The Beginning of a Jihad?

The FBI was active in the Khobar Towers attack investigation and that was in 1996.

<a href="http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/khobar.htm">FBI - Khobar Towers</a>

 

A Price Too High
By BOB HERBERT


ow long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

At the United Nations yesterday, grieving diplomats spoke bitterly, but not for attribution, about the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. They said it has not only resulted in the violent deaths of close and highly respected colleagues, but has also galvanized the most radical elements of Islam.

"This is a dream for the jihad," said one high-ranking U.N. official. "The resistance will only grow. The American occupation is now the focal point, drawing people from all over Islam into an eye-to-eye confrontation with the hated Americans.

"It is very propitious for the terrorists," he said. "The U.S. is now on the soil of an Arab country, a Muslim country, where the terrorists have all the advantages. They are fighting in a terrain which they know and the U.S. does not know, with cultural images the U.S. does not understand, and with a language the American soldiers do not speak. The troops can't even read the street signs."

The American people still do not have a clear understanding of why we are in Iraq. And the troops don't have a clear understanding of their mission. We're fighting a guerrilla war, which the bright lights at the Pentagon never saw coming, with conventional forces.

Under these circumstances, in which the enemy might be anybody, anywhere, tragedies like the killing of Mazen Dana are all but inevitable. Mr. Dana was the veteran Reuters cameraman who was blown away by jittery U.S. troops on Sunday. The troops apparently thought his video camera was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The mind plays tricks on you when you're in great danger. A couple of weeks ago, in an apparent case of mistaken identity, U.S. soldiers killed two members of the Iraqi police. And a number of innocent Iraqi civilians, including children, have been killed by American troops.

The carnage from riots, ambushes, firefights, suicide bombings, acts of sabotage, friendly fire incidents and other deadly encounters is growing. And so is the hostility toward U.S. troops and Americans in general.

We are paying a terribly high price — for what?

One of the many reasons Vietnam spiraled out of control was the fact that America's top political leaders never clearly defined the mission there, and were never straight with the public about what they were doing. Domestic political considerations led Kennedy, then Johnson, then Nixon to conceal the truth about a policy that was bankrupt from the beginning. They even concealed how much the war was costing.

Sound familiar?

Now we're lodged in Iraq, in the midst of the most volatile region of the world, and the illusion of a quick victory followed by grateful Iraqis' welcoming us with open arms has vanished. Instead of democracy blossoming in the desert, we have the reality of continuing bloodshed and heightened terror — the payoff of a policy spun from fantasies and lies.

Senator John McCain and others are saying the answer is more troops, an escalation. If you want more American blood shed, that's the way to go. We sent troops to Vietnam by the hundreds of thousands. There were never enough.

Beefing up the American occupation is not the answer to the problem. The American occupation is the problem. The occupation is perceived by ordinary Iraqis as a confrontation and a humiliation, and by terrorists and other bad actors as an opportunity to be gleefully exploited.

The U.S. cannot bully its way to victory in Iraq. It needs allies, and it needs a plan. As quickly as possible, we should turn the country over to a genuine international coalition, headed by the U.N. and supported in good faith by the U.S.

The idea would be to mount a massive international effort to secure Iraq, develop a legitimate sovereign government and work cooperatively with the Iraqi people to rebuild the nation.

If this does not happen, disaster will loom because the United States cannot secure and rebuild Iraq on its own.

A U.N. aide told me: "The United States is the No. 1 enemy of the Muslim world, and right now it's sitting on the terrorists' doorstep. It needs help. It needs friends."

nyt

 

Gooooooooooood morning Vietnam!


same old same old



these guys never think the other side will launch a counter attack. this is found opportunity to the terrorists. we are making it easy for them to find easy targets, and they don't even have to leave their neighborhoods to find us.

How do you say "Charlie" in Iraqi?

 

no devil's advocate who isn't this naive, you were merely trying to point out how a person in power might try to twist reality and use prevalent religious fanatacism to make it appear that way from the perspective of the largely uninformed, uneducated populous in order to garner their support and loyalty to gain even more power.






and if there's one thing i don't lose sleep over, it's whether someone in the middle east will use an action to start a holy war.

