A Pilgrim’s Digression

Grisly Path to Power In Iraq’s Insurgency (washingtonpost.com)

In the debate about the proper place of the war in Iraq in the overall War on Terror, much is posited, but little stands up to scrutiny. The Bush Administration overstates its case when it asserts collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but those on the opposite side of the issue have to ignore some compelling facts in order to dismiss the war in Iraq as a diversion from the war on Terror. This article in today’s Washington Post provides new insight into the question of whether Saddam Hussein was harboring Al Qaeda terrorists; unfortunately, the article does not answer the question of whether that alone was reason enough to invade. I happen to think it is a better reason than that Saddam was producing or had the capability to produce WMD, but the argument received short shrift in the runup to the war, perhaps because the media was so dismissive of the idea that there was a link between Saddam and terrorism. The article is a retelling of the story of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the one link that connects Saddam to Al Qaeda.

About the same time [March 2002], Jordanian authorities indicted Zarqawi in absentia for his role in the millennium plot in Amman and issued a warrant for his arrest. Jordanian investigators had followed his trail to Iraq and tried to persuade Saddam Hussein’s government to extradite him.

“There is proof that he was in Iraq during that time,” the Jordanian security official said. “We sent many memos to Iraq during this time, asking them to identify his position, where he was, how he got weapons, how he smuggled them across the border.”

Hussein’s government never responded, according to the official, who added that documents recovered after its overthrow in 2003 show that Iraqi agents did detain some Zarqawi operatives but released them after questioning. Furthermore, the Iraqis warned the Zarqawi operatives that the Jordanians knew where they were, he said.

That Saddam was indifferent even to a Muslim country’s attempts to fight terrorism should come as no surprise; what is new and important is that apparently, agents of Saddam’s regime, with or without official sanction, provided information to Zarqawi about Jordan’s knowledge of their whereabouts. Evidence of collusion? No, evidence of indifference to the criminals living in the midst of Iraq.

The article goes on to document Zarqawi’s ties to Al Qaeda, stressing that there is tension between Zarqawi and the leaders of Al Qaeda. As the most active terrorist in the world today, Zarqawi has risen to larger-than-life status, and he is helped along in that endeavor by his ability to elude the Americans who want him dead. His overall goals are also different than those of Al Qaeda, but nonetheless he has sought out Al Qaeda for advice and financing. As an FBI agent interviewed in this article says, terrorists typically belong to amorphous, disorganized groups, and one cannot expect the kind of clear connections and alliances one might see between states aligned against an enemy. This is the problem with the war on terrorism: how does one fight an enemy with no territorial boundaries, no conventional army, and a hundred leaders, most of them as replaceable as the foot soldiers? One cannot even develop a rationale for fighting such a war that satisfies everyone from the most peaceful to the most hawkish.

Thus those who looked at Zarqawi as the clear link between Saddam and Al Qaeda find only the thinnest threads; and those who dismiss such links out of hand must contend with the fact that after the war in Afghanistan, one of the most ruthless, cunningest, bloodiest villains the world has ever known took up residence in Iraq, and Saddam did not throw him out. Perhaps both sides of the issue were looking the wrong way, and certainly both sides decided on the wrong course of action. America could not sit by and allow Zarqawi to live in peace in Iraq; but I wonder whether if, instead of a full scale invasion and occupation, we could have simply used our special forces to take Zarqawi by surprise while looking for other, more sensible means to bring down Saddam. Speculation is useless, yet one has only to look at how the Iraq occupation has turned out to wonder if things could have been different.

Every time I hear the President say that we are fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them over here, I think to myself, “Why is it better that Americans are dying in Iraq, while we civilian Americans go about our lives in peace over here?” Is there some fundamental, metaphysical difference between an American soldier dying in the dust of the Middle East and an American businessman dying in the collapse of a skyscraper in New York City?

Over a thousand dead, and for what? I am no longer sure. I appreciate the sacrifice of the soldier who dies in Iraq that I may live in oblivious peace in Washington, D.C., but it is a sacrifice I don’t think he had to make, not in this way, not for this cause.