I’ve long been thinking about the relevance of the Iraqi situation to the upcoming US elections. About the only thing that can firmly unseat Bush is a large-scale tacit demