Al Qaeda, Impeachment, and Iraq

Al Qaeda, Impeachment, and Iraq
by ralphlopez, Sun Feb 24, 2008 at 05:31:27 PM EST

If there is anything George Bush can rely on to keep us in Iraq, it is the threat that we will be "handing it over to Al Qaeda" if we withdraw, and inviting civil war. Whether you support the occupation, supported it before but now regret it, or were against it from the start, our options have dwindled to zero. We can't stop the world's worst humanitarian disaster from unfolding before our eyes - a proportionate number of refugees in the US would equal 50 million people - but we can't pull out. This is the classic definition of a quagmire.

There is only one problem: What if neither of these Apocalyptic premises are true?

We're the only rationale for them being around. Absent us, they become foreigners."

I hope to show that not only is our presence in Iraq beneficial to Al Qaeda; they actually need us there to survive. Al Qaeda is neither wanted nor liked in Iraq. The sooner we pull out, the sooner the local populations will identify and expel them, or kill them.

What the occupation has managed to do is to make Al Qaeda the devils the Iraqis will tolerate in their fight against American troops. The 2006 Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group found that 61 percent of Iraqis favor attacks on American forces. After the 2006 bombing in Samarra, of one of the Shias' holiest sites, a spokesman for the Sunni insurgent group Al-Sunna said "our people have come to hate Al Qaeda, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. Fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy."

There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before the summer of 2003, when it burst on the scene with characteristic violence. Its attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad which killed Brazilian diplomat Sergio DeMello and 21 other UN personnel forced the UN to pull out. The message was : Don't work with the Americans. In bombing after bombing Al Qaeda has shown its gift for alienating the local population. In July of 2007, Ansar Al-Sunna and six other nationalist and Sunni Islamist resistance groups united behind an anti-Al Qaeda platform, opposed attacks on civilians, and called for negotiations with Americans on a full withdrawal.



more at:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/24/173127/255