Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series) (48 page)

7.
Robert D. Kaplan,
Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos
(New York: Vintage Books, 2002), 39.

8.
Stephen Hayes,
The Connection: How al-Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

9.
After grossly exaggerating the terrorist potential of Iraq, the Bush administration has not said nearly enough about the genuine terrorist threat posed by Iran inside the United States. Yes, the White House and the American Enterprise Institute are always warning that Tehran sponsors terrorism, but they focus on Iran’s terrorist activities in the Middle East and against Israel. They seldom mention the continental United States as a target. Why? Because Washington does not want to admit that the real terrorist threat posed by Iran and its Lebanese Hezbollah partner is inside the United States. Iran’s intelligence service and Hezbollah’s cadre have built terror-supporting infrastructures inside the United States and across Canada over the past twenty years, thanks to the U.S. governing elite’s refusal to enforce immigration laws and impose border controls. U.S. law-enforcement agencies know Iran and Hezbollah are here, but they have no precise handle on total numbers or locations. It is extremely unlikely that either Iran or Hezbollah would stage an unprovoked terrorist attack inside the United States—both have the fatal handicap of having known return addresses—but if Washington attacks Iran, all bets would be off.

10.
Not long after destroying the Iraqi bulwark against the westward movement of Sunni jihadists, Washington, with bipartisan congressional support, took a strong step toward accelerating the fall of the Syrian anti-Islamist bulwark by forcing Bashir al-Assad to withdraw Syrian military and intelligence forces from Lebanon. Washington’s public humiliation of al-Assad emboldened his domestic Islamist militants, while the Syrian withdrawal inaugurated—with the key summer 2006 assistance of the Israeli Defense Force—the disintegration of Lebanon’s political stability that we are now witnessing. The White House and the Congress both deserve thank-you notes from bin Laden for their successful efforts on al-Qaeda’s behalf.

11.
See Scheuer,
Imperial Hubris
, 7, 229–30.

12.
While there is nothing funny about the Bush administration not destroying al-Qaeda–related WMD experiments when that option was available, al-Zarqawi’s chemical-weapons team once found themselves in an unusual position. They had designated a horse to be used as the subject for one of their experiments and walked him into one of the camp’s buildings. The Islamists stood the horse in a large metal tub and then applied the chemical substance being tested. The experiment worked like a charm, and the horse quickly died. Now, however, Allah’s would-be chemical warriors had the horse lying dead in a metal tub. Obviously, he could not exit the way he entered. This caused some consternation, and the now-contaminated horse eventually had to be removed piece by piece.

13.
The first two categories of Iraqi fighters, dispersed regulars and the
fedayeen,
were described by the Bush administration from the outset as either “remnants of Iraqi forces” or more opaquely by the Pentagon as “Former Regime Elements” or FREs. The same sort of terminology also was used in Afghanistan after the capture of the Taliban’s capital in Khandahar; thereafter the forces of the U.S.-led coalition were described as “mopping up” Taliban and al-Qaeda “remnants.” Both cases were nothing more than blatant attempts to deceive Americans about the enemies’ remaining strength, and another example of how U.S. leaders still believed in the possibility of conducting “bloodless wars.” In Iraq, U.S. decision-makers let between 400,000 and 500,000 Iraqis go home with their guns (and later kept them angry and at home by formally disbanding the Iraqi army) and earlier had permitted probably a bit more than 60,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to similarly melt away with their weapons. What the White House and the Pentagon termed “remnants” were basically the entire enemy force in both countries that had fled from a head-on confrontation with America’s unbeatable conventional military prowess to hide and fight again another day in circumstances more favorable to themselves. When both Iraqi and Afghan insurgents reemerged to engage U.S.-led forces in guerrilla-style warfare, the administration continued to misinform the American people by describing these virtually bottomless pools of military manpower as “remnants.” At one point, in fact, CIA officers were told that Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz had decreed that the term “insurgents” would not be used in the Pentagon’s intelligence analysis because it gave “legitimacy to terrorists.” Even at this late date the Cold War belief that the United States was the master of the international political ballet still prevailed; the insurgents simply could have no legitimacy in any American mind, or Muslim mind, for that matter, unless the U.S. government awarded it to them.

