A deadly dance of death and resurrection.

In strategic terms, it is one of the weirdest juxtapositions and unintended campaign consequences that Bush ever cooked up. I mean obviously Bush did not suddenly decide he needed two fronts in the ME, and picked Iraq as the weakest nation to invade and occupy.

Strategically, the situation is rather interesting. Al Qaeda’s strongholds and popular support in Pakistan is uncontested. They got kicked from Sudan and Saudi Arabia and numberless other places, but the Pakistani tribal regions have given them sanctuary. (in return for boat loads of money of course) So what would have been a double envelopment by Iran and Pakistan upon the low population, devastated, and infrastructure wise weak Afghanistanis, has developed into an entirely different situation. Rather than Afghanistan having to defend against Iranian infiltrators and spies from the West, and Pakistani terroists from the South, Afghanistan just has to fight the Pakistanis. With the US working with the leader of Pakistan.

What eased the pressure on Afghanistan was Iraq. Given a choice between focusing on slitting the throat of Americans in Afghanistan and preventing a stable democracy in Iraq, Iran was forced to choose the latter. Not only was Iraq closer to the capital, Tehran, but Iraq also had more population, more wealth, and a hostile history with Iran.

So every terroist jihadist in the world, went to Iraq to kill Americans all day, and jihad all night. You’ve seen how hard Israel’s task of getting Hizbollah is. How do you kill terroists and smash their organizations if they hide behind civilians, and those civilians LOVE hizbollah and HATE you? It’s why Israel’s chances of ultimate victory are low.

I got one idea, why don’t you invite them to a battlespace of your choosing, and let them come to a land foreign to them, and hostile to foreigners? Iraq was great. The resources Al Qaeda could have used to support the Taliban against Karzai, are wasted against the US forces in Iraq. Not only does US forces learn how to fight a counter-insurgency and the language/culture, but the terroists are showing themselves so that we can finally bomb them. Sure, we could have gotten more with a longer invasion, but nobody can change that. What we can change is how many terroists we can kill in places like Fallujah. Iraq’s an interesting roach motel and it serves both long term strategic and logistical plans that most people don’t pay any attention to.

Afghanistan’s our back up base in case Iraq falls. Every plan should have a backup after all.