Theres a very troubling

There’s a very troubling, but not very surprising article in today’s Times about the outward flow of jihadists from Iraq into neighboring countries. Lebanon, Jordan are cited as examples. But one could likely list all the neighboring states and Europe and the United States as destinations for fighters either trained in the Iraqi insurgency or wielding methods honed there against American troops.

On its face it is almost a storyline you might expect war supporters to embrace — Iraq as the central front in the ‘War on Terror’, a breeding ground of terrorism now spreading to other countries. Again we see the leitmotif of the president’s war on terror — evidence of the abject failure of his policies marshaled as evidence of the necessity of pursuing them.

We’re so far deep into this mess that sometimes I believe we’re past the point of argument. You look at the evidence and you either see it or you don’t. Or perhaps more agnostically, you look at the evidence and one of two completely contradictory narratives makes sense. Whichever is right, the assumptions brought to the issue are so divergent as almost to defy argument or debate.

At moments like this, a thought, actually an email, comes back into my head. I’ve referred to it a couple times over the years. But it was one TPM Reader TR sent in back on July 27th 2003, almost four years ago and only about four months after the war. This was back when what was then called the ‘flypaper’ theory of the Iraq War was first kicking into gear in the right-wing press.

From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To:
Subject:

Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 18:28:22 -0600
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Being based in Iraq helps us not only because of actual bases; but because the American presence there diverts terrorist attention away from elsewhere. By confronting them directly in Iraq, we get to engage them in a military setting that plays to our strengths rather than to theirs’. Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn’t always be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open.–Andrew Sullivan

Now that’s extraordinary. Kind of like saying “by having a dirty hospital, we fight germs on our terms,” or something ridiculous. Its not as if there’s a finite number of “terrorists”–chances are anyone fighting us in Iraq never would’ve thought twice about attacking us elsewhere before we invaded–we’re breeding germs is all. Part of the reason Saddam was so brutal was because he had plenty of people as brutal as he going after him all the time–now we’ve unleashed those forces against our troops. Has there yet been any sign that our real nemesis, Osama and al Qaeda, are in Iraq? No. What we’re really doing is diverting our resources while al Qaeda sits back and reaps the windfall of our distraction and formulates their next attack. What horrible logic to rationalize the continuing deaths of American soldiers caught up in a situation that had nothing to with al Qaeda, nuclear weapons, or anything else of significance.

TR, as you can see, starts by clipping a passage from Andrew Sullivan’s site. And Andrew’s moved a long way on these points over the last four years. I only include this now for the sake of completeness, to share with you the email in its entirety.

Of course, give it time, give it time. This was only four months into the war. And, as you know, eventually some folks in Iraq adopted the name al Qaida, namely al Qaida in Mesopotamia. So now we can say it’s al Qaida. And of course al Qaida, or whoever still owns the rights to the franchise, is happy to call it that too since it puffs up their own organizational profile.

TR‘s point isn’t one that others haven’t made. But at the time I got his note it struck me as so hilarious and bitingly on point, hilarious because it stated in this unvarnished fashion, in disbelief, the essential ridiculousness of the premise of the entire fight. And while it seems obvious, the argument he was attacking really is still the central one animating our policy in Iraq.