Wargaming a choice of losing in Iraq

Rowan Scarborough:

The CIA this month conducted a simulation of how the Iraq war affects the global jihadist movement, and one conclusion was that a U.S. loss would embolden al Qaeda to expand its ranks of terrorists as well as pick new strategic targets, according to sources familiar with the two-day exercise.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield confirmed to The Washington Times yesterday that the simulation took place in Northern Virginia. He declined to discuss its findings, saying that a final report is not finished and that the report will not be the intelligence community's official view. It will, however, be circulated within the community and possibly to U.S. policy-makers.
The exercise involved 75 CIA analysts and outside specialists. It was conducted by the CIA's Office of Terrorism Analysis, within the agency's Counterterrorism Center.
A source familiar with the simulation said it was a "red team" exercise in which participants played the role of global jihadists and war-gamed how the U.S. involvement in Iraq will influence their terror movement.
Although it takes no policy positions, the simulation's key finding appears to bolster Mr. Bush's contention that a U.S. loss in Iraq will have far-reaching ramifications.
At a press conference yesterday, Mr. Bush said, "A lot of Americans understand the consequences of retreat. Retreat would embolden radicals. It would hurt the credibility of the United States. Retreat from Iraq would dash the hopes of millions who want to be free. Retreat from Iraq would enable the extremists and radicals to more likely be able to have safe haven from which to plot and plan further attacks."
Al Qaeda has made stopping democracy in Iraq a top priority, according to U.S. military officials. It has recruited hundreds of suicide bombers to come to Iraq and inflict mass casualties to spur a Sunni-Shi'ite Muslim civil war. The group wants to wear down U.S. troops to the point where they will retreat. Al Qaeda's ultimate goal is to turn Iraq and other Middle East countries into hard-line Islamic states, U.S. military officials say.
One key finding from the "red team" exercise is that al Qaeda will follow past practices. Jihadists perceived the victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1988 as a seminal event that spawned the creation of al Qaeda under the direction of Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda leaders thought that if jihadists could defeat a global power in one theater, it could bring down governments in other nations.
Six years later, when U.S. troops left Somalia after taking casualties at the hands of al Qaeda-trained Muslim fighters, it reaffirmed its feeling of invincibility and its belief that Western powers have a low threshold for casualties. After Somalia, al Qaeda -- and like-minded jihadists -- began attacking U.S. targets in the Persian Gulf region and ultimately struck America on September 11, 2001.
The CIA-sponsored simulation predicts that al Qaeda will view a U.S. defeat in Iraq as another jihadist victory over a superpower and one that will bring it even more terrorist recruits.
"When we did the simulation, the ramifications were enormous," said the source, who asked not to be named. The source said al Qaeda will proclaim, "God has given us a second victory over a superpower.
"Imagine what defeat in Iraq would do," said the source. "Al Qaeda picks new targets after it thinks it's won."
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This should be blindingly obvious to everyone but the Democrats who have made the choice to lose in Iraq. While Democrats are fond of calling Iraq a war of choice, they are less likely to recognize the consequences of making the choice to lose in Iraq. Since they never take responsibility for such decisions, they will probably try to push the consequences off on the choice to go to war rather than the choice to lose. But, we still can make the choice to win. The enemy in Iraq is weak and getting weaker.

While some are concerned about the upsurge in violence and attacks in Iraq their are two aspects to that increase that should be considered. While the enemy has increased the number of his attacks he has not increased the effectiveness of them. In other words he is having to expend greater effort and accomplishing less. The second aspect to it is that a significant amount of that increase is due to Shia militia retaliating against Sunni insurgents. These are not anti government attacks. That is important to remember. These non government attacks on the enemy are thrown in with all attacks to give the impression that anti government violence is increasing. While they are a demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi government effort in Baghdad, they are also a demonstration of the weakness of the Sunni insurgency.

It also makes the civil war fear overblown. The Shia militia are doing things the government is constrained from doing to the enemy because it must abide by the Geneva Conventions. The media has never held the Sunni insurgency responsible for following the Conventions and now the Shia militia are filling that same roll in support of the government. Part of this is a result of the media double standard on the Geneva Conventions. If they ahd made more of an issue of the enemy war crimes and shamed them rather than following their script of blaming the government and the US for not stopping the war crimes, there would be less reason for the Shia militia to counter them. The only reason for the Sunni attacks on on combatants was to generate media attention. By complying with that objective, the media encourage more violence against non combatants.