14.
There are two classic works, one very short and one longer, on the post–Great War British disaster in Iraq, or Mesopotamia as it was then called. The shorter work is T. E. Lawrence, “Report on Mesopotamia,”
Sunday Times,
August 2, 1920. The longer and much more recent work is David Fromkin,
A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East
(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1989). Lawrence’s report and the sections of Fromkin’s book on Iraq (especially pages 449–54) are both unnerving and eerily familiar for the contemporary American reader. Lawrence’s report begins: “The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor.” Sound familiar?

15.
Machiavelli,
Prince,
28

16.
This is not to say that the Iranian and Sunni services are not involved in getting would-be mujahedin to Iraq. They certainly are, but with the open borders all around Iraq, entry to the battlefield is relatively easy. As in Afghanistan, the provision of cash, ordnance, identity and travel documents, and some paramilitary training by these services suffices. The services are going with the flow more than directing it.

17.
The many routes traveled and sponsors available for the young Arabs intent on going to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Red Army are excellently covered in Bergen,
The Osama bin Laden I Know.
A fine and extensive firsthand account of how one European Muslim got to the Afghan arena after the Soviet retreat is Nasiri,
Inside the Jihad,
3–100.

18.
For the impact of prison on Ayman al-Zawahiri, see the exceptional, ground-breaking essay by Lawrence Wright, “The Man Behind Bin Laden,”
New Yorker,
September 16, 2002. The impact of al-Zarqawi’s prison experience is described in two articles featuring al-Zarqawi’s religious mentor, the famed Islamist scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisis; see Luqman Iskandar, “Calling for the Formation of a Global Body of Sunni Ulemas…,”
Al-Arab al-Yawm
, July 5, 2005, and Yasir Abu-Hilalah, “Interview with Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisis,” Al-Jazirah Satellite Television, July 5, 2005.

19.
On the role of Afghan war veterans in Bangladesh and Thailand, see, for example, David Mantero, “How Extremism Came to Bangladesh,”
Christian Science Monitor,
September 6, 2005, and “Southern Thailand: Insurgency, not Jihad,”
International Crisis Group,
Asia Report No. 98, May 18, 2006.

20.
“92 al-Qaeda Suspects Freed in Amnesty,”
Los Angeles Times,
November 17, 2003.

21.
“Algeria Pardons 5,065 Prisoners to Mark Muslim Feast,” www.deepikaglobal.com, January 18, 2005.

22.
“Mauritania: Junta Declares General Amnesty for Political Prisoners,” Reuters, September 5, 2005.

23.
Said Moumni, “One-hundred and sixty-four Detainees Belonging to the Salfia Jiahdia Group Are Pardoned,”
Annahar al-Maghribiyah
, November 5, 2005.

24.
“Morocco Pardons 10,000 to Mark Independence,” Reuters, November 17, 2005.

25.
“Saudi Arabia: Almost 400 Prisoners Released,” www.adnki.com, December 19, 2005.

26.
“Algeria to Pardon or Reduce Sentences for 3,000 Terrorists,” www.evening echo.ie/news, February 2006.

27.
“Over 2,000 Algerians to be Released Under Reconciliation Charter,” Radio Algiers/Channel 3, March 1, 2006.

28.
“Ben Ali Frees 1,600 Tunisian Prisoners,” www.middle-east-online.com, February 27, 2006.

29.
“Yemen Frees 627 Zaidi Rebels,” www.middle-east-online.com, March 3, 2006.

