Young: Hype in two-part harmony

WACO, Texas — Give John McCain this much credit: He's not going around saying, "The insurgency is in its last throes."

Otherwise, to hear what he says about Iraq, you would think he'd been in a sound-proof room since Vice President Cheney was convincing Americans that Iraq was behind 9/11. That's something even President Bush finally admitted was false.

On the campaign trail, McCain routinely frames U.S, involvement in Iraq as a battle against al-Qaida, glossing over the realities of multi-factional civil war.

His tendency is so pronounced as to have elicited a New York Times story featuring experts' takes on it: "Critics say that in framing the war that way at rallies or in sound bites," McCain "is oversimplifying the hydra-headed nature of the insurgency in Iraq in a way that exploits the emotions that have been aroused" since 9/11.

Some of McCain's rhetoric is more fit for a caller to Rush Limbaugh's show than for someone with scads of foreign policy experience.

McCain has talked about al-Qaida taking over Iraq should U.S. troops withdraw. This splinter group of Sunni insurgents has about as much likelihood of doing that in a land now controlled by the Shia as does Saddam Hussein himself.

Al-Qaida in Mesopotamia didn't even exist in Iraq before U.S. troops invaded, creating a chaotic vacuum. Saddam was no friend of al-Qaida, we've come to understand, and vice versa.

Yes, al-Qaida operatives such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were in Iraq pre-9/11. They also were in Hamburg, Toronto, Los Angeles, Paterson, N.J., and Norman, Okla., to name just a few. U.S. forces have yet to administer "shock and awe" to any of the above terror strongholds.

If you're worried about havens for terrorists, well, it was Bush dynasty ally Saudi Arabia from where 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers hailed.

So what would become of al-Qaida in Iraq if U.S. troops withdrew? (Even having to put an "if" before "withdrew" tells us what is so grave with our situation, and how misled Americans were.)

If al-Qaida in Iraq acted like an enemy of a state that truly was a manifestation of the people's will and not a proxy of the United States military, the people would marginalize and neutralize it.

Some of these individuals would see no futher reason to expose their hides to danger and would get on with living. Others would continue to plot wherever they could roll a rug or have a rent house — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Phillipines, Great Britain and the dear old United States.

Our occupation of Iraq is not about al-Qaida. It's not about 9/11. It's not even about terrorism, except to the extent that our presence there seeds more terroristic passions.

Politicians should not be able to make these appeals without rejoinder. Spurious claims led this nation into a tar pit of misery and expense, claiming more American lives than the Sept. 11 attacks did. Nearly 100,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion.

Speaking of specious claims that can lead to war: Another Times story reports uncertainty over the scope of Iran's involvement in the Iraq insurgency inspite of increasingly warlike statements by the Bush administration.

It's clear that Iranian arms are being used in Iraq. But in that environment this is a little like tracing firearms from New York City to Newark, N.J.

The bipartisan wise men who made up the Iraq Study Group recommended direct talks with Iran and Syria toward bolstering Iraq's new government and marginalizing the insurgency. To those who say, "No way," consider that Iran played a broker in the cease-fire recently between Iraqi forces and the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Imagine: Talking it out, rather than fighting it out and then fighting on and on because if we stop fighting the "terrorists win." Imagine.

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald.