Eli Lake has written a tremendously important story in today’s New York Sun. Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi, leader of the Anbar movement that grew into an Iraq-wide effort to purge the country of al-Qaeda, is ready and willing to recreate his efforts on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
“Al Qaeda is an ideology,” Sheik Ahmad said. “We can defeat them inside Iraq and we can defeat them in any country.”
Forgive me for invoking Chris Matthews, but every time I read Sheik Ahmad’s quote I do feel a thrill going up my leg.
Would it not be the most fortuitous irony if the war maligned as a catastrophic detour in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden actually ended up birthing the means of Bin Laden’s capture? We now know that victory in Iraq is well within reach. We know that Sunni Awakening groups are rejecting Bin Ladenism. We know that the Maliki government is fighting Shiite extremism, and we know that political reconciliation is happening. The hope has been that a consensually governed Iraq, with a population opposed to tyranny and terror, would serve as a regional model for Muslim states still in the clutches of totalitarians and extremists. But the notion of Iraq as a true ideological and operational epicenter of Islamic anti-terrorism forces is a potential development so monumental that even the war’s most passionate advocates never toyed with the idea in public. Yet, it just might happen. Here’s more from the Sun:
Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi told The New York Sun that in April he prepared a 47-page study on Afghanistan and its tribes for the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Kabul, Christopher Dell. When asked if he would send military advisers to Afghanistan to assist American troops fighting there, he said: “I have no problem with this; if they ask me, I will do it.”
[…]
When Sheik Ahmad’s brother, Sheik Sattar, met with Mr. Bush in Anbar last fall, he told the president that he dedicated his victory over Al Qaeda to the victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On September 13, 2007, Sheik Sattar was assassinated by an improvised explosive device. Since then, his brother Sheik Ahmad has led the awakening movement.
There goes the other leg.
Sheik Ahmad calls President Bush “a brave man” and “a wise man” and when he gives public addresses he is introduced as a “friend of General Petraeus.” The Sheik is in Washington this week and he’s advocating for America’s continued operational assistance in Iraq. How I wish for a face-to-face encounter between Sheik Ahmad and Nancy Pelosi, so that the Speaker of the House can look this man in the eye and tell him about the failures of the war, the failures of the surge, the failures of the Iraqi government, the “goodwill” of the Iranians, and the legions of new terrorists created by the invasion.
