As with many truths, it is toxic in today’s political discourse to suggest that the US has brought many of its problems with terrorism and terrorists on itself. It’s like saying the US can’t afford many of its entitlements and somebody is going to get screwed. For those who seek an abundance of analytic and factual confirmation of the terrorism assertion, here it is, from Dan Sanchez at antiwar.com:
After the abject failure of the Iraq War became undeniable, court intellectuals strained to concoct alternative rationales for the War that would recast it as a success, or at least a work-in-progress.
Of these, the favorite of blogger-pundit Andrew Sullivan (who has since vociferously recanted his support for the Iraq War) was “Operation Flytrap,” which he picked up from a Bush Administration insider in 2003. Through the Iraq War, the US would win the War on Terror by using its troops as bait to draw Islamic extremists into Iraq, where they would be trapped like flies on flypaper: gathered, contained, and neatly disposed of.
Even as late as 2007, the neocons were still clinging to this self-serving analogy and narrative. In that year, Iraq War architect David Wurmser told The Telegraph:
“While Iraq became more violent, it also became in some ways the international bug-zapper of terrorists. It was the light that attracted all the terrorists of the world. And that became the battleground, and this is a decisive battle. I think the battle is turning in our favour now, and this is a defeat that it will take the al-Qaeda world a long time to recover from.”
Setting aside its moral obscenity, this post hoc purpose has been a complete failure. This was gruesomely confirmed a little over a week ago, when, in a single day (Friday, June 26) major terrorist attacks occurred on three continents. Moreover, all three attacks occurred in countries not yet afflicted with war: Kuwait (27 dead in the bombing of a Shiite mosque), Tunisia (39 dead in a gun attack on a tourist resort), and France (one workplace beheading).
Also on that day, ISIS attacked the Kurdish city of Kobani, leaving almost 200 civilians dead. This served as a grisly reminder that the movement long ago surpassed mere terrorism and insurgency, graduating to military operations and territorial conquest.
Yet another 200 were killed on Wednesday in a massive assault by an ISIS affiliate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. ISIS affiliates have even been giving less extremist Islamist groups a run for their money: contending with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hamas in Palestine. Further ISIS affiliate attacks have occurred recently in Libya and Saudi Arabia.
And these are just the exploits of an offshoot of Al Qaeda. The latter has itself also been launching attacks and conquering territory in Syria and Yemen.
What happened to Sullivan’s flypaper and Wurmser’s bug-zapper? How is it that after “Operation Flytrap,” the world is suffering from a far worse terrorist infestation than before?
Let’s review.
To continue reading: Flytrap to Breeding Ground
