One of the more inane talking points embraced by supporters of the war is the notion that withdrawal from Iraq is inherently dangerous, because “the enemy will follow us home.” The president and his allies tend to repeat this, mantra like, without ever pausing to wonder if it makes sense.
It’s always been a dubious claim. For one thing, most of the violence in Iraq is the result of a civil war. Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias are not likely to “follow us home.” For another, as Fred Kaplan recently noted, “if terrorists wanted to attack American territory again (and maybe they do), their ability to do so is unaffected by whether we stay in or pull out of Iraq. It’s not as if they’re all holed up in Baghdad and Anbar province, just waiting for the fighting to stop so they can climb out of their foxholes and go blow up New York. If al-Qaida is a global network, its agents can fight in both places.”
And yet, we keep hearing the phrase, as if repeating it will make it true. McClatchy’s William Douglas took the unusual step of scrutinizing the comment’s accuracy. Guess what he found.
Military and diplomatic analysts say it isn’t [true]. They accuse Bush of exaggerating the threat that enemy forces in Iraq pose to the U.S. mainland.
“The president is using a primitive, inarticulate argument that leaves him open to criticism and caricature,” said James Jay Carafano, a homeland security and counterterrorism expert for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. “It’s a poor choice of words that doesn’t convey the essence of the problem – that walking away from a problem doesn’t solve anything.”
U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush’s own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States.
When a Heritage Foundation staffer, who opposes withdrawal, is accusing the president of relying on a “primitive” and “inarticulate” argument, you know it’s bad.
“The war in Iraq isn’t preventing terrorist attacks on America,” said one U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he’s contradicting the president and other top officials. “If anything, that — along with the way we’ve been treating terrorist suspects — may be inspiring more Muslims to think of us as the enemy.”
Yes, we already knew this, but a) it’s periodically helpful to be reminded of reality; and b) I’m delighted to see it in a national newspaper chain.