Defining Terms
Bush just blamed the violence in Iraq on Al-Qaida....wait, does that make sense or not? This is one for further investigation. While in Estonia, Bush landed a rhetorical attack on Al Qaida that has triggered reprisal attacks of rhetoric on both sides of the aisle in Washington. As Abbott and Costello might say, Who's "Al Qaida?"
Bush implies that Zirqawi is with Al-Qaida, and that he and Al-Qaida bombed the Golden Mosque on February 22nd, and has been causing the violence in Iraq. Is this really true? No one seems to be sure. Some say it was, some say it wasn't, some say our presence in Iraq opened the door to Al Qaida for terrorizing Iraq for the first time.
Here's Bush's statement at a highly visible speech before the President of Estonia.
reported December 1st, 2006
“No question it’s tough, no question about it,” Bush said at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. “There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by al-Qaida, causing people to seek reprisal.”
"The president dated the current spike to the Feb. 22 bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra, which triggered attacks and reprisal counterattacks between the Shiite majority and Sunni minority, and raised fears of civil war."
If you think that's confusing , just wait. At very least, we can flip back to "mission accomplished" rhetoric and say, "so if our mission was accomplished, how did Al Qaida get in there?" (And how did our oil get under their sand?)
Here is an article that shows how dubious this Zirqawi connection might be, a complexity in direct opposition to Bush's simplistic statement, which uses the word Al Qaida with a bold sweep of his famously glib tongue to blame a comlex and ongoing disaster, with hundreds of Iraqi dead per week, on this suddenly ambiguous group.
Excerpt from an article by Gordon Corera
An October 17th (2004!)statement posted on an Islamist website and published in al-Qaeda's military journal Mu`askar al-Battar claiming to be from the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) group led by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi began with a personal pledge of allegiance from Zarqawi and his fighters to Osama bin Laden: "[Let it be known that] al-Tawhid wal-Jihad pledges both its leaders and its soldiers to the mujahid commander, Sheikh "Osama bin Laden"... Numerous messages were passed between ‘Abu Musab' (God protect him) and the al-Qaeda brotherhood over the past eight months, establishing a dialogue between them. No sooner had the calls been cut off than God chose to restore them, and our most generous brothers in al-Qaeda came to understand the strategy of the Tawhid wal-Jihad organization in Iraq, the land of the two rivers and of the Caliphs, and their hearts warmed to its methods and overall mission." [1]
After this, JTJ began issuing statements of responsibility under its new name Tanzim Qai'dat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (al-Qaeda in Iraq). At the time, some Islamist circles expressed doubt about the statement's authenticity suggesting that it was part of a US-inspired campaign to associate the violence in Iraq with "international terrorism" rather than "legitimate" nationalist insurgency. [2] But the identities of the posters as well as the language and style indicated that the messages were from Zarqawi's group. U.S. intelligence sources say they are confident of the validity of the original pledge.
The statements marked a surprising twist in the long, complex and disputed tale of Zarqawi's links with al-Qaeda. Few have doubted that there has been contact, but the generally accepted view so far has been that Zarqawi constructed his own parallel network which may have in some ways been in competition, or at the very least independent of, al-Qaeda.
Historically, the links were limited. According to an interview in Al-Hayat a former Afghan jihadist claims that Zarqawi was not a well-known or significant fighter in Afghanistan during the late 1980s and early 1990s. [3] He participated with a number of jihadi fighters in the battlefront at Khost, where a number of Jordanians fought, but had no identifiable links to al-Qaeda as it began to emerge.
After spending some time in a Jordanian prison, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan and subsequently established a training camp in the western city of Herat. Though he apparently assembled 80 to 100 people, largely Palestinians and Jordanians committed to jihad but with no formal name for the group, there is not thought to have been any links to al-Qaeda at this time. Evidence gathered from Shadi Abdullah, an Islamist arrested in Germany in 2002, even points to competition between Zarqawi and bin Laden for recruits during this period, though Zarqawi seemed far more focused on overthrowing the Jordanian regime and recruited almost exclusively Palestinians and Jordanians.
