Say What You Mean And Mean What You Say

The most current Clintonista attack on Senator Obama was prompted by Obama's claim that any of the three contenders for the presidency (The Hillster, The Hopester, or The Geezer) would be better than The Dubster. The Hillster focuses on The Geezer's hawkishness on Iraq (and Iran) as the reason The Hopester is hopeless as a viable candidate. The Geezer would be an improvement over The Dubster — not because his views on Iraq are enlightened — but because The Geezer is not an idiot. The Geezer's views on Iraq are foolish, as Professor Juan Cole shows below, but The Geezer makes more sense than The Dubster on any subject (let alone Iraq) any day of the week. The Hillster misses the point. There is a darker reason for the effort to plant al-Qaeda in Iraq.

On January 20, 1942, a meeting of fifteen senior officials of the Nazi German regime — was held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. The Wannsee Conference implemented the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem which took the shape of death squads, concentration camps, and genocide. Flash forward to 2002 when the war criminals in The Dubster's administration met in The Dickster's office and authorized the use of torture in questioning "al-Qaeda" combatants. At the Wannsee Conference, Jews (and other undesirables) were targeted for inhuman methods. At The Dickster's Conference in 2002, "al-Qaeda" was targeted for torture. If this is a (fair & balanced) crime against humanity, so be it.

[x The Modern World]

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Copyright © 2008 Tom Tomorrow

[x Informed Comment (a blog maintained by Professor Juan Cole)]
McCain and the Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq
By Juan Cole

I am quoted in this NYT piece today on John McCain's allegations that the US is fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq and that there is a danger of "al-Qaeda" taking over the country if the US leaves.

Those allegations don't make any sense. McCain contradicts himself because he sometimes warns that the Shiites or Iran will take over Iraq. He doesn't seem to realize that the US presided over the ascension to power in Iraq of pro-Iranian Shiite parties like Nuri al-Maliki's Islamic Mission Party and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. So which is it? There is a danger that pro-Iranian Shiites will take over (which is anyway what we have engineered) or that al-Qaeda will? It is not as if they can coexist. Since the Shiites are 60 percent and by now well armed and trained, and since the Sunni Arabs are only 17 percent of the population and since only about 1 percent of them perhaps supports Salafi radicalism--how can the latter hope to take over?

Even if McCain only means, as his campaign manager tried to suggest, that "al-Qaeda" could take over the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, that doesn't make any sense either (McCain has actually alleged that al-Qaeda would take over the whole country.) The Salafi radicals have lost in al-Anbar Province. Diyala Province, one of the other three predominantly Sunni areas, is ruled by pro-Iranian Shiites. That leaves Salahuddin and Ninevah Provinces. Among the major military forces in Ninevah is the Kurdish Peshmerga, some of them integrated e.g. into the Mosul police force. Hint: The Kurds don't like "al-Qaeda", i.e. Salafi radicalism. Jalal Talabani is a socialist.

So the Shiites and the Kurds among the Iraqis, now more powerful than the Sunni Arabs, would never allow a radical Salafi mini-state in their midst. They would crush them. And substantial segments of the Iraqi Sunni population have already helped crush them.

Moreover, Shiite Iran, secular Turkey, Baathist Syria and monarchical Jordan would never put up with a Salafi radical mini-state on their borders. They would crush it. Jordan's secret police already appear to have played a role in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who had his own "Monotheism and Holy War" organization that for PR purposes he at one point rechristened "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" (he actually never got along with Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri).

McCain's whole discourse on Iraq is just a typical rightwing Washington fantasy made up in order to get you to spend $15 billion a month on his friends in the military industrial complex and to get you to allow him to gut the US constitution and the Bill of Rights.

[John "Juan" Ricardo I. Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on television, and testified before the United States Senate. He has published several peer-reviewed books on the modern Middle East and is a translator of both Arabic and Persian. Since 2002, he has written a weblog, "Informed Comment." Cole earned, in 1975, a B.A. History and Literature of Religions at Northwestern University. In 1978, he took an M.A. in Arabic Studies/History at American University in Cairo. His Ph.D. in Islamic Studies was awarded in 1984 by the University of California at Los Angeles.]

Copyright © 2008 Juan Cole

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