Cape Cod Times August 30, 2005
Terrorists in Iraq or Nationalists?
By Sean Gonsalves
In a recent column, I suggested that U.S. forces were not fighting ''terrorists'' in Iraq but nationalists using low-tech terror tactics against a vastly superior U.S. military.
The piece generated mostly positive feedback. But, as always, there were several naysayers.
One critic said: ''The case has been made pretty clearly that many of the suicide bombers in Iraq are, in fact, Saudis, Egyptians, Yemenis, and so on. How does that square with the idea of Iraqi nationalism? It doesn't.''
It doesn't?
''I want to underscore that most of the attacks on our forces are by former regime loyalists and other Iraqis, not foreign forces,'' said Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Yes, there are ''many'' non-Iraqi insurgents in Iraq. But the more important question is: are most of the insurgents ''foreign terrorists'' or Iraqi nationalists?
Most experts agree the insurgency is made up of mostly Iraqi Sunni Muslims and Baath Party loyalists.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies recently estimated there are about 1,000 foreign Islamic jihadists fighting in Iraq (out of an estimated 40,000 insurgents and up to 200,000 native supporters).
Council on Foreign Relations staff writer Lionel Beehner reports: ''Nationalism is...what motivates many of Iraq's insurgents, many experts say. These include Iraqis who, after Saddam Hussein's regime fell, were fired from their military or other government jobs but do not favor a return to Saddam Hussein's secular form of Arab socialism.''
Most insurgents, Beehner writes, are Sunnis who fear a Shiite-led government, support a strong state run by Sunnis, and want U.S. forces out of Iraq.
''Some experts say these fighters are less likely to target Iraqi civilians or engage in suicide bombings. These insurgents, like the Baathists, may be using the foreign jihadis as 'cannon fodder' to fight U.S. forces,'' Steven Metz, director of research at the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, told Beehner.
The folks at GlobalSecurity.org, an independent military research group, draw a similar picture. War apologists have this idea that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is tantamount to appeasement, which would ''send the wrong message to the terrorists.''
The wrong message? That assumes the Muslim-Arab world, in general, and Iraqis, in particular, approved the invasion and occupation in the first place; a spin-off of Rumsfeld's ridiculous pre-war assessment that we would be greeted as liberators.
Neocons have turned reality on its head, convincing the true believers that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is reducing terrorism. It should be clear to anyone without ideological blinders on that U.S. military presence in Iraq is actually fueling terrorism.
Tom Regan of the Christian Science Monitor reports on two recent studies, one conducted by the Saudi government and the other by an Israeli think tank. Both studies found that most foreign fighters in Iraq were not terrorists before the Iraq war, but were ''radicalized by the war itself.''
Regan also highlights an Israeli analysis conducted by Global Research in International Affairs of 154 foreign fighters which found that, despite the presence of some senior al-Qaida operatives,...''the vast majority of (non-Iraqi) Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq.''
And we haven't even touched on how the Bush administration played right into the hands of Osama bin Laden, who was counting on Bush to attack Iraq after 9-11 to remove a secular Arab regime, open the door for an Islamist stronghold, divide the West, and recruit operatives.
Stay the course? I bet Osama hopes we do.
Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and columnist.
© Copyright 2005, Cape Cod Times
