Death By Americans

Donald Sensing, citing Strategypage reports, notes something that has been apparent since the invasion: Arab states are sending their budding local jihadis to Iraq in order to kill Americans to thwart us and, more importantly, be killed by Americans there so they won't be a threat to the sending regimes. From Saddam's fedayeen who contested our invasion force to today's jihadis who plant bombs and carry out suicide attacks, Arab states are providing the most bloody-minded of the Islamist cannon fodder waging war in defense of Saddam and against the newly democratic Iraq. Said Reverend Sensing:

In effect, these countries export their Islamist radicals to Iraq and use the United States and the Iraqi Security Forces to carry out antiterrorism on their behalf. At the same time they fight the United States.

For the sending states, the jihadis are dead, and instead of the international community getting mad about hundreds if not thousands of exectutions, the international community is mad at us for killing them. Pretty sweet deal for a nervous autocrat who will never learn to govern well to deaden the appeal of Islamism.

This is not the first time that American soldiers have killed troublemakers. In 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait in part to keep his huge army busy lest it try a coup. Saddam couldn't demobilize so many troops without having jobs available, yet couldn't afford to keep them. So he hit the bank to keep them busy and pay for them, too. We didn't go along with the program and killed off much of his army. In a sense, we coup-proofed him. We did the job directly in the end, but back in 1991 it was death by Americans for potential regime foes.

And in the Korean War, the new communist China largely sent the former KMT foot soldiers into Korea to kill Americans and die at our hands to keep these potential counter-revolutionaries out of the country. For Peking, killing Americans or being killed by Americans were good things. Again, death by Americans.

So what Arab autocracies are doing in Iraq isn't new. It should be recognized as a complicating factor in what is simplistically being called a "civil war" by Matt Lauer and his disciples.

And one additional point on this subject. Critics of the Iraq War like to say we've just created a training ground for terrorists who then go back home to plot mayhem in their home countries. Clearly, the Arab governments encouraging their domestic jihadis to go to Iraq don't think they are being trained as more effective terrorists. The Arab regimes think we will kill their jihadis off and keep the regimes safe.

The Arab regimes are right about this. Iraq is a strange training camp indeed when almost all the trainees die before "graduation."

UPDATE: Really, the Arab governments involved agree with our government that it is better to fight the war on terror "over there" in Iraq rather than at home. I do agree with that sentiment.