Al-Qaeda = Everybody

George Bush is on his heels with the current conflict in Iraq. Nothing is going as planned and even some high ranking republican law makers are beginning to turn on him. Only 8 of his 18 bench marks are showing progress and even these are not fulfilled and the troop surge appears to be doing very little to prevent sectarian violence in and around Baghdad and actually is seeing an increase in areas outside the capital. However Bush maintains his stay the course strategy despite the loss of popular support from the people of this country and the growing disdain from politicians. With the loss of support Bush turns to an old friend of his to try and increase his strength on the issue and that is Al Qaeda. Somehow, someday every enemy in Iraq turned into Al Qaeda, no longer is it insurgents or sectarian attacks.

Most references by bush refer to Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) which is a Sunni insurgent group in Iraq. Bush would have you and I believe that this group is a direct descendent of the original Al Qaeda. Fact of the matter is that Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not even exist until the US invaded Iraq in 2003. At that point AQM made its appearance and became a strong Sunni insurgency force which saw its numbers swell due to the intense hatred for the over 100,000 occupying US troops and the installment of a Shiite dominated government. The American military and American “intelligence” groups see AQM as “a ruthless, mostly foreign-led group that is responsible for a disproportionately large share of the suicide car bomb attacks that have stoked sectarian violence.” This is not in concurrence with the goals of Al-Qaeda but rather is the foundation of an insurgent group bent on removing an occupier and fomenting civil war, not attacking US interests abroad or even in country. Also differing from Al-Qaeda, the majority of members of AQM are Iraqi and the financing is derived from local sources as opposed to other Arab governments. None of these factors show any relation to the actual Al-Qaeda.

The only reason Bush is playing AQM as the same people who attacked us on Sept. 11^th is because the war he has gotten us into is the biggest foreign policy failure in US history. He is distorting facts and trying to play to emotions of a public who at this point in my opinion is not swayed by these tactics. While the overall goal of AQM is to fight America and to make the war impossible for us to maintain because of high political costs, the fact that they are now being compared the Al-Qaeda only reinforces their strength as a terrorist group doesn’t have to kill people to spread terror but rather make people worried which is what Bush’s constant doctrine of fear does.

The main point here is that Iraq is not the main battlefield for fighting Al-Qaeda, but rather a quagmire bogged down in a civil war. Despite our fight with Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Al-Qaeda itself is back to strength levels it had not approached since 9/11. If we were actually making a difference in Iraq this would not be the case, it would be weakened by our continued attacks. The proof is in the pudding and at this point I don’t see any reason why the war in Iraq should continue, bear in mind that the Iraqis do not see democracy as synonymous with freedom as we do. No Middle Eastern country does and for us to continue trying to impose our beliefs on an unwilling populace with force is just plain wrong.