Stardate 20040318.1349

(Captain's log): Vinod wrote this to me:

Thought I might suggest a topic for you that several folks I've been debating with keep bringing up. I figured that I'm clearly not doing justice to the topic and thought I'd bat it over to you. The core question is:

Would Al Qaeda have been shut down sooner / more thoroughly if Iraq hadn't drawn our attention and resources?

For example, some contend (though not I) that the bombings in Spain would be less likely to have happened IF we'd spent more resources keeping Al Qaeda on the run.

There are several levels on which this question can be discussed. To begin with, it's always hazardous to discuss what-ifs, as I explained here:

Evaluating what-if's is always perilous. Once you permit yourself to make changes to history, you can demonstrate that any outcome was possible just by adding as many more what-ifs as are needed to make it come about. So it's sometimes interesting to speculate about such things, but not always, because the speculations often prove more about your what-ifs than they do about any real historical possibilities.

So ultimately the only honest answer to the question Vinod has faced is that there's absolutely no way to know for sure.

A different level of answer is to evaluate probabilities and to consider the most likely what-if. The answer on that level is "no."

There is reason to believe that in fact the process of pursuing al Qaeda would not have been any faster or more successful if we had not invaded Iraq. The struggle against al Qaeda involves different resources, and it wasn't actually necessary to divert any resources from the shadow war against al Qaeda in order to invade Iraq.

In fact, it's arguable that the invasion of Iraq may have had the opposite effect, and reduced the number of al Qaeda attacks elsewhere. For one thing, the invasion of Iraq, and Saddam's capture while hiding in a septic tank, led to Qaddafi's decision to capitulate in December. His decision appears to have been genuine, and Libya has totally opened the books to the UK and US. Part of that was exposure of Libya's involvement in a furtive multi-nation effort to develop nuclear weapons. Another part which has gotten less publicity involves Libyan intelligence giving us everything they have about various terrorist groups in the Islamic world, and it is virtually certain some of that information has helped us in the shadow war against al Qaeda.

A more important consequence of the invasion of Iraq was that it has served as a "honey pot" for Islamic militants. Militants and resources which could have been applied elsewhere by al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups have instead gone to Iraq to attack our military, which is best prepared to defend itself and to destroy those who attack.

David Warren was among the first to point out this positive consequence of the invasion, which he referred to as "flypaper":

The U.S. occupation of Iraq has done more to destabilize Iran than the ayatollahs could hope to do in Iraq; and then something. This "something" has befuddled the various "experts" on regional security, trapped within their Pavlovian assumptions. They notice that the U.S. forces in Iraq have become a new magnet for regional terrorist activity. They assume this demonstrates the foolishness of President Bush's decision to invade.

It more likely demonstrates the opposite. While engaged in the very difficult business of building a democracy in Iraq -- the first democracy, should it succeed, in the entire history of the Arabs -- President Bush has also, quite consciously to my information, created a new playground for the enemy, away from Israel, and even farther away from the United States itself. By the very act of proving this lower ground, he drains terrorist resources from other swamps.

This is the meaning of Mr. Bush's "bring 'em on" taunt from the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday, when he was quizzed about the "growing threat to U.S. forces" on the ground in Iraq. It should have been obvious that no U.S. President actually relishes having his soldiers take casualties. What the media, and U.S. Democrats affect not to grasp, is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians, both in Iraq and at large. The sore thumb of the U.S. occupation -- and it is a sore thumb equally to Baathists and Islamists, compelling their response -- is not a mistake. It is carefully hung flypaper.

If we had not invaded Iraq, what would they have attacked instead? How would those resources have been applied? There's no way of knowing, of course; and it might well not have been Spain. But it seems likely at least some of it would have been directed against the west.

It also seems likely that we have captured intelligence data in Iraq regarding al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Whether Saddam was actively cooperating with al Qaeda or not is irrelevant; Saddam's government still knew a l