Al-Qaida Weighs In

From IBD:
Posted 6/20/2006

Iraq: The men who just murdered two American soldiers may not be watching this week's Senate debate, but there can be no doubt how they would vote — for U.S. withdrawal, the sooner the better.

Indeed, al-Qaida already has voted in its typical way, through an atrocity clearly designed as a political message. The bodies of two U.S. servicemen kidnapped last week — Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston and Pfc. Thomas Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. — were recovered on Tuesday.

A statement posted the same day on a terrorist Web site said the men were "slaughtered" by the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, the Egyptian Abu Hamza al-Muhajer.

The message didn't say exactly how Menchaca and Tucker were killed, but it used the same Arabic term used in the past to denote beheadings carried out by Muhajer's predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

So one political message is reasonably clear: Muhajer wants the world to know that he is following in Zarqawi's footsteps, both as leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and as butcher in chief of the terrorists. He also needed to show that al-Qaida is still alive (and capable of taking revenge) after Zarqawi's killing on June 7 in a U.S. airstrike.
Another message is probably not intended, but it comes through loud and clear to us. This murder is a grisly antidote to any moral ambiguity Americans may be feeling about this war.

It also unmasks the hypocrisy of those who condemn the U.S. for the acts of a small number of its troops — against its rules, and prosecuted accordingly — while ignoring the barbarities committed by the terrorists as a matter of policy.

It's too soon to tell how the American public will react to the killing of two young men serving their country and the cause of freedom. In wars past, such an act would have inspired outrage and a renewed commitment to destroy the enemy.

But with much of the media and the Democratic Party constantly looking for reasons to quit the Iraq mission, Americans see their elites divided and are divided themselves. Do these deaths give us new reason to stay or to leave?

There's no such confusion for al-Qaida.

As internal documents seized after the Zarqawi raid make clear, the U.S. is beating al-Qaida in Iraq, and al-Qaida knows it. Also, al-Qaida sees that the Americans can win by staying the course. As one of the documents puts it, "Time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance."

Al-Qaida's only hope is to somehow get the Americans to leave prematurely. Best of all (for the terrorists) would be a definite deadline for U.S. withdrawal, an idea being pushed by Democratic Sens. John Kerry and Russ Feingold, two men with presidential ambitions. Al-Qaida would simply have to hide out and wait for its most dangerous enemy to leave the field of battle.

The more soft-focus withdrawal plan proposed by Democrats this week and being debated in the Senate also would serve al-Qaida well.

Though it calls for a "phased redeployment of U.S. forces" starting this year rather than a pullout by a certain date, withdrawal under such conditions would have the same look of surrender. Al-Qaida could boast it has outlasted the U.S., and it would be right.

We do not accuse leading Democrats of intentionally aiding America's sworn enemies. But mindlessness can be as deadly as malice. The Democrats seem so zealous to exploit the war's unpopularity for political gain that they've blinded themselves to the potential consequences of their actions.

You can bet that al-Qaida sees more clearly.