Today's Wild Geese: Foreign Fighters in the GWOT

[Bob's World]

Ok, I read Dr. Levitt's article. It adds nothing new, merely parroting the same old, flawed thinking. So I ask, does Dr. Levitt really just not get it? Or, in the alternative, does Dr. Levitt and the others who work so hard to shift the focus to state's like Syria have some alternative motivation, and what is it??

AQ is in Iraq for one reason: Because America is there. Fight us where we are, follow us where we go. Remain focused on their primary goal of taking down the Saudi Government and to break the will of the US to prop up the many governments of the region that we have invested so heavily in over the duration of the Cold War and work to sustain in a favorable relation with us today long after that conflict is over.

Foreign Fighters travel to Iraq for similar reasons to fight with AQ. They have poor governance at home that they want to change but believe that they cannot so long as that same governance is protected by the US; and they buy into the AQ mantra that step one is to break the support of the US to the region.


So, like flood waters flowing down hill to the sea; will blocking the path of least resistance stop the flood? No.. it merely changes the route.


This is not unlike a similar situation in US history. My family were Quakers back in the 17 and 1800s; and by the 1830s had migrated to southern Ohio and Michigan. There many of them became heavily involved in the very illegal business of smuggling escaped slaves out of the South up into the North and to Canada.

The governments and populaces of those states largely turned a blind eye to this illegal activity because they in some measure supported the moral cause for the action. Would strong sanctions against these states or populaces worked to shut down the pipeline? Perhaps, but at what consequence? Would targeting the otherwise solid citizens engaged in actually running the pipeline out of their strong religious and moral convictions shut down the pipeline? Doubtful, and again at what consequence?

After all the real problem was not the pipeline, but the governmentally supported institution of slavery; and the destination of Canada and the promise of freedom as powerful of a draw to enslaved people as the Ocean and gravity are to water.

We lacked the moral courage to make the hard decision to do the right thing then, and chose instead the harder path to the eventual unavoidable resolution of the problem.

We face a similar choice in the Middle East today. We can make the hard moral choice now; or ignore it and face the much harder inevitable resolution. I for one, vote for the former.

Men like Dr. Levitt are dangerous. Challenge them and their thinking. Challenge me and my thinking, but above all, think, and draw your own conclusions. The rhetoric is loud, but really does not stand up to close inspection.

[bourbon]

Or, in the alternative, does Dr. Levitt and the others who work so hard to shift the focus to state's like Syria have some alternative motivation, and what is it??

Dr. Levitt is a senior fellow The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was founded by AIPAC. While WINEP avoids AIPAC’s partisan image and was established to present a balanced view of the Middle East, its critics contend it a research arm of the pro-Israel lobby.

If one were looking for such an alternative motivation I would start there.

[Tom Odom]

Dr. Levitt is a senior fellow The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was founded by AIPAC. While WINEP avoids AIPAC’s partisan image and was established to present a balanced view of the Middle East, its critics contend it a research arm of the pro-Israel lobby.

If one were looking for such an alternative motivation I would start there.

yep