 

Let's all jump to conclusions shall we?

Why not wait for the Iraqi government to get up an running and have their own security forces in place where we fall back to our permanent bases, and then see how it goes.

We are an occupying force, but we are not occupying Korea are we?

You guys are going to look like fools in 10 years when there is a democratic Iraq and the middle east is more stable then ever.

DD

 

THE ROVING EYE
Why the lessons of Vietnam do matter
By Pepe Escobar

HANOI - Just as it took a few years for the Americans to lose the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese, it took them only a few weeks to lose the hearts and minds of the majority of Iraqis - which ultimately means losing the war, whatever the strategic final result. Topographic denials - this is the Mesopotamian desert, not the Indochinese jungle - don't work, nor do denials saying that the Iraqis are not as politicized as the Vietnamese were by communism. These totally miss the point: as happened in Vietnam, what is happening now in Iraq has everything to do with patriotism and nationalism.

Former Iraqi vice premier Tariq Aziz used to say, before the US invasion, "Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles." Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, aka "Comical Ali", the unforgettable former minister of information, used to say Iraq would be "another Indochina". The guerrilla war strategy against what was considered an inevitable US invasion has been perfected in Iraq for years. And the master strategist was neither an Assyrian nor a Mesopotamian general, but the legendary Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who coordinated the victories against French colonialism and US meddling.

Iraqi strategists - from army officials to Ba'ath Party officials - have always been thorough students of the Vietnam War, or American War, as it is referred to in Vietnam. In addition, the Iraqi urban population is very well educated and analyzes events with a deep historical sense - as well as the Vietnamese. Iraqis are not gullible to the point of believing the occupying power's boast of "nation building"- as they have not seen any tangible results since the "fall" of Baghdad on April 9. Since the beginning - the first huge popular demonstration departing from Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad on April 18 - the "liberation" of the Iraqi people by America has been viewed inside many sections of Iraq as a national liberation war, a "popular war" in the Giap sense against an imperialist aggressor.

It's all there in Vo Nguyen Giap - Selected Writings, a collection spanning the years 1969-91 and published by Gioi Editions in Hanoi: the strategy and tactics of a war of national liberation and how a "popular war against the American aggression" was organized. The Ba'ath Party and the Republican Guards may have not implemented what they learned - as the top army commanders, after a campaign of preventive intimidation, were finally bought out by Pentagon cash and safe refuge (see The Baghdad deal, April 25). But basically the same strategy is now being implemented by the array of groups that constitute the Iraqi national resistance.

The objective is always to harass, bog down and demoralize a hugely superior army. Veterans of the American War in Hanoi - who usually congregate every day around Hoam Kien Lake to talk about the past and the present - stress that it was all about national consciousness, patriotism and local traditions: according to Giap, "patriotism associated with the democratic spirit and love of socialism". In Iraq, the impetus is the same - with "love of Islam" substituting for "love of socialism". Iraqi patriotism and anti-imperialist sentiment is as strong as it was in Vietnam.

Giap wrote that "conditions should be created to attack the enemy by all means appropriated", and urban revolutionary forces should be coordinated with the countryside: today this means attacks both in Baghdad and in the Sunni belt (already spreading towards the Shi'ite south). The next step of the Iraqi resistance would be, applying Giap, "to combine armed forces with political forces, armed insurrection with revolutionary war". This means a concerted strategy of the Sunni belt alongside Shi'ite groups, many of which have already switched from a "wait-and-see" attitude toward barely disguised hostility with the US proconsular regime.

Giap is adamant: "The strategy of popular war is of a protracted war." The Iraqi resistance is following it to the hilt. The point is not that Saddam loyalists may be behind the attacks against the Americans: they are just one part of the equation. Giap wrote that the Americans and the puppet South Vietnamese government were supported by "a brutal repression and coercion machine, applying against our compatriots a fascist policy of barbarity". This is exactly how the resistance - and increasingly the whole Iraqi population - sees scared and even demoralized American soldiers shooting to kill innocent women, children and even the odd foreign cameraman. Against the "repression machine", Giap recommends "guerrilla and self-defense militias" in strategic zones - exactly the way that the Iraqi resistance has been acting.

