Thoughts on Iraq

Matthew Yglesias has thoughts on the grand strategy of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I find his analysis lacking on several levels. Here are some quotes:

1. Eliminating the Afghan sanctuary cut down on al-Qaeda recruitment because despite the continuing appeal of the al-Qaeda ideology, people who wanted to sign up didn't know where to go.
2. By invading Iraq and then botching the aftermath, we've created a new location for would-be jihadis to travel to in order to join the war.
3. Thus, we're creating some number of new anti-American warriors.
4. Right now, those warriors aren't killing people in America because they're in Iraq.
5. But at some point, some of them will leave Iraq, and start launching attacks in the United States, Europe, and other countries.

I have problems with concepts 2 and 3.

It does not follow that they would not have established training areas somewhere else if we had not invaded Iraq. Libya, Hussien's Iraq, and Somalia are all potential locations. They did not congregate in Afghanistan so they could fight there. All they needed was a friendly regime.

Our containment of Iraq by having bases in Saudi Arabia were the offense that began really empowering this stage of Bin Laden's growth in the first place. So they would also be creating new warriors if we hadn't gone to Iraq. The question is, after attrition from contact with US forces, are they still posting a net gain in followers?

To answer this question we have to look at this Yglesias statement:

The vast majority of insurgents are, by all accounts, native-born Iraqis.

All accounts I have seen say otherwise. The only numbers I have seen say that 10% combatants are known Iraqis, 20% of are Saudi, 15% are Syrian, 10% are other, and a whopping 45% are of unknown nationality. Which means that the Iraqis might be a simple majority in the insurgency depending how many of the unknowns are actually Iraqi nationals. They are certainly not a vast majority.

So what we are doing over there is killing a lot of foriegn terrorists from all over the Middle East and Africa. This may explain the change in rhetoric from Osama bin Laden prior to the last election. They are suffering highly asymmetric losses and this is a good thing.

His last two points have merit however. We cannot count on the insurgents being foolish forever. Our great advantage is that they do not have the sort of command structure that leads to a lot of foresight, complex operations, or advanced planning. Part of our actions in Afghanistan was to substantially cripple these capabilities. But when Iraq is over, we should be preparing for them to turn their eyes toward us again once they have rebuilt their forces.