This was always the problem with the flypaper strategy -- it assumed a static population of violent extremists, of which a disproportionate number would be drawn to Iraq to be cut down by our forces.

This way of seeing the world is pretty common on the American right. It's almost exactly the same world-view as "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns": the NRA divides the world into two categories, the Law-Abiding and the Criminal. They are fixed, clearly-defined groups, and the goal of social policy should be to let the Law-Abiding have as many guns as they want while putting all the Criminals in prison (or letting the Law-Abiding kill them with their Law-Abiding guns).

The idea that people can change from one category to the other, or mistakenly commit a violent act with a gun, never enters into the equation.

Similarly, the right-wing view of the GWOT is that there exists a finite number of Crazy Jihadi Murderers who Hate Us For Our Freedom, and the way to make the problem go away is to kill all of them.

This world view fits very, very well with American racism, which also favors essentialist categorizing of people, and with American militarism, which sees force and violence (or at least the threat of violence) as the solution to almost any problem you can name. So I think the tendency to think this way is as deep-seeded as American racism and militarism, which means it's pretty damn deep in our ideology.

And the "flypaper strategy" was actually ex post facto, a rationale grafted onto Iraq after it became apparent that A) there were no WMDs there and B) we were actually creating a lot more terrorists.

So I think the tendency to think this way is as deep-seeded as American racism and militarism, which means it's pretty damn deep in our ideology. - Pesto

Actually it's deeper than American racism and militarism. The whole "there are the elect and there is everyone else -- and the elect are predestined to be elect while everyone else is predestined to hell" is the sort of vintage Calvinism held by the Puritans and Separatists themselves.

The "two categories of people" idea came here, shall we say, on the Mayflower.

*

Actually, part of the problem with the flypaper strategy is that it's very existance actually brings people from the not terrorist category to the terrorist category:

you say your liberating us but then you say your turning our country into a giant piece of fly-paper to trap a bunch of violent, illiberal terrorists? gee, thanx but no thanx -- if I have to choose between supporting my erstwhile "liberators" and the terrorists whom the liberators are using my country to trap, I think that I am gonna join me up with those terrorists. Don't you?

And as to the chronology -- I might be remembering wrong, but I remember even in the run up to the war, pretty much every argument ("WMDs!" "Liberate Iraq!" "Fight them there so we don't have to fight them here!" -- i.e. flypaper strategy "If you like Israel you must support our war -- and if you don't support our war that means you hate Israel! Only anti-Semites oppose the war! Why do you hate Israel you anti-Semite?", etc) was being thrown out in the hope that one or more would stick.

And some of them did indeed contradict others (flypaper vs. liberation). If the media were doing their jobs, they would have asked some tough questions about things, but instead they joined in with the jingoistic cheerleading and let those of us who did have questions be labeled as anti-American or worse.

People think now that it didn't mean much to vote against the war resolution? Remember, the resolution was sold as "merely giving the President the stick he needs for negotiations" and anyone who opposed it was a moonbat unserious about national defense and possibly a lover of terrorists.

. And were it not for the war, thousands of Americans and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive, right now, and all without a propaganda windfall that spikes terrorist recruitment for the extremist lurking around the mosque trying to generate new Mr. AQIs

A small price to pay to stave off the menace of gay marriage, slightly higher marginal rates of income tax, and at least for a while, a Democratic Congress.

This is the most sane thing I've read in along time. Really, we needed months of research and discussion to figure this out? It's like the artical I read about research into whether kids are influenced by TV to start smoking. I guess common sense and a knowledge of history is only inherent to people like me, and not to the self-serving morons in power.

Of all of the possible post-hoc rationalizations for the unprovoked invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation, the flypaper theory (as I have written many times, and am basically just reposting now) is very nearly the most vile, ranking just above [Karl Rove's recent admission of] "Because we wanted to control their oil." Advocates of this position can maunder on about "foreign fighters" and "better there than here" all they want, and even if the actual facts on the ground didn't largely contradict them, there's one simple truth that they're ignoring.

