I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them - Isaac Asimov

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Well-heeled western liberals and Michael Moore fans might not understand President Bush’s Middle East strategy, but the terrorists do.  An authenticated al Qaeda “strategy document” lays out the organization’s plan for Iraq.

“We consider that the Spanish government cannot suffer more than two to three strikes before pulling out (of Iraq) under pressure from its own people,” said the document obtained Wednesday by AFP from Raido France International’s regional office in Beirut.

“If these (Spanish) forces remain after the strikes, the victory of the socialist party would be near-guaranteed and the pullout of Spanish forces from Iraq would be on its agenda,” said the document, distributed ahead of the March 11 attacks in Madrid.

Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, elected after the train bombings in Madrid which left 191 people dead in Spain’s worst ever terrorist attack, withdrew Spanish troops from the troubled country in May.

So, their strategy worked, as we all know.  And what of the rest of the coalition?

A lengthy chapter of the document focuses on “the main allies of the United States in their aggression against Iraq: Britain, Italy, Poland and Spain, as well as some Arab countries.” ...

It called for striking US forces in Iraq on a daily basis in order to force them “to disperse on the territory, weaken their efficiency and strike the morale of the soldiers.”

“The operations should be concentrated on the Arab Sunni sector… (given) the absence of motives for the explosion of the situation in the Shiite southern regions and the Kurdish north,” it said.

The booklet, presented as a handbook for the “Mujahedeen,” called on the “Iraqi resistance (to form) a movement which gathers the factions of the Jihad… and unite in the same objective, as currently they are not united in the same organisation.”

“The Mujahedeens in Iraq should now concentrate on the complete pullout of all foreign forces from all Iraqi territory,” it said.

In other words, they will commit acts of terrorism in order to weaken and demoralize US resolve to see the job through.  But the most telling aspect of the article, for me, came right at the end.

It said the US plan was “to build an Iraqi state as conceived by the United States...and enslave Saudi Arabia politically, fight against Islamic proselytism as a salafist and jihadic movement.”

“This would be (for the US) the first step toward the eradication of hardline Islam in the entire world,” it said.

This is what conservatives have been saying all along, that Iraq was simply the first step in the overall task of modernizing the Middle East and destroying Islamism.  This idea has, as usual, been poo-pooed by the left-wing intelligentsia, but as you can see here, the terrorists understand what is at stake.  A free Iraq, with free-flowing oil, means less money and power and influence for Saudi Arabia.  (You know Saudi Arabia, the country that Michael Moore says Bush is beholden to.) A free Iraq and a weak Saudi Arabia gives America and the rest of the free world an excellent vantage point from which to “fight against Islamic proselytism as a salafist and jihadic movement.”

This is why the invasion of Iraq was and still is so essential to the broader war on terror.  It is “the first step toward the eradication of hardline Islam in the entire world.”

Salafist movements are what Daniel Pipes refers to as Islamist, essentially being a form of theological fascism based upon a perverted form of Islam.  This is what al Qaeda is fighting for.  Lefties might not get it, but the bad guys do, and they’re willing to fight to the death.  The only way to win is to kill them first.