Iraq now is already like Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive. The Americans could have left Vietnam any time - but this would have meant to lose face, in an Asian sense, and to admit defeat: ultimately, this is what happened when that last helicopter abandoned the US Embassy in Saigon in April 1975. Even if they had any intention of doing it, which they don't, the White House and the Pentagon - although they have declared victory - simply cannot leave Iraq. They know that as soon as the US leaves, a democratically elected, Shi'ite-dominated, anti-American Iraqi government will come into power - as an anti-American communist government took over Vietnam. If the US remains in Iraq for "years" - as the Pentagon would have it - there's only one question: how many body bags does it take for the US public to demand a withdrawal?

The Iraqi resistance's attacks are being conducted by small, mostly well-trained groups who generally manage to escape without losses. They follow classic Giap thought: to demoralize American soldiers and at the same time increase the already unbearable distress suffered by the population, thus nourishing resentment against the occupying power. Asia Times Online has learned of many former high-ranking army officials - now unemployed - who have been called to join the resistance: they answer that sooner or later they will "if the Americans continue to humiliate us". Others are financing small guerrilla groups to the tune of thousands of dollars. The reward for someone launching a rocket against an US fighting vehicle is about US$350 - enough for many to buy what is now the rage in Baghdad's at least partly free market: a color TV with satellite dish.

In Vietnam, the resistance was organized by the Party. In Iraq, it is organized by the tribes. Tribal chiefs - practically all of them loyal to Saddam - are about to reach the deadline of the "grace period" that they conceded to the Americans. The resistance can count either on former Ba'ath Party and army officials, as well as on unemployed youngsters following the appeal of Sunni clerics, their own tribal chiefs and, more broadly, Arab patriotism.

The resistance can potentially count on almost 600,000 individuals who have been demobilized by the American proconsular regime. With more than 20 years of war, virtually all the male population in Iraq has been militarized. More than 7 million weapons were distributed by Saddam Hussein's regime. Millions of rockets and mortars were abandoned when the regime collapsed. Organized armed struggle in Iraq - in the Giap sense - may still be in its infancy, but the results are increasingly devastating. The "popular war" is getting bolder: surface-to-air missiles launched against military transport planes; sabotage of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline. US Central Command admits there may be as many as 25 attacks a day.

These Sunni Iraqi mujahideen - the counterparts of the Sunni Afghan mujahideen now fighting the anti-American jihad in Afghanistan - can count on the active complicity of the local population, just like in Vietnam. It's all becoming a "popular war" in the sense that people in any given neighborhood will know who organized an attack, but obviously they won't tell the invaders about it. But what about Saddam's tapes inciting a jihad against the Americans? Saddam is no Ho Chi Minh - a legitimate leader of a national-liberation struggle. There is not a lot of Saddam nostalgia in Iraq. And former army officials are not nostalgic either - or over-optimistic, for that matter, about the success of the guerrillas. They know that the Iraqi people once again will be the greatest victims - as the Americans are obsessed with their own, not the Iraqi people's, security. But these former officials are ready to join the resistance anyway.

In 1995, on the 20th anniversary of the end of the American War, former US defense secretary Robert McNamara met the legendary Giap in Hanoi. The old warrior told him that the US had entered a war without knowing anything about Vietnam's complex history, culture and fighting spirit against a wave of foreign invasions. McNamara was forced to agree. The US emerged from Vietnam with nothing but humiliation. In Iraq, corporate Bu****es at least expect to get away with the oil. And this is basically what young American soldiers are dying for: Executive Order No 13303, signed by George W Bush in late May.

This states with respect to "all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein", that "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void". In other words, according to Jim Vallette of the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington, "Bush has in effect unilaterally declared Iraqi oil to be the unassailable province of US oil corporations."

