Mission Escaping Iraq May Be Tomorrow's Winning Slogan Ramzy Baroud

Opinion, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Mission Escaping Iraq May Be Tomorrow's Winning Slogan

Ramzy Baroud

editor@palestinechronicle.com

SEATTLE, 27 August 2003 — Outside the United States, very few are willing to accept the widely circulated argument of US officials that the Iraqi resistance resembles terrorism. Because of that, the US is ferociously pushing to breathe life into the theory that Al-Qaeda is in Iraq. The deadly attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad might have been all that the Pentagon needed to play the Al-Qaeda card once more.

Even before the last casualty was pulled from underneath the rubble of the shattered UN building in Baghdad, blown up by an apparent suicide attack on Aug. 16, American officials repeated a tired argument: Al-Qaeda is to blame.

Al-Qaeda, of course, shouldn’t be discounted, but the apparent obsession by US officials to indict the group, or others affiliated with it, seems of greater political significance to the Bush administration than preventing such devastating attacks from being repeated.

When a car explosion toppled much of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Aug. 7, US officials blamed Ansar Al-Islam, subsequently, Al-Qaeda. Although there was little proof that such cooperation between Ansar Al-Islam and Al-Qaeda exists, US officials now refer to the groups as if they were synonymous.

While internationally many theories were offered to explain the motives that could have fueled the embassy attack, Pentagon officials seemed only interested in theories concerned with Al-Qaeda.

The same scenario is being repeated in the case of the UN blast.

A US official had reportedly told CNN that “intelligence reports in the past two weeks indicated Ansar Al-Islam might be planning a major attack in Iraq.”

It was also reported that “a top US official in the country also said he suspects the group could have launched Tuesday’s strike that killed at least 17 people.”

Officials immediately reasserted the alleged links between Ansar Al-Islam and Al-Qaeda, while US civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer said: “It’s quite clear we do have terrorists inside Iraq now.”

What terrorists? And where did they come from? Bremer also offered an answer.

“After the war, it appears that a number of terrorists from the Ansar Al-Islam group have re-infiltrated into Iraq,” Bremer said. “We are concerned about that. We also have other foreign terrorists who’ve been arriving from other borders.” Bremer disclosed the destinations from which these foreigners came, specifying Syria, Yemen and Sudan.

Meanwhile, many so-called terrorism experts have been crowding American television stations, offering their own explanations of Al-Qaeda’s alleged involvement.

James Rubin, former US Deputy Secretary of State also blamed “Islamic extremists”. “Let’s face it, if you are a terrorist in the Middle East and you have a mission to kill Americans, Iraq is now the place you’re going to want to go,” he said.

But why push the Al-Qaeda and “Islamic extremists” card at this point in time, when the occupation of Iraq is going sour, with resistance attacks mounting and with opinion polls across the United States showing that the population is increasingly disgruntled by the botched Iraqi mission?

The answer is simple. The US pretexts used to wage the war on Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 are of no use now, and to reinforce them, the Al-Qaeda wildcard has to be played once more.

The US occupation administration is trying to make the best of a worsening situation. If the Bush administration appeared perplexed and confused in the midst of the chaos, it is likely to endure the blame of its opponents, nationally and internationally. To lessen the blame, and to reinforce its agenda of internationalizing the responsibly of “rebuilding Iraq” while remaining the only determiner of the fate of the occupied Arab nation, the US government is desperately working to revitalize the pretext of international terrorism. Few are impressed.

World governments — most notably Spain and Japan — that agreed to send some of its troops to Iraq, are enduring political storms that are yet to settle.

With the international arena not yet ready to follow the US lead in Iraq, the already puzzling equation is getting yet more mystifying, and the linear US style of military and political analysis is not helping the situation a bit.

The US is desperately hoping to locate an Al-Qaeda thread in Iraq to justify the war, even in retrospect, to legitimize its occupation and to solidify the battered alliances it forged following the Sept. 11 attacks. It’s also eager to re-win the trust of the American public, which is dwindling by the day.

But in Iraq, the equation seems to be unraveling into scores of mini equations, hypotheses, theories and predictions, which collectively add to the chaos and uncertainly.

The more the chaos intensifies, the more countries that want to wash their hands of it and further distance itself from the US government and its futile plans.

To prevent such a scenario from happening, the US government will need to provide solid answers and display greater vision.

When asked whether the perpetrators of the Baghdad blasts were known to him, Bremer responded: “We know in general terms who’s behind it … It’s people who are fighting against the liberated Iraq that most Iraqis have welcomed. It’s people who do not share the vision of a free Iraq with a vibrant economy.”

If this is the best explanation the US is able to offer, then the Iraq swamp is likely to deepen, to the point that “Mission: Escaping Iraq” could become the winning slogan in future presidential elections.

—Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian-American journalist and editor in chief of Palestine Chronicle.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).