11.15.05

Outside Commentary, Outside Analysis, Iraq

The New Al Qaeda: More Dangerous than the Old Version


The following comes from author Ivan Eland, a Senior Fellow at the libertarian Independent Institute, Director of the Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty, and author of the books The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense�? Back into U.S. Defense Policy.

It talks about how the war in Iraq seems to have become a birthing ground for a sort of Al Qaeda 2.0, more vicious than the first version, which seems to now be moving beyond the main battleground in Iraq.

It’s certainly worth thinking about this: How powerful would Abu Musab al-Zarqawi be today if the United States had not invaded Iraq?


The New Al Qaeda: More Dangerous than the Old Version

November 14, 2005
Ivan Eland

Say good-bye to the old al Qaeda and hello to a new, more dangerous version created by President George W. Bush. The recent suicide bombings by Iraqis in Amman, Jordan are ominous because they provide hard evidence (confirmed by U.S. intelligence analysis) that the war in Iraq—far from pinning terrorists down within that country’s borders, as the president alleges—is incubating combat-hardened jihadists for export to other countries. As many opponents of the Iraq war predicted beforehand, a non-Islamic nation’s invasion of another Muslim country has spawned the same radical Islamic terrorism that occurred after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s and Russia invaded Chechnya in the 1990s.

The former invasion ultimately led to the rise of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda’s leader and once dominant force. After 9/11, the United States made considerable progress in eliminating al Qaeda’s safe haven and training infrastructure in Afghanistan and isolating bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his deputy, from their forces in the field. Yet the U.S. invasion of Iraq allowed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a previously independent actor who didn’t care that much about the United States, to grab the spotlight by joining al Qaeda and becoming the face of the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S. occupation. Zarqawi and his “al Qaeda in Iraq�? organization make the treacherous bin Laden and Zawahiri look like choirboys. Zarqawi’s trademarks are the brutal videotaped beheadings and the wanton slaughter of Muslim innocents, as well as the foreign occupiers and their Iraqi allies.

Zarqawi is so ruthless that Zawahiri sent him a letter asking him nicely to tone it down a bit. We know things are bad when the al Qaeda leadership seems temperate in comparison. Yet, Zarqawi has ignored pleas from al Qaeda’s leadership for moderation, and the bombings by his Iraqi minions in Jordan seem to indicate that he is now expanding his attacks outside Iraq. With bin Laden and Zawahiri in hiding, Zarqawi is emerging as al Qaeda’s most effective and prominent force. With the Iraq war providing a new training ground for waves of new Islamist terrorists and Zarqawi’s apparent willingness to begin striking American targets outside Iraq, it is time to worry about a resurgence of a more potent al Qaeda worldwide. This development could nullify many of the gains that were made against the organization in the aftermath of 9/11.

President Bush and his administration clearly used the public’s post-September 11 fear and manipulated intelligence to sell an unrelated vendetta against Saddam Hussein at the expense of delivering a knockout punch to al Qaeda while it was on the ropes. Even worse, that sideshow has allowed al Qaeda to rise again—this time with an even more ruthless protagonist in the vanguard.

The president, in a partisan Veteran’s Day speech, however, lashed out at Democratic congressional critics of the war, alleging that they had seen the same intelligence as his administration and that they also had believed prior to the invasion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Although the Democrats do have partisan motives for criticizing the administration’s manipulation of intelligence, the administration’s claim is preposterous. The executive branch intelligence agencies dwarf the congressional staff and are responsible for collecting, analyzing, debating and disseminating the intelligence. Members of Congress and their staff do not see all of the intelligence, especially the raw inputs into the process. In addition, the imperial presidency has a much grander bully pulpit from which to twist and embellish facts about a war than do members of Congress.

Yet even some hawkish Democrats, such as Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), dismiss other Democrats’ concerns about being sold a bill of goods before the war by the “massaging�? of intelligence. Lieberman asserted, “Those aren’t irrelevant questions. But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war.�? Perhaps public support for a dishonest war that has cost many lives (both U.S. and Iraqi) and hundreds of billions of dollars (and still counting), and has made the terrorism threat worse should not be sustained. To Lieberman and his ilk, both Democratic and Republican, sustaining a small counterinsurgency on the other side of the world is more important than answering a question that goes to the core of our constitutional system of checks and balances: Did the president deceive the Congress and the country into the most solemn decision a republic can make? It seems that he did, and in doing so, revived a terrorist monster to boot.



In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Comments

Please Leave a Comment!




Please not: Comments may be moderated. It may take a while for them to show on the page.





