Al Qaeda Is The New Nader

With the elections yesterday giving control of the Spanish government to the Socialists, over the coalition of the willing's Popular Party, we're going to see a wave of posts and op-eds explaining how the 3/11 terrorist attacks threw the election to the party "soft on terror," thereby allowing Al Qaeda to get exactly what they wanted: a regime that would be "friendly" to them. No doubt a version of this argument will be trotted out again and again during the runup to the 2004 election here.

So seconding Josh Marshall's call for a strong Kerry stand on national defense issues, let's make it clear once again what many of us were saying a year ago about the Iraq war, and what Kerry should be saying now, if he can get around his vote to authorize the President to go to war. We're not opposed to operations like "Iraqi Freedom" because we somehow think that terrorism isn't that big of a deal. There is no more important issue in the world today. We're opposed because we think that pre-emptive, destabilizing attacks against nation-states in the Middle East that aren't associated with Al Qaeda will create MORE opportunities for Al Qaeda, not less. Those opportunities will come from: 1) distracting the US leadership from its primary focus tracking down Al Qaeda members and Bin Laden; 2) giving Al Qaeda incredible recruiting material by showing that the US is willing to unilaterally take over Arab nations at will; 3) creating a new breeding ground for chaos and instability in Iraq.

This formulation needs to be drilled into people's heads: we opposed the Iraq war because we predicted that this particular engagement would lead to more Al Qaeda strikes, not less. (We supported the Afghanistan war because we felt it would, on the whole, lead to less.) In other words, we thought that invading Iraq was ultimately "friendly" to Al Qaeda: hard on Hussein and his secular dictatorship, but soft on the shadowy, nationless networks of Islamo-fascism. So when the Spanish vote out the Popular Party, or the US votes out the Bush Administration, it's not that we're trying to give the terrorists a break. It's that we think the Bush Administration has been playing directly into the hands of Al Qaeda for the past two years, enraging young Arab men with elective wars that do nothing to combat Bin Laden and his minions directly.

The terrible attacks of 3/11 might have happened anyway, of course. But if you're trying to win the war on terror, and terror keeps winning, it's reasonable to question the strategy. Beyond a certain point, it's soft on terror not to question the strategy.

Comments

[Eirik]

Very interesting post, Steven. A major factor in the big swing in support for the Conservative party in Spain seems to have been people's anger at a government all too willing to blame _anyone_ but Al Qaeda. In other words, it was not just the policies leading up to the election, it was the willingness to withhold and distort information. "It's the lies, stupid" might well be a useful slogan in your upcoming election.

BTW, I'm not convinced that this election result is what Al Qaeda actually wanted. Just like the Hamas in Israel, they may well reason that hard-line right-wing governments will give them a larger recruiting base. The theory of "crisis maximation" (the worse it gets, the better it is), is as old as the hills among terrorists...

[Ross Mayfield]

While I agree about Kerry and Iraq, I think you have the design of terrorism wrong.

Throughout history the strategy of terrorism has always been to provoke the over-reaction by the state. If the state over-reacts and uses force to quell terrorists it will cause atrocities against civilians and terrorists alike. When immoral equivalence is near, citizens open themselves to the claims of terrorists and the state of war become ground for a new state.

If Al Qaeda was the cause and if Spain elected a "hard on terror" party, then it could declare victory. And its hard to see how Al Qaeda could ever make a friend out of a regime in Spain at this point.

[Steven Johnson]

Great points, Ross and Eirik. For what it's worth, I wasn't saying that I believe that Al Qaeda "wanted" the soft on terror party to win -- I was just quoting other folks on that point. I think both of you have it right that the goal of most terrorists, and certainly Al Qaeda, is to inflame the opposition and create a true clash of civilizations, not cause them to go all wobbly...

[A.R. Yngve]

I don't know if these suicide bombers really know WHAT they want. They have a deathwish, that much is indisputable (couldn't they just have blown up themselves *only* to begin with, and spared the Spanish a lot of misery?)...

I think the source of the current terrorist vogue is a profound crisis in Arab culture: it is about to undergo a radical change from medieval to modern. Al-Qaida and the related groups are only the most deranged part of an overall desperation in the face of a triumphant secular West.

I mean, does anyone - anywhere - seriously think the theocrats and extremists can WIN? They wouldn't stand a chance, not even with an arsenal of the worst weapons you could imagine.

What the Arab world needs is to somehow re-wire their collective unconscious, to "connect" to reality and start going after their real enemy: the theocrats and tyrants who rule their countries.

This will happen; I'm confident. (It is already begun in Iran.) East Germany fell without a fight; so will the despots of the Orient, when the oppressed refuse to accept the lie that democracy and prosperity is not meant for them.

Afterwards, like after the Cold War, we'll shake our heads and wonder how things could change so fast, and why we hadn't seen it coming.

[Anthony]

It's interesting how some people are well versed in logic and reason, but when presented with open and indisputable facts, they somehow fail to "connect the dots". I wonder why this is so?

You say that the president is playing into the hands of Al Qaeda. I wonder... what if the president knew he was doing just that and he had a reason to do so? The current administration is anything but dumb, despite the blundering language of Mr. Bush. In fact, they are coldly calculating.

Perhaps the strategy is not what you think it is...