White House officials have spent an inordinate amount of time lately trying to convince American voters that they know which party the terrorists like more, and the electorate should back candidates who’d make the terrorists unhappy. To do otherwise would be to “appease” the enemy.
With this in mind, Ari Melber asks a pertinent question today, “[W]ho cares what the terrorists want?”
It’s a tempting choice, and sounds easy. If our enemies want something, we should want the opposite, right? If terrorists want us to leave Iraq, we have to stay. Yet Bush’s argument is wrong on two levels.
First, even if all our enemies wanted a U.S. withdrawal, it’s irresponsible to define our foreign policy reactively, in their shadow. By talking this way, Bush actually risks strengthening terrorists, suggesting that U.S. foreign policy is crafted in response to their positions, rather than our independent interests and analysis. […]
As the influential hawk Robert Kagan wrote last month, “I would worry about an American foreign policy driven only by fear of how our actions might inspire anger, radicalism and violence in others.”
That’s a good point. To hear the Bush gang tell it, the key to success in Iraq is trying to figure out exactly what al Qaeda leaders want. We’ll shape our policy by doing the exact opposite. It is, to put it mildly, a flawed approach. Our policy should be based on evidence and wise decision making, not a constant game-theory contest with Osama bin Laden.
Of course, Melber’s second point is an argument I’ve raised here many times — if we followed Bush’s approach and did craft a policy based on the opposite of terrorists’ desires, we’d vote against the GOP.
[T]here’s strong evidence that al Qaeda actually supports Bush’s policy to stay the course in Iraq.
A recent private letter between senior al Qaeda leaders declared their “most important” goal was “prolonging the war” in Iraq. The letter, confiscated in the fatal June attack on the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and translated by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, argues that pinning the United States into an open-ended commitment in Iraq will strengthen jihadists around the world.
On that score, al Qaeda apparently agrees with the administration’s famous National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is a ” ’cause celebre’ for jihadists,” inspiring new terrorist enemies around the world.
On a related note, Marc Lynch noted some discussion from an Arabic internet forum, “whose author has little reason to believe that it will be picked up by the English language media – and so should not be dismissed as an attempt to manipulate American public opinion.” (via Kevin Drum)
“Al-Qaeda’s Scenario During the Coming Weeks” argues that the coming two weeks represent a pivotal moment in al-Qaeda’s long-term jihad strategy. Since 9/11 and the Afghan war, al-Qaeda has been pursuing a stage in its long-term strategy which the author calles ‘direct combat’. Keeping American in Iraq has been the key to its strategy. America has suffered great losses through this stage, both economic and its people, and many of its allies have already abandoned the fight. The next two weeks (giving a clue as to when it was written) will reveal whether al-Qaeda’s leadership believes that this stage of direct combat has served its purpose of weakening America sufficiently. If it does, according to the author, al-Qaeda will remain silent, allowing the Democrats to win the Congressional elections and initiating a new phase of the conflict. If it does not (as the author hopes), it will intervene through a bin Laden tape or an attack on an American ally in order to ensure a Republican victory which will keep the Americans trapped in Iraq longer in order to weaken it more before moving to the next stage.
The author’s premise is that al-Qaeda has consistently intervened in American domestic politics where necessary in order to ensure that America stays in Iraq. Whenever America seems like it might withdraw, he writes, Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri pops up to remind Americans that if they do then al-Qaeda will triumph in their wake – thus goading them to remain. This predictably silences those reasonable voices calling for withdrawal, who are even accused of national treason, and strengthens the voices of stupidity. The author offers several detailed examples, including the 2004 election in which bin Laden ensured that Bush would win and continue his policies in Iraq, and a Zawahiri video last year calling on Bush to flee Iraq and admit defeat which Bush used to silence his critics. Each time al-Qaeda’s leaders speak, he argues, Bush and his party are strengthened, and commit even more firmly to remaining in Iraq… while the mujahideen laugh from the depth of their souls. […]
Therefore, while the author does not know what al-Qaeda will do, he thinks that al-Qaeda should seek to delay the American withdrawal as long as possible by working to ensure that Bush and the Republican Party win the coming elections. How? A televised al-Qaeda video should do the trick, whether from Zahawiri or (more likely) Bin Laden – perhaps announcing the creation of an al-Qaeda state in Afghanistan or Iraq, perhaps issuing a direct threat against America. A strike against important oil facilities in the Gulf might also do it, or against an important US ally like Britain. Either should ensure a Republican victory, he writes, and secure al-Qaeda’s main strategic objective of keeping America implanted in the combat zone in Iraq.
Getting back to Melber, if Bush is right and we should care what the terrorists want, the choice in the elections seems increasingly clear.