30.
Human Rights Watch, “Libya: Hopeful Sign as 132 Political Prisoners are Freed,” www.yubanet.com, March 3, 2006. Not surprisingly, the U.S. military announced in November 2007 that among foreign insurgents in Iraq, Libyans formed the second-largest contingent. See Richard A. Oppel Jr., “Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to U.S. Allies,”
New York Times,
November 22, 2007.

31.
Lee Harris, “Terror in Egypt: It Isn’t Going to Stop Anytime Soon,”
Weekly Standard
(Internet version), April 27, 2006.

32.
“5 Ex-Guantanamo Detainees Freed in Kuwait,” Associated Press, May 22, 2006.

33.
“Yemen Acquits 19 Men in al-Qaeda-linked Trial,” Reuters, July 8, 2006.

34.
“Seven Security Detainees Escape Saudi Jail,” Reuters, July 8, 2006.

35.
“Mauritania Frees Suspected Islamist After Fourteen Months,” Reuters, July 28, 2006, and “Mauritania: Three al-Qaeda-linked Suspects Escaped from Jail,” Associated Press, April 27, 2006.

36.
Morocco: Huge Amnesty Signals Historic Day,” www.africa-interactive.net/index.php? PageID=3580, March 12, 2007, and “Fighters infiltrate from Morocco to Iraq,” www.alsumaria.tv/en/print-news-1-1896.html, March 22, 2007. None of the releases described account for the large numbers of Islamist fighters—including some captured on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan—that such regimes as Saudi Arabia and Yemen are cycling through what they describe as religious rehabilitation camps. The authorities in both countries claim that camp graduates are cured of jihadist tendencies, but there is no way to know whether these camps are anything more than part of a process that provides eyewash for Western governments prone to believe in such psychological rehabilitation and allows captured fighters to return to the wars. The Saudi regime is the highest volume rehabilitator, releasing 1,500 former al-Qaeda fighters from prison in November 2007. Perhaps not coincidentally, Saudis form the largest group of foreign insurgents in Iraq. See Eli Lake, “1,500 Qaeda Members Freed After Counseling,”
New York Sun,
November 27, 2007; Talal Malik, “1,500 ‘Extremists’ Released by Saudi,” www.Arabianbusiness.com, November 26, 2007; Richard A. Oppel Jr., “Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to U.S. Allies,” op cit.; “Saudi to Temporarily Release 55 Former Guantanamo Detainees; Give Them Money,” Associated Press, October 6, 2007; and Kathy Gannon, “Yemen Coddling Terrorists,” Associated Press, July 5, 2007.

37.
Arab and Muslim regimes also derive an international-opinion benefit from releasing these prisoners: they win the applause of politically influential Western human-rights groups for releasing “prisoners of conscience.” When in 2006 the Libyan regime of Colonel Qaddafi, for example, released 132 political prisoners, among them 86 Muslim Brotherhood members, the Middle East and North Africa director for Human Rights Watch Sarah Leah Whitson overflowed with praise for the Libyans. “The release of these longtime prisoners is a welcome step,” Ms. Whitson said. “It is wonderful that 132 political prisoners are free. The Libyan government should now allow these people to express their views and engage in peaceful political activity.” That Colonel Qaddafi might have released some of these men on the condition they travel to Iraq or Afghanistan to kill American soldiers seems never to have occurred to Ms. Whitson, and it probably would not have mattered to her if it did. Efforts by Washington to prevent Libya and other Arab regimes from freeing “prisoners of conscience” are not in the cards, as U.S. political leaders are cowed, as they were during the Cold War, by human-rights groups and are very unlikely to court the groups’ condemnation or their own depiction by the media as foes of religious freedom. In the case of Libya, moreover, U.S. leaders would not want to alienate the authoritarian Qaddafi regime, with which they are planning to further increase American dependence on Arab oil. For Ms. Whitson’s comments see “Libya: Hopeful Sign as 132 Political Prisoners Freed,” March 3, 2006.