What to Do About the Islamic Threat

We began this series by asking if militant Islam’s threat is truly serious. Edward Luttwak’s piece for Prospect is the best argument for downplaying the threat. Note, however, that Luttwak simply waves away terrorism fueled by martyr-seeking youth, and with his dissmissive approach, fails to document any shortcomings al-Qaeda may have. Luttwak instead focuses on the conventional force weakness of Middle Eastern states and of Hizbullah.

Thus in the end, Luttwak’s analysis leaves unchallenged the grim projections Lawrence Wright and Thomas Ricks provide for al-Qaeda’s growth post-Iraq. Since Wright and Ricks, who are anti-Bush realists, are deeply concerned about what lies ahead, why are mainstream Democrats so relaxed? Why have Harry Reid and Democrats competing for president seemingly taken leave from the dire consequences that defeat would impose on us?

My thoughts:

Too many treat the Iraq war as a political issue. Bush made it so, pushing the war according to a political timetable, wanting the war over by the 2004 election, thus forcing us into war in spring 2003 so we could finish before that year’s hot summer. Jumping in too quickly meant not giving UN inspectors enough time to find (not find) WMD. Having watched Bush use the war for political gain, Democrats now relish the pain failure to prevail in Iraq has caused Bush.

The fact: Iraq should be above politics; it's too important.

The media’s main agenda is bringing Bush down, and Iraq is their best way for doing so. Democrats don’t see victory in Iraq as possible, partly because from the war’s beginning, the media have stressed difficulties and failures in Iraq. The media’s current power position in the U.S. stems from their success in mobilizing the American people to get the U.S. out of Vietnam, and their success in similarly ousting Nixon from the White House. 9-11 threw the media off-stride; the disaster did require the nation to rally behind Bush. The media before 9-11 viewed Bush as an illegitimate president—Gore really won the 2000 election. Furthermore, the media didn’t trust Bush’s evangelical Christian beliefs, his cowboy ways, and his ties to Big Oil. When Bush began an elective war in Iraq in 2003 that offered rich possibilities for American death and defeat à la Vietnam, the media saw their opening to use negative news coverage to cripple Bush.

The fact: 2005 was a good year in Iraq, with the population voting in three successful elections.

Failure to think through the consequences of one’s actions remains our biggest Iraq-related problem. For Bush, failure came from moving too soon, before he built the strong coalition that would help him ride through Iraq’s rough spots; moving before he had raised the right force to defeat an al-Qaeda-led insurgency. Why did our military brains fail to anticipate al-Qaeda’s entry into the Iraq fight? For Democrats, the failure is not realizing that if we lose in Iraq, we are going to have a much harder time defeating al-Qaeda elsewhere. Bush is right about the value of beating al-Qaeda in Iraq. Democrats and the media, blinded by their hatred of Bush and their dislike of war, lusting for a Vietnam-type popular response that will drive Republicans from office, cannot turn to the task that should top our national interest now—winning in Iraq.

The fact: If Iraq's leadership can distribute oil fairly, give Sunnis a political future, and provide for local autonomy, Iraq will have frustrated al-Qaeda's disruptive terrorist campaign enough to allow the U.S. to leave with honor.