McCain, revving up the Zombie Patriots by re-linking the Iraq war and al-Qaeda:
“[M]y friends, if we left, they (al-Qaida) wouldn’t be establishing a base,” McCain said Wednesday. “They’d be taking a country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to al-Qaida.”
The idea that Al-Qaeda is in a position to take over Iraq, or would be if Uncle Sam ended the occupation, is not remotely credible.
Juan Cole:
the allegation that he makes about there being 'al-Qaeda in Iraq' that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. The Sunni Arabs are no more than 20% of the Iraqi population. How could a tiny minority from within them take over the whole?
The technical definition of al-Qaeda is operatives who have sworn fealty to Usama bin Laden. There were only a few hundred of them. I doubt whether more than a handful of such individuals are in Iraq.
So there isn't any "al-Qaeda" in Iraq in the technical sense. There are "Excommunicating Holy Warriors" (Takfiri Jihadis), i.e. devotees of political Islam who are violent and willing to deploy terror for political purposes. They declare other Muslims who disagree with them "not Muslims,"-- thus the "excommunicating" bit. But there are only a few hundred foreign fighters. A small minority of Iraqis has associated with them. They don't call themselves 'al-Qaeda in Iraq.' The major such group is "The Islamic State of Iraq." And to say that they have "bases" in Iraq is pretty grandiose. They have some safe houses and try to take and hold neighborhoods, so far with indifferent success.
The idea that this small minority of violent Muslim fundamentalists could take over Iraq is completely crazy. They haven't even been able to keep their toehold in Baghdad-- the Sunnis have been largely ethnically cleansed from the capital by Shiite militias.
So the Shiites would not allow an "al-Qaeda" takeover of Iraq. Neither would the Kurds. Nor would most Sunni Arabs (as in al-Anbar Province, where the Dulaim tribe is at daggers drawn with the Excommunicating Holy Warriors).
Moreover, the neighbors would not allow the radical Sunnis to take over. Iran would sit on its hands while Shiites were massacred in Baghdad? Secular Turkey would allow this development? Baathist Syria? Hashemite Jordan (which played a major role in tracking down and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi)?
McCain's assertions that "al-Qaeda" has a strong position in Iraq or has any chance of taking over the country if the US leaves are both inaccurate. One is an error, the other is a dark but insubstantial fantasy.
So, as Crooks and Liars points out, this raises a serious question: Is McCain abjectly pandering to the militaristic yahoos and knee-jerk jingoes who he hopes will constitute his base, or is is he genuinely, frighteningly clueless about the actual politics we have gotten ourselves mixed up with in Iraq?
McCain is going out of his way to act like an uniformed hack — on purpose — because the Republican Party’s far-right base is just confused enough to think AQI really could somehow take over Iraq. McCain doesn’t want to educate them; he wants to exploit their confusion and ignorance for electoral gain. It’s easier, in McCain’s case, for voters to be wrong — an informed voter is less likely to support him.
But I’m not at all sure why we should assume that McCain really does know what he’s talking about. He’s offered precious little evidence of it. McCain was wrong before the invasion (he said the conflict would be short and easy); he was wrong at the start of the occupation (he supported the Rumsfeld strategy and said we simply needed to “stay the course”); and he’s been wrong about the surge (he predicted widespread political reconciliation, none of which has happened).
As recently as November 2006, McCain couldn’t even talk about his own opinions on the war without reading prepared notes on the subject. As recently as March 2007, McCain was embarrassing himself by insisting that Gen. Petraeus travels around Baghdad “in a non-armed Humvee” (a comment that military leaders literally laughed at, and which CNN’s Michael Ware responded to by saying McCain’s credibility “has now been left out hanging to dry.”)
So, how do we know McCain really “knows better”? Is it unreasonable to at least entertain the possibility that the senator simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and that his reputation for expertise is a media-hyped mirage? At this point, the difference between a politician who gets Iraq wrong on purpose to make right-wing activists happy, and a politician who gets Iraq wrong accidentally is fairly small.
PAF: Either way, if McCain wins, we all lose.
