America vs. al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq

Leading Democrats remain bogged down in an intellectual quagmire concerning the war on terror. That quagmire can be briefly summarized like this: al Qaeda is a minor factor in Iraq, and they weren't even there before Bush invaded; the central front in the war on terror is Afghanistan, where al Qaeda is resurgent, not Iraq, which has simply fallen into a state of civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.

As I will try to explain yet again today with a new (and, to me) informative chart, this is an intellectually vacuous position that is contradicted by all of the available evidence. It is particularly contradicted by the most compelling evidence, which has to do with the effectiveness of the suicide bombers of Iraq and Afghanistan. One reason why it may be hard for many Americans to appreciate the absurdity of the standard Democratic view of Iraq is that when when someone like Barack Obama declares that our troops should be pulled from Iraq to go fight the "real terrorists" in Afghanistan, he also typically makes mention of Pakistan (or the Afghanistan/Pakistan border). Because everyone pretty much accepts the idea that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, it might sound sensible to send more troops in that general direction if you don't think about it too hard. But it isn't sensible because no matter how many troops we send to Afghanistan, they are not going to invade Pakistan, and that's where Osama bin Laden is. A few more NATO troops are needed in Afghanistan, but they are needed to fight the relentless yet largely incompetent Taliban, not to hunt Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The Pakistani army is going to have to do that. And in the meantime, al Qaeda is waging war against America in Iraq while doing virtually nothing in Afghanistan.

First, let me illustrate the fact that the Democrats remain stuck in the quagmire that has handicapped their thinking about Iraq for the better part of 2 years now. Do you think that any Democrat actually believes Nancy Pelosi when she says:

Ms. Pelosi. How is this war in Iraq helping us fight the war on terrorism, the real war on terrorism, Afghanistan?

And does any Democrat believe Barack Obama's stale analysis of Iraq?

Obama: Shift troops to fight al-Qaida

Chicago Tribune | July 14, 2007
By Mike Glover

The U.S. should shift troops from Iraq to pursue al-Qaida along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Saturday.
...
"We cannot win a war against the terrorists if we're on the wrong battlefield," Obama said. "America must urgently begin deploying from Iraq and take the fight more effectively to the enemy's home by destroying al-Qaida's leadership along the Afghan-Pakistan border, eliminating their command and control networks and disrupting their funding."
...
Obama contended the Bush administration erred by choosing to fight in Iraq rather than concentrating on Afghanistan, where he said al-Qaida has rebuilt itself.

"They have entirely regrouped along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border," Obama said. "The threat of terrorism has actually increased and we've seen a massive spike in terrorist activity, in part because we did not finish the job in Afghanistan and were distracted by a war of choice in Iraq."
...
"When I am president of the United States I will make this pledge: Nobody will work harder to go after those terrorists who will do the American people harm," Obama said. "But that requires a commander in chief who understands our troops need to be on the right battlefield, not the wrong battlefield."

If you are a Democrat, you should be embarrassed by this kind of thinking. The central idea here is that al Qaeda is fighting us in Afghanistan, not Iraq, so let's go fight them where they are, not where a civil war is raging. But how clear does al Qaeda have to be before you get it that Iraq, not Afghanistan, is their main priority? Way back in 2004, bin Laden had this to say:

Bin Laden identified the insurgency in Iraq as "a golden and unique opportunity" for jihadists to engage and defeat the United States, and he characterized the insurgency in Iraq as the central battle in a "Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation."

And he hasn't changed his mind since then. Just a couple of weeks ago, he said this:

(CNN) -- Al-Jazeera broadcast on Thursday an audiotape on which a voice identified as Osama bin Laden declares "Iraq is the perfect base to set up the jihad to liberate Palestine."

The voice calls on "Muslims in neighboring countries" to "do their best in supporting their mujahedeen brothers in Iraq."

