David Frum, offering some observations on this ninth anniversary of 9/11, believes the links between Iraq and global terrorism have been exaggerated:
'Remember how there was supposed to be a surge of rage against the governments who fought the Iraq war? Yet the worst violence occurred in France, which did not join the war. And even in France, Islamic extremist violence has abated since 2005, contained and defeated by effective police work.Al-Qaeda radicals carried out co-ordinated deadly bombings inside Saudi Arabia in 2005. Not since. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states now co-operate much more closely with the United States than ever before, including sharing financial information relating to terrorist networks. Terrorist incidents inside Iraq have tumbled by 90%, according to the Brookings Institutionâ??s Iraq Index, as more and more Iraqis have sided with the government and the coalition-backed security forces.
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This strikes me as an incredibly simplistic - not to mention shortsighted - analysis of the still to be determined byproducts of the Iraq war. A 90 percent drop in what was once a rather rare and distant occurrence in the lives of most Iraqis must bring little comfort and solace to those whom have lost friends and loved ones over there due to the invasion.
And a decrease in terrorist attacks - which, at one point, numbered in the thousands each month (pdf) - seems like a rather weak metric for success or failure in Iraq. It's difficult to determine, only seven years removed from the invasion, what the full effects of the war in Iraq will be. We do, however, know that many Jihadists honed their skills in Iraq; skills which were only later utilized in actual al-Qaeda havens, such as Yemen.
We also know that President Bush's rationale for the 2003 invasion - an invasion which David Frum helped package and frame for the American public - never actually materialized. The notion that Iraq would serve as a magnet, or "flypaper" for Jihadists, thus drawing them into Iraq and away from other terrorist fronts, proved to be absolutely false.
So while I'm certainly glad to hear that Mr. Frum is reconsidering Iraq's impact on global terrorism, I fear his retroactive caution may be about seven years too late.
(AP Photo)