{"id":6818,"date":"2010-03-18T05:23:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T13:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=6818"},"modified":"2010-03-18T05:23:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T13:23:00","slug":"how-al-qaeda-in-mesopotamia-thinks-about-the-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/18\/how-al-qaeda-in-mesopotamia-thinks-about-the-surge\/","title":{"rendered":"How al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia Thinks About the Surge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marc Lynch has a fascinating post<\/a> examining a recent (unofficial) document posted on a jihadist forum, entitled A Strategic Plan to Improve the Political Position of the Islamic State of Iraq<\/em>. The whole post is worth reading for insight into the current state of thinking about the Iraq war on the part of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) and its supporters, but I was particularly struck by this passage, discussing the document\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s take on the reasons for AQM\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s declining fortunes since 2006-7:<\/p>\n

It explains its setbacks, which it argues came at the height of its power and influence, on what it calls two smart and effective U.S. moves in 2006-07: an effective U.S. media and psychological campaign, which convinced many that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mujahideen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had committed atrocities against Iraqis and killed thousands of Muslims; and the Awakenings, achieved through its manipulation of the tribes and the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nationalist resistance.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The document doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mention the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Surge\u00e2\u20ac\u009d much at all, at least not in terms of the troop escalation which most Americans have in mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back in the U.S., of course, hawks have been keen to emphasize the third element\u00e2\u20ac\u201cthe troop escalation\u00e2\u20ac\u201cat the expense of the other two. After all, to suggest that the Awakenings bore primary responsibility for the drop in violence comes uncomfortably close to implying that jihadists are not a monolithic group of bloodthirsty fanatics who \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hate us for our freedom\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; instead, it might suggest that we should actually talk to them and perhaps (gasp!) offer the relative moderates among them incentives to defect. Classic appeasement, in other words. Similarly, although talk of winning \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hearts and minds\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is all the rage in counterinsurgency (COIN) discussions these days, hawks have been careful not to focus too much on the role that atrocities (by the U.S. or its enemies) play in swaying public opinion; that might imply that the U.S. should, for instance, close Guantanamo and Bagram, thoroughly reform its detainee system, or halt the drone war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Far better, from the hawks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 perspective, to credit the drop in violence and the wane in AQM\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fortunes entirely to the surge. Doing so sends a nice unambiguous message: when in doubt, the solution is always more troops, more money, more war.<\/p>\n

Iraq experts continue to vigorously debate which factors were most important in causing the drop in violence, and in any case I am no Iraq expert myself. Nonetheless, it is striking that strategists associated with AQM itself appear to attribute their downfall primarily to public perceptions of their own atrocities, and to the U.S. decision to reach out to former members of the insurgency, rather than to the surge itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marc Lynch has a fascinating post examining a recent (unofficial) document posted on a jihadist forum, entitled A Strategic Plan to Improve the Political Position of the Islamic State of Iraq. The whole post is worth reading for insight into the current state of thinking about the Iraq war on the part of Al Qaeda […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6819,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818\/revisions\/6819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6818"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}