After the U.S. attacked the Taliban, Zarqawi moved first to Iran. He was then pressured to move on and traveled just over the border into Iraqi Kurdistan as the only available place for refuge. Here he developed links with a new generation of Salifists who had not fought in the original Afghan jihad, including Ansar al-Islam, which had established itself on the Iranian border and taken control of a number of villages. Reports from militants claim that Iran was concerned over their location and asked them to move three miles from the border to avoid any direct contact between Iranians and the Ansar forces. Jihadist fighters then flowed into Northern Iraq from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran. [4]
In his February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council, the U.S. Secretary of State described Zarqawi as "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants." Although Secretary Powell was careful not to call him a formal member of al-Qaeda, Zarqawi was depicted as a key link in the evidence designed to outline an association between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But firm evidence of strong links either way – to Saddam on the one side and to al-Qaeda on the other – is largely absent.
Since the formal end of the Iraq war in April 2003, many of the most high-profile attacks, in particular suicide bombings and kidnappings have been attributed to Zarqawi's organization. But some question whether Zarqawi is really as significant in organizing the insurgency as portrayed. It is helpful for the U.S. to personalize the insurgency and emphasize the role of foreign fighters because doing so provides a link to al-Qaeda while obscuring the essentially "nationalist" character of the Iraqi insurgency. For the Iraqi interim government it is also helpful to emphasize international links because it diminishes the sense that there is a domestic Sunni-led insurgency against the state and that Iraqis are willing to kill each other.
Though Zarqawi and his fighters numerically make a small proportion of the resistance (estimates run from 50 to 500), they exercise an exaggerated degree of influence due to their coupling of extreme violence with an acute understanding of the power of the media; tactics which have developed in symmetry and through close observation of other international terrorist groups including al-Qaeda and its offshoots in Saudi Arabia. Over the summer of 2004 with Osama bin Laden yet to appear and Zarqawi carrying out increasingly bloody and high profile attacks, some began to question whether Zarqawi was beginning to rival or even succeed bin Laden.
So what explains the October 2004 pledge of loyalty? The message claims that talks have been going on for eight months between al-Qaeda and Zarqawi which encountered many interruptions as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad explained its strategy before the final offer of loyalty. Zarqawi is alleged to have sought al-Qaeda support in the past but without success. In January 2004, an individual was captured carrying a 17-page letter on a CD thought to be written by Zarqawi calling for help from al-Qaeda in fomenting a sectarian war in Iraq. The implication was that Zarqawi's group was independent but nonetheless looking for support as the tone was at once supplicatory but also written as if from one equal to another.
The letter said that Zarqawi's group had "our backs to the sea, the enemy before us" and "we do not see ourselves as fit to challenge you," but instead seek to "work under your banner, comply with your orders." U.S. officials said they believed al-Qaeda had rebuffed these advances but there are some doubts over the provenance and authorship of the letter...."
Our analysis:
If US officials believed then that Al Qaida rebuffed these people, why doesn't Bush know that? Or is there a new definition for Al Qaida in Iraq that includes splinter groups and anyone who wants to call themselves Al Qaida? Bush's statement makes it sound like this new Al Qaida is the same one he incorrectly said was in Iraq under Saddam. A war of definitions. If the Venezuelans renamed themselves "The Real United States of America," would that make them our allies?
In one sense, blaming Al Qaida for the Golden Mosque incident would be like accusing Trent Lott of assassinating Lincoln because he clearly sympathizes with the south. After all, John Wilkes Booth was a southern sympathizer too.
As Bush blames Al-Qaida for the acts of people they hate and refuse to acknowledge, it might be better to say its like blaming New Hampshire Senator John Hale for killing Lincoln because John Wilkes Booth wanted to marry his daughter Lucy and was refused...Those New Hampshire people, they're all alike!
A spiffy answer would be: "Sir, in order to blame the violence in Iraq on Al Qaida, it would be good to define Al Qaida and who they are. Are they 1. people trained by Al Qaida's network and under their direct command? 2. people who would like to be trained by Al Quaida's network and under their command? 3. people who use Al Qaida's name and likeness without permission? 4. anyone who wants to blow up buildings and kill people and who have such license as long as they call themselves "Al Quaida?"
Once we hear back from Bush, we'll be able to continue the discussion.
Al Qaida, tag you're it.