That's how al Qaeda's #1 views Iraq. What about al Qaeda's #2? Zawahiri had this to say in a letter that was intercepted back in 2005:

So we must think for a long time about our next steps and how we want to attain it, and it is my humble opinion that the Jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals:

The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq.

He wants to expel the Americans from Iraq? Who knew? And just the other day, when answering questions over the internet, he said this:

Hasn’t the questioner heard what Shaykh Usama bin Ladin (may Allah protect him) mentioned in his latest speech, that the battalions of the Mujahideen, after expelling the occupier from Iraq, shall make their way towards Jerusalem?

Any ideas who the occupier that he refers to might be? If you are a Democrat who is not embarrassed by your leadership (as I am), perhaps you believe that bin Laden and Zawahiri are just kidding about expelling Americans from Iraq. Could that be it?

No, that's not it. Al Qaeda's weapon is the suicide bomber. Suicide bombers in Iraq are not of Iraqi origin. Instead, they are flowing into Iraq from foreign countries, as has been amply documented (even in the New York Times). Because it is a critical consideration, I want to again show you the chart from the New York Times that shows where 90% of the suicide bombers of Iraq come from:


Even MSNBC woke up to the fact that the suicide bombers of Iraq represent al Qaeda in action:

Suicide bomber is al-Qaida's deadliest weapon

BAGHDAD - The suicide bombers who have killed 10,000 people in Iraq, including hundreds of American troops, usually are alienated young men from large families who are desperate to stand out from the crowd and make their mark, according to a U.S. military study.

As long suspected, most come from outside Iraq. Saudi Arabia, home of most of the 9/11 hijackers, is the single largest source. And the pipeline is continually replenished by al-Qaida in Iraq's recruiters.

If you really think that the violence in Iraq mainly reflects a civil war, you have to ask yourself what these foreign suicide bombers have to do with that. Any ideas? According to one theory, foreigner jihadists are flocking to Iraq to fight a civil war, and it's just a coincidence that they tend to rely on al Qaeda's method (namely, suicide bombings) and that they pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden. According to a different theory (the one I happen to believe, and the one that all available evidence supports), this story from way back in 2003 got it exactly right:

Bin Laden's Iraq Plans

By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

Monday 15 December 2003

During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, three senior Qaeda representatives allegedly held a secret meeting in Afghanistan with two top Taliban commanders.
...
At that meeting, according to Taliban sources, Osama bin Laden's men officially broke some bad news to emissaries from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the elusive leader of Afghanistan's ousted fundamentalist regime. Their message: Al Qaeda would be diverting a large number of fighters from the anti-U.S. insurgency in Afghanistan to Iraq. Al Qaeda also planned to reduce by half its $3 million monthly contribution to Afghan jihadi outfits.

All this was on the orders of bin Laden himself, the sources said.

Did Osama bin Laden really divert his suicide bombers away from Afghanistan and towards Iraq (because he considered the latter to be "a golden and unique opportunity" for jihadists to engage and defeat the United States, as bin Laden himself puts it)? To find out, we can tabulate deaths from suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The comparison is striking, and it shows that, indeed, al Qaeda has been doing next to nothing in Afghanistan (the place where Barack Obama wants to send our troops) while they have absolutely wreaking havoc in Iraq (as General Petraeus has patiently explained for more than a year now).

Casualty statistics from suicide bombings in Iraq are fairly easy to obtain because both the U.S. military and the radical anti-war web site Iraq Body Count both keep track of the statistics. Because I don't want anyone to think that I am fabricating information by relying on what you (as a person of the left) might preposterously suspect to be an unreliable source (namely, the U.S. military), I always use a source that I know you can trust (namely, the radical anti-war web site) to get my casualty figures. It takes a bit of work to extract deaths in Iraq due to suicide bombings from their database, but anyone can do it with a bit of effort. It is harder to get the corresponding statistics from Afghanistan, but I cobbled them together from many different sources (e.g., news stories, like this one, and this one, and this one, as well as various reports on the fighting in that country, like this one and this one). I used many more sources as well, and believe that I identified every major suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan that has been reported by the media. I probably missed very minor attacks that killed one or two people, but I don't believe that I missed any major attack involving, say, more than 20 people killed. Thus, although the numbers for Afghanistan might be a little low, I believe they are pretty accurate.