Welcome
Welcome to PNAC.info-- a site dedicated to drawing attention to the neoconservative foreign policy approach, and its consequences for America and the world.
Useful Links
Category: Outside Analysis
  • "Afghanistan: The War Without End" (within a war without end)
  • "Regime Change" Ambitions in Iran
  • "The Believer": In-depth look at Paul Wolfowitz "defending his war"
  • 1958-1991, Iraq: A Classic Case of Divide and Conquer
  • A Debate Over U.S. 'Empire' Builds in Unexpected Circles
  • An Economist's Case Against an Interventionist Foreign Policy
  • An Iran Trap?
  • Analysis: Wolfowitz's 1992 vision as 2002 U.S. Foreign Policy Reality
  • Article: Conservatives and exiles [begin to consider that they may have to think about having to] desert war campaign
  • Briefing - The rise of the Washington "neo-cons"
  • Empire Builders: Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power
  • Getting Out of Iraq: Our Strategic Interest
  • Iraq war to gain US foothold in South Eastern Asia (college paper)
  • Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?
  • Is the Neoconservative Moment Over?
  • Jim Lobe's Neo-Con Focus Area from IPS
  • Neoconservatism Made Kristol Clear
  • Op-Ed: From Republic to Empire
  • Pay no attention to the neocon behind the curtain
  • Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
  • PNAC College Paper
  • PNAC on NPR's "Fresh Air"
  • Puppet Show: Will Ahmed Chalabi Govern Post-War Iraq?
  • Reference Materials for "Debating Empire"
  • Rep. Ron Paul's Speech to Congress: "Neo-conned"
  • Richard Perle's connections
  • The American Conservative: The Weekly Standard’s War
  • The Bush Foreign Policy Team's Shared Vision
  • The Conservative Split I: An Introduction to Neoconservatism
  • The Conservative Split III: A Call to Action
  • The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts
  • The Neo-Conservative Ascendancy in the Bush Administration
  • The New Al Qaeda: More Dangerous than the Old Version
  • This war is brought to you by...
  • William Arkin connects the "Syria's next" dots
  • Category: News Articles
  • "Afghanistan: The War Without End" (within a war without end)
  • "The Believer": In-depth look at Paul Wolfowitz "defending his war"
  • $60 billion Rebuild Iraq Plan 'freezes out' UN, favors U.S.
  • 1992 "Defense Planning Guidance" Draft Excerpts
  • 4 years before 9/11, plan was set
  • A Debate Over U.S. 'Empire' Builds in Unexpected Circles
  • A think tank war: Why old Europe says no
  • ABC News: The Plan
  • Analysis: Wolfowitz's 1992 vision as 2002 U.S. Foreign Policy Reality
  • Angry Assad Says Syria Will Cooperate (but will fight if necessary)
  • Article: Conservatives and exiles [begin to consider that they may have to think about having to] desert war campaign
  • Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
  • CBS News: Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11
  • China: Little Progress on N. Korea Talks/ N.Korea Offers Reactor-for-Concessions Bid
  • Debating Empire Prior to 9/11
  • Defense deputy gets authority for military tribunals
  • Disturbing Level of Unrest in Iraq
  • Familiar Hawks Take Aim at Syria
  • From Heroes To Targets
  • Hans Blix: Iraq war planned long in advance; banned arms not the priority
  • Hints of PNAC on CNN: "World War IV"?
  • Iran ♥'s Syria
  • Iran Raises Stakes on U.N. Inspections
  • Major survey shows non-interventionism rising in U.S.
  • Much Ado About Syria, Pt.1-- Clashes at the Border
  • Much Ado About Syria, Pt.2-- U.S. Weighed Military Strikes; Syria Gets Surly
  • Much Ado About Syria, Pt.4-- Syria: U.S. troops killed Syrian soldier
  • North Korea and the US 'on a slide towards conflict'
  • Op-Ed: The Pentagon's (CIA) Man in Iraq
  • Opposition groups reject US military rule plan
  • PNAC Proponents Inflated WMD Threat to Promote Iraq War
  • Rebuilding of Iraq is in Chaos, Say British
  • Richard Perle Resigns From Advisory Panel
  • Rumsfeld urged Clinton to attack Iraq
  • State Dept. Report: Democracy Domino Theory 'Not Credible'
  • Superb Article -- The Mideast: Neocons on the Line
  • Syria balks at U.N. Resolution, but promises cooperation
  • The Fight Yet to Come
  • The president's real goal in Iraq
  • The Thirty-Year Itch
  • The trouble with Delivering Democracy Abroad
  • This war is brought to you by...
  • U.N. Demands Syria's Cooperation
  • U.N. Resolution on Syria and Hariri assassination investigation
  • U.S. and partners scrap North Korea Reactor Project
  • U.S. pullback in S. Korea also alarming to N. Korea
  • US begins the process of 'regime change' in Iraq
  • US General Condemns Iraq Failures
  • US losing the peace in Afghanistan
  • Viewing the War as a Lesson to the World