America’s self-inflicted war wounds

America’s self-inflicted war wounds
By Gideon Rachman
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: September 10 2007 18:20 | Last updated: September 10 2007 18:20


The symbolism of getting General David Petraeus to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the anniversary of 9/11 appealed to the White House. It should not have. It is crass. General Petraeus’s struggle to salvage the Iraq war merely underlines the fact that invading Iraq was a crazy way to respond to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Six years after 9/11, the US needs to re-think. It is now clear that Iraq was the biggest blunder of the Bush years. It is also becoming evident that counter-terrorism should no longer be the centrepiece of American foreign policy. As the official 9/11 commission demonstrated, Saddam Hussein played no role in the terrorist attacks. He also had no nuclear weapons and no significant relationship with al-Qaeda.

But the Iraq invasion was not simply the wrong response to 9/11. It has actually made the terrorism problem worse in five significant ways.

First, it has diverted attention and troops from the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban are undefeated and al-Qaeda has re-grouped. Osama bin Laden is still alive and starring in home-made videos. Nobody is quite sure of his whereabouts – but he certainly is not in Iraq.

Second, it has created a failed state in Iraq – which is the best possible breeding ground for terrorism. In the aftermath of 9/11 the Bush administration became transfixed by the possibility of a rogue state handing over weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. It is a nasty idea. But it has never actually happened. By contrast, we have plenty of evidence that terrorism flourishes in failed states with large, lawless areas – such as Afghanistan or Somalia. Iraq has turned into just such a place.

Third, the Iraq war has created a new and virulent branch of al-Qaeda. Even the hawks at the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-war Washington think-tank, reckon that 90 per cent of the members of “al-Qaeda in Iraq” are locals. By invading Iraq, the Americans have managed to create a nationalist insurgency and fuse it with a global terrorist movement.

Fourth, the Iraq war has mobilised recruits for terrorism across the world – handing al-Qaeda a powerful propaganda weapon. Of course, the men behind 9/11 did not need an Iraq war to motivate them. But any effective attack on al-Qaeda must try to shrink the pool of its potential recruits and sympathisers. The Iraq war has done the opposite – as the British and American intelligence services have now acknowledged.

Finally, the invasion of Iraq has hugely undermined support for America among its traditional allies. Last week an annual opinion survey for the German Marshall Fund found that 58 per cent of Europeans now regard US leadership in world affairs as “undesirable”. Although anti-Americanism is often regarded as an elite prejudice, the GMF poll suggests the opposite. About three-quarters of senior EU officials were in favour of American leadership. It is the public who have lost faith. This too is a self-inflicted wound in the war on terror, because it makes it much harder for European politicians to argue for the close co-operation with the US that counter-terrorism demands.

Invading Iraq was undoubtedly a major blunder in the “war on terror”. So would withdrawing from Iraq improve matters? The concern is that al-Qaeda in Iraq would gain in strength and – as President Bush puts it – “follow us home”. But it seems unlikely that a Sunni group can seize control of a majority-Shia state – particularly since many Iraqi Sunnis now seem to have turned on al-Qaeda. Even after troop withdrawals, al-Qaeda bases in Iraq would still be vulnerable to American attack.

Some worry that al-Qaeda will gain in prestige if America is seen to lose in Iraq. That is possible. But American withdrawal would weaken the emotive argument that “crusaders” are occupying a Muslim country and take pictures of American troops in Iraq off Arab television screens.

So if terrorism really is the central concern of American foreign policy, withdrawal from Iraq makes sense. But it is time for the US to re-think the post 9/11 conventional wisdom, which held that America’s entire foreign and national security policy needs to be completely restructured to fight the “war on terror”. The fact is that six years after September 11 2001, the US has not experienced another major terrorist attack on home soil. It is Europe that is much more in peril, largely because it is easier to get at.

A swift withdrawal from Iraq would probably not make the US much more vulnerable to terrorism. But it could bring about a host of other unwanted consequences. One of the unpleasant ironies of the Iraq misadventure is that it has underlined the fact that American foreign policy needs to be about a lot more than counter-terrorism.

Getting out of Iraq risks worsening several traditional geopolitical problems, which have been whipped up by the invasion. These include the rising power of Iran, the risk of a broader regional war, the fear of a humanitarian catastrophe and the security of oil supplies from the Gulf.

It now seems unlikely that the Petraeus report will be the decisive moment in the American debate on Iraq that many expected just a few months ago. There probably will be some modest troop withdrawals next year. But traditional strategic concerns – which have relatively little to do with the “war on terror” – may still dictate that US troops stay in Iraq for years to come.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

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