Central Fronts
Colin Kahl did a good, pretty wonky post, about how the central front in the battle against al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan and Pakistan the other day. I hadn’t realized, however, that General Petraeus made some news yesterday by kinda sorta saying that Iraq is the central front.
It’s important to note that a more precise version of what he said is that Iraq is still the central front according to al-Qaeda’s leaders, though they may be shifting their rhetorical emphasis. Whether or not that’s the case, the question we need to ask ourselves as Americans is whether we should be letting al-Qaeda’s rhetoric define the battlefield? Progressives say we shouldn’t. The al-Qaeda central leadership, the people who plan and propagandize for violent jihad against the United States, are where they’ve been for years, Central Asia, and we want to take the fight to them. An al-Qaeda offshoot only arose in Iraq in the first place because we invaded there and created an appealing venue in which to try to kill American soldiers and bleed American resources. But our goal should be to seize the initiative and not continue down the bizarre path of Bush-Osama symbiosis that we’ve been on for the past seven years.
13 Responses to “Central Fronts”
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September 11th, 2008 at 11:25 am
The whole idea of a front in a war on terrorism strikes me as a little odd. When we talk about a front it implies that if we lose the enemy may break through our front lines and leave us in a less defensible position. But a war against terrorist networks isn’t a conventional war. Al-Qaeda isn’t like Germany taking over countries across Europe. The fewer unstable governments and chaotic regions the better but spending a disproportionate amount of resources in once country because it is a ‘front’ makes no sense. We have to reduce instability and chaos globally and we should devote our resources in those countries where we can do the most good.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:58 am
The Iraq/Afghanistan good war/bad war dichotomy is a ridiculous political trope. These are two battlefields in one war. Obviously Iraq has more geopolitical strategic importance, but Afghanistan is important, too. The AQ leadership is in neither place, though dishonest liberals try to obscure this undisputed fact. They’re in Pakistan! There are probably not appreciably more AQ in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
It’s the Taliban that are attacking Afghanistan from their safe havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan. If you have a solution to that problem, you should notify the Defense Department.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Isn’t the point that the central front in the battle with Al Qaeda will be always be wherever American soldiers happen to go in the Middle East? If America decided to invade Syria, and redeploy soldiers from Iraq to Syria, then some Al Qaeda would follow them there, and Syria would be the central front in the battle with Al Qaeda. If we went to Yemen, then Yemen would be the central front; and if our entire Middle East presence were floating around in the Persian Gulf, then the Persian Gulf would be the central front.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Steve Clemons had a post earlier about the passing of General William Odom
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/09/remembering_wil/
worth a look
September 12th, 2008 at 3:46 am
Read my lips. Afghanistan is utterly irrelevant to anything and always was. We did not need to invade Afghanistan to “get” Al Qaeda. And no matter how crappy the Taliban government in Afghanistan was, they weren’t a problem for us at all and still aren’t.
We don’t even particularly need to “get” Al Qaeda. All the US needs to do is stop giving Al Qaeda a reason to attack the US, and let them attack their real targets, the Saudis and the other corrupt Middle East governments (and Israel).
Al Qaeda is simply not our problem, 9/11 notwithstanding.
Finally, there is absolutely no possibility of our “getting” Al Qaeda in any event, regardless of how Afghanistan turns out, and regardless of whether the US actually invades Pakistan’s territories – which is a physical impossibility, as those territories house some 3.3 million people who do NOT like the US or any other government including their own. Al Qaeda is a movement and that movement will continue to exist until its reason for existence has been removed – which the US can do nothing about.
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