MERIP
Middle East Research and Information Project
Middle East Report
Middle East Report Online
Newspaper Op-Eds

MiddleEastDesk.org
Press Room
Background
Contact Info
Subscribe
Back Issues
Internships
Giving
Search
Subscribe Online to
Middle East Report

Order a subscription and back issues to the award-winning magazine Middle East Report.

Click here for the order page.

SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS

Primer on Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Click here (PDF)

[Click here for HTML version]

 

 

 
Bush's Flawed Flypaper Theory

Chris Toensing
 
Topeka Capital-Journal (07/29/05)
Minuteman Media

Forget for a moment how shamelessly President George W. Bush tried to manipulate Americans' emotions by invoking September 11 six times during his recent prime-time sales pitch for staying the course in Iraq. There is no need to recall the reports finding no connection between that day's terrorist attacks and Iraq, and no call for repeating that Iraq was not in danger of becoming a "safe haven" for al-Qaida until after it was invaded. The president doesn't really claim otherwise.

Instead, he says that, since the invasion, "ruthless killers" affiliated with al-Qaida "are converging on Iraq to fight the advance of peace and freedom." Whatever its pre-war state of affairs, today Iraq has become a "central front" in the global war on these extremist Islamists. Hence, the United States has only one option­"to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home." This is the so-called "flypaper" theory of the war on terrorism: If you can't find al-Qaida fighters where they are hiding, attract them to an overseas locale where overwhelming U.S. firepower will guarantee their demise. Mr. Bush made this theory the centerpiece of his effort to convince Americans that an open-ended military deployment in Iraq is "vital to the future security of our country."

Forget that U.S. commanders in Iraq say "foreign fighters" constitute a tiny minority of the insurgents they are battling. Don't unravel the tangled logic whereby the bait luring jihadis to Iraq is also the only means of saving Iraq from their mortars and car bombings. Did anyone ask Iraqis if they wanted the United States to hang its flypaper in their country?

Iraqi civilians, after all, have taken the vast majority of casualties inflicted by the small jihadi wing of the insurgency. Iraq's interior minister states that 12,000 civilians have been killed during the past 18 months, most of them Shiites. They were victims of Sunni jihadis' attempt to stoke sectarian strife. Clearly, bombings outside mosques and in marketplaces have exacted a disproportionate civilian toll. Still more civilian bystanders have died in attacks directed at recruits of the nascent Iraqi police force and national guard, or at U.S. troops. 

Iraqis for their part are not confused about whether the U.S. presence is the cause or the cure for this insecurity. As far back as May 2004, a U.S.-sponsored poll found that 59 percent of Iraqi Arabs thought attacks on U.S. soldiers occurred because the attackers want all foreign forces to leave, and, 53 percent thought they occurred to protect Iraqi national dignity. Undoubtedly, the elements of the insurgency that target civilians have ulterior motives­from killing Shiites because they are "infidels" to fomenting civil war­as well as the aspiration to expel U.S. soldiers from the heartland of classical Islamic civilization. But the fact remains that these dark forces­whether they are of foreign or indigenous ­ have been unleashed by the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might not dispel these forces, but the longer the United States stays in Iraq, the stronger they are likely to get.

It is offensive, to be sure, that the White House still thinks Americans are so gullible as to believe that the September 11 attacks justify the war in Iraq. But the Bush administration reveals even greater contempt for both the public's intelligence and its sense of decency when it insists, in effect, that the future security of Americans requires that Iraqis mortgage their security indefinitely. There is no reason whatsoever why invading a Muslim country­however many "foreign fighters" the invading force entraps­necessarily reduces the risk of a radical Islamist attack on U.S. soil. Quite the opposite may be true. Meanwhile, the inescapable corollary of Bush's flypaper theory is: If thousands of Iraqi civilians are killed in the crossfire, better them than us. 

--

Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report, published by the Middle East Research and Information Project in Washington, DC.

DonateNow

Search MERIP

MERIP OP-EDS
Want to Fight Terrorism? Think Globally, Act Locally
 Globe and Mail (Toronto),
 August 4, 2008
Khalid Mustafa Medani

Militant Islam is under global scrutiny for clues to conditions that foster its rise, and to strategies for reversing that growth. But the key is not in Islamic doctrine, US foreign policy or formal ties to various nations, as many analysts have asserted. It lies at the community level, with clan and local leaders. Full Story>>

Iraq’s Kurds Have to Choose
 Globe and Mail (Toronto)
 July 30, 2008
Joost Hiltermann

Kurdish parties have become kingmakers in Baghdad , and they know it. As no federal government can work without them, they are pulling every available political lever to expand the territory and resources they control, trying to build the foundation of an independent Kurdish state. But even more than territory, they need security. If everyone acts quickly and wisely, that understanding could help resolve one of the Iraq war’s thorniest issues. Full Story>>

Exiting Iraq Is Easier Than They Say
 The Nation (web-only)
 July 16, 2008
Chris Toensing

The debate over the war in Iraq follows a yellowing script: The minute someone suggests that the US move to withdraw its troops, war supporters cry “Havoc!” True to form, when no less a figure than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated he wants a timeline for a US pullout, John McCain summoned the specter of dire consequences. “I’ve always said we’ll come home with honor and with victory and not through a set timetable,” McCain said. In his major foreign policy speech on July 15, Barack Obama affirmed his support for a withdrawal timetable, adding that the US must “get out as carefully as we were careless getting in.” Obama’s position is the correct one, but he, like many other war critics, has done too little to counter the refrain that withdrawal is simply “cutting and running,” a recipe for disaster. Full Story>>

Presidential Pandering on Palestine
 Asheville Citizen-Times
July 4, 2008
Bayann Hamid

At the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) earlier this month, presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama competed over who would become the “candidate for Israel.” The match came to a draw when both candidates pledged undying and unconditional support for Israel. While their support for “Israel right or wrong” was unquestionable, at the end of all the commotion, the most pertinent question for Americans and the world remained unasked and unanswered: Who is the candidate for peace? Full Story>>

The Next President's Iran Dilemma
 In These Times
 February 6, 2008
Chris Toensing

Quick: Who is the strategic victor, to date, of the war in Iraq? Nearly everyone outside the Bush administration (and perhaps some within it) would answer: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The catastrophe of the U.S. occupation of Iraq has bolstered the clerical regime in Tehran, while souring ordinary Iranians on the prospect of U.S.-delivered “democracy.” The occupation has done so by emplacing Iranian-backed Shiite Islamists in power in Baghdad and cooling the jets of those in Washington hoping to “shock and awe” Iran's mullahs. Full Story>>

Libya's Fat Cat
 The Topeka Capital-Journal
 January 11, 2008
Chris Toensing

Few dictators in the world are sitting prettier in 2008 than Col. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. In a region full of potentates and presidents-for-life, his reign is supreme. Having seized power in a 1969 coup, he has ruled his country for longer than any other Arab head of state. And now, as wintry January begins, the colonel has quietly completed his journey back in from the cold. Full Story>>
  Home | Contact/Intern | Background Info | Middle East Report | MER Online | Newspaper Op-Eds | Giving
Copyright © MERIP. All rights reserved.