The Iraqi people did not ask to be the bystanders, the injured, maimed, and killed, the "collateral damage" in our war with those "foreign fighters."

Any proponent of the "flypaper" argument shows that they regard the Iraqis and their children as somehow less than human, somehow less deserving of the same safety that they seek for themselves and their children. It is fundamentally immoral in its use of the Iraqi civilians as a means to an end.

I agree that this fly-paper strategy was never really the goal, and only grafted on later.

More I think the problem was that the public, the media, and the politicians lack the imagination to realize: things can get worse. After we were bombed on 911, few people took seriously the idea that "there aren't really that many terrorists trying to kill us" and "there could be a lot more". So actions that make a lot more weren't regarded as risky, because hey, they're already attacking us.

Similary, Saddam is a bad guy. We didn't really think "yes but there could be a lot worse than him, as the result of our actions."

Yeah well John McCain, who is basing his entire claim to be president on his superior foreign policy expertise and correct judgment about Iraq, thinks that AQI is a creation of the Iranian clerical regime and that the AQI operatives are recruited and trained in Iran, and then sent back into Iraq to commit their violence.

That ought to entirely discredit him, but of course the corporate media will pay as little attention as possible, while they obssess with who had sex with whom and Obama's minister.

Well, at least our trillion dollar experiment in duh studies provided us with publishable results. They'll definitely get tenure now.

Did it ever occurr to you that this proves GWB correct.
This is the exact profile of the 9/11 terrorists that did attack us OVER HERE. Long before GWB attacked anyone.

I can't stand "the flypaper strategy." It would be immoral if it weren't a load of baloney invented for domestic consumption. It was the faux-military plan behind the idiotic "fighting over there so we don't have to fight them over here" rallying cry. It's the keystone of the deeply perverted Bush Doctrine and is one of the sickest parts of this whole sick enterprise. And, of course, as you said, the irony is that all of it only creates more people willing to take extreme actions in defense of their culture/country.

Read the profile of the 9/11 attackers...fits exactly as you descibe the same people today.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801315.html

They were guys running around caves; they were recruited from the same places as the current guys.

Anon, and your point is...what? The point here is that...GWB is CREATING MORE OF THESE GUYS!!!

At this point, this is cleary by design. It simply can't be a flaw. No group of people is so stupid as to do the exact same thing over and over and over again expecting magic to happen. Individuals do things like that, groups do not.

I'm forced to believe that Republicans actively pursue policies that cause blowback, so they can use the resulting blowback to justify even more military actions. They dimply don't care how many Americans they get killed, so long as they get to keep their power and increase their money.

The concept that it is George Bush and the liberation of Iraq that is the direct cause of Al Queda recruitment of terrorists is shown by history to be completely false.

In fact it was Bill Clintons genocide in Iraq (non war) that Osama Bin Laden used to recruit the 9/11 hijackers…the exact same middle class young men from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Thus showing that the absence of liberating Iraq would not change Al Qeadas ability to strike, they would simply have to strike back in the US.

If you believe that the Bush liberation is the direct cause of terrorists attacking US forces and its Bushs' fault.

The you must also believe that the Clinton, Obama, Clinton plan of sanctions was the direct cause of Sept 11th and thus it is Clintons fault.

The difference is under Bush the terrorists are having to fight soldiers trained and equipped to fight them.

Of course we know that in all wars the enemy goes where its adversary is. A lot of Germans showed up at Normandy who weren’t there when we got there. That doesn’t mean it was Roosevelts fault, that’s simply how a war operates.

