Symposium: Shattered Dreams of Al Qaeda

FP: Bill Roggio, Andy McCarthy and Steve Schippert, welcome to this special edition of Frontpage Symposium.

Bill Roggio, give us the background to how these documents were seized and what their significance is.

Roggio: The documents were seized during a series of raids against al Qaeda in Iraq safehouses in Salahadin province. US, Iraqi and Coalition special forces conduct raids against al Qaeda in Iraq's command networks on a daily basis.

During a raid in October in the city of Samarra, a document was captured which outlines al Qaeda's poor tactical and strategic disposition throughout Iraq, but particularly in Anbar province. The document was thought to have been written by a senior al Qaeda leader. US forces also captured a diary of a regional al Qaeda in Iraq commander in the Balad area in early November.

Both of these documents provide valuable insight on how al Qaeda has been effected by the “surge” of US forces. The Balad commander said his force of 600 fighters was attritted down to about 20 fighters. The Anbar document stated al Qaeda suicide bomber volunteers often cannot carry out attacks and have been demoralized due to the tactical situation. Both commanders lament the rise of the “Awakening” forces and the Concerned Local Citizens (which are now being called “Sons of Iraq”), two organizations which have given insurgent groups and tribal forces the means to fight al Qaeda.

The Balad emir refers to the Awakening movement as “the cancer that grew on the body of the al Jihad Movement.” He explicitly credits the rise of the Sahawa, or Awakening movement, with the demise of his organization. He notes the Awakening movement in northern Salahadin severely restricted al Qaeda in Iraq's ability to operate and depleted the organization's ranks. The tribes and insurgent groups such as the Islamic Army of Iraq, which were rolled into al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq, defected en masse.

One other message that was intercepted by US forces was al Qaeda leader Abu Ayyub al Masri's call to change strategy and tactics. This message was released in mid-January 2008. Instead of intimidating local populations, he ordered his fighters to reach out to “disaffected Sunnis” while continuing to target Sunni leaders who cooperate with US forces. He also called on his terror legions to attack critical infrastructure targets, such as bridges, communications towers, etc.

These documents show an organization that has encountered major problems with command and control, recruiting, retention, logistical supply chains, and morale due to the surge of US and Iraqi forces and the rise of the Sunni Awakening and Sons of Iraq. Successful organizations do not change their strategy in midstream. The US was in this position at the end of 2006, and had to change its plans from drawing down and turning over security to the Iraqis to a new counterinsurgency strategy led by General David Petraeus.

As Andy, myself and others indicated in the last symposium on the topic of whether al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated, this fight is not over. While al Qaeda in Iraq's numbers have gone from 12,000 fighters to 3,500, those remaining fighters must be accounted for. Al Qaeda and its puppet Islamic State of Iraq leadership is still on the loose. And foreign fighters, while their number has been reduced from about 120 to 40 entering Iraq per month, are still entering the country. Al Qaeda may adjust its strategy accordingly and re-establish itself if the reconciliation process fails.

These documents tell us the change in US strategy over the course of 2007 has had a very real effect on the security situation and al Qaeda's ability to operate. We must follow this success by continuing to pursue al Qaeda's networks where they still have some measure of support (southern Arab Jabour, the Salahadin-Kirkuk-Ninewa region, and Diyala). Drawing down to quickly and turning over security to Iraqi security forces before they are ready will only sacrifice the hard-fought gains accomplished over the past year plus.

Schippert: Bill makes two excellent points: The fight is not over, and that we must resist the political temptation and domestic pressure to reduce our forces in Iraq too quickly. Secretary of Defense Gates himself has stated this in recent days as well.

I would advise against an outright statement that these documents represent al-Qaeda's concession of defeat. Defeat is terminal, the end. That is not the case here. What they do reveal from the very lips of al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq is that they are having their lunch handed to them and in the process of being defeated.

This flies directly in the face of significant Washington elected officials' recent claims already this week that the “surge” is “a failure.” If our military commanders are not to be trusted, and Iraqis are not to be trusted, perhaps the cries of al-Qaeda leadership in Iraq can be trusted that our change in strategy, tactics and manpower is anything but a failure. Al-Qaeda is not yet defeated, but its ability to operate, maintain havens acquired through brutal force, and sustain itself are all diminished to the point of critical mass.

It's like a brushfire. Killing the flames is critically important, but to walk away leaving embers smoldering is to invite re-ignition. And we – or more importantly, Iraqi civilians – truly need not endure the al-Qaeda inferno twice only to fight the flames again, do we?

