http://www.nypost.com/seven/06172008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/al_qaeda
s_vietnam_115861.htm
By RICH LOWRY
June 17, 2008 -- LATELY, the Iraq War has looked more and more like
another Vietnam - not for us, but for al Qaeda.
CIA Director Michael Hayden says the terror group has suffered"near-strategic defeat" in Iraq. It has been routed from Anbar, Diyala and Baghdad provinces, and now is getting a beating in its last stronghold of Mosul, in the north. It is reviled by the Iraqi populace,and its downward trajectory began with indigenous uprisings at its expense. When the United States lost Vietnam, it lost credibility and saw an emboldened Marxist-Leninist offensive around the Third World. Al Qaedais a global insurgency and not a nation-state - and thus its circumstances are radically different from ours 40 years ago - but it has suffered a similar reputational loss.
The Iraq War had been a powerful recruiting tool for al Qaeda when it was winning. No more. Osama bin Laden rendered what is called the "bandwagon effect" in international relations - the tendency of states to go along with the dominant power - in his homespun Arabic analogy of people liking the strong horse over the weak horse. In Iraq, al Qaeda's proverbial horse is a broken-down nag.
Our loss in Vietnam forever shattered the domestic consensus in favor of the Cold War, creating a crisis of national confidence known as the Vietnam Syndrome. Al Qaeda's troubles in Iraq correspond with a similar unraveling of its ideological cohesion. Reports in The New Yorker and The New Republic recently have detailed an Islamist backlash against alQaeda's indiscriminate killing, partly attributable to its brutish campaign in Iraq.
A group devoted to overthrowing secular Arab rulers and fighting America
has overwhelmingly identified itself with the mass slaughter of Muslim
innocents. Its methods might not have produced revulsion in the broader
Muslim world if they were succeeding. Instead, in Iraq, it's been wanton
murder in a losing cause.
Like we did in Vietnam, al Qaeda in Iraq has run afoul of nationalism
and local culture, although in spectacular fashion. It has trampled on
the prerogatives of tribal sheiks and issued lunatic decrees, like its
banning of the local bread in Mosul - sammoun - because it did not exist
at the time of the Prophet.
Like we did in Vietnam, it over relied on favored tactics even after
they proved ineffective or counterproductive; with us, it was ever more
bombing runs in the North and search-and-destroy missions in the South,
while in al Qaeda's it has been mass-casualty suicide bombings.
Like we were in Vietnam, al Qaeda was sucked into a conflict not of its
choosing by the geopolitical assertion of its adversary.
America could have ignored North Vietnam's assault on the South as a
marginal loss on the strategic periphery of the Cold War. Since Iraq is
central to the Middle East and one of the three most important Arab
countries, al Qaeda could not tolerate our attempt to establish it as a
democratic ally in the war on terror. It would have been like the Cold
War-era America writing off a Communist takeover of West Germany.
If Vietnam was arguably a winnable war for the United States - once we
established a respectable South Vietnamese army backed by our air power
- Iraq was winnable for al Qaeda. In the chaos and civil war it stoked
in Iraq in 2006, it came close to collapsing our war effort, and has
exacted a stiff price for our intervention there.
The group remains dangerous, and - if we throw away the gains we've made
with a rapid withdrawal - could mount a comeback in Iraq. Regardless, it
still has its redoubt in Western Pakistan. Suffering a Vietnam needn't
mean a larger strategic defeat, as we ourselves learned. But the United
States had the enormous resources of the world's largest and freest
economy and the essential justness of its cause. Al Qaeda has neither,
just the animating hatreds that have been put on such stark,
unflattering display during its Vietnam
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