Friday, December 16, 2005
Reading Juan Cole so you don't have to
Iraqi security forces caught the most wanted man in the country last year, but released him because they didn't know who he was, the Iraqi deputy minister of interior said Thursday....
Professor Cole adds additional facts that are not in the link, presumably because CNN wrote the story through over night:
CNN is reporting that Iraqi authorities had arrested Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist, in Ramadi, but mistakenly released him. Nic Roberts reported that Zarqawi had put on weight, grown a beard, removed a tattoo, and was using a Kurdish passport, making him unrecognizable to Iraqi security forces.
Why this bit was written through is anybody's guess, except that at least some of it seems asinine on its face: prior to the American invasion, Zarqawi lived in Kurdistan, which was the base of Ansar al-Islam, a largely Kurdish coven of Islamist terrorists. Of course he has Kurdish travel documents (among many others, I'm sure) -- how else would he have avoided arrest in Kurdistan? It is hard to believe that that it was the Kurdish travel documents that bamboozled the police who questioned him.
In any case, Professor Cole draws a huge conclusion from this incident (bold in the original):
What I take away from this report is that if the Iraqis cannot recognize a Jordanian master terrorist, the American military has zero chance of fighting the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement in Iraq, because most of them don't even know enough Arabic to distinguish an Iraqi from a Jordanian accent. And if all it takes is putting on weight and growing a beard to disguise oneself, then we're in deep trouble.
It is statements like this that force me to wonder whether Juan Cole is deploying his considerable knowledge in the service of reason. By Professor Cole's logic, if a fugitive drug dealer uses forged papers to talk his way through a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, the cops might as well just give up. I mean, if the New Jersey State Police can't recognize a wanted drug dealer, local police have zero chance of fighting entire gangs.
See what I mean? Professor Cole was so eager to get to the punch line -- "then we're in deep trouble" -- that he stitched together a chain of reasoning that, er, wasn't actually a chain. One guy gets away and he absurdly concludes that they're all going to get away. I'm sure that insurgents "get away" or even slip through checkpoints virtually every day. I am also sure that we -- meaning the counterinsurgency writ large -- are killing and capturing them virtually every day. This condition will undoubtedly prevail right up until Iraq has reduced the insurgency to background noise.
Now, defenders of Juan Cole might argue -- correctly -- that I have trapped myself by my own analogy: that counterinsurgency includes a large element of basic police work, and that it is therefore a very difficult type of war for a foreign power to fight. I couldn't agree more. Everybody understands that this is a war that we Americans cannot win on our own. That is why we have been moving heaven and earth to train an Iraqi army and police force, because we know that it will be much more effective than foreigners. That is also why we have been pushing so hard for Iraq to broaden the legitimacy of its government, as it did yesterday. More Iraqis, both in uniform and out, will shoulder the considerable risks of a counterinsurgency campaign if they have a government, and a system of government, that they actually want to defend.
6 Comments:
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Fri Dec 16, 06:37:00 AM:
What got me was, "most of them don't even know enough Arabic to distinguish an Iraqi from a Jordanian accent."
What, is native level familiarity in Arabic dialects a basic skill now? The fact that we have soldiers who *can* tell the difference between regional accents speaks well of our armed forces. I take issue with his denigrating tone...
By Dawnfire82, at
Fri Dec 16, 06:58:00 AM:
That joker has to approve comments before they show up? What a bitch. In case he doesn't "allow" my comment to his post, I'd like to repeat it here.
"most of them don't even know enough Arabic to distinguish an Iraqi from a Jordanian accent..."
Can you? As a service-member, I take issue with your denigrating tone. If native level familiarity with Arabic dialects had become a basic soldier skill, no one told me.
"Many bombings and other operations attributed to Zarqawi cannot possibly have been his work, since his organization is small..."
How small? How many cells, of what size, and what specialty? Are you taking into account foreign jihadis who come in specifically to link up with Zarqawi and get sent on suicide missions? What about contract jobs with local criminals or other insurgent groups? And further, how could you possibly know this? Because if you do, then we need to talk.
"Zarqawi had organized earlier in Jordan and Germany. Apparently his group has now spread to France, where authorities have found explosives and broken up a ring affiliated with Zarqawi."
I thought his organization was small and incapable of so many bombings in Iraq, yet now they're operating in France and Germany?
"This incident is further evidence that the Iraq War of the Bush administration is having a destabilizing effect in the Greater Mediterranean, with Iraq-related violence spreading to Jordan and Europe."
This statement is further evidence of people irrationally blaming terrorist acts on the President, rather than on the terrorists.
Zarqawi is an agent of Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda has been operating globally for more than 13 years. Islamic radicals were recruited in Europe in the 80s and 90s. Cells were found and broken up in Europe before the invasion of Iraq, including a planned attack using ricin.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/870750/posts
Notice the date on that article.
The 'violence' was there already. But now, since Al-Qaeda is fighting in Iraq, all Al-Qaeda violence can be labeled as "Iraq related." But that's not intellectually honest. It'd be better if it were labeled, "Al-Qaeda related."
By Jason Bourne, at
Fri Dec 16, 07:50:00 AM:
If true, think about the ramifications about Zarqawi's operational capabilities. If he was taken without a massive firefight (the presence of one surely would have tipped the Iraqis off to his presence), then his security apparatus must not be that great. If that is true, then what are we to assume about the effectiveness of his organization?
By Cassandra, at
Fri Dec 16, 08:44:00 AM:
It's called the Transitive Property of Terrorism, the beauty of which is that it always leads to the same conclusion no matter what values you assign to a, b, and d.
Ex: a = b, and b = d, than a = c (Don Rumsfeld must resign and we must immediately withdraw all our troops from Iraq).
By cakreiz, at
Fri Dec 16, 10:24:00 AM:
TH- love your phrase "eager to get to the punchline." That's exactly right. Much Iraq war news analysis reads the same way.
By cakreiz, at
Fri Dec 16, 10:30:00 AM:
To be fair, much of the post-Incursion, post-no WMD rhetoric applied the same logical standards. Inevitably, every fact led to the punchline "Saddam had to go". Most of the non-WMD justifications would not have provided a sufficient political basis for War.
