|
Friday, 20 January 2006 |
By Michael A. Ledeen
National Review Online
Of all the confusions surrounding the war in Iraq, perhaps none has
clouded so many minds as the phony question, "are we fighting domestic
insurgents or foreign terrorists?" The people who purport to answer
this question with "data," should look again at the demographics of
Iraq, Syria, and Iran, and they can start by asking themselves, "who's
an Iraqi"?
That question is surprisingly difficult to answer, above all because,
during the Iran-Iraq war, millions (I say millions) of Iraqi Shiites
took the Iranian side, and went to Iran, where they remained for the
better part of twenty years. During that time a large number of them
were recruited by Iranian intelligence, folded into the terror network
of the Revolutionary Guards and the intelligence ministry, and placed
under the command of the Badr Brigade of the SCIRI ("Supreme Council
for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) or other radical Shiite groups.
When we liberated Iraq, many of them returned. What are they? Iraqis or
Iranians? It's a surprisingly tough question. If, as is often the case,
they show up as suicide terrorists or sharpshooters or IED
manufacturers or spooks working for "insurgent" or "terrorist" groups,
do they count as "foreign fighters" or "Iraqi insurgents"? They have
Iraqi DNA, but Iranian ideology, and they are under effective Iranian
control. But for the most part, it seems that our official bean
counters in the intelligence community have defined them as
"insurgents," which enables them to argue that we're basically fighting
domestic groups. They can thus downplay the decisive role played by
Iran (and, on the other side of Iraq, by Syria).
All this was underscored by a nifty story in the Washington Times two
days ago (9 January), written by Sharon Behn: "Iraqis receive training
in Iran." It's more of the same, albeit she falls into one of the
tempting rhetorical traps set by our "analysts." She writes about young
Iraqis being sent to Iran by SCIRI for "political indoctrination and
militia training," and later on refers to claims by the National
Council of Resistance of Iran (better known as the MEK, the Mujaheddin
Khalq) that " Tehran has been training Iraqi and other nationals in
intelligence gathering and terrorists operations." If you read
carefully, you'll see that the so-called militia training is really
terrorism: "They (the Iranians) trained them (the young Iraqis)...to go
out on patrol, to get people out of their houses, execute them and
leave them on the street..."
Let's stop talking about "militia training," okay? This is terrorist
training. And let's stop the bogus "analysis" that turns
Iranian-trained terrorists into "domestic insurgents" by punching
find-and-replace. They're terrorists working at the behest of Iran. And
let's (finally!) stop acting as if Sunnis and Shiites don't cooperate
in the killing fields of the Middle East. Zarqawi's a Sunni and he has
long been supported by Iran. The surviving bin Ladens are mostly in
Iran, as is Zawahiri, Sunnis all.
The basic sermon remains as true as ever: We are playing a sucker's
game in Iraq, because we are fighting in a single country even though
we are engaged in a regional war. This guarantees we cannot win the
broader war. Administration officials have struggled mightily to avoid
this hard truth, because they want to be able to declare "victory" in
Iraq as soon as possible, and then get out.
But the hard truth remains, as does the unbreakable determination of
Iran and Syria to drive us from Iraq. And if they succeed, they will
not stop there. The leaders of Iran have told their people to prepare
to "rule the world." You may be sure they will not declare victory
simply because they have won the battle for Iraq.
Michael A. Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at AEI. |
