This started out as a response to a Traveller Diary, but grew.

Replacing Saddam with a pro-US stooge along the lines of the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt is no solution in my books. It is the sort of policy responsible for the 9/11 catastrophe, accepting that coddling these dictators has the side-effect of fostering nihilist ideologies.

The elections in Iraq are probably the only unequivocal positive from the last 4 years, and unfortunately, it seems that anti-muslim sentiment is preventing them from being recognized as such. (Among some at the Forvm, at any rate.) First though, we have to split off those Islamists like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranians from those who follow the teachings of bin Ladenists. I don´t see this being done here. In fact I see the introduction of terminology such as the ¨war against militant islam¨ replacing ¨war against terror¨ as being designed to conflate the two. I see the former as populist, pro-business and anti-zionist. They are not a threat to the US. Hezbollah is not even up to dominating the local scene in Lebanon. However, they have deep roots and are not about to be easily exterminated. These former groups engage in terror operations, black marketeering, arm themselves, and train for and fight wars with Israel, but they are not to be confused with the bin Ladenists who are almost completely without popular support. We can see the experience of the Algerian Civil War in the 90s when secularists and nationalists fought the popular Islamists (FIS). The latter part of that conflict saw the extremist ¨Afghan Arab¨ GIA turning on the populists (and society as a whole) in violence very similar to what we see every day in Iraq. Iraq is another example of the division between Islamists, and more confirmation that THEY perceive the differences between themselves, even if we refuse to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_civil_war

Chris Hitchens is one of these refusers. He wrote a fairly decent piece a few weeks ago critical of Bush raising the Viet Nam analogy in a recent speech. At the end though he wrote that the US must remain in Iraq lest the al Qaeda there ¨become the new Khmer Rouge.¨ What Hitchens should know and I will tell you if you do not, is that the longer the US remained in Indochina, the more popular the Khmer Rouge became. They started as an obscure group of activists driven into the maquis. When they finally marched unopposed into the capital, they had the support of the peasantry, the royalists, and the streets were lined with cheering residents strewing flowers. I don´t see Iraq as being similar in any way. al Qaeda there has no constituency among the public. If the US forces left next week, the struggle to eradicate al Qaeda would continue, perhaps with more brutality, torture and repression if the experience of the Algerian Civil War is anything to go by, but I think Americans can take some comfort in the fact that their work would continue.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/09/01/200337677...

I claim that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a matter of increasing discomfort. This is where I fear the Khmer Rouge analogy holds some water. The danger is in al Qaeda is gaining a popular foothold among the notoriously independent tribals. The danger is compounded by the fact that a quick exit of NATO is not really an option. Unlike Iraq, there won´t be anyone left behind willing or able to clean up the mess.
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Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just