Bush just blamed the violence in Iraq on Al-Qaida....wait, does that make sense or not? This is one for further investigation. While in Estonia, Bush landed a rhetorical attack on Al Qaida that has triggered reprisal attacks of rhetoric on both sides of the aisle in Washington. As Abbott and Costello might say, Who's "Al Qaida?"
Bush implies that Zirqawi is with Al-Qaida, and that he and Al-Qaida bombed the Golden Mosque on February 22nd, and has been causing the violence in Iraq. Is this really true? No one seems to be sure. Some say it was, some say it wasn't, some say our presence in Iraq opened the door to Al Qaida for terrorizing Iraq for the first time.
Here's Bush's statement at a highly visible speech before the President of Estonia.
reported December 1st, 2006
“No question it’s tough, no question about it,” Bush said at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. “There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by al-Qaida, causing people to seek reprisal.”
"The president dated the current spike to the Feb. 22 bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra, which triggered attacks and reprisal counterattacks between the Shiite majority and Sunni minority, and raised fears of civil war."
If you think that's confusing , just wait. At very least, we can flip back to "mission accomplished" rhetoric and say, "so if our mission was accomplished, how did Al Qaida get in there?" (And how did our oil get under their sand?)
Here is an article that shows how dubious this Zirqawi connection might be, a complexity in direct opposition to Bush's simplistic statement, which uses the word Al Qaida with a bold sweep of his famously glib tongue to blame a comlex and ongoing disaster, with hundreds of Iraqi dead per week, on this suddenly ambiguous group.
Excerpt from an article by Gordon Corera
An October 17th (2004!)statement posted on an Islamist website and published in al-Qaeda's military journal Mu`askar al-Battar claiming to be from the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) group led by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi began with a personal pledge of allegiance from Zarqawi and his fighters to Osama bin Laden: "[Let it be known that] al-Tawhid wal-Jihad pledges both its leaders and its soldiers to the mujahid commander, Sheikh "Osama bin Laden"... Numerous messages were passed between ‘Abu Musab' (God protect him) and the al-Qaeda brotherhood over the past eight months, establishing a dialogue between them. No sooner had the calls been cut off than God chose to restore them, and our most generous brothers in al-Qaeda came to understand the strategy of the Tawhid wal-Jihad organization in Iraq, the land of the two rivers and of the Caliphs, and their hearts warmed to its methods and overall mission." [1]
After this, JTJ began issuing statements of responsibility under its new name Tanzim Qai'dat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (al-Qaeda in Iraq). At the time, some Islamist circles expressed doubt about the statement's authenticity suggesting that it was part of a US-inspired campaign to associate the violence in Iraq with "international terrorism" rather than "legitimate" nationalist insurgency. [2] But the identities of the posters as well as the language and style indicated that the messages were from Zarqawi's group. U.S. intelligence sources say they are confident of the validity of the original pledge.
The statements marked a surprising twist in the long, complex and disputed tale of Zarqawi's links with al-Qaeda. Few have doubted that there has been contact, but the generally accepted view so far has been that Zarqawi constructed his own parallel network which may have in some ways been in competition, or at the very least independent of, al-Qaeda.
Historically, the links were limited. According to an interview in Al-Hayat a former Afghan jihadist claims that Zarqawi was not a well-known or significant fighter in Afghanistan during the late 1980s and early 1990s. [3] He participated with a number of jihadi fighters in the battlefront at Khost, where a number of Jordanians fought, but had no identifiable links to al-Qaeda as it began to emerge.
After spending some time in a Jordanian prison, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan and subsequently established a training camp in the western city of Herat. Though he apparently assembled 80 to 100 people, largely Palestinians and Jordanians committed to jihad but with no formal name for the group, there is not thought to have been any links to al-Qaeda at this time. Evidence gathered from Shadi Abdullah, an Islamist arrested in Germany in 2002, even points to competition between Zarqawi and bin Laden for recruits during this period, though Zarqawi seemed far more focused on overthrowing the Jordanian regime and recruited almost exclusively Palestinians and Jordanians.
