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Iraq: lightning rod?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

15:37 / 12.10.03

Here's a nasty - and possibly not very original - idea:

it's in the Bush administration's interest to keep US forces on the ground in Iraq, because that gives an obvious hard target for angry Muslims to attack. Want to attack the US? Go to Iraq...

Maintaining a proxy battleground potentially reduces the threat of a strike on the US mainland.

Anyone know if it's been said before?

Am I being needlessly cynical? Or cynical in the wrong direction?

15:59 / 12.10.03

If it is indeed policy - which I doubt - i'm not sure its really feasible. Dead Americans tend not to play very well regardless of where they were killed - and Vietnam showed that the great American Public doesn't really have much taste for throwing its sons and daughters in the military to a foreign country to get shot at and , increasingly, killed.

Am i being overly optimistic in thinking that The American Govt. doesn't need to maintain a frontline overseas to provide the illusion of domestic security. They can do that quite effectively with a few loud bangs around the world and the continual erosion of civil liberties...

16:03 / 12.10.03

It has been said before at some point, possibly by someone in the Bush admin. At any rate, I do recall hearing this on the news in the last few months or so.

That being said, no, I don't think you're being needlessly cynical. You're merely being a realist in response to an unrealistic situation.

18:55 / 12.10.03

Well, it has occurred to me - and again with today's news - that striking US troops in Iraq is far easier for militants in the Arab world than organising terrorist attacks in the US.

But the cynic in me thinks, too, that they don't want their oil pipelines bombed, now, do they? So why encourage terrorism?

The cynic also thinks that a lot of arms manufacturers have a lot of money to make from an unstable region which needs fresh weaponry, and perhaps they, as much as a need for a lightning rod, may be driving this non-war war.

19:00 / 12.10.03

Spooky. Am getting back into Chomsky, and found a messageboard on his work while I was looking at this thread on Barbelith.

First thread I open there?

One saying very similar things to this

Great minds....

19:56 / 12.10.03

Or it could be because the PNAC needs Lebensraum. Perhaps they needed to practise on a country which used to be an ally. If it works, they can try a long term (until the Rapture, anyway) on a more comfortable country such as Syria or Iran.

00:39 / 13.10.03

uhm I think the purpose of keeping troops in Iraq is to keep the peace
while searching for the WMDs and inserting democracy through fair and balanced propaganda-or something like that

oh yeah, and to KILL SADDAM!

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:17 / 13.10.03

From the New York Daily News (Sept 15th '03):

Cheney and other top administration officials said the billions of dollars in taxpayer money and hundreds of Americans killed are the price to pay to prevent another terrorist strike on U.S. soil.

"Whatever the cost is in terms of casualties or financial resources, it's a whale of a lot less than trying to recover from the next attack in the U.S.," Cheney said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"This is the place where we want to take on the terrorists," said Cheney, who would not rule out asking Congress for more money on top of the $87 billion President Bush requested last week.

That's pretty black and white. It's a proxy war. Iraq is to be the battleground where Cheney fights terror, because it's less expensive (I'm sure he did at least mean "fewer American civilians will die", but it seems to have come out rather fiscal) than dealing a terror attack on US soil.

So that whole 'liberating Iraq' thing takes another knock. The longer it goes on, the better: it means a smaller chance of trouble at home.

Aie.

10:11 / 13.10.03

I don't think it confirms the proposition as you first put it, Nick. I mean, part of the propaganda for this war was that it would somehow address 9/11 by combating terrorism, specifically Islamic terrorism.

So when Cheney says that the war is cost effective in reducing terrorism and the attacks on US soil, that is not intended to mean that Iraq is a lightning rod. I believe what they mean is that they are fighting terrorists and leaving them no safe haven. "Liberating Iraq" from terrorists.

13:13 / 13.10.03

I don't know about this proposition - surely dragging the war out in Iraq is the one thing that's doing huge damage to his re-election chances? I agree with the point made above that it's much easier for attacks to be mounted in Iraq, bearing in mind the huge level of security in the US - ie. the round up of Iraq nationals, the PATRIOT act and so on. Seems to me a disaffected Palestinan would have virtually no chance of reaching Wall Street with a suicide bomb.

Tryphena Absent

15:16 / 13.10.03

I can't say I understand this at all anymore except that they have to keep troops in there because if they don't and Iraq implodes it might take everywhere with it and the North American government likes to retain some control in the region.

