U.S. News & World Report has a fascinating article about General John Abizaid’s views on the war against terrorism.
A long, Hard fight
Wed Feb 23, 5:23 PM ET
By Julian E. Barnes
BAGHDAD--Standing in the thick mud before a giant Paladin howitzer, Capt. John Benoit, an artilleryman from the Louisiana National Guard, looked Gen. John Abizaid squarely in the eye and asked bluntly: How's the war going? Many soldiers, even those who give no quarter when fighting insurgents, tend to clam up in the presence of four-star brass. So when Abizaid, commander of all U.S. troops in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), finds a group like the Louisiana grunts willing to ask tough questions, he sticks around. And he doesn't just answer their questions but tries to share his view of the war in Iraq and what he sees as the larger struggle against Islamic extremism.
The insurgency, Abizaid acknowledged, has grown worse over the past year. There's no defensiveness on that point, though, as he segues into a discussion of why the insurgents--particularly the radical Islamists--must be confronted. "What we can't allow to happen is guys like Abu Musab Zarqawi to get started," Abizaid told Benoit and the soldiers of the 1-141 Field Artillery. "It's the same way that we turned our back when Hitler was getting going and Lenin was getting going. You just cannot turn your back on these types of people. You have to stand up and fight."
Abizaid's military command covers an area that stretches from Somalia through the Arabian peninsula, and into Iraq and on to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Throughout that mostly Islamic region, Abizaid argues, a critical struggle is going on between the forces of moderation, who are pushing for democratic reforms, and of extremism, who are pushing for the imposition of a rigid interpretation of Islamic law.
The White House uses the term "global war on terror." With the military's well-known fondness for acronyms, this has, inevitably, been reduced to GWOT, but Abizaid tends to cast the conflict slightly differently, as the "war on extremism" or the "long war." America has a chance to confront and stop an Islamic extremist movement akin to fascism or communism in its early stages, the general believes, before it metastasizes and dominates a significant chunk of the world. Before the United States attacked al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors, Afghanistan clearly fit that model; Iraq, on the other hand, did not become a magnet for Islamic jihadists until after the U.S. invasion. CIA (news - web sites) Director Porter Goss, in congressional testimony last week, said that Islamic extremists now are "exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists. These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq," he predicted, "experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism."
Abizaid, who is of Lebanese descent, has deep experience in the Middle East. He was Gen. Tommy Franks's deputy during the initial invasion of Iraq. In the late 1970s, he served as a United Nations (news - web sites) observer in Jordan, where he learned conversational Arabic. Though he frequently speaks to people in the region in Arabic, he rarely uses the language publicly. It was during his posting in Jordan, he says, that the foundation of his views on the Middle East was established, after watching the fall of the shah of Iran. "Being out here during the Iranian revolution," he says, "gave me a clearer idea of the emotional sorts of movements that can sweep the region very quickly and very powerfully."
Missed signals. Within Central Command headquarters, Abizaid has established an advisory group of six officers and two civilians with Middle Eastern expertise. The task of this mini think tank is to turn up ideas about the region from academia and find new ways of thinking about, and fighting, Islamic extremism. These advisers contend, for instance, that the United States missed the significance when Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), never a devout Muslim, embraced religion and, mindful of the growing American efforts against him, gave Sunni imams wide latitude to preach a fiery new brand of Islam. "We didn't appreciate how people got radicalized," says a member of the advisory group. "We didn't appreciate it, and it hurt us after the invasion."
In policy circles, there continues to be debate about the nature of the Iraqi insurgency--the role of disaffected Sunnis, of Iraqi nationalists, and of foreign jihadists. The most important enemy, Abizaid argues, is Iraqis who have come to follow the brand of extremist Islamic fascism preached by Zarqawi or al Qaeda. Those are the insurgents, Abizaid argues, on whom the military must focus. "There are all kinds of complexities," the general says. "But . . . the point is, there is a main enemy in the theater, and it is al Qaeda-inspired, [with an] ideological desire to dominate the region."
The stakes are particularly high in Iraq's volatile Al Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. "Al Anbar province is the place where we can demonstrate that the insurgency can be defeated," Abizaid says, "that it can be defeated everywhere."
Over the long term, Abizaid contends, extremists will be beaten back through the spread of democratic reform in the region. The Iraqi elections may represent a strategic turning point, he says, and the Americans must work to sustain this democratic evolution. "If we can succeed here," Abizaid told the Louisiana guardsmen, "the whole region will be better off."
Abizaid sees the Iraqi elections as a step toward democratic reforms elsewhere in the region. But on this point, the commander of the U.S. Central Command must be something of a diplomat, since the United States has close relations with authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. So Abizaid tries to strike a balance--and the diplomatic niceties can leave his argument a little less clear. But, delicately, he makes his point: "I think what we have to be wary of is trying to impose an American solution on a part of the world that may not necessarily be ready for an American solution," he says. But, he adds, even countries like Saudi Arabia are beginning to change: "While a lot of people say you will never get reform in Saudi Arabia, they fully recognize they need to have reform. But it needs to be reform on their terms within their cultural . . . limits."
A day after he met with the Louisiana guardsmen, Abizaid flew to Al Anbar province to bid goodbye to Maj. Gen. John Sattler before his force is replaced with a new rotation of marines. Generals across Iraq have been talking about the need to have Iraqi forces take on an increased role in fighting insurgents. On the wall of the marines' conference room hangs a sign quoting Lawrence of Arabia. "Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly," it reads in part. "It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them . . . . " Abizaid drove home the same point. "The hardest thing your successors need to do is take their hand off the wheel. What we have to do is set the Iraqis in front to fight the insurgency," he told the marines. "The insurgency will go on long past the time we are gone."
"That long war." At the Marine Corps headquarters at Camp Fallujah, rather than speaking to sergeants and captains, Abizaid spoke to generals and colonels. His message? "We didn't have the guts to get out in front of the fascists or the Bolsheviks. This time we have to get in front. This time we have a chance. If we don't fight this fight here, we will fight it at home. I would ask you to please talk to your captains, young gunnery sergeants, and tell them we need them. We need them to fight that long war."
Whether or not it started as part of the struggle against extremism, it is clear that the fight in Iraq has become part of Abizaid's "long war." The months to come will show whether Abizaid's plan to win that fight is the right one. |
