Justus For All

Certainly it is likley that insurgent forces have stepped up the tempo in Iraq over recent months with the U.S. elections in mind, and having obtained the result they presumably wanted, to have the U.S. respond by increasing its commitment in Iraq would doubtless be a devasting blow to their morale.

Do you have any authority to back up that statement?

It is based upon my own reasoning, although I do not think the reasoning difficult to follow or particularly amazing.

I don’t think that their is any disagreement that insurgent attacks have increased over the past few months. It is certainly not controversial that Iraqi insurgents are aware of U.S. elections, and there is plenty of reason to believe, not the least being their post-election statements that the outcome they wanted was the Democrats in power which they believe would force a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Connecting those facts into a unified narative does not require any particular analytical brilliance.

As to what the effect would be on the morale if the result the expected didn’t happen, that is speculation on my part, but I don’t think it unreasonable. Having obtained one’s desired results, at signifigant cost and then finding out that those results didn’t pan out, and were even detrimental, after all would certainly present a chanllenge to anyone’s spirit.

If you think I am being unreasonable in this analysis, feel free to let me know and explain why.

I don’t think that their is any disagreement that insurgent attacks have increased over the past few months.

What are you talking about? The Mahdi army? Al Qaeda in Mesopatamia? Ba’athists? To the extent that violence has gotten worse in Iraq in recent months it seems to be less calculating “insurgents” than a rise in sectarian violence in general, inspired in great part by the bombing of the mosque in Samarra in February.

So I think that your leap is not, in fact, grounded in fact. You make the America-centric assumption that people in other countries know about our internal politics. But if you actually travel abroad and talk to a lot of people in the Middle East, they tend more toward the crude generalizations like, “the Jews control America.” But getting as nuanced as knowing the timing of congressional elections (and timing “an increase” in attacks months beforehand!), the parties at play in American politics, etc.? It fits into a Republican worldview, but with no authority to speak of, not in reality.

Who am I talking about, to some extent all of the above.

We are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. There have been increased operations since about august against U.S. troops, evidence of that is in the numbers of U.S. soldiers killed.

The notion that foreigners, especially those embroiled in combat against U.S. forces have no notion of U.S. politics is frankly, quite amusing. Certainly all of the Iraqi bloggers that I have read were aware of them. Here is a story from the Washington Post that gives and example of this:

After American warplanes killed al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June, his successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, called on followers to concentrate attacks on U.S. troops and Shiite militiamen, soldiers and police. In September, Masri urged every insurgent in Iraq to kill at least one American within 15 days.

The Egyptian-born Masri wanted redoubled attacks “to have a great effect on the American elections,” said Abu Islam al-Arabi, a local al-Qaeda leader reached by telephone Thursday in Anbar province.

I expect that other insurgent forces are equally savvy that increased violence this fall and a growing sense of failure in Iraq would empower the Democrats in their election struggle. Clearly, these groups want American forces to leave, and electoral results in America are a way to achieve that goal, which is impossible for them from a conventional military perspective.

HP, I don’t see where U.S. troops would be the targets of sectarian attacks, the official position of the U.S. military vis a vis the Sunni/Shiite divide being ostensibly one of neutrality.

What I find most interesting about your comment is that it is representative of the refusal of the left to believe it can be the target of Islamist psy-ops and propaganda.

I still have hope that the Democrats being in power will turn out to not be a gain for the insurgents in Iraq and terrorists elsewhere. I think that the vast majority of Democrats are just as patriotic as anyone else, and certainly don’t want our enemies to win. This conflict has become a political issue in the U.S., and I hope that with Democrats having some control of the levers of power it will become less political and a more unified stance can develop. If that unified stance is to give up though, I think we are in for a world of hurt in the future.