Al-Qaeda has demonstrated that its embers are present, though they are forced to find new fuel in creative and sinister ways. The lack of capable and willing human resources is precisely what precipitated the murder of two mentally disabled girls stricken with Down Syndrome. An al-Qaeda terrorist working at a psychiatric hospital facilitated strapping bombs to their unwitting bodies and sending them into a marketplace they regularly frequented, killing scores when the girls were detonated.

The moral question that must be faced square on is one in which we ask ourselves: Is this what we are going to leave Iraq to?

Many Iraqis took to fighting al-Qaeda before our shift in strategy one year ago. But it did not become the decisive popular movement it is today until Iraqis felt secure enough that we at least were not going to leave them, their towns, their neighborhoods and their families exposed and unprotected against the barbarous. We are not everywhere in Iraq. We are, however, in more places than we have ever been simultaneously and we are in pursuit.

What happens to the confidence and psyche of the Iraqi people when we begin calling off the pursuit and drawing it down before the wolves are gone or crippled beyond safe regeneration? Al-Qaeda is not yet defeated. I don't hear any Iraqis celebrating their final defeat just yet. We are on such a course, however, but let's hold the celebration or declaration. I suspect the families in Baghdad, Ramadi, Baqouba, Mosul and elsewhere will let us know when that is appropriate.

McCarthy: My principal observation would be this. I heard a tape of Speaker Pelosi being interviewed (over the weekend, I believe). When it was pointed out to her (even before disclosure of the information Bill and Steve address today) that the surge had been hugely successful, she had the temerity to say that the surge was a failure, just as the Left insists the entire Iraq enterprise was a failure — even as the evidence mounts of ties between Saddam and jihadists, of the fact that Saddam had every expectation that he would get out from under the sanctions had we not acted to remove him, and of his full intention to ramp up weapons production once the sanctions regime collapsed.

This is important because Speaker Pelosi insisted that the purpose of the surge was to give Iraqis the space to make the political progress necessary for its elected government to be successful. With due respect, that was not the purpose of the surge. That was a hoped for residual benefit of the surge. The purpose of the surge was to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq — or, more urgently, to ensure that we were not defeated by al Qaeda in Iraq, which would have been a catastrophe on many levels. The war on terror is, primarily, about destroying radical Islam's capacity to project power so that its networks are no longer a strategic (or, God forbid, an existential) threat to the American people. That is what we are fighting for.

The information we are now seeing shows that the surge continues to be extremely successful in moving us toward that goal. As my colleagues observe, though, we must keep the pressure on until we obtain that goal. We cannot win the war in Iraq, but we can defeat al Qaeda in Iraq and make its reemergence unlikely. This would be a humiliating defeat for our enemies, which is something we can use to demoralize their operatives, and discourage other recruits, as we go forward. The point is: This is about the security of the American people, and it's important to think and talk about it in those terms.

Roggio: Andy makes a great point about the purpose of the surge. It was launched to prevent our defeat at the hands of both al Qaeda and the Iranians. Political reconciliation is a indicator of success – without it, the sectarian violence stoked by al Qaeda and the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army would tear the country apart and use it to further their ends: al Qaeda would use the rump Sunni state as a launchpad into the Middle East; Iran would expand its sphere of influence eastward, dominate the southern oilfields, threaten Saudi Arabia, and jeopardize the world's access to oil. Both parties would benefit from a humiliating US defeat and eventual withdrawal from the strategic region.

But, that being said, the “surge” has resulted in political reconciliation. It just hasn't occurred in the form of a law – yet. The turning of Sunni public opinion and the willingness of the government to incorporate Sunni groups into the security forces is the foundation of reconciliation, and is worth more than any meaningless law passed by the Iraqi parliament. That Speaker Pelosi cannot recognize this speaks volumes of her understanding of the situation on the ground.

Steve is absolutely correct about the immoral component of al Qaeda's use of children and the mentally disabled. I was deeply dismayed when I saw the press reports and even Multinational Forces Iraq refer to the two mentally disabled women who were used in the recent bombings in Baghdad as “suicide bombers.” This label is incorrect. The term implies they willingly knew what they were doing – it puts them in the same category as so-call 'martyrs' who intentionally kill themselves to kill others. Those innocent women were used in an act so perverse no name exists for it.

Steve asks “Is this what we are going to leave Iraq to?” Rightfully so. I don't like to use political terms such as Left, Right, Liberal, or Conservative as they are over-generalized. But if refusing to fight people who purposefully use innocents to deliver bombs and hoping for the Iraqi nation to descend into a civil war is “liberal” then the word has no meaning.

