Al-Qaida beheading makes prison abuses..

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Registered: 05-10-2004
Al-Qaida beheading makes prison abuses..
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 1:40pm
...pale in comparison, analysts say

Posted on Fri, May. 14, 2004








Al-Qaida beheading makes prison abuses pale in comparison, analysts say

BY PHILIP DINE

St. Louis Post-Dispatch


WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The gruesome murder of a young American in Iraq appears at first to be a tactical blunder on the part of Islamic radicals in that it deflects attention from U.S. mistreatment of Iraqis imprisoned at Abu Ghraib.

But his killers may have had a different goal in mind.

The barbarism involved in the beheading of 26-year-old Nicholas Berg makes the images of naked Iraqi prisoners being led around by leashes pale in comparison.

"Al-Qaida's judgment on how to influence western opinion is so poor that in the midst of a Washington scandal created by pictures of brutality, they release their own pictures depicting far worse atrocities," Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank, said this week.

President George W. Bush said the killing would steel U.S. resolve in fighting terrorism, including the war in Iraq. "They are trying to shake our will, they are trying to shake our confidence, yet by their actions they remind us of how desperately parts of the world need free societies and peaceful societies," Bush said outside the White House on Wednesday. "We will complete our mission, we will complete our task."

But the al-Qaida elements that apparently murdered Berg may have aimed their actions, not at America, but at potential recruits in Muslim countries, revving up anguish over U.S. policy and further embroiling Iraq in chaos.

"I think that video, like others before it, was aimed at a Muslim rather than an American audience," said Jim Phillips, an expert in terrorism and the Middle East at the Heritage Foundation.

"They want to trumpet their strength to Muslims, especially their core audience of 15-to-25-year-old male Muslims. They want to show them they are doing something to resist the Americans or to punish the Americans, also to avenge the humiliations Iraqis have suffered under Americans. It's kind of a recruiting video."

The terrorists may have a "tin ear" about how such actions are perceived by Americans or by the bulk of Muslims, Phillips said, "but I don't think they care. It's very targeted toward recruiting young Muslims who may be willing to help them in their violent campaign."

Asked if the video is likely to be effective toward that end, Phillips said: "Unfortunately, I think it is."

The perpetrators have multiple audiences but most important is the one they understand best, countries in their part of the world, said Jon Alterman, who directs the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was a State Department policy planner under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

"They don't understand much about the United States, don't know how it works. But they do know a lot about their own society, and they're trying to show themselves as all-powerful. A lot of this is about demonstrating power. Here ... they can essentially publicly slaughter an American and proclaim it to the world. To them, that comes across as an empowering act," Alterman said.

"This is also partly about recruitment, partly about shaping the context of debate, and because a lot of these people do hate the United States. It's not an act."

Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zubari, told reporters that the killers aimed through "savage and barbaric means ... to derail Iraq's future" by creating hatred and discord.

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One key variable is the murder's effect on American attitudes toward the war in Iraq.

Ever since fatalities led U.S. forces to pull out of Lebanon two decades ago and out of Somalia one decade ago, radical Islamic forces have operated under the assumption that Americans cannot stomach casualties and will retreat, given sufficient bloodshed.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said Berg's murder would bolster the American commitment in Iraq, because even as U.S. officials are deploring the prison abuses, "an al-Qaida-connected animal conducted a heinous crime on videotape in Baghdad" for the world to see.

In a sense, Thompson said, the terrorists did the administration a favor.

"What al-Qaida has done here is simply underscored why we're fighting them in the first place," Thompson said. "Events in Iraq were already eroding support for American policy. If they had just let the scandal unfold and stay quiet, they would have seen much better results, because the administration is being undermined by events in Iraq. Now al-Qaida had reminded the public why military operations are necessary."

But the impact may be more complicated than that, says Stephen Hess, a veteran political analyst at the Brookings Institution. The killing is likely to reinforce the views of those who feel the war is a mistake as well as those who think the war is necessary, thereby leading to further polarization, he said.

"Those who are already predisposed to feel that we were in error and are opposed to the war, have more reasons or arguments to support their position now," Hess said. "Those who feel perhaps equally strongly that we did the right thing and that Americans are supporting a better life for Iraqis have further reasons to stay the course."

Too much focus on the motivations and likely impact of the murder may be misplaced, suggested Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign policy and defense at the American Enterprise Institute and a former top staff member for terrorism and the Middle East on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"Their goal is to kill people," she said. "Let's not make it any more grand than necessary. These are murderers. This is how they operate. I don't think you can glorify their killing by associating it with a cause. These are not people we can deal with, these are not people we can negotiate with. These are people who are fighting a war with every single American."

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Seems this atrocity has just expanded both stances in regards to the war. This just shows how we all take things differently and form our own conclusions.