Stratfor has an interesting article on why we’re making significant progress in winning the war on terrorism (Abstract only). They note that the insurgency in Iraq, while stil dangerous, is nowhere near as active or as strong as they were a few months ago, and just as the dreaded "neocons" predicted, Iraq is proving to be a crucial pivot point in the larger war against Islamic fundamentalism:
The situation in January 2004 is startlingly different than it was in November. The guerrilla movement is contracting, and the core problems in Iraq have become primarily political, involving the transfer of power. The Saudis are intensely involved in an internal conflict with Islamists and are paying a significant price to wage the war. The Iranians are discussing the public price of reconciling with the Americans while privately collaborating. The Libyan government has reversed policies dramatically, while the Syrians have also begun to search for a path to policy reversal, having massively miscalculated the course of the Iraq war in the summer of 2003.
Finally — and this may be the single most important fact — threats that an explosion in the Islamic world would follow a U.S. invasion of Iraq proved to be in error. The single most important fact is that the genuine anger in the Islamic street has not had any political repercussions. Rather than trending away from the United States, the political behavior of Islamic states has been toward alignment. This tendency has accelerated since the decline in guerrilla activity until it is difficult to locate an Islamic state that overtly opposes the United States. When even Syria is asserting its desire to cooperate with the United States, the situation is utterly different than what some expected in February 2003, before the war began.
The situation, therefore, is much better than the administration had any right to expect last fall and substantially better than the general perception. It might be put this way. Even while the tactical situation in Iraq deteriorated, the strategic situation in the region improved. Once the tactical situation in Iraq improved, the improvement in the strategic situation accelerated.
The reason why the preferred Democratic strategy of ignoring Iraq while focusing on al-Qaeda would not have been wise is because that strategy treats the problem symptomatically rather than dealing with the underlying causes. As has been demostrated repeatedly by Middle East scholars like Bernard Lewis, the "root cause" of Islamic fundamentalist terror is not US action but the larger failure of the Muslim world to cope with modernity. The governments of the Muslim world (with some notable exceptions) have failed to provide even the most basic standards of living for their people. An earthquake that killed 3 in California killed 41,000 in Iran. Standards of living in the Arab world are exceptionally low, unemployment is high, and the governments of these states are endlessly corrupt. These conditions have forced these governments to focus anger on the US in order to channel it away from attacking the systems actually responsible.
Iraq permanently altered the status quo. Bin Laden believed that the US was deeply afraid of casualties and would run from danger. Even after the war in Afghanistan this perception continued to exist. Iraq has shattered this perception. Despite the tragic loss of over 500 soldiers, the US shows few signs of a desire to leave Iraq. The capture of Saddam Hussein demonstrated that not only would we hold our ground, but we would fight back. As Stratfor mentioned, the Ba’athist and al-Qaeda insurgency is in a state of crisis. They’re losing the ability to recruit, they’ve gained no hearts or minds in Iraq, and they’ve been unable to force us to retreat.
This is exactly what had to be done in Iraq. The idea that a few attacks would be enough to stop a military superpower in its tracks had to be ended. The concept of terrorism as an effective tool had to be destroyed, and our continued presence in Iraq achieves this goal. If we were to have pulled out and given the country over to the UN not only would Iraq descend immediately into civil war, but terrorism would have been justified. It would have proved that a few RPG attacks could prevent the US from seeking the goal of a democratic Middle East.
That goal is what the terrorists fear most. A democratic Middle East means that the failure that terrorism feeds off of would no longer exist. A free, prosperous, and educated society is not a condusive breeding ground for terrorism. A society in which saving lives becomes more important than ending lives means that terrorism no longer becomes a socially acceptable option.
The changes that are occuring in the region are a direct result of US and coalition action and resolve. They have improved the lives of millions in Iraq and Afghanistan and made the world demonstrably safer. They have created a situation in which al-Qaeda is decimated, Saddam Hussein is in chains, and the governments in the region are trying to embrace change gradually before the momentum completely sweeps away the old order. None of this would have been possible in a framework that treated al-Qaeda as the only threat. Such a strategy would have put this country into an endless game of “whack-a-mole” in which one leader would be captured only to have 3 more pop up in their place. It would have almost certainly meant that al-Qaeda would have been able to unify their operations and attack the United States again, likely with even more destructive methods.
The only way to end this problem over the long term is to "drain the swamp" rather than just swat the mosquitoes. The democratization of the Arab world will not only end the terrorism which plagues the rest of the world, but it will ensure greater peace and prosperity for the Arab world as well.
