Aces Full of Links: The Myth of Al Qaeda

June 30, 2006

The Myth of Al Qaeda

The ultimate tragedy of the Iraq war was not only that it diverted the U.S. from the knockout blow against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan—the deaths of bin Laden and Zawahiri would likely have persuaded most jihadis it was wiser to focus on the near enemy—but that Iraq also altered the outcome of Al Qaeda’s internal debate, tipping it in bin Laden’s favor. “Iraq ended that debate because it fused the near and the far enemy,” as Arquilla puts it succinctly. America ventured into the lands of jihad and willingly offered itself as a target in place of the local regimes. And as a new cause that revived the flagging Al Qaeda movement. It is, no doubt, bin Laden’s greatest victory.

When some people say Bush built up the threat of al Qaeda, they mean he took a truth and built up a useful fiction around it. In a sense, the administration’s mishandling of international affairs has created new threats. That’s a different kind of “building up.” But I think both are true.