Logic Times

Abandoning the Myth - Essay Challenge

Posted by Larry Horacek, 11/02/05. Comments (1)

I like your latest article about abandoning the myth. However, there is one aspect of the insurgency in Iraq that deserves careful thought when sizing up the extent to which Al-Queda is perceived as making a stand in Iraq.

There are three main groups in Iraq: Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Islamic Kurds. Less we forget, Sunni Arabs have almost as much hatred and animosity for Shiites as they do for "The West." So let's for a moment compare at this internal situation in Iraq with a phenomenon that occurred in our own country some years ago. Fifty years ago, a Jim Crow south had marginalized blacks and fostered a sense of superiority that whites believed they had over blacks. The civil rights movement directly confronted this racism that eventually led to the enactment of the 1964 civil rights and voting rights laws. Yet these changes in the law did not bring about the social change promised. Many Southern whites felt threatened by the changes. Here in Louisiana, segregated society, imposed by a ruling white establishment, continued in open defiance to the law for decades thereafter. In Baton Rouge, after almost 20 years of inaction to desegregate schools, a federal judge finally ordered (in 1977) a busing solution - a solution that was ultimately resolved in 2003. What does any of this have to do with Iraq, Al-Queda, and Abandoning the Myth?

It has been more than 40 years since the civil rights act of '64 became law. Most people here in Louisiana have embraced the ideals that are at the foundation of the law. Yet a small, active group could suddenly bring incredible turmoil if they decided to firebomb a few black churches. They could receive an alarming and disproportionate level of recognition and media coverage by committing just a few selected acts of violence. Look at what happened a few weeks ago in Ohio when neo-Nazis demonstrated there. Today, police would have a good chance of nabbing any perpetrators because our law-enforcement capabilities clearly outweigh the ability for the perpetrators to remain anonymous and continue to rampage. Such was not the case 40 years ago when sympathetic neighbors (and sometimes sympathetic members of the law enforcement establishment) worked in collusion with perpetrators who used violence to try and sustain racism. The laws may have been on the books but open hostility was reality. As I look at what is happening in Iraq now, I see a lot of the same story that unfolded here in the south those many years ago. Sunni Arabs see their system of domination eroding before their eyes, and some believe that if they do not step forward and fight they will lose everything (their identity, culture, wealth, families). These people form both the bulk of the perpetrators as well as the sympathizers that work in collusion to inflict damage on their "enemies." In the Middle East, the Islamo-facist/Al-Queda factor represents the hard core - the ones who would still be pushing their agenda forty years from now like the Ayrian Brotherhood here in the US.

I think Al Queda is making a stand in Iraq because they have read history and know that they really don't have to do much to achieve a victory in the media, where it counts most for the long term. The way the western media covers Iraq, Al Queda need only keep its presence in the headlines and it will be the benefactor of a US "withdrawal" from Iraq under pressure from the insurgents (Al Queda). The lesson of Vietnam is not lost on Al Queda leaders. Unlike our civil rights movement, Iraq and the US do not have 30 to 40 years to make it work. It has to get up and running in a year or two or it will all become subject to the media war of withdrawal that Al Queda will win. Al Queda is making an inexpensive, but necessary, investment today by linking their future to Iraq because there is a very strong chance that the withdrawal they expect will happen. They are not financing the Sunni Arabs so all they need do is give their "emotional" support to the insurgents. It is a smart use of limited resources by an Al Queda leadership that is weakened and boxed in along the Afghan/Pakistan border.

The real war on terror will be won politically. That is why the participation of Sunnis in large numbers is so important to the success of a new Iraq.

I realize that the point you are making is that Al Queda is publicly making a stand in Iraq that would, in a normal world, bring a renewed US effort to destroy them. Abetted by a US media that is more interested in demeaning the Bush administration, Al Queda believes that it not only can involve itself without risking further damage to Al Queda but that it can actually enhance its position by doing so. It correctly sees that it has this window of opportunity and will exploit it. What I find unconscionable is the inability for the media, and many Americans, to see our engagement in Iraq as anything less than the real War on Terror.

{Aslan: Thanks for the thorough and well-informed response. I like your analogy and agree with it to a point: I do not believe that the Sunni Arabs have the fortitude and organization to resist the Coalition. I agree that there would have been hotspots and perhaps an occasional roadside bomb, but the Sunnis have a history of running first and fighting only when out of options. In other words, the Sunnis (i.e., the secular Baathists) are opportunities by nature, not ideologues. With an intact military command, these Baathists may have represented a threat, but the vast majority of the Baathist military high command has been captured or liquidated (how fondly we all remember the Iraqi Playing Cards).

I stand by my claim that Al Qaeda is the "engine" that makes this insurgency happen. After consuming all the unfiltered feedback from Iraq I can along with personal feedback from military people with who I am acquainted, it seems that there is a stark difference between Al Qaeda and Baathists, and the former is by far and away the deadliest foe. Read this recent report that speaks to the success Iraqi Security Forces are having against Baathists.

This war is "hot" because of Al Qaeda, and that is operationally foolish given the prevailing problems support for the war faces in America, problems that are almost exclusively centered on the legitimacy of the Iraq War. Al Qaeda compromises what would be a much faster meltdown here in the U.S., and I believe they do so not because they are too eager or too foolish but because the "insurgency" would be nothing without them.

Your observations, however, about the Sunnis v. Shiite, are accurate and expose that my choice of the word "idyllic" in the original essay contained perhaps a touch of hyperbole. LOL.

EDITOR UPDATE: Read today (11-06-05) from the news report out of Iraq that speaks to the dominant presence of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" in a Sunni region.}

Comments

1: Allen Ward

November 18, 2005 12:30am EST

I think Larry is on the right track, but too nice by half. He rightly recognizes that the mainstream of the insurgency is Iraqi, not foreign. Would we not resist if America were occupied? I sometimes wish that Americans like the arrogant Aslan could be "occupied" for a while to appreciate the injustice of what is happening in Iraq.

{Aslan: I am "occupied," Allen, with inanity like your comment. I aim for the high road most times, but for you to draw moral equivalence between our transitional presence in a free Iraq and another power’s occupation of America is…well…inane. The Iraqi portion of the insurgency, which I have acknowledged is numerically greater, but influentially weaker, is composed of ex-Baathists fighting not to secure freedom, but to regain lost tyrannical power. You’ll have to do better than that.}