The Iraqi resistance is very much aware of Executive Order 13303 - and that's why it sabotaged, and will continue to sabotage, the crucial Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline. The more Iraqis have to wait for oil money to come flowing back and help the reconstruction of the country, the more the US-appointed interim government loses its already shaky credibility. The Iraqi population reads only one thing in all this: it has to buy motor fuel at inflated prices in the black market, and it has to come back to its living quarters and put up with only three hours of electricity a day.

Giap also wrote that the resistance in Vietnam should "smash the Machiavellian design of US imperialism of making Vietnamese fight Vietnamese, of nourishing war by war". The Americans are making the same mistake in Iraq. The US went into Vietnam, among other factors, to stress its symbolic credibility and to show off its military technology: in Iraq, the theatrical demonstration was certainly powerful, but the symbolic credibility risks being reduced to ashes. In Vietnam, the US wanted to make a demonstration of how to smash revolutionary nationalist regimes in the still dismissively denominated Third World. It failed miserably. In Iraq, the US wanted to show off how to "correct" former client regimes who went astray. It is also failing miserably - as the conditions become ripe for a popular war ultimately leading to still another revolutionary nationalist regime.

Pentagon No 2 Paul Wolfowitz's idea of a political and economic order in Iraq is similar to what the US wanted in South Vietnam - and similar to what the US forcing all over the Third World in the 1950s and 1960s. In Vietnam, the US may have had the power, and the control of a puppet government (South Vietnam's). But it absolutely failed to create a viable political, economic and ideological system capable of counteracting the Vietnamese revolution. This means that America's non-military defeat was even more crucial than its own military impasse.

The same may be happening in Iraq. Wolfowitz and company are definitely not interested in democracy, because they know that in any free and fair democratic elections Iraq would switch towards a Shi'ite-dominated, probably Sharia-ruled, and certainly anti-American government. In Iraq - just as in Vietnam - the US has de facto installed a military system. This military system will be controlling - or euphemistically "overseeing" - the political structure, and more crucially, as Asia Times Online has already demonstrated (US and the changing face of Iraq, August 13), the new US-subsidized economic order. By all means, Iraq in Wolfowitz's project is supposed to become a US colony.

In Vietnam the US was not capable of translating its awesome firepower into any sort of political appeal. Fine dialecticians, Hanoi veterans today tell us that by bombing Vietnam indiscriminately, the US provoked an almost unbearable economic and psychological trauma: the US could never win hearts and minds this way. And then they switch to Iraq, stressing that the Pentagon still has not learned a crucial lesson: it simply cannot barge into a complex society without causing tremendous social corrosions that ultimately lead to the collapse of any puppet regime.

The Iraqi resistance should be underestimated by Washington at its own peril. It is learning fast, on the ground, the lessons of Vietnam - where the communists, in a protracted war, won against the ultimate war machine, Giap would say, because of three factors: decentralization, mass mobilization and mobile military tactics. Giap has articulated a set of political, organizational and technical maneuvers to counterbalance the awesome US war machine that can be applied by resistance forces everywhere in the world, and especially in Iraq.

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Re-define conclusions, or rather, recognize that it is speculation or forecasting if you prefer. I don't think those of us who are using a critical eye towards our situation in Iraq will look like fools in ten years when there is a stable gov't in Iraq---As a matter of fact, I would relish being labled a fool; please prove me wrong that Iraq hasn't become another Vietnam...

 

I'm not saying their crazy either. I'm saying you are right, but that they have seen this as a religious war for a long time now.

 

your blind faith would be comical if people weren't dying.

You tell me, about jumping to a conclusion, which one of us is making the greater logical leap:

you? pretending that something that hasn't happened in hundreds of years and that looks increasingly unlikely will happen because the president told you it would? or me, and pretty much everybody else who doesn't work for the Bush administration, expecting that the status quo will continue?

 

Let's see a few hundred dead versus over 3000 on 9-11.

