If you wanted to design a recruiting poster for Al Qaeda and other extremist Islamic groups in the Middle East and around the world, you couldn't have done a better job than Tony Snow, Defense Secretary Gates, and Gen. Odierno who all suggested last week that the future of the American military presence in Iraq is analogous to Korea where the U.S. has maintained military bases for over 50 years.
The origins of Osama Bin Laden's war on the United States was the creation of permanent U.S. military bases in the Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. He accuses the United States of wanting to reinvent the Crusades, colonize the Arab world and steal its oil. He recruits militants by promising to use terror against Americans to drive US forces out of the Arab homelands.
Now the White House and the Pentagon are saying that Bin Laden is right. America's goal was not just to eliminate Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, overthrow the tyranny of Sadaam Husein, and bring "democracy" to the Iraqi people. It's goal is to maintain a permanent military presence in the heart of the Arab world and to control Iraq's oil.
Snow, Gates and Odierno have provided extremist Islamic groups everything they need to recruit new terrorists to attack Americans in order to help drive the foreign "crusaders" out of Arab lands.
Moreover, the Korean analogy is completely inaccurate. The Korean War was a conventional war fought between regular armies, the U.S. and South Korean army on one side, and the Chinese and North Korean Army on the other. It ended in an armistice dividing Korea along the 38th parallel. The 30,000 American troops who remain stationed in South Korea are not there because they could do much themselves to combat an invasion from the North. They are there as a so-called "tripwire." If the North Korean army again crossed the 38th parallel and engaged U.S. troops in combat, it would be deemed a declaration of war on the United States, which would then feel entitled to bring the full force of its military might, including nuclear weapons, against North Korea. American troops in South Korea are intended as a deterrent to a conventional war.
In contrast, Iraq is a multi-faceted civil war between a myriad of armed sectarian militia using small weapons and low-tech improvised devices like IEDs to kill each other and fight against the American occupation. The situation there is completely unlike the situation in Korea is or has ever been. Does the Bush administration really think America can be the policeman of Iraq for the next 50 years or that the American people would tolerate it?
By projecting the half-century long American military presence in Korea as a model for the future of the American army in Iraq, Snow, Gates and Odierno have done tremendous harm to the long-term struggle to reduce the danger of Islamic extremism. It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Who knows how many more Islamic terrorists will be recruited by advocating such a strategy.
Long-term American military presence in Iraq is not fighting "the central front in the war on terror." It is one the greatest motivators for recruiting more radical Islamic terrorists.