It's amazing how many peple are criticizing the flypaper strategy without actually bothering to understand it. Most of the criticisms are not criticisms of the strategy or its effectiveness at achieving its goals, but are statements that the dissenter disagrees with the assumptions of the flypaper strategy.
The flypaper strategy is based on a couple of assumptions. A common model of the strategy can be expressed as ABX + ACY = number of effective terrorists. Let A equal Population of countries that breed terrorists. Let B be a variable between 0 and 1 that represents the effectiveness of a terrorist. Higher decimals represent increased training and a stable terrorist organization capable of transforming raw recruits into effective operatives. Let X represent the long term percentage of the population that is structurally likely to volunteer for terrorist activities. Note, short term current events do not immediately impact this variable. Let Y equal the percentage of population likely to volunteer for terrorism as a result of short term events (Abu Graib, etc...). Let C be the short term analogy for B.
Given this model, foreign policy will be aimed at reducing A, B and X. Increases in Y will be short term and considered of limited consequence. The decision to apply an interventionist foreign policy is predicated on the assumptions built into estimated A, B and X. If one assumes that Islamic fundamentalism is spreading and succesfully imposing structural changes in society that are causing X to exhibit a sustained long term growth trend and state sponsored funding is dramatically increasing B, then the primary foreign policy goal will be to reduce B and X. Any changes in Y are considered short term and of little consequence. It is expected that any successful reduction in B and X will have an inverse effect on Y. One would expect reductions in B to have a positive effect on C. Generally long term is either 10 years or 1 generation (20 years) depending upon the model.
Thus, the proponents of the flypaper strategy do not consider it a failure that the number of terrorists recruits increase as a result of their strategy. If the long term number of recruits is structurally diminished and the effectiveness of the recruits is diminished, then the policy is a success.
If one wishes to have an actual contructive discussion with the conservatives who implemented this policy you will have to address the impact on A,B and X. Harping on short term activity is just going to make them actively ignore you.

It's amazing how many peple are criticizing the flypaper strategy without actually bothering to understand it. Most of the criticisms are not criticisms of the strategy or its effectiveness at achieving its goals, but are statements that the dissenter disagrees with the assumptions of the flypaper strategy.
The flypaper strategy is based on a couple of assumptions. A common model of the strategy can be expressed as ABX + ACY = number of effective terrorists. Let A equal Population of countries that breed terrorists. Let B be a variable between 0 and 1 that represents the effectiveness of a terrorist. Higher decimals represent increased training and a stable terrorist organization capable of transforming raw recruits into effective operatives. Let X represent the long term percentage of the population that is structurally likely to volunteer for terrorist activities. Note, short term current events do not immediately impact this variable. Let Y equal the percentage of population likely to volunteer for terrorism as a result of short term events (Abu Graib, etc...). Let C be the short term analogy for B.
Given this model, foreign policy will be aimed at reducing A, B and X. Increases in Y will be short term and considered of limited consequence. The decision to apply an interventionist foreign policy is predicated on the assumptions built into estimated A, B and X. If one assumes that Islamic fundamentalism is spreading and succesfully imposing structural changes in society that are causing X to exhibit a sustained long term growth trend and state sponsored funding is dramatically increasing B, then the primary foreign policy goal will be to reduce B and X. Any changes in Y are considered short term and of little consequence. It is expected that any successful reduction in B and X will have an inverse effect on Y. One would expect reductions in B to have a positive effect on C. Generally long term is either 10 years or 1 generation (20 years) depending upon the model.
Thus, the proponents of the flypaper strategy do not consider it a failure that the number of terrorists recruits increase as a result of their strategy. If the long term number of recruits is structurally diminished and the effectiveness of the recruits is diminished, then the policy is a success.
If one wishes to have an actual constructive discussion with the conservatives who implemented this policy you will have to address the impact on A,B and X. Harping on short term activity is just going to make them actively ignore you.

Oops sorry for double post. Kittens were walking on keyboard and I got sidetracked.

principes, we've added one more country to the list of A; Iraq wasn't a large-scale terrorist hotbed or training ground prior to the invasion, although that may have more to do with Saddam's brutality than anything else.

We've increased B. The terrorists keep finding new and effective ways to attack conventional armies. If you don't think our experience in Iraq is enough evidence, then ask the IDF how their excursion against Hezbollah went; Hezbollah benefited directly from operational knowledge gained from insurgents in Iraq.

And we've created any number of Ys what with Gitmo, renditions, poorly targeted raids, Abu Ghraib, off-target bombings, etc..

Yeah, I'd say that's pretty much an unmitigated disaster.

