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And now the bad news...
Sammy's gone â maybe underground, maybe to meet his maker, maybe to Russia, maybe to Syria, maybe to the Costa Brava. With him went all of the Baath Party but a handful of die-hards. Some of them are on their way to Tikrit for GötterdÀmmerung, or an Arab equivalent. Some are trying to pot a few Marines before going bye-bye, dying in the Lost Cause. But the Baath really went out with Saddam. It could come back, someday, but it will be through the back door, with a different name, wearing a false moustache and glasses. Probably it's dead.So the hard part's over, right? Not quite. The Baath was as much a mask as a political movement. With the mask off, we're face to face with the real enemy. It's an enemy we're already familiar with. In Afghanistan and Pakistan it wears an Islamic face, but it stalks the "Arab Street," too. Now we have to contend with the xenophobes, with the blind, unreasoning hatred that's not limited to the Islamic world, but which the Islamic world is trying to make its trademark. They're hardly even bothering with the pro forma Islamic posturings â the Syrians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Sudanese, and other sweepings are swarming to Iraq not to protect Iraq and the Iraqis, but to kill Americans. There's a desultory blessing given by the usual vicious holy men, who are more politicians than theologians, but the real driver is pure malevolence, hatred of America and Americans. The tactics used by the Masked Marauders are the same they use back home in Palestine or that they'd like to use if their repressive regimes in other places would let them. The link has always been there with Iraq, but because it's so much more obvious in Syria and Iran we tended to overlook it. But Sammy managed to pack in a bit of both terror worlds: Ansar al-Islam in the north, with its al-Qaeda roots and international wahhabi links, to terrorize the Kurds, and a deep and intricate involvement with the PLO and the Fatah thugs. Our battle goes from being "only" with al-Qaeda and its supporters, but encompasses al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Tanzim, and Hezbollah. It's all warf and woof on the same fabric. So now we can gradually switch from conventional war to dealing with the intifadah to come. Syria's already described our presence in Iraq as an "occupation" â shades of Paleostine. If we don't deal sternly with the flow of explosives and hard boys, if we don't cut the funding off at its source before it has a chance to get started, we're going to have a long drawn-out problem. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-04-10 |
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