Congress & The Jihad

In March 2004 Al Qaeda won its first parliamentary election in Europe.
It installed the trailing candidate José Luis Zapatero as prime minister of Spain.
It clinched this victory just 3 days before the election by exploding 10 bombs causing the death of 191 people and the wounding of 1,700 others.
The grateful prime minister quickly repaid his election backers by withdrawing his country’s 1,300 troops from Iraq.

On November 7th 2006 Al Qaeda looks set to win its first Congressional election.
This time Al Qaeda’s campaign strategy has shown itself somewhat earlier; a steady but deliberate boost in the body count of American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan as the election approaches. It is daunting to think what peak this may reach by the eve of the election.

In the past, the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist agencies have been content to simply scare off foreign troops with dastardly acts of wholesale terror. Like the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 which left 240 American servicemen dead and 40 others wounded. Despite Vice President Bush’s statement that America ‘would not be cowed by terrorists’ all US troops were pulled out within 6 months.

This time Al Qaeda is gunning for the US congress.
But why fly a plane into the capitol building, if you can defeat Bush through the ballot box?
Why hijack an aircraft in the sky when you can hijack votes on the ground?
Even now, the very fear of a GOP defeat is forcing the Bush administration into seeking some kind of exit strategy in Iraq.

Virtually everyone is agreed that the Iraq policy has failed, in that it is getting nowhere.
My personal view is that it was right for the US to remove Saddam, as a tyrant to his own people and a clear threat to world peace. Being firmly of the view that ‘Arabs don’t do democracy’ I was pleasantly surprised that the coalition managed to organise a free election. But I can’t see this freedom lasting, especially if the coalition withdraws.

The fact that the Iraq policy is stalled does not necessarily mean that the only sensible option is to withdraw. However much enmity there may be for America in the region, such a retreat would betray all those who seek freedom from tyranny. They will never again trust the West.

In particular, such an open abandonment of desperate people on the very cusp of freedom would totally undermine the chances of any popular uprising against the mullahs in Teheran. That remains the best and most risk-free way of restoring freedom to the people of Iran and neutralising its nuclear threat. But when the time comes for Iranian students to stand before the tank-treads they need to be certain that the free world will not abandon them in their hour of need. Nothing will deflate them more than America turning its back on Iraq. And nothing will empower them more than an American president who sticks to his promises and damn the pollsters.

If America beats a hasty retreat, it is almost certain that radical fundamentalists will emerge from the ensuing civil war, in control of Iraq with all its oil wealth. With support from Iran in the East, this new Axis member will quickly overrun its Western neighbour Jordan and finish Abdullah and his Hashemite Kingdom. Then, at last, the Islamists will have Israel completely encircled in an arc of terror stretching from Lebanon, to Syria, to the new Islamic Republic of Jordan and of course Palestinian Gaza.

Yes, the Iraq policy has stalled. And yes, something dramatic needs to be done.
But failure cannot be an option.
The answer is not to bring troops home, but to send out an equal number of fresh troops to double the forces of freedom in the frontline of the war on terror.
And then to win it.
That was of course the original objective.

Writing these lines from London, linked by tunnel and treaty to a continent of appeasement, I find it astonishing that Americans – least of all Jewish Americans - would allow Al Qaeda a congressional victory by empowering a Zapatero platform of retreat and withdrawal in voting Democrat in the coming election.

Americans have just a few precious days left to learn Spanish.
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This first appeared as an Op-Ed on 26 October in The Jewish Press

FOOTNOTE, a few days later ....

US VP Dick Cheney says Iraq violence increased to influence midterm elections

October 31, 2006, 9:34 PM (GMT+02:00)

He blamed al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents for raising the level of violence in Iraq “to break the will of the American people.” They are monitoring US public opinion via the internet, said Cheney, as the US death toll in Iraq passed 101 in October. Iraq is a hot issue in campaigning for the Nov. 7 election, in which the Republicans face the possible loss of their majority in one or both Houses of Congress.