I freely admit that I am a horrible chess player.  It seems to be enough that I fill my head with my own strategy of how to attempt to take out my opponent that I can’t recognize the strategy he or she is countering with until it gets to me and the game is over.  Usually only after I have already lost am I able to look back on the game and see what was coming and how I could have altered my plan and played a winning—or at least better—game.  Chess is excellent, however, and has been played by the great warrior minds throughout history as a way to hone one’s ability to outwit an enemy.

           We have now reached a time in the war in Iraq where we can see an end coming.  The Iraqi officials have requested that the U. S. troops leave within a certain time period, and the U. S. has agreed to accommodate that request.  This is a logical time, now that a reasonably competent Iraqi force is in place to take over from here.  So perhaps now is an appropriate time to take a look back and see what was really accomplished there; to see how this game of chess was played by our strategists and how it was connected to the more general war on terror.

           Critics have said that it is the fault of the U. S. that Al-Qaeda came to Iraq in the first place, and that there were no operatives in that country until our troops showed up.  But it could be that that is the whole point.  It is very clear that these extremists have no sense of decency or honor, and that their blind zeal for a misguided faith leads them to do things that defy any definition of sanity or morality.  At the risk of being contumelious, I firmly believe that Bin Laden’s thick-headed lemmings need to be brought to a place where their lack of any sort of Godly conscience can be exposed before they can recruit more brainless zealots into their fold.  By contrast, the exceptional genius of the U. S. strategists can easily be seen when the right question is asked.

Multiple choice

           I’ll express this in a simple question with a familiar format: If you could have a choice of where to engage Al-Qaeda, where would you do it?

A.  On American soil – come on, really—how many 9-11’s do you want?

B.  In their own home territory – by this you would mean the Tora Bora region along the northern border of Afghanistan and Pakistan; the place known to have had training camps and most likely Bin Laden’s hideout.  This appears to be the approach that the new administration has toward the enemy.  However, it is naïve and has certainly proven to be problematic so far; Al-Qaeda has already shown itself to be a quite mobile and elusive group.  U. S. troops have been there for over seven years now and have yet to find many of the upper level leaders.  Let us not forget that they know their own turf well enough to keep us guessing; and also let us not forget that this is a major part of the way they defeated the Soviet army in the 1980’s.  And we are not fighting an enemy with territory—this is a global problem which disregards national boundaries.  With cells all over the world, it is also conceivable that the terrorists we seek could be scattered anywhere on the planet, carefully disguised and masquerading as actual people.

C.  Go from place to place around the world and take out the cells.  This is undoubtedly where answer B above will eventually lead anyway.  But how practical would it be to spread our forces out so thinly?  Do we really have enough military, CIA operatives, and other special forces to accomplish this?  And once we clear a particular location of its vermin, would we be able to keep them from returning once we have moved on?  We have already demonstrated that we are having trouble sniffing out those who are in the U. S. currently, so how will we fare in even the friendliest of nations?  And what about those nations that might not wish to cooperate with this venture?  If the flak over the action in Iraq has been so boisterous, what would have happened if we had gone into Canada, Germany, or Indonesia to search for Al-Qaeda?

D.  Pick a neutral country in the Middle East.  It’s OK if it’s a place that doesn’t have much of an Al-Qaeda presence in the first place, nor does it need to be a regime that supports them—but it does need to be somewhere where we have to send our military for other purposes anyway.  Perhaps it’s a place where our forces have been recently (say, ten to twenty years ago at most) and we still know a little about the area.  Maybe it should be a place where the government hasn’t been cooperative with the United Nations; a place where the dictating despot ought to be restrained; a place where the liberating of a populace would be a noble project.  Then, once our forces are in place, the terrorists can be drawn in from all over the globe to come and pester the U. S. army.  Then, once the “major” combat is over and the objectives directly concerning the nation in question have been met, the “secondary” goals (the “mop-up” afterward) can include the engagement of the original terrorist problem.

           Do I really think that the secret purpose of the war in Iraq was to lure Al-Qaeda from their hiding holes and sucker them into a new place where they can imagine that they are helping to liberate a nation of their own people from the heinous sin of non-fanaticism?  Maybe it just sort of worked out that way—as a temporary way to occupy the attention and effort of the extremists while much of the rest of the world remained relatively safe.  Critics seem to think that Al-Qaeda is only getting stronger because of their anger over the situation in Iraq.  However, American resolve has remained strong to this point, and the enemy has shown us that it is not really stronger in any way, shape or form.  They are more drained of resolve and resources, and yet they seem to have a false sense of continuing relevance.  We know that the war on terror will continue and that the current lull in Al-Qaeda activity is only temporary; but we also know that the action in Iraq has done significant harm to the enemy and that our troops, no matter how ragged and war-weary they have become, have once again done for us a tremendous and honorable service.