Friday, April 08, 2005
"Vexing and exhausting" al Qaeda
We have previously written (quoting Professor Michael Doran) that al Qaeda's strategy is to "vex and exhaust" the United States and the 'puppet regimes' that carry out the American mission in the Muslim world. Wretchard added that George Bush's democratization strategy turned these very tables against al Qaeda:
To this we add today's Iraq report from StrategyPage, which observes that our military and Iraq's government may be exhausting al Qaeda's military capability. Iraq may be the meatgrinder that chews up the enemy's military capacity -- al Qaeda's Stalingrad:
The German army retained tremendously lethal even after its defeat at Stalingrad. But it only asserted the initiative on the eastern front one more time -- at Kursk -- and after Kursk there was nothing left but retreat. With its depleted financial resources, lack of a real refuge and the loss of its glamour in the glare of military defeat, will al Qaeda be able to recover the initiative?
One reason why the democratization strategy has proved so potent against the Al Qaeda is that it is actually Al Qaeda's own strategy, purged of its fatal flaw, turned against it. It was a recognition that winning public opinion mattered; that it was important to "vex and exhaust" the enemy by forcing them to take up local political causes; that it was desirable to force Al Qaeda to fight in their own Middle Eastern heartland to divide their very base; and that it was important to allow the local populations to "vex and exhaust" their own dictators. America's solution to the problem of empire-builders was simply to dispense with building an empire at all: it would thrive within dynamic conditions rather than seek to fix them. Success would be imperium in itself.
To this we add today's Iraq report from StrategyPage, which observes that our military and Iraq's government may be exhausting al Qaeda's military capability. Iraq may be the meatgrinder that chews up the enemy's military capacity -- al Qaeda's Stalingrad:
More foreign terrorists are entering Iraq, as al Qaeda desperately tries to maintain its level of operations. This effort is faltering. Al Qaeda is having an increasingly difficult time getting Iraqis to participate in attacks that might kill Iraqis. This is apparently behind two recent large scale attacks on American troops. One was an ambush, involving over 40 attackers. Most of the attackers were killed when the American MP escort got into action. One of the MP NCOs who led this counterattack is likely to get a medal for her bravery, and the way she drilled her troops beforehand to prepare them for such an attack. The second major attack, on the Abu Ghraib prison, also failed, and left several dozen attackers dead or wounded. In both cases, the American troops went into action quickly and effectively, even though there had been few attacks like this previously. There aren’t likely to be many more. The Iraqi government has been quick to get news, and pictures, of such failed attacks onto television. This works much faster than the rumor network in discouraging others from launching such suicidal attacks on American troops....
Al Qaeda’s alliance with Sunni Arab nationalists appears to be coming apart. Some of the Sunni Arab gangs that once worked with al Qaeda cells, are now gunning for terrorists. Apparently, some of the Sunni Arabs had kin killed by al Qaeda attacks, and family obligation forced them to get some revenge, or become outcasts. In other cases, tribal elders declared the al Qaeda people unsuitable allies, which led to an armed dispute.
The German army retained tremendously lethal even after its defeat at Stalingrad. But it only asserted the initiative on the eastern front one more time -- at Kursk -- and after Kursk there was nothing left but retreat. With its depleted financial resources, lack of a real refuge and the loss of its glamour in the glare of military defeat, will al Qaeda be able to recover the initiative?
2 Comments:
By 
Fausta, at
Fri Apr 08, 10:44:00 AM:
Certainly one can say that American reaction to "vexation" was not quite what al-Qaeda expected.
By Final Historian, at
Fri Apr 08, 04:25:00 PM:
Indeed. Bin Laden expected us to fold after 9/11. He saw America as weak and vulnerable. Like many others, he failed to appreciate just how America worked, and how what one President (Clinton) did, didn't force the one who followed to carry on in the same manner.
