"Kagan: I don’t think you can talk about percentages because people are trying
to make a false dichotomy here. The reason why we have a civil war in Iraq, the
reason why we have sectarian violence is because al Qaeda deliberately set out
to create and foment sectarian violence. It was the bombing of the Samarra
mosque in 2006, which set off this round of intense sectarian violence, which
only began to drop again in January as the surge began. And al Qaeda’s still at
it. They went after the minarets of the Samarra mosque not that long ago. So al
Qaeda, their whole strategy revolves around generating sectarian violence,
because that’s how they embed themselves in local communities in Iraq. The
notion that we could somehow fight al Qaeda without concerning ourselves with
sectarian violence completely misunderstands the realities on the ground. This
isn’t Afghanistan. These guys aren’t living in big training camps in the middle
of the desert, like they did in Afghanistan. They’re mingling with the
population and they’re using sectarian violence to force the population to
support them. If you don’t stop that dynamic, then talking about fighting al
Qaeda is just nonsensical."
While I might be missing his point the message I get from this is that Al Qaeda is taking advantage of the insecurity inside Iraq. They have created this insecurity by getting the two sides to fight each other. When one side gets attacked by the other, it allows the terrorists to come in and say that the Americans aren't doing enough to protect them and they need to fight with Al Qaeda. If we leave Iraq, and the country falls into choas, Al Qeada will blame the choas and the destruction on the Americans and use that as a tool to bring more Iraqis into their operation. If we leave tomorrow, and next year, we should leave Iraq as secure as we can, if we defeat Al Qaeda we are one step closer to that goal.
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