It is all about taking a hard line stand against terrorism, and building a stable middle east.

Is it the right thing to do? I don't know, but it is better than doing nothing and getting slugged in the gut every so often.

I prefer the proactive stand that we are taking, we should not just sit idly by while the terrorists of the world take pot shot after pot shot at us.

Make them scatter like cockroaches, and then when caught, kill em DEAD !

DD

 

i'm going back to the wisdom of Han Solo...if this gives us a chance to confront a mass of Al Qaeda or Islamic extremists...bring it on. that's a dream scenario for the US who has previously been fighting an invisible enemy.

 

Max,

Exactly !

Let's draw them out to the battlefield and make them pay for their ignorance.

Dead is dead !!

DD

 

A few thoughts:

Indications are that those fighting in Iraq are not nationalists, as in Vietnam, but extremists from other parts of the Muslim world. I imagine they'll get tired of Al Queda types smashing their water infrastructure, and killing everyday Iraqis. While they may see American intervention as a double edged sword (thanks for getting rid of Saddam but you can leave now), I don't think the everyday Iraqi is going to unite with the unpredicatable and incompatible Al Queda-style revolution. As the Iraqis are well educated, it is doubtful that they really want to embrace a Taliban redux. Even in Afghanistan, where the society is much more tribal, and much less edcuated, the Muslim extremists were not embraced as brethren, but as tools to help break the Soviet occupation.

And you can try and re-write history if you want, but the Vietnam War was lost at home, not on the battlefield. US forces won practically every engagement over platoon size in 12 years of combat. Even Ho wrote that he was seriously considering giving up the conflict but decided to continue because of the backlash from the public in the States. So continue on stirring the pot. Maybe you can contribute to the escalation and drag this conflict out with your protests in the same way.

 

Indications are that those fighting in Iraq are not nationalists, as in Vietnam, but extremists from other parts of the Muslim world

I know this is the current Bush line, but any support for this given their credibility problem on Iraq issues? Many think the Iraqis are doing most, if not all the fighting. Until a week or two your own Bush Administrators said it was all caused by "bitter enders" or 'Baathists". Please explain the switch and doesn't this seem sort of reminescent of how Rumsfeld et al kept switching the story on wmd and the reasons for the war from week to week?

As the Iraqis are well educated, it is doubtful that they really want to embrace a Taliban redux.

It seem your side was arguing more or less the opposite when it wanted to invade Iraq to civilize them and make the democrats..

Also, how can you argue that this all the work of outsiders, the Al Qaeda types; that The Iraqi don't want them, and yet , because the population shelters them we can't find those doing the fighting. Please explain.

the Vietnam War was lost at home, not on the battlefield.... So continue on stirring the pot. Maybe you can contribute to the escalation and drag this conflict out with your protests in the same way.

Ah here we go again. You seem to be anticipating defeat. Anyone who opposes the war and or the occupation is a traitor. America is always the strong, and the victorious except for weak cowardly liberals.

Hayes, you sound desperate in your defense when you have to go back to worn out cliches of the right wing to try to argue the present case. What's next? "America. love it or leave it?",

I can see a future staple of right-wing talk radio. "We wouldn't have that mess in Iraq and would have a glorious case of a free market democracy, friendly to the US and the forces of good, with separation of church and state if not for the liberals, the UN and the French and Gemans etc." . Conveniently forgetting who pushed for the stupid war in the first place.

 

Well, first I was just going off of MacBeth's original post. And they are 'your' Bush Administrators too, unless I missed something. You sound particularly bitter today, glynch. Second, when addressing the credibility of these claims, the self-proclaimed Iraqi Resistance has also pointed to outsiders involved in the recent attacks, which would seem to bolster the Pentagon's claim. Third, you give no reason why it is NOT true.

As the Iraqis are well educated, it is doubtful that they really want to embrace a Taliban redux.

Don't remember arguing Iraqis were stupid, but feel free to back up your claim if you can find me saying so. Good luck. I do remember saying they were opressed by a tyrant, and that Saddams security infrastructure prevented them from kicking him out. And here again you give no reason my point is NOT valid.

