Leaking on the Parade
The Washington Post is reporting on the latest National Intelligence Estimate in which the National Intelligence Council has concluded that the War for Iraq has served only to radicalize and make more Muslim terrorists (emphases mine):
The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its allies can reduce the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.
A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the “centrality” of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.
Yep. It’s another one of those stories that just happens to depend on the leaking of a classified document. But don’t let that worry you: this is one of those good leaks.
The report continues:
Although intelligence officials agree that the United States has seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qaeda and disrupted its ability to plan and direct major operations, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized.
Many of the new cells, the NIE concludes, have no connection to any central structure and arose independently. The members of the cells communicate only among themselves and derive their inspiration, ideology and tactics from the more than 5,000 radical Islamic Web sites. They spread the message that the Iraq war is a Western attempt to conquer Islam by first occupying Iraq and establishing a permanent presence in the Middle East.
Well, there may be something to that. Then again, any time that the Western powers come into the Middle East —be they Frenchmen or Englishmen carving up the Ottoman Empire or ARAMCO moving in on Saudi Arabia or Zionists establishing the State of Israel or the Gulf War coalition setting up shop on their holy soil— Muslims always have a problem with the infidels.
Is there a difference this time? Probably. The same old interests (particularly oil) are still in play, but this time, we’re going to hang in there until we are sure that a fully-functioning Iraqi democracy can stand on its own. We’re going to stay there until the situation next door in Iran is resolved, too, because Iran is a major sponsor and exporter of jihadist mass murder —and it doesn’t matter whether they have also been “radicalized” by our presence in Iraq. The Iranians don’t need an excuse to come after us or our allies.
In fact, it’s vitally important that the West not ever turn its back on what’s going on in the Muslim Middle East now because there is every reason to believe that our continued presence there will eventually liberalize the region. It’s very difficult to see that now because of the constant violence we see on the streets of Baghdad, but there is a general trend towards democratic movements in that region that we cannot allow to be reversed.
Remember that global communism, too, was seen as a threat to our way of life —for decades. But it collapsed in a relatively brief period of time. And where it did not collapse outright, it turned into something else that we could do business with. If we can make inroads in the Muslim Middle East and expand our export trade with them (e.g., consumer goods, movies, music, and other advantages of modernity, as well as civil rights and the civil society), I am optimistic that we can help to secularize their populations and marginalize the fundamentalist elements there.
Failing that, we’ll be in a strategic place from which we can manage things in a different manner.