OK, for the sake of argument I will play the neocon. Iraq was already a state sponsor of terrorism, so invading Iraq hasn't increased the potential pool of terrorists. The pool has actually shrunk because most Iraqis are turning against the terrorists.
The effectiveness of the terrorist (B) has been dropping at a steady and significant rate. US Army casualties are still within the range of normal peacetime deaths and definitely less than civilian casualties from multiple US homeland terrorists attacks. Most major terrorist networks have beens significantly degraded and training has definitely deteriorated.
From the neocon point of view the plan has been a success and you have yet to raise a valid objection. It is vitally important to remember, that only casualties in the 50-80K range in a 2 year time frame would be considered too many casualties by the neocons. Everything else is just the price you pay for being the dominant world power. The terrorist just aren't creating significant US military or civilian casualties.

Ezra could just as logically argue that the Danish cartoons are used as a recruiting tool for Islamic extremists and thus the Danish cartoonist are to blame for Jihad and not the Islamic etremist.

I guess Ezra could outlaw cartoons as a way to end the violence - or he could intellectually recognize that the extremists will use whatever perceoved or cococted slight as a means of recruitment.

I guess we could outlaw holiwood movies that depict a decadent west which are also used by Islamic extremists to recruit people to their cause.

Thus the evidence shows that since Osama Bin Laden has wanted to attack the US for the last 5 years and has failed to do so, shows that the terrorists in Jeddah, or Algiers are busy fighting the American Armed Forces and not attacking skyscrapers, or schools, or Nuclear plants here in the US.
Otherwise, just like Sept 11th, Osama would have been recruiting those same taxi drivers to come back over here and do again what they did on Sept 11th.

Let me congratulate you on a first-class blog, in content and presentation. And I am sorry for this belated comment - I have just got permission to post.

I have just completed a 5-year study of the Afghan conflict (1978-2001) in the context of the Cold War and its aftermath, due for publication soon. It is a kind of history of the Cold War with Afghanistan being the focus. It does not ignore the big picture, because it is always a mistake to try to understand a trouble spot without the wide-angle lens. Why was the United States there if the big picture was not relevant? And why did Bill Clinton walk away from Afghanistan once the Cold War was over, to try to neutralize much of the Soviet-era nuclear arsenal, and to focus on his ‘enlargement agenda’? Again, the big picture was important.

One thing that frequently strikes me is poor knowledge of history when experts discuss suicide bombers. If they are to be believed, people who are prepared to die as they launch an attack are ‘weird’, even ‘deranged’. For us in western countries, it does seem strange that anybody would want to blow themselves up to kill others. Al-Qaeda tactics are seen as new by terrorism pundits of today.

Not so, actually.

The concept of martyrdom while inflicting maximum damage to the enemy goes back hundreds of years if not more. When the Mughal armies repeatedly invaded what is now India in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, soldiers of Hindu princely states with saffron turbans on went to fight in the certainty of being killed (they too called it martyrdom). Back home, their women lit up funeral piers and jumped into flames for fear of being violated by the enemy. Similar episodes happened during the struggle for Indian independence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

We know about the Japanese practice of hara-kiri and about Tamil suicide bombers more recently. Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad or Hamas suicide bombers are not unusual in the context of history. Hindus and Christians did it, as recently as just twenty years ago in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. And a small number of Islamic fundamentalist are doing it now, with disastrous consequences.

I believe in liberal, democratic values. From where I stand, there is something fundamentalist about all acts of deliberate self-sacrifice, however misplaced the belief which drives individuals to suicide attacks. But I have the luxury of a comfortable, relatively carefree lifestyle. I do not know the suffering, the pain, the humiliation of those who are at the other end. And I cannot appreciate how a tiny number of young people – children of middle-class families – are so profoundly affected by what they see that they are prepared to do the most unthinkable.

Fundamentalism cannot be fought with fundamentalism of the opposite kind.
It requires security measures in the short run and, in the long run, genuine political steps that will deprive Osama bin Laden of his constituency.

Deepak Tripathi