Iraq the Distraction

When I read articles about the fight against terrorism, I become depressed and, with today's article, that's certainly no exception.

The article is rather long, but I encourage you to read it. You may become even a little bored, but I think that it is absolutely necessary for Americans to understand these kinds of things in order to have a better sense of what's going on the fight against al-Qaeda.

To boil the article down to its main parts, here's what it says. There have been no good leads in the search for Osama bin Laden in two years. The last good knowledge about him, though, was when he left Tora Bora in 2001, which the U.S. screwed up by not being heavily involved in the battle there, thus allowing him to escape. After that, he's been assumed to be hiding just across the border in Pakistan. His #2, Zawahiri, has also been similarly difficult to track.

However, what is also clear from the article is just how much we probably missed in finding these guys and fighting al-Qaeda by diverting resources to Iraq. In the lead-up to Iraq and in the ensuing aftermath (which is still going on), both hardware, such as CIA drones, and personnel have been shifted to Iraq. Intelligence resources for fighting al-Qaeda diminished greatly.

I find this to be one of the most depressing aspects of the political discussions regarding Iraq. Bush et al. insist that Iraq is a part of a broader struggle against terrorism and have connected al-Qaeda to Iraq, both explicitly and implicitly for years now. However, it should be clear to any, but the most obstinate fools, that the two are separate and, in fact, that Iraq was a distraction from fighting al-Qaeda. Whatever "terrorists" are now in Iraq are the direct or indirect results of, not the cause of, the U.S. invasion -- i.e. they wouldn't be there for us to fight if we hadn't invaded. Moreover, most of those "terrorists" are not actually part of al-Qaeda but are Sunni insurgents who lost a great deal when Saddam fell and probably would be uninterested in attacking the U.S., except for attacking U.S. troops in Iraq.

One more aspect of this article deeply bothers me. The article notes that, in the last three months, Bush has ordered a massive flooding of resources to be devoted to finding bin Laden. So, in the past 4.5 years, Bush ordered a dramatic decrease in resources for finding bin Laden and then, suddenly, reverses course. You might ask why. Is it because al-Qaeda has committed another terrorist attack against the U.S.? Not that I know of. In fact, bin Laden, according to reports, has been mostly cut off from actually managing al-Qaeda. Moreover, until Bush's speech this past week, he rarely even mentioned bin Laden.

So, what's going on? Well, Bush's approval ratings are in the toilet and mid-term elections are coming up. Democrats are poised for some major victories and, so, talking about bin Laden may work a great deal to inspire fear among the voters, especially as Bush combines this with talk about how Democrats would weaken the war on terrorism. Moreover, if bin Laden could actually be caught, Bush's approval would probably go up, and the Republicans might avoid major losses.

Frankly, I find this kind of politics to be disgusting. It was Bush and the Republicans (with some Democrats at the time, just due to fear of being trounced in elections) who shifted resources AWAY from al-Qaeda and toward Iraq. There were many Democrats at the time who deplored this action and said that going after al-Qaeda and bin Laden was far more important and that Iraq would direct our attention away from what mattered -- all of which ended up being absolutely true. Now, Bush is shifting back to al-Qaeda being important and saying Democrats are the problem. How long will it be before he claims that Democrats shifted the government's attention away from al-Qaeda and onto Iraq?