Presidential paths diverge over
terror focus By Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON - Last week's violent clashes
in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Basra
reverberated all the way to Washington, where
suddenly, the Iraq war has been thrust back into
the limelight, just as the 2008 US presidential
election primary season enters its final stretch.
On Monday at the Washington think-tank the
Brookings Institution, foreign policy advisers
from the major campaigns sought to fit the
Shi'ite-on-Shi'ite armed power struggle into their
plans for Iraq - with Democrats Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama advocating a phased withdrawal,
and Republican John McCain arguing for a continued
high level of troops in the country.
Built
into all three narratives was the persistent
question of what is the central front in the
so-called "war on terror" - whether the
more important battle
with Islamic extremism is in Iraq or the war in
Afghanistan and its border regions with Pakistan
where al-Qaeda's central leadership is based, and
how the two theaters stand to affect each other.
McCain's advisor and the Democrats both
said their respective plans would bolster the
effort in Afghanistan.
Randy Scheunemann,
the top advisor in McCain's foreign policy
apparatus, echoed the George W Bush
administration's long-time rationale that a
withdrawal from Iraq amounts to a defeat that
would embolden global terrorists.
"We
learned in the 1990s that we needed to take
al-Qaeda at its word," he said. "They have said
themselves that Iraq is the central front in the
war they are fighting with the West. I don't see
how we are going to better address our goals in
Afghanistan if we are defeated in Iraq."
How a withdrawal from Iraq would help US
efforts in Afghanistan was clear to the Democratic
advisors - it would make some of the over 100,000
troops in Iraq available to pursue global
terrorists where they are based, and free up
billions of dollars to address that conflict.
"Defeat is staying in Iraq for 100 years
because that will have very, very serious
consequences for us in Afghanistan and Pakistan,"
said Clinton adviser Lee Feinstein, adding that in
Afghanistan, "Al-Qaeda is as strong as any point
since 9/11."
McCain has said he has no
issues with staying in Iraq for over 100 years.
And while he describes that length of time as a
Korea-like plan for permanent bases, it is unclear
when and how that shift from a hot war to that
sort of peacetime military presence would be
possible.
"What is in America's broadest
strategic interests? For example, if we maintain
an indefinite commitment to Iraq, are we going to
be able to address the forgotten frontline in
Afghanistan?" said Feinstein.
Calling
operations in Iraq a "diversion from our effort in
Afghanistan and to the principal front in this
fight against al-Qaeda", Obama adviser Denis
McDonough said that despite the requests of
commanders in southern Afghanistan for more troops
to quell rising violence in the region, those
troops are not available and "on the shelf"
because of the massive commitment in Iraq.
Last week, the president of the Army War
College, Major General Robert Scales, said the way
US troop levels stand now is already
unsustainable, noting that the math simply does
not work.
"You can't take a 43-brigade
force, and have 23 of those 43 brigades deployed,
and have a one-to-one exchange for time at home
and time in the theater," he said.
In
Iraq, insurgent militias are organized by
religious identities, but their religious
extremism is not directed at the US generally or
the US homeland, but rather against US occupation.
While foreign jihadis do exist there,
Sunni fighters associated with the al-Qaeda
spin-off group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, have since drawn
close to the US as part of the Sahwa movement,
otherwise known as the Sunni Awakening, spurning
al-Qaeda in Iraq and marginalizing it.
"McCain is certainly lying when he says
that Iraq will become an al-Qaeda state if the US
leaves," said Nir Rosen, a journalist who has
spent extensive time in Iraq. Rosen told IPS that
insofar as the "war on terror" has any coherent
meaning, it is certainly not taking place in Iraq.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
al-Qaeda's central leadership has been regrouping
and allegedly retraining for further attacks on
the US. Feinstein said that in the border regions
between the two countries, the US faces "really
serious problems with people who want to attack
and hurt the United States and plan for it every
single day".
In February, the US director
of national intelligence, retired Admiral J
Michael McConnell, said the greatest threat to the
US is posed from the rejuvenated al-Qaeda
leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But some experts like Rosen contend that
both the narratives on the "war on terror" are
deeply flawed.
With regards to Iraq,
University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole said no
US advantage is to be gained through the war in
Iraq and that it could serve to bolster the
weakened global jihadi groups.
"The real
al-Qaeda is using Iraq as a recruiting tool," he
said. "[The US is] playing into the hands of
[Osama] bin Laden. To the extent that the US is
involved in the military occupation of an
Arab-Muslim country, they're playing by bin
Laden's script."
Cole sees no connection
between foreign al-Qaeda fighters and the struggle
in Iraq. "We have 24,000 prisoners in Iraq. Just
about 150 of them are foreigners," said Cole. "So
what that tells me is that we're fighting Iraqis.
If the foreign fighters - the al-Qaeda types - are
a significant group, we should have more of them
in prison. What, do they run faster? It's not
possible given that statistic that Iraq is the
central front in any war on terror."
But
Cole also cautioned that the war in Afghanistan
and the struggle to contain groups in Pakistan
also play a minimal role in the fight against
terror threats to the US.
"The idea that
the United States faces a mortal threat from
Waziristan in northern Pakistan also doesn't make
any sense to me," said Cole. "There are a handful
of al-Qaeda types who are there, but I don't think
there is very much left of the group that was in
Afghanistan. I don't understand what they can do
to us from Waziristan. 9/11 wasn't launched from
rural Afghanistan, it was launched from Hamburg,
Germany."
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
