Posted by
Brian Garst on Monday, September 25, 2006 5:49:42 PM
The New York Times is
gleefully reporting on a yet to be released National Intelligence Estimate supposedly attributing rising global jihad to the Iraq war.
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American
intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and
occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic
radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the
Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct
role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either
in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by
the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in
Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the
final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal
appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies
since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16
disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global
Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that
Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and
spread across the globe.
Absent from the NYT's report, however, is any semblance of logic. Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters
correctly points out the article's fallacies:
It makes the classic logical fallacy of confusing
correlation with causation, and the basic premise can easily be
dismissed with a reminder of some basic facts.
First and foremost, Islamist radicalism didn't just start expanding in
2003. The most massive expansion of Islamist radicalism came after the
end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the Islamists
defeated one of the world's superpowers. Shortly afterwards, the
staging of American forces in Saudi Arabia to drive Saddam Hussein out
of Kuwait created the most significant impulse for the expansion of
organized Islamist radicalism and led directly to the formation of
al-Qaeda. It put the US in Wahhabi jihadist crosshairs for the first
time.
Of course there has been an increase in jihadist activities since Iraq.
But, as Captain Ed points out, correlation is not causation. And in
this particular case, the cause lies in the fundamental nature of the
enemy we are fighting, not in the actions we have taken to combat them.
The competency to which we have carried out that action is another
question, however.
If I place a lamp over the edge of a table and leave it perilously
close to falling over the edge - knowing full well that any disturbance
will cause it to fall and break - is the next person who walks into the
room and causes it to fall the one to blame, or am I?
Radical Islamic Jihad ideology has been bombarded upon the populations
of the Middle East for decades now. A primary part of that ideological
assault is the assertion that the West, specifically the US, is
determined to destroy Islam and conquer all the countries in the Middle
East.
Some think this is reason for us not to take any action that could
possibly be interpreted in that manner. The assumption behind that
position - that the radicals rely on even the tiniest bit of truth in
order to spread their filth - is fatally flawed. They have such total
control over the media that they can claim any manner of outlandish
nonsense and it will be believed. These people get on national
television and
claim that jews kill children and use their blood for passover.
Any belief that these people rely on us actually doing what they claim
we are doing in order to convince their public it is so should be
dropped.
The brainwashing applied to these people since birth has put them in a
position where they are ready to believe any aggressive Western action
is a new crusade. It is that indoctrination that is to blame for
knocking them over the edge, not our efforts to combat them. And that
is where this report (or more likely, the NYT's account of this report)
misses the mark.
The enemy has ingeniously designed a system in which our efforts to
fight back results in an increase of their numbers. They rely on that
fact to paralyze us into inaction, hoping that our resolve will waver
and they will be allowed to operate virtually unimpeded, as they did
all through the 90's. But we
must continue on until we have eliminated the
true
cause, the stranglehold that virulent Islamic Jihad has on their media
and culture. Expecting the enemy to just roll over as a response to our
efforts is foolish and naive.
See this post and more at
Conservative Compendium.