Playing into the Hands of the Enemy

“Iraqis are ‘seeing tangible progress in their lives,'” President Bush said in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations today.

Only days ago, prior to surviving an apparent mob attack, Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi defiantly told the UK’s Observer: “They are doing the same things we saw in the Saddam days and even worse,” referring to the new Iraqi government.

Al Jazeera’s (apparently accidental) broadcast of an old videotape today, starring al Qaeda henchman Ayman al-Zawahri, serves as a harsh reminder that the U.S. mission to “liberate” Iraq has misplaced the power in the region — to the enemy.

The Geneva Conventions offer protection for those who have “fallen into the hands of the enemy.”

Al Qaeda, being a stateless, invisible enemy, has less to do with the Geneva Conventions than even the U.S., although, the organization at least appears to have the courtesy to remind us — albeit with prerecorded propaganda — just who is winning this war, before recklessly attacking.

You could say that they are inviting us to fight them on their home turf, so they don’t have to bother attacking on our soil. (and that’s OUR strategy).

“I call on the holy warriors to concentrate their campaigns on the stolen oil of the Muslims, most of the revenues of which go to the enemies of Islam,” Zawahri said, adding, “…Sheik Osama bin Laden, is still, God protect him, leading the holy war.”

It seems even President Bush has already resolved to losing this war to the phantom-like al Qaeda. “[V]ictory will be achieved when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq’s democracy,” proclaimed the president today.

Ugly as it sounds, the U.S. has become so vulnerable to aspire only to share a “victory” with the untouchable Islamic fundamentalists, who terrorize us without even showing face.