Take a look at the two charts below. The top one shows civilian casualties from suicide bombings in Iraq (the numbers would be even higher if they included casualties among security forces). The second one shows casualties from suicide bombings in Afghanistan (civilians plus security forces). Keep in mind that we are trying to figure out if Osama bin Laden really sent his suicide bombers to Iraq instead of to Afghanistan. Here's your answer:




If al Qaeda is resurgent in Afghanistan and practically nonexistent in Iraq, how do you explain this glaring discrepancy? Who the heck are the suicide bombers of Iraq, if not al Qaeda? And what the heck is al Qaeda doing in Afghanistan, if not using their suicide bombers to kill people (which is their main modus operandi)?

These two charts show al Qaeda at work in Iraq and the incompetent and bumbling Taliban at work in Afghanistan. A letter written by Zarqawi (the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed in 2006) and intercepted in 2004 explained how he was going to use al Qaeda's suicide bombers in Iraq. It was an incredibly evil plan that nearly succeeded in expelling U.S. forces from Iraq. It may still succeed, but that depends on who wins the election in November. Here is his still-active plan:

The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change. Targeting and striking their religious, political, and military symbols, will make them show their rage against the Sunnis and bear their inner vengeance. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands of these Sabeans, i.e., the Shi'a.
...
Way of action: As we have mentioned to you, our situation demands that we treat the issue with courage and clarity. So the solution, and god only knows, is that we need to bring the Shi'a into the battle because it is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us.
...
So i say again, the only solution is to strike the religious, military, and other cadres of the Shi'a so that they revolt against the Sunnis. Some people will say, that this will be a reckless and irresponsible action that will bring the Islamic nation to a battle for which the Islamic nation is unprepared. Souls will perish and blood will be spilled...This is what we want. Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to support us in many of the Sunni regions. When the Mujahidin would have secured a land they can use as a base to hit the Shi'a inside their own lands, with a directed media and a strategic action, there will be a continuation between the Mujahidin inside and outside of Iraq.
...
As far as the Shi'a, we will undertake suicide operations and use car bombs to harm them.

Long story short, the idea was to send al Qaeda's suicide bombers against Shiite civilians (instead of American troops) to provoke them into retaliating by slaughtering Sunnis. That would create the failed state that al Qaeda seeks and would send the Americans home with their tails between their legs (creating a propaganda victory for al Qaeda such as the world has never seen). It was a good plan, and it nearly worked (and would have worked had the Democrats prevailed in their efforts to pull our troops out during the height of sectarian violence).

That's what the suicide bombers of Iraq have been up to. Meanwhile, Time Magazine wrote the following article on the Taliban's suicide bombers. Can you imagine such an article being written about al Qaeda's suicide bombers? I can't. Here it is:

The World's Worst Suicide Bombers?

Are Afghans the worst suicide bombers in the world? That's the conclusion of U.S. academic Brian Glyn Williams, an assistant professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. In a fascinating recent essay published on the website of conservative think tank The Jamestown Foundation, Williams analyzes the success rate of suicide attacks in Afghanistan over the past two years. Though attacks are getting more frequent, Williams found that more than four out of every 10 attempted suicide bombings in Afghanistan kills only the attacker. "Such unusual bomber-to-victim death statistics are, of course, heartening both for coalition troops — who have described the Afghan suicide bombers as 'amateurs' — and for the Afghan people, who are usually the victims of the clumsy bombings," writes Williams.

Barack Obama wants to pull our troops from Iraq to go fight the "real terrorists" in Afghanistan. That is, like bin Laden and Zawahiri, he wants to expel our forces from Iraq. John McCain, by contrast, wants to finish off al Qaeda in Iraq. That's your choice; take your pick.