In The World Of OZ-ie the 'left'

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Terrorists in Oz

Commentary by Aslan, 2/12/06, 9:22pm. Comments (0)

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A frequent indictment of the Iraq War is that our presence in Iraq is creating more terrorists than we are eliminating. This strikes at the heart of the current Iraq policy that seeks to reduce the threat of terrorism by introducing representative self-government to the Middle East and, as an added bonus, eliminating any terrorists loitering in the neighborhood. If the Iraq policy is increasing the terrorist threat, the policy is failing.

To make an assessment, one must define "terrorist threat." A viable definition might be: "the potential for attacks on U.S. soil resulting in loss of civilian life and disruption of economic and social activity." Immediately, the definition itself argues against any claim that our action in Iraq is creating terrorists. Terrorists are called terrorists because they engage in terrorist activities, of which the most notable is slaughtering civilians of their political enemies. If our Iraq policy is to prevent and deter terrorism in the United States by eliminating these criminals overseas and transforming the culture that breeds them, then the simplest measure of failure would be a rise in attacks against their main political enemy. In simpler terms, if there are more terrorists and a greater terrorist threat because we are in Iraq, then there would be more terrorism in the United States. (Ed.: I can visualize the Leftist paroxysms at reading this statement, so violent that they do not realize they are walking into a trap.)

Since there have been no further attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11, anyone arguing that the terror threat is rising must abandon Occam’s Razor and begin to weave a convoluted explanation why less terrorism is coexisting with a greater terrorist threat. This would be akin to a greater threat of rainfall yielding less precipitation. The first part of that tale is that the terrorists are indeed slaughtering civilians, but they are Iraqi civilians. And in this they would be correct. The terrorist slaughter of 9/11 has been replaced, in part, by the terrorist slaughter of Iraqi civilians. This is a profound commentary on the success of the Iraq policy, and it is a commentary about capability. The Iraq policy has clearly degraded the ability of the terrorists to attack their primary target, the civilian population of the United States, and, if you are a civilian of the United States, this is excellent news.

Consider the profile of the 9/11 terrorists:

"By the beginning of that year, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, two Arabs who had been leaders of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, were already living in Florida, honing their skills in flight schools. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had been doing the same in Southern California. The hijackers maintained tight security, generally avoided cell phones, rented apartments under false names and used cash—not wire transfers—wherever possible. If every plan to attack al-Qaeda had been executed, and every lead explored, Atta's team might still never have been caught." (Time Magazine, August 4, 2002)

Contrast that level of sophistication with today’s terrorist:

"One day soon, this somber young man plans to offer up a final prayer and then blow himself up along with as many U.S. or Iraqi soldiers as he can reach. Marwan Abu Ubeida says he has been training for months to carry out a suicide mission. He doesn't know when or where he will be ordered to climb into a bomb-laden vehicle or strap on an explosives-filled vest but says he is eager for the moment to come. While he waits, he spends much of his time rehearsing that last prayer. 'First I will ask Allah to bless my mission with a high rate of casualties among the Americans,' he says, speaking softly in a matter-of-fact monotone, as if dictating a shopping list." (Time Magazine, July 4, 2005)

The exchange of one Mohammed Atta for a hundred Marwan Abu Ubeidas is brilliant exchange and a valuable part of any successful anti-terrorism policy.

Part Two of the convoluted tale addresses the implicit immorality in Part One, namely that it is reprehensible for us to have transferred the threat from American civilians to the Iraqi people. Note that this argument already abandons the idea that the terrorist threat in America is rising and instead makes the case that the declining terrorist threat comes at too great a price. Yet, despite the increase in terrorism in Iraq, the mortal danger faced by the Iraqi people has diminished since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and the nature of the threat has changed for the better as well. What was once the slaughter of between 2105 and 3509 civilians per month under the hopeless tyranny of Saddam Hussein has been replaced by a hope-filled struggle for freedom costing, at most, 970 lives per month*. To claim that Iraqi civilians are worse off today is to ignore statistics on one hand and the value of liberty on the other.

If the media had covered the 24 years of carnage under Saddam with the same intensity as is on display today, if they had shown the mass graves being dug and filled, had videotaped writhing Kurds in the poisoned streets of Halabja (one of forty poison gas attacks), had documented the stream of women passing through the rape rooms and countless dissenters being fed feet-first into industrial shredders, had visited the children’s prisons and had shown the military suppression of dissenters in the South after Gulf War I, then no one would bother to debate this point; there would a consensus among all rational people that the plight of Iraqis has dramatically improved.



Part Three of the tale, displaying expected ignorance about the military, shouts out that terrorism has taken a toll on our soldiers, not just the Iraqi people. That is warfare, not terrorism. When the United States Congress authorized the War on Terror, all understood that there was going to be a devastating, yet necessary, exchange: the lives of some military personnel for the increased safety and security of the people of the United States. The specter of 9/11 compelled that this difficult choice be made, and this has been achieved by the imposition of our will, through force, on the politics of the Middle East. The very convoluted argument underway, which concedes that the terrorist threat in the United States has declined, demonstrates that this exchange has (and is) taking place.



The tale grows even more torturous when, despite terrorist failure in the United States and a massive decline in the capability of the terrorists we are battling today in Iraq, we are to believe that our future is all the more bleak because of the potential for this new stable of scruffy 19-year-old walking bombs to one day morph into Al Qaeda operatives able to carry out elaborate covert operations within the United States. This really is the backbone of the "We are creating terrorists!" claim: that the heavy-handed U.S. intervention in Iraq is feeding the recruitment lines for Al Qaeda. This may or may not be true, but is it relevant? Such a trend is analogous to a major league baseball team in desperate need for major league talent having to field a team of sandlot players. And the coaching staff – the only hope for those sandlot players to amount to anything – is slowly dying off:

(from USA Today)

A little rational thought once again demonstrates that the terrorist threat is in decline. There has been none in America after September 11th and the Iraqis are undoubtedly delighted to have exchanged a brutal dictatorship for liberty and the occasional car bomb. So what is the point of this unsubstantiated claim – that we are creating terrorists – being made over and over again? Like Dorothy wishing her desperate desire into reality ("There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home!"), the Left continues to wish disaster on Bush with no more ammunition than their own fantastic mantras – supported, unfortunately, by a media willing to pretend we all live in Oz.

"We are creating terrorists, we are creating terrorists, we are creating terrorists!"

"Iraq is a failure, Iraq is a failure, Iraq is a failure!"

"The economy is bad, the economy is bad, the economy is bad!"

"Bush lied, people died, Bush lied, people died, Bush lied, people died!"

* The 970 figure comes from the maximum casualty figure on iraqbodycount.net divided by the number of months since the fall of Baghdad (33).

Copyright © 2006 Dan Hallagan. All Rights Reserved.