As Americans grow forgetful of the war they are in, events coalesce to remind us that our future depends less on whether judges can be filibustered than on the advance or decline of Islamofascist terrorism. The past fortnight in Iraq has been unusually bloody, as the enemy turns its attention more relentlessly to the softest targets it can find: random shoppers and untrained volunteer soldiers. The New York Times has begun to wonder whether any purpose drives the killing. The “insurgents”, it observes, have no spokesmen, no specific demands, no program. Instead of striving to win hearts and minds, they seem intent on generating support for the forces of order.
The insurgents in Iraq are showing little interest in winning hearts and minds among the majority of Iraqis, in building international legitimacy, or in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology or cause beyond expelling the Americans. They have put forward no single charismatic leader, developed no alternative government or political wing, displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern now.
Rather than employing the classic rebel tactic of provoking the foreign forces to use clumsy and excessive force and kill civilians, they are cutting out the middleman and killing civilians indiscriminately themselves, in addition to more predictable targets like officials of the new government. Bombings have escalated in the last two weeks, and on Thursday a bomb went off in heavy traffic in Baghdad, killing 21 people.
This surge in the killing of civilians reflects how mysterious the long-term strategyremains. . . .
Dafydd ab Hugh, guest blogging at PowerLine, draws the conclusion that the appearance is the reality: Zarqawi and his co-conspirators are “serial spree killers” whose goal is mayhem for its own sake.
[T]he best historical precedents are the Aztecs, who turned mere human sacrifice into an art form by killing more and more and more people until they literally may have slaughtered an end to their own empire. Their intent was not to achieve some political goal; they already ruled. Rather, they developed the theological notion that the more people they butchered, the more pleased their bloody gods would be.
With that gloss, the Iraq “insurgency” comes suddenly into crystal-clear focus, like the beginning of the TV show the Outer Limits: the killers in Iraq have no political goal. That is not the point.
The point is to kill. They have invented a whole new kind of murder... they are serial spree killers. [ellipsis in original]
Leaving the mystery of motivation hanging for a moment, let us turn to the Big Story of the past several days. Newsweek has apologized for reporting as confirmed fact an anonymous, implausible claim that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated a copy of the Koran. At least 16 people died in riots that followed in Afghanistan, and there are credible reports that the imaginary atrocity has been a great propaganda bonus for holdout Taliban rebels. So far, the consequences in Iraq and elsewhere in the Moslem world appear to be minimal, but that is just good luck. Newsweek lit a fire in a dry forest. It has retracted the story, though its initial climbdown was grudging, undermined by the recitation of other tales of alleged American atrocities. Many of its most prominent competitors have refused to take the later retraction seriously. They insist that there is nothing unbelievable about the original report, that it fits what is “known” about American military misconduct.
Back now to Iraq. Try to see the world through terror master Zarqawi’s eyes.
He is not an Iraqi himself and is not leading Iraqis. Evidence continues to accumulate that his forces consist primarily of Saudis and other foreigners. It is reasonable to infer that who rules in Iraq is not his main interest. In any case, he has stated openly that he does not believe in selecting rulers in accordance with “the evil principle of democracy”. He has no reason, then, to care whether the common folk of Iraq admire or detest him.
What is important about Iraq, from his point of view, is that the overthrow of the Ba’athist regime demonstrated shockingly the power of the infidel West and sparked demands for democratic reform throughout the House of Islam. Some Westerners fear that Moslem electorates, given the opportunity, would vote Zarqawi look-alikes in to power. Paradoxically, gaining political power that way, in the wake of an onrush of democratic sentiment, would be a defeat for the Islamofascists. No democratic government can commit itself for long to the policies of anti-Western jihad, cultural retrogression and economic misery that are the essence of the contemporary fascist cause. Hence, an elected Islamofascist administration would quickly have to undertake the task of crushing democratic sentiment, leaving itself exposed to the same resistance that run-of-the-mill Near Eastern authoritarians are now encountering. Democracy is a treacherous foundation for tyranny, especially for a tyranny that intends to wage protracted war against militarily superior foes.
If we put aside that hypothesis that Zarqawi is a mere psychopath, the outline of a strategy underlying his seeming irrationality becomes visible. American success touched off enthusiasm for the idea of democratic governance; American defeat would chill the enthusiasts. The terrorists can’t inflict anything worse than flesh wounds on the U.S. presence in Iraq, so a direct military victory is impossible. On the other hand, they can optimitically infer, from reading American journalists and listening to American politicians, that flesh wounds will be enough to trigger a collapse of the enemy home front and unstoppable demands for extrication from the Mesopotamian “quagmire”.
If that hope seems overblown, Zarqawi can point to Newsweek as a confirmation. It would be very easy, to one looking for signs of crumbling giaour will, to see the “Koran desecration” report as less negligence than subversion, an act by covert friends to rouse Moslem fury against the Great Satan. The subsequent backtracking can then be viewed the way that open friends like the Daily Kossacks characterize it, as a grudging concession to government pressure. That the government is not able to stifle all dissent is shown by the continued endorsement of the discredited tale by other media elements.
In terms of political dynamics (not moral stature), the journalists who trumpet distortions of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are Zarqawi’s equivalent of the samizdat writers in Cold War Russia. We believed, when we read the furtive publications that emerged from under the rubble, that many, perhaps most of those who lived under communist rule thirsted for freedom. President Reagan inferred that the Soviet colossus rested on shallow foundations and that steady pressure would topple it.
Similarly, it would be rational – incorrect, I think, but rational – for Zarqawi to conclude that contemporary America is riddled with antipathy to fighting for democracy in Iraq or elsewhere. By keeping up a visible resistance, he can wear down our willingness to fight, and spectacular acts of terrorism, however pointless in a narrow strategic sense, are an easy way to maintain high visibility, particularly for a combatant that can win no victories on the battlefield.
So Zarqawi’s dream, I suggest, runs on these lines: Deaths in Iraq will encourage what he thinks of as his allies in the West to agitate more fiercely for American withdrawal from Iraq. American defeat will stifle pro-democratic rumblings in the Islamic world and boost the prestige of resolute anti-Westerners. The force that “won” in Iraq, its power augmented by new recruits and its enemies’ fears, will move on to overthrow “reactionary” regimes elsewhere. Iraq will probably be left to dissolve; a lone liberal government, demoralized by abandonment, is not likely to survive long. After a decent interval, a revivified caliphate can sweep up the pieces.
There may well be elements of sadistic depravity in the upper Islamofascist echelons. The intentional infliction of terror requires a degree of personality disorder. It is a comforting delusion, however, to think that the Zarqawis of the world are simply irrational. Ample grounds exist for a rational belief that murdering civilians in Iraq will lead to the ultimate demise of the Christian West.
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