This administration’s folly in Iraq has done far more than divide sentiment in the U.S. (NY Times via memeorandum):
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
[snip]
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
Obviously, Polimom’s not surprised to read that the Iraq War has compounded our problems exponentially, but it’s sobering that this is a consensus view, and that it aligns with international intelligence.
I spent a lot of time this morning reading various opinions about this intelligence report. People from the left, right, and middle are all writing furiously, and a post by Rick Moran (among others) pulled some thoughts together for me. He wrote in part:
In short, is there anything we could have done differently that would have made the United States safer while still dealing effectively with the global threat of terrorism?
In one way, the question opens the abyss beneath our feet in that it calls into question everything we’ve been doing for the past five years to fight terrorism. But in another way, the question challenges the assumptions of those who offer much in the way of criticism but little in the way of alternatives.
The question of alternatives are a real sticking point, and that pragmatic little voice in my head will not be stilled. What, if anything, can be done about this disastrous situation?
Rick wrote something else, though, that truly needs to be confronted and understood:
But “solving” the problem of poverty anywhere is a chimera under any circumstances. And given the obvious tension between addressing the concerns of people being oppressed by despots and those same despots holding life in the balance for the western world with their hands clasped around an oil spigot, one can immediately see where the real world so rudely intrudes on the fantasies of the “root causes” crowd.
That oil spigot is the immutable, underlying reason the U.S. can’t simply leave behind a destabilized region; it’s the millstone from which we evidently cannot free ourselves. On the North American continent alone, the combined resources of Canada, the United States, and Mexico could sustain us if it were necessary while we transition to alternative energy… but we’ve left the development of alternatives too long, and politically it’s a quagmire. So instead, we’re up to our eyebrows in the Middle East.
Can we get ourselves out of this morass?
By radically overhauling our approach to energy sources, I think it’s possible that we can eliminate our reliance on that particular spigot… but while that would help us, it would not salvage Iraq — because I don’t think the United States can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. We are too hated. Stabilizing Iraq — if it can be done at all — is going to require cooperative intervention from the neighboring countries: places like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
We need Iran’s help, but the actions and statements by Iran’s president, combined with what I continue to see as a desire for “the bomb”, make radically increased Iranian influence in the region utterly unacceptable to U.S. and Western interests and the wider Middle East, and it’s ironic that our own actions in Iraq have dramatically increased Iran’s power and influence in the region.
No, we cannot avoid dealing with Iraq’s neighbors… and specifically with Iran. Lately, the background noise about “hitting” Iran has increased in volume, and Polimom’s starting to see a larger method to the madness about the U.S. stance: To “solve” Iraq, we require a different Iranian government — which brings me to Joe Gandelman’s post this morning about an “October Surprise”:
If there is any kind of a military operation right before the elections, it will automatically undermine the credibility of the operation. It could help the GOP retain control of Congress, but it could also turn off independent voters. And even if the GOP retained control of Congress, the international cynicism and cynicism of local administration critics will be hardened. It’s hard to imagine two years of an administration supported almost exclusively by its party’s base and talk-show listeners.
I agree that a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities just before the elections would be political suicide for the GOP, but I can also see that such an action becomes more likely with every passing day…. not so much because of imminent nuclear fears, but because of Iraq.
This is starting to look like a line of dominoes — a series of terrible options that were all initiated by the foolishness of this misadventure; Polimom’s very concerned that things are going to get much worse before it gets better.
So will we have an October Surprise in Iran? Probably not… but I wouldn’t rule it out for November or December.
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