U.S. troops in western Baghdad: We’re bored, send us to Afghanistan; Update: Foreign jihadis head to tribal areas

OhEssYouCowboys:

amerpundit hit the nail on the head there. Killing bin Laden is a feel-good goal, not a be-all end-all if we intend to smash Islamic extremism. He was a figurehead and fund-raiser, and now he’s cut off from his sources, hiding in a cave putting out a crackly audio tape every year or so just so we won’t all forget he’s still cowering from us. That’s honestly probably better than martyring him right off the bat and declaring victory.

Al-Queda is a movement, not a clear-cut organization… that’s how al-Queda in Iraq formed. It wasn’t that AQ members snuck in and started up a new gang… they were Islamic extremists who thought Iraq was a good place to fight the infidel, and thought they could get more PR points for being associated with al-Queda. Well, they got the attention they wanted, and are virtually annihilated, along with almost every maniac who charged into Iraq thinking they could fight our military.

You fight an organization by decapitating it and disbanding the membership. Since al-Queda isn’t an organization, but a movement, killing their leadership is only important in the sense that the leaders are independently dangerous. But we could kill every last one, and a new AQ would pop up somewhere else. You kill a movement not be defeating them – but by showing them they were wrong to have opposed you in the first place. In short, we drain the pool of potential members.

We can’t fight Islamic extremism from Afghanistan – it’s out on the fringes, will probably take a century to stabilize (it hasn’t been organized and ruled properly since the Mughal Empire), is not centrally in the thoughts of most of the Muslim world (except as that festering hole between Iran and Pakistan). If we build a real country out of the place, it’s going to practically be from scratch.

Now Iraq in contrast: centrally located, formerly the seat of the Caliphate, Arab (as opposed to Persian or Indo-Asian-Persian), an existing modern base society, disliked by its neighbors for assorted reasons… and for our purposes, engaged in a low-key war, in violation of actionable UN sanctions, ruled by Hitler-lite and the Rapist Duo, and apparently (according to intel at the time) rebuilding or attempting to rebuild a WMD program (specifically nuclear, to gain the sort of immunity of action North Korea has gained, and Iran is now seeking). To be cold blooded about it, we have to change the culture that produces religious extremism by providing a better alternative. The only other alternative is to bunker down, weather future attacks (which within the century, will be nuclear in nature… it’s unavoidable at this point) from frustrated jihadis, and hope they undergo an Islamic Reformation before they murder too many of us, or goad the rest of the world into going Exterminatus on their collective asses. Since that’s not something I’d care to see, we need instead to actively show them a better way of doing things through example and by wiping out the throwbacks who would rather blow a hundred Muslims to bloody chunks rather than let them live in a way not according to the most extreme and fanatic application of sha’ria imaginable. It is a messy, expensive, dangerous process… but also the one with the greatest potential rewards.

And so far, it is working, regardless of what the NYT editorial board thinks. Afghanistan has been a major holding action since we pushed the Taliban and al-Queda into hiding in the Pakistan border ranges. We can’t obliterate them, but we can keep them from reasserting control. In Iraq however, we have seen real progress. We deposed a murderous thug and dangerous dictator (not by itself necessarily reason to go to war, though certainly not a bad thing). We proved that we infidels ain’t all bad by doing so, and by providing a bit of security and stability. We’ve put Iraqis in everyday contact with our best men and generated a sense of familiarity, especially once Petraeus shifted our positioning, and got our guys out of their isolated bases. We’ve established a clear demonstration of strength and resolve (provided we don’t run now), and the inherent weakness and cowardice of the decadent West is one of their big memes. Further, by coming into Iraq, they succeeded in behaving like a bunch of psychotic thugs, and managed to chase a major part of an angry populace right into our arms… no doubt this has done wonders for their reputations in the rest of the Muslim world.

We need to stay in Afghanistan to remove it from play as a secure refuge for fanatics. We need to stay in Iraq and continue to gradually transform the society there in order to take the first major step in eradicating Islamic extremism and the general misery and hopelessness that it thrives on.

E1701 on July 17, 2008 at 4:06 PM