Indications are that these outsiders have RECENTLY started to infiltrate the country in an organized manner. My claim is not that there are NO radicals in the country, which can explain how they are sheltered, but that everyday Iraqis will quickly get tired of them killing everyday Iraqis.

the Vietnam War was lost at home, not on the battlefield.... So continue on stirring the pot. Maybe you can contribute to the escalation and drag this conflict out with your protests in the same way.

Hardly. But I deal mainly in facts, glynch. Ho's own writings back me up. Sorry if that tugs at your conscience, implicating you in the defeat in Vietnam, but those are the facts. If you want to go do the research and say Ho never said that, then be my guest. Otherwise don't dismiss my points with such scorn, as you are only arguing with the normal 'what's next? love it or leave it?' smokescreen. If you'd like more recent example I can do that as well. Somalia. The US pulls out because there is a public outcry (or fear of one) over US casualties. What is the result? Osama decides we are weak, and ripe for attack - hence 9/11. Please explain you side. Tell us how this is NOT a FACT. Which of us is making logical points, and which of us is engaging in mindless rhetoric?

 

US forces won practically every engagement over platoon size in 12 years of combat.

Hayes, I missed that last time.

You know it doesn't appear that the Iraqis intend to engage in this type of combat. I know. Unfair. Reminds me in history where the British claimed that at the Battle of New Orleans, the Americans were "unfair".

Sorry if that tugs at your conscience, implicating you in the defeat in Vietnam, but those are the facts. If you want to go do the research and say Ho never said that, then be my guest.

I'm proud that I was one of 100's of thousands, or rather millions of patriotic Americans who opposed and protested that war.

So the fact that Ho got discourged for awhile means that we would have won? Not necessarily. Often times people who eventually triumph at something get discouraged momentarily, but keep trying and win. Isn't it a bit much to rewrite the whole history of the war based on one fact that Ho had some doubt. This is the type of spinning one fact to the point where you arrive at a false conclusion that was typical of the whole wmd thinggy for Bush and your side.

Fortunately from a combat point of view our own military looked at itself and took respnsibility for what happened there in future planning and didnt' try to blame it all on protestors. It is true one of the lessons learned led Powell, Schartkopf and the real military guys to be reluctant to go to war without a clear majority of Americans behind them.

Unfortuantely Dubya, who ran on a lying claim to be "a uniter not divider" and the other chickehawks disregarded the military guys on the issue of whether to go to war without clearcut support. Compounding the problem here was that their misleading statments were so obvious to many so soon and that virtually the whole world opposed it every step of the way. Dubya chose the counsel of the salesman and the arm chair rewriters of history when it came to this war and how to do the occupation.

I love the spin. Truly Karl Rhovian and to give you credit you are even ahead of him on this one. Those who opposed the war should be blamed because it is turning into a mess

 

EVERYONE who has a reason to hate us will use this as their opportunity to target our guys.

All those underlings who served in the Bathist party know that the leadership at the top is gone. These Sunni stakeholders will not easily go away.

In the south and east are the Shia, with their strict Muslim views, naturally opposed to us. In the middle are the Sunni, now disenfranchised. In the north are the Kurds, with the unhappy Turks on the other side of the border. To the northwest is Syria, home of Hamas, and to the west is Jordan. Southwest is Saudi.

We are in the middle of that, with 150,000 weary troops stretched out over 700 miles. We are targets for everyone with any grievance, which is about 75% of the population within a 1000 mile radius.

 

I don't know, I don't think America has a very strong record in installing new governments in foreign land. Certainly, Japan and Germany are success stories, but the 60s and 70s yielded terrible results in South America.

However, I am with you in leaning towards optimisim in the long term because there is simply too much at stake. America is under the eyes of the world to make this right. Also, unlike South America, this is a region that is very wealthy. The civilians' standard of living should be fine as long as government is stable. Democracy or no democracy, the Iraqi's should be relatively happy once every thing is settled.