Values and Interests
The "insurgency" and the future of the Middle East.
National Review Online
December 23, 2004, 8:28 a.m.
By Michael Ladeen
The notion that we are fighting an "insurgency" largely organized and
staffed by former elements of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is now fully
enshrined as an integral piece of the conventional wisdom. Like earlier bits
of the learned consensus - to which it is closely linked - it is factually
wrong and strategically dangerous.
That it is factually wrong is easily demonstrated, for the man invariably
branded the most powerful leader of the terrorist assault against Iraq - Abu
Musab al Zarqawi - is not a Baathist, and indeed is not even an Iraqi. He is
a Palestinian Arab from Jordan who was based in Iran for several years, and
who - when the West Europeans found he was creating a terror network in
their countries (primarily Germany and Italy) and protested to the Iranians
- moved into Iraqi Kurdistan with Iranian protection and support, as the
moving force in Ansar al Islam.
You cannot have it both ways. If Zarqawi is indeed the deus ex machina of
the Iraqi terror war, it cannot be right to say that the "insurgency" is
primarily composed of Saddam's followers. Zarqawi forces us to think in
regional terms rather than focusing our attention on Iraq alone. Unless you
think that Iraqi Defense Minister Shaalan is a drooling idiot, you must take
seriously his primal screams against Iran and Syria ("terrorism in Iraq is
orchestrated by Iranian intelligence, Syrian intelligence, and Saddam
loyalists"). Indeed, there has been a flood of reports linking Syria to the
terror war, including the recent news that the shattered remnants from
Fallujah have found haven and succor across the Syrian border. Finally, the
Wahabbist component carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the quavering
royal family across the border in Saudi Arabia.
The terror war in Iraq was not improvised, but carefully planned by the four
great terror masters (Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) during the
infuriatingly long run-up to the liberation. They made no secret of it; you
have only to go back to the public statements of the Iranian mullahs and the
Syrian Baathists to see it, for top Iranian officials and Bashir Assad
publicly announced it (the mullahs in their mosques, Bashir in a published
interview). They had a simple and dramatic word for the strategy: Lebanon.
Assad and the mullahs prepared to turn Iraq into a replay of the terror war
they had jointly waged against us in Lebanon in the 1980s: suicide bombings,
hostage-taking, and religious/political uprisings. It could not have been
more explicit.
Some of our brighter journalists have recently written about Iraqi documents
that show how Saddam instructed his cohorts to melt away when Coalition
forces entered Iraq, and then wage the sort of guerilla campaign we now see.
But neither they nor our buffoonish intelligence "community" have looked at
the documents in the context of the combined planning among the four key
regimes. Anyone who goes back to the pre-OIF period can see the remarkable
tempo of airplanes flying back and forth between Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran,
and even Pyongyang (remember the Axis of Evil?), as military and
intelligence officials worked out their strategies. Some of those flights,
as for example those between Saddam's Baghdad and the mullahs' Tehran, were
a kind of man-bites-dog story, since in the past such flights carried
armaments to be dropped on the destination, whereas in 2002 and early 2003
they carried government officials planning the terror war against us in
Iraq.
The myth of the Baathist insurgency is actually just the latest version of
the old error according to which Sunnis and Shiites can't work together.
This myth dominated our "intelligence" on the Middle East for decades, even
though it was known that the Iranian (Shiite) Revolutionary Guards were
trained in (Syrian-dominated, hence secular Baathist) Lebanon by Arafat's
(Sunni) Fatah, starting as early as 1972. The terror masters worked together
for a long time, not just after the destruction of the Taliban. But we
refused to see it, just as today we refuse to see that the assault against
us is regional, not just Iraqi.
Many of the statements emerging from official (that is, both governmental
and media) Washington nowadays reflect yet another error, a corollary of the
axiom that sees the region hopelessly divided between Shiites and Sunnis.
The corollary has it that the impending electoral victory of the Iraqi
Shiites will greatly increase Iranian leverage in Iraq. The truth, as Reuel
Gerecht so eloquently demonstrated in the Wall Street Journal last week, is
precisely the opposite, because the Shiite leaders in Iraq are fundamentally
opposed to the Iranian doctrine that places a theocratic dictator atop civil
society. The Iraqis adhere to the traditional Shiite view that people in
turbans should work in mosques, leaving civil society to secular leaders,
and therefore their victory in Iraq will threaten the sway of the mullahs
across the border. We should not view all Shiites as a coherent community,
and we should welcome a traditional Shiite society in Iraq, and recognize
that it is a valuable weapon in the war against the terror masters in
Tehran.
The mullahs know this well. They dread the success of traditional Shiites in
Baghdad, and they are desperately trying to foment a Sunni/Shiite clash of
civilizations. That is the explanation of the resumption of suicide-bombing
attacks in the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala, which the mullahs'
intelligence agents had terminated when previous bombings intensified
anti-Iranian (rather than the hoped-for anti-Sunni) passions. As many Iraqi
leaders have observed, the recent attacks in the holy places demonstrate
desperation, not growing "insurgent" strength.
The clear strategic conclusion remains what it should have been long before
Coalition troops entered Saddam's evil domain: No matter how strongly we
wish it to be otherwise, we are engaged in a regional war, of which Iraq is
but a single battlefield. The war cannot be won in Iraq alone, because the
enemy is based throughout the region and his bases and headquarters are
located beyond our current reach. His power is directly proportional to our
unwillingness to see the true nature of the war, and our decision to limit
the scope of our campaign.
The true nature of the war exposes yet another current myth: that we are at
greater risk because we failed to send sufficient troops into Iraq. More
troops would simply mean more targets for the terrorists, since we are not
prepared - nor should we be - to establish a full-scale military occupation
and to "seal off" the borders with Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Hell, we
can't even seal off the Mexican border with the United States, an area we
know well. How can we expect to build a wall around Iraq?
No, we can only win in Iraq if we fully engage in the terror war, which
means using our most lethal weapon - freedom - against the terror masters,
all of them. The peoples of Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are restive, they
look to us for political support. Why have we not endorsed the call for
political referenda in Syria and Iran? Why are we so (rightly and honorably)
supportive of free elections in the Ukraine, while remaining silent about -
or, in the disgraceful case of outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell,
openly hostile to - free elections in Iran and Syria? Why are we not
advancing both our values and our interests in the war against the terror
masters?
Faster, please.
a.. Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the
author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the
Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200412230828.asp
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