Not a group to tolerate the Wahhabi nonsense unless there was some clear overriding reason to do so (like American occupiers), but even that marriage of convenience would, as it has, be short-lived, because, really, not that many people can really stand the Wahhabists fanaticism for long
That was true for Afghanistan too. Even most of the Pashtuns hated Taliban rule, and Hazara and other non-Pashtuns were treated horribly. So, does that mean that the 'marriage of convenience' was over, and the Taliban was ready to fall? Not at all. There was a Northern Alliance rebellion, which was stalemated. The rest of Afghanistan was solidly under Taliban control.
Same would be true for al Anbar without an opposing force, esp. if al Qaeda continued to be well financed. Sure people turn against them. But they are not democrats, in case you haven't noticed, and they are ruthless and perfectly willing to kill large numbers of civilians using imported suicide bombers. So "turning against them" would not just happen, just as it didn't just happen in Afghanistan.
I'm counseling realism, recognizing what the violence is really about. If you call that "surrender," so be it. I call pretending that the violence in Iraq is primarily about Al Qaeda a mischaracterization of the situation at best, a willfully stupid lie/fantasy at worst.
You are picking and choosing which facts you will believe in order to support your argument for retreat. If there is a "natural" unstoppable civil war going on, then it is rational to propose withdrawal. If sectarian violence is being deliberately fomented by an outside group, then perhaps the civil war isn't so "natural" and unstoppable after all. We know that al Qaeda has implemented a strategy of fomented sectarian violence by taking control of Sunni neighborhoods and using them as bases to kill Shia.
I mind your cavalier attitude that pretends to be all-knowing a la Cheney when you (the Bush admin, that is) haven't, as Biden said on the Senate floor the other day, made one correct decision on Iraq yet. "Not one," he boomed, asking Bush, Cheney and all the Senators on the floor to come up with one. Least of all the decision to go to war to begin with.
How convenient to assume that the alternate reality would not have involved, Saddam free of sanctions, unhampered by no-fly zones, massacreing the Shia and Kurds again, with oil billions in his pocket, going shopping at AQ Khan's Sam's Club for Nukes? Have I mentioned something unlikely yet? You like that alternative?
The US's chief mistakes were going in at all rather than focusing on Afghanistan and the real Al Qaeda
So the "real" al Qaeda is only in Afghanistan, and all the al Qaeda bombings in Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey, London, etc, etc are done by "fake wannabes"?
How convenient. Demand the "real" war in Afghanistan that you didn't actually support in 2001, and which was won quickly. Or were you demanding that in 2001 that Bush invade Pakistan to finish the job? If so, I didn't hear you.
al Qaeda is networked war. It is a franchise. It is an idea. It is not located in one place, and the support it is getting from Waziristan is only a small piece of the threat - which is the support it is getting from Iran and Syria and from rich Arab sympathizers. |