After the U.S. attacked the Taliban, Zarqawi moved first to Iran. He was then pressured to move on and traveled just over the border into Iraqi Kurdistan as the only available place for refuge. Here he developed links with a new generation of Salifists who had not fought in the original Afghan jihad, including Ansar al-Islam, which had established itself on the Iranian border and taken control of a number of villages. Reports from militants claim that Iran was concerned over their location and asked them to move three miles from the border to avoid any direct contact between Iranians and the Ansar forces. Jihadist fighters then flowed into Northern Iraq from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran. [4]
In his February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council, the U.S. Secretary of State described Zarqawi as "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants." Although Secretary Powell was careful not to call him a formal member of al-Qaeda, Zarqawi was depicted as a key link in the evidence designed to outline an association between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But firm evidence of strong links either way – to Saddam on the one side and to al-Qaeda on the other – is largely absent.
Since the formal end of the Iraq war in April 2003, many of the most high-profile attacks, in particular suicide bombings and kidnappings have been attributed to Zarqawi's organization. But some question whether Zarqawi is really as significant in organizing the insurgency as portrayed. It is helpful for the U.S. to personalize the insurgency and emphasize the role of foreign fighters because doing so provides a link to al-Qaeda while obscuring the essentially "nationalist" character of the Iraqi insurgency. For the Iraqi interim government it is also helpful to emphasize international links because it diminishes the sense that there is a domestic Sunni-led insurgency against the state and that Iraqis are willing to kill each other.
Though Zarqawi and his fighters numerically make a small proportion of the resistance (estimates run from 50 to 500), they exercise an exaggerated degree of influence due to their coupling of extreme violence with an acute understanding of the power of the media; tactics which have developed in symmetry and through close observation of other international terrorist groups including al-Qaeda and its offshoots in Saudi Arabia. Over the summer of 2004 with Osama bin Laden yet to appear and Zarqawi carrying out increasingly bloody and high profile attacks, some began to question whether Zarqawi was beginning to rival or even succeed bin Laden.
So what explains the October 2004 pledge of loyalty? The message claims that talks have been going on for eight months between al-Qaeda and Zarqawi which encountered many interruptions as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad explained its strategy before the final offer of loyalty. Zarqawi is alleged to have sought al-Qaeda support in the past but without success. In January 2004, an individual was captured carrying a 17-page letter on a CD thought to be written by Zarqawi calling for help from al-Qaeda in fomenting a sectarian war in Iraq. The implication was that Zarqawi's group was independent but nonetheless looking for support as the tone was at once supplicatory but also written as if from one equal to another.
The letter said that Zarqawi's group had "our backs to the sea, the enemy before us" and "we do not see ourselves as fit to challenge you," but instead seek to "work under your banner, comply with your orders." U.S. officials said they believed al-Qaeda had rebuffed these advances but there are some doubts over the provenance and authorship of the letter...."
Our analysis:
If US officials believed then that Al Qaida rebuffed these people, why doesn't Bush know that? Or is there a new definition for Al Qaida in Iraq that includes splinter groups and anyone who wants to call themselves Al Qaida? Bush's statement makes it sound like this new Al Qaida is the same one he incorrectly said was in Iraq under Saddam. A war of definitions. If the Venezuelans renamed themselves "The Real United States of America," would that make them our allies?
In one sense, blaming Al Qaida for the Golden Mosque incident would be like accusing Trent Lott of assassinating Lincoln because he clearly sympathizes with the south. After all, John Wilkes Booth was a southern sympathizer too.
As Bush blames Al-Qaida for the acts of people they hate and refuse to acknowledge, it might be better to say its like blaming New Hampshire Senator John Hale for killing Lincoln because John Wilkes Booth wanted to marry his daughter Lucy and was refused...Those New Hampshire people, they're all alike!
A spiffy answer would be: "Sir, in order to blame the violence in Iraq on Al Qaida, it would be good to define Al Qaida and who they are. Are they 1. people trained by Al Qaida's network and under their direct command? 2. people who would like to be trained by Al Quaida's network and under their command? 3. people who use Al Qaida's name and likeness without permission? 4. anyone who wants to blow up buildings and kill people and who have such license as long as they call themselves "Al Quaida?"
Once we hear back from Bush, we'll be able to continue the discussion.
Al Qaida, tag you're it.
posted by evan pritchard at 8:32 AM
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