Schippert: There is no going back, there is no turning back the clock. The issue of the path to Iraq and the wisdom of its choice is academic and serves the purpose of future engagements. Such debate – criticism or praise – has absolutely no bearing on the future conduct of the war in Iraq. None. We are there. It is upon us.

I say this because in every debate, the subject of what to do today is always couched in what President Bush did or didn't do in 2003, what Secretary Powell did or didn't say, and how Secretary Rumsfeld did or didn't direct. Of course, in short order, the even less cognitively inclined offer up the dreaded “H” word and Vice President Cheney triumphantly. I just shake my head.

I cede them that, just for sake of argument. But the mass graves we are unearthing are no longer from the Saddam Hussein era, and al-Qaeda prisons with torture rooms have been discovered and raided more regularly than should be comfortable, to say the least. When al-Qaeda were evicted from Ramadi in Anbar and converged onto Baquba in Diyala province, teens who did not submit to conscription were crucified in public as an example of what happens when al-Qaeda gives an unheeded order. Iraqis have witnessed al-Qaeda literally baking the child of a resistant family in order to intimidate an entire village into submission.

And we are there now, with the ability to end this nightmare. And the Iraqis are standing up – Sunni and Shi'a – to fight the fight alongside the might of our magnificent warriors. Are we to abandon them now? What moral stance are we then taking? The blank stare and dead silence you get from anti-war debaters is their moment of truth, one which they may well disregard as soon as you break your gaze. But gaze you must. And often.

For they will likely never have to look Iraqis in their eyes as they leave their villages behind, disappearing into the horizon and descending into …something much worse. No. That unsettling chore is the one they prefer left to the warriors who gave those villages hope in the first place.

Every debate encountered with regard to Iraq must be properly framed in the here and now, not in how we got there. It is 2007, not 2003. And the misery or opportunity is what we will leave them. And one leads to the defeat of al-Qaeda's claimed primary battlefield. The other, well, doesn't.

McCarthy: I part company with my colleagues a bit here. I think it is crucially important that we do not cede to the anti-war side the history of the Iraq mission. As what Bill and Steve have described attests, there is a different war going on in Iraq than the one that is being reported — or, better, not reported — here at home. The media have the same bias as the anti-war Left. Consequently, once the surge started to have positive effects, the war dropped from the headlines and top stories — it was only “news” when it was a tool for claiming the Bush was escalating an unpopular war. Similarly, even as the evidence (which I discussed above) has gotten firmer to support the justification for removing Saddam Hussein, the received wisdom in our country has congealed that the invasion was, at best, a mistake, or worse, built on a tissue of lies and the manipulation of intelligence.

History is important. The heroic work that our troops are doing now will not be remembered by Americans as isolated incidents of bravery. It will be put in a context. The framework for how Iraq is regarded involves how we found ourselves there every bit as much as how we leave the place. And that crucially involves how we can show we advanced the cause of American security.

Of course al Qaeda is barbarian. Is anyone really surprised that savages who would smash airliners loaded with innocent people into skyscrapers loaded with innocent people would, it turns out, exploit the mentally disabled to carry out more murders of innocents? But al Qaeda is savage every place it operates, not just in Iraq. And even if al Qaeda were factored out of the equation, there are aspects of life in the Islamic world — honor killings, tribal warfare, discrimination against women and non-Muslims, sharia punishments and the like — that Americans would still find reprehensible. We are in Iraq so naturally we react with horror to al Qaeda's atrocities in Iraq. We empathize with the Iraqis because, again, we are there and we have worked closely with them. But does that mean we should repeat the Iraq approach in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia or other places where al Qaeda operates?

I believe we are learning what we should have known from the start: that democracy building is a long-term, ground-up, iffy proposition — the work of generations. The American people are not going to support a mission like that again, even if they remain patient in Iraq because we are there and, once there, we have try to succeed. Our primary concern is that al Qaeda be defeated — not just in Iraq, but everywhere. Iraqi political reconciliation is low on our list of priorities. The endurance of Americans' patience and willingness to sacrifice in Iraq is dependent on two things, and neither of them involves the degree of savagery used by al Qaeda or misery endured by the Iraqis. Those two things are the perceived rightness of our cause and the perception of how much the mission makes Americans safer. Getting the history right is central to that perception. That, indeed, is why it's so fascinating to study this new information.

FP: Bill Roggio, Andy McCarthy and Steve Schippert, thank you for joining this special edition of Frontpage Symposium.