The Central Front

As Thomas Joscelyn observes in the Weekly Standard, Democratic presidential hopefuls are unanimously of the opinion that the war in Iraq has little to do with defeating al Qaeda.  That's not what al Qaeda thinks.

Here's Bin Laden in December, 2004:

I now address my speech to the whole of the Islamic nation: Listen and understand. The issue is big and the misfortune is momentous. The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation. It is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.

The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries; the Islamic nation, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. It is either victory and glory or misery and humiliation. The nation today has a very rare opportunity to come out of the subservience and enslavement to the West and to smash the chains with which the Crusaders have fettered it.

Mr. Joscelyn's offers a slew of quotes from Bin Laden and Zawahiri, in addition to the one above, to make the point that al Qaeda really is in Iraq and has been there all along.  He concludes,

...the war raging in Iraq--let us be clear--is certainly not "all al Qaeda, all the time," as some critics now accuse the Bush administration of believing. But the idea that the Iraq war has nothing to do with al Qaeda is demonstrably false.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri's own words tell us that the American project in Iraq jeopardizes everything their group stands for: These two top leaders of al Qaeda have promised the people of the Middle East that al Qaeda will protect Muslim soil from the "Crusader-Zionist" invaders, even if the region's rulers will not, and even if doing so meant cooperating with the "apostate" Saddam.

Zawahiri believes that Iraq is al Qaeda's best opportunity for establishing a true Islamist state in the heart of the Middle East. Democracy does not belong in the region, the two men say, and only an Islamic government based on sharia law is acceptable in Iraq. The mujahedeen will drive the Americans out of Iraq using the same tactics they used to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. America's leaders and soldiers are weak, al Qaeda says. They are looking for a way to run from the fight in Iraq, and they will do so, bin Laden exults, while the "whole world is watching."

The whole world, that is, except the leading Democratic candidates for president.

I disagree with that last comment of his.  I think those Democratic candidates are watching, but they seem to be under the mistaken apprehension that an American defeat is a Bush/Republican defeat.  Unfortunately it's gotten to the point that an American victory is clearly a defeat for the Democrats.  That is something they know with a certainty.

Comments

[Frank]

There is no question that taking credit for instability in Iraq is a talking point in Al Qaeda's propoganda manuel.

So why are you using it?

[Mike]

THERE IS HOPE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!

The above article is just what you would expect of a typical liberal. It doesn't make any sense.

The average number of attacks last June was at its highest level since May 2003. The sectarian power struggle cannot be fought to a conclusion until we leave and a functioning government forms.

First, some terminology.

I make no differentiation between liberals and neocon liberals who everybody knows are Trotskyites.

Nor is it correct to say that just because Reagan had some of these people in his administration that he would have let them hijack the party.

But there is some hope for the Republican Party. We might get rid of them and they might leave.

Here’s a couple of quotes from King Trotskyite Bill Kristol -- editor of the weekly standard.

"If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the New York Times.

“If you read the last few issues of the Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives."

Yes, it does. But excuse me Bill, the right phrase is not “traditional” conservatives. Rather, it is simply conservatives period -- you know like Ronald Reagan and Casper Weinberger?

Of course, conservatives believe in a strong defense driven by well thought-out arguments. Liberals just to put together a bunch of incoherent statements.

Please, by all means, take you and your neocon liberal Trotskyite friends back to the Democrat party where all of this silly “ideology” started.