September 27, 2006

So it turns out that the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism does confirm what we’ve been saying all along: that the Iraq War is fueling terrorism.

A lot of the news reports said that the estimate listed “the Iraq jihad” as one of the “four underlying factors [that] are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement,” which is “increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.”

But if you read the relevant declassified passage closely, you’ll see that Iraq plays a role in three of the four underlying factors.

The first factor is “entrenched grievances.” This includes a sense of “injustice” and “fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness.” The Iraq War certainly has fueled this fear. It is the very essence of Western domination. And the round up of thousands of Iraqi men and the torture at Abu Ghraib reinforced “anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness.”

The second factor is “the Iraq jihad” itself. Bingo.

The third factor is “the slow pace of reforms.” That one doesn’t apply.

But the fourth factor is “pervasive anti-U.S. sentiment among most Muslims.” Again, the Iraq War contributes to this sentiment.

So three of the four factors, identified by our intelligence communities, relate to the Iraq War.

How Bush can then turn around and say that we wouldn’t “see a rosier scenario, with fewer extremists joining the radical movement,” if we weren’t in Iraq is not only beyond me but beyond his own intelligence experts.

And it’s also beyond General Musharraf of Pakistan, who told Jon Stewart later the same day that the Iraq War “has led certainly to more extremists and terrorism around the world.”

If you read the declassified portions of the document printed in the New York Times on September 27, two other things pop out.

One is the dog that didn’t bark, and that is the omission of any mention of U.S. support for Israel against the Palestinians. This may be the biggest entrenched grievance in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It is a constant supplier of “anti-American sentiment,” a seemingly inexhaustible source of “anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness.” If the National Intelligence Estimate, in its entirety, omits mention of this problem, then the United States government is woefully ill served by the director of national intelligence. (The estimate was written prior to Israel’s reoccupation of Gaza and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Both have provided additional fuel for the jihadists.)

The other aspect is especially noteworthy—and alarming—for progressives. And that is the document’s inclusion of “anti-globalization” as a source of terrorism.

“Anti-U.S. and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies,” the document states. “This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack U.S. interests.”

Those of us who are “leftist” and who belong to the “anti-globalization” movement are put on notice. We are now terrorist suspects in the eyes of the U.S. intelligence community.