Al Qaeda’s Ayman Zawahiri has released his latest video. He is calling for Muslims to join fighters in “open jihad fields such as Somalia, Iraq, Algeria and Afghanistan”.
Obama’s The World Beyond Iraq speech asserts that the war in Iraq is lacking a strategy. Perhaps he should consider the following facts.
- There has not been another terrorist attack by al Qaeda on American soil since 9/11.
- There have been numerous terrorist attacks by al Qaeda in Iraq.
- Al Qaeda has issued calls for Islamic fighters to converge on Iraq for jihad.
- After Iraq was invaded, Libya renounced its WMD program and sought to repent for its past terrorist activities.
What if the war in Iraq as a component of the War on Terror is actually pivotal to the strategy. What if the criteria for success are actually being achieved, but it is more effective to portray ineptitude to keep the focus on the chaos in Iraq, rather than to celebrate our successes to place al Qaeda’s focus on attacking America? What if it is more effective to keep the strategy unspoken, so that the enemy who is distracted will not be alerted to our true goals? Maybe our goals are modest and fully met by the fact that terrorist attacks are concentrated on Iraqi soil and not Manhattan or Washington DC.
