Soccer Dad

On the side of intelligence estimates

In Angels and Intelligence Estimates ( or here ) Charles Krauthammer disputes the definitive nature of the interpretations of the widely publicized National Intelligence Estimate.

The question posed -- does the Iraq war increase or decrease the world supply of jihadists? -- is itself an exercise in counting angels on the head of a pin. Any answer would require a complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, as well as construction of a complete alternate history of the world had the U.S. invasion of 2003 not happened.

Ah, but those seers in the U.S. "intelligence community," speaking through a leaked National Intelligence Estimate -- the most famous previous NIE, mind you, concluded that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, slam-dunk -- have peered deep into the hypothetical past and found the answer. As spun by Iraq war critics, the conclusion is that Iraq has made us less safe because it has become a "cause celebre" and a rallying cry for jihad.

However for one thing

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Iraq was already an Islamist cause celebre and rallying cry long before 2003. When Osama bin Laden issued his declaration of war against America in 1998, his two principal justifications for the jihad that exploded upon us on Sept. 11, 2001, centered on Iraq: America's alleged killing of more than 1 million Iraqis through the post-Gulf War sanctions and, even worse, the desecration of Islam's holiest cities of Mecca and Medina by the garrisoning of infidel U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia (as post-Gulf War protection from the continuing threat of invasion by Hussein).

Or for another

Moreover, does anyone imagine that had the jihadists in Iraq remained home they would now be tending petunias rather than plotting terror attacks? Omar al-Farouq, leader of al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia, escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan a year ago and was apparently drawn to the "cause celebre" in Iraq. Last month he was killed by British troops in a firefight in Basra. In an audiotape released Sept. 28, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq said that more than 4,000 of its recruits have been killed there since the American invasion. Like Omar al-Farouq and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they went to Iraq to die in Iraq.

(For a concurring view of this see Osama bin Sulkin' at Brain Terminal.)

Krauthammer concludes, essentially, that the war on terror is an ongoing enterprise and that knowing whether or not we're safer now isn't relevant. What is relevant is that the successful prosecution of the war should, in the end, make us safer.

Technorati tags: War on Terror, Charles Krauthammer, National Intelligence Estimate.