Al-Qaeda Over There

The US says that a suicide bomber and roadside bomb that killed 68 in Iraq was the work of Al-Qaeda--the second deadliest attack in Iraq this year. Also, 154 were injured.

The Bush administration and other supporters of the war sometimes justify our presence there by saying that we must stay and fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Indeed, John McCain has said of withdrawal from Iraq, "They'd be taking a country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to al Qaeda.'' However, before the US invaded Iraq, there was no significant Al-Qaeda presence there, and terrorist attacks were non-existent. This fact complicates the anti-withdrawal argument stated above, and puts a couple of different interpretations of it into play.

One interpretation is that, yes, it was a mistake to go into Iraq--especially as incompetently as we did--and yes, this did have the unintended consequence of attracting Al-Qaeda to Iraq. However, whatever mistakes have been made, we must face the current reality, which is that Al-Qaeda is in Iraq--and they must be engaged there. To withdraw at this point would be to surrender--if not in fact than at least in appearance--which for various reasons is completely unacceptable.

Another interpretation construes terrorist attacks as a sort of zero-sum game: there are always going to be some number of Al-Qaeda attacks, and the attacks have to be carried out somewhere. As long as we keep engaging Al-Qaeda in Iraq, those attacks will be carried out over there, instead of in, say, downtown Manhattan. If we relent in Iraq, then the terrorists will be able to refocus their resources and attention on attacking the US mainland. Seen this way, then, keeping troops in Iraq is an imperative for domestic security: our best defense is to remain on offense.

Now, it is obvious to me that--though I may not agree with it--something like the first interpretation is at least pragmatic, well-intentioned, and honorable. The second one I find to be cynical and cowardly. The first is acknowledging a tactical reality; the second regards Iraqis as mere cannon fodder and uses them essentially as human shields. It is as if to say that Iraqi civilian deaths are somehow more acceptable than American civilian deaths, or that American lives are more valuable than Iraqi lives. Not only that, but it makes the mistake of assuming, in an intuitive way, that a terrorist attack carried out abroad is one less terrorist attack that would have been carried out on US soil--an obviously false notion.

Of course, no one would openly advocate the second interpretation in the precise way that I've stated it--however, sometimes the rhetoric of the opponents to withdrawal seem to imply just this sort of reasoning. Someone who suggests that Al-Qaeda will "follow our troops home" if we withdraw is, to me, favoring the second interpretation. So is anyone who does not regard the death of an Iraqi civilian with as much heart-felt sympathy and compassion as that of an American civilian.