I think the original premise for this thread is either a little too cynical or not cynical enough. I mean, the US is so rarely hit by terrorism from the outside anyway and as Illmatic points out they've taken measures against possible terrorist action to a despicable point. So where does that leave us explanation wise? Nowhere. So it's all fun and games as usual. Not surprising when you consider this is a government run by a mass murderer. I think they just fancy killing some people but perhaps that's really far fetched.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:17 / 13.10.03

terrorism, specifically Islamic terrorism

Iraq having been a particularly secular Arab state (with Saddam being considered an apostate by no less a luminary in these fields than Osama bin Laden). I don't think it's Islam Bush hates... it's Arabs.

btw... lurid, this ain't an attack on the point you were making, btw.

18:23 / 13.10.03

Of course, its also a great excuse to make truckloads of cash off a neverending crisis. Occupying armies use up a great deal of food, fuel, medical supplies, spare parts, not to mention ammo. Lots of money to made by various defense department subcontractors.

What no one wants to come right out and say though, is that a good many servicemen and women are being used as live bait. I find it particularly appalling that they have been put in harms way in such a callous manner by those who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and got away with it because they were spoiled rich brats. The fact that same said indivudals also support cutting veteran's benefits is yet another slap in the face to those who actually served their country.

Not that I support war by any means, but I do think that people who served should get compensated if they were wounded. Its not their fault they were lied to. True, they chose to serve and fight, but they were also deliberately misled and manipulated. That has to be taken into account, for every war we get involved in.

01:54 / 29.10.03

After an especially brutal last few days, with missle attacks, car bombs killing dozens and more, Bush et al. are laying the blame on 'foreign elements' that somehow (Iran and Syria?) are getting inside the country...

...has there been anything published about those involved in these attacks? Are they Iraqi? or not? Given the number of Iraqis killed, it seems for the first time to me that those carrying them out may actually be from elsewhere... unless it's a whole 'punish the collaborators' kind of thing... it seems to be getting more chaotic by the day...

16:43 / 29.10.03

Agreed. What I'm afraid will happen though is that the whole "foreign fighters" angle will be used eventually to justify a widening of the war. Wholealse invasion/occupation? Doubtful. Incursions into other countries? Probably. Think Cambodia 1970.

04:34 / 30.10.03

I think you'll be hardpressed to see any sort of run-up of another invasion with the neo-cons right now. They're growing faster and faster into a political liability.

A moderate Republican friend of mine, who never misses a day to talk up politics, has suggested that the subtle push for a multilateralist approach (the request for financial help from other countries in exchange for a bit of the 'peacekeeping pie'), coming from the State Department, is a reaction, a concession by the powers that be, to the neocon fuck-up. Rummy, Perle, Wolfowitz. They had their chance. And they fumbled it. Now Powell and the State Dept has Bush's ear.

The thing I'm fascinated by is that the attacks against the occupiers, esp. the suicide bomber element, is very much out of character for the Iraqi people. This is a country that's been a secular nation for years now. The suicide bomber meme isn't really a part of their culture. So it would not surprise me to see jihadists outside of Iraq taking it upon themselves to drive this fight right to the American troops. Something I look at with mixed feelings of revulsion and relief. Revulsion more than anything because human lives are being used as collateral or a means of distraction.

Whether one supported this war or not, we're up to our necks in it now. From here on out, things have to be handled delicately. Occupying it for too long could blow up into catastrophe just easily as pulling out too quickly and leaving things worse than when the US got there.

unheimlich manoeuvre

21:35 / 15.11.03

Car bombs kill at least 20 in Istanbul

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Car bombs have exploded outside two Istanbul synagogues, killing at least 20 people -- most of them Muslim passers-by -- in simultaneous attacks on Jewish worshippers celebrating the Sabbath.

Turkish officials said al Qaeda might have had a hand in Saturday's blasts which wrecked cars and buildings over wide areas surrounding the heavily protected temples.

Istanbul police officials said at least 20 people had died and 303 were reported wounded in the attacks which happened around 9:30 a.m. (7:30 a.m.).

Bombings at Turkey Synagogues Kill 20

...

Crash of U.S. helicopters kills 12

One of the helicopters was hit in the tail by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG), a U.S. officer at the scene said on Saturday.