Who Are We Really Fighting? By Jim Simpson

Every day we hear more reports about the rising Islamist threat. Stephen Emerson reports alarmingly about the Islamists hidden among us. Al Qaeda is reportedly alive and spreading all over the world – morphing into a many headed snake. Meanwhile, Iran has moved from bluster to bully as it seizes British sailors on the open sea and blatantly ignores worldwide demands to cease its nuclear program, while continuing to arm Iraqi terrorists in direct defiance of the United States. Islamist militants in Palestinian-controlled areas and Lebanon visibly flex their muscles both militarily and diplomatically, while Muslims worldwide stridently demand absurdly special treatment in the non-Muslim societies where they have settled. As a friend once said, paraphrasing Trotsky: “You may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you.”

Without diminishing the threat these worldwide activities suggest, it is important nonetheless to recognize that they are a distraction, a deliberate provocation designed to keep our eyes focused on the wrong enemy. The true threat is and always has been the worldwide communist movement, spearheaded by the Soviet Union (oh sorry, I keep forgetting, “Russia,”) and Communist China. And given the cacophony currently being raised by their Islamist provocateurs, I fear the sucker punch is not long in coming.

We are obsessed with routing out “al Qaeda” in Iraq but almost willfully ignore that the insurgency remains largely driven by the Iraqi Ba’athist party’s highly organized network, with assistance from their Ba’athist cousins in Syria. I fear that if we merely defeat al Qaeda, our misidentification of the enemy will lead us to give up the fight early, leaving the much more dangerous Ba’athist infrastructure in place. In such circumstances, we will soon be facing another Saddam. Similarly, it is easy to see a Shia-led Iraq fall into the Iranian camp if we leave. (I described this potential problem in great detail before the war started. See: Regime Change Means Eradicating the Ba’ath Party.)

The Russians initially trained, funded and equipped the Ba'athists in both Syria and Iraq. They taught them the tactics being used now in Iraq against us. They continued to provide Saddam with military advice during the first Gulf war and at least the beginning of the current one, and I remain confident that they provide the Ba'athist insurgents with some manner of support to this day. They assisted in the removal of Saddam's WMD to Syria. According to defector Ion Pacepa, the former Romanian Intelligence chief, Russia long ago developed a contingency plan for all puppet states to hide WMD should Western powers appear close to exposing them. (Read all about that here.)

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