can rely. The vast international mood of America(and not just france) has become one of utter DISGUST and there is an element of sadness too, as many look on and see a great country being flushed down the toilet. The world does know however, that there is a strong group who are opposed to bush 2 so they won’t tar everone with the same brush. In the end, unfortunately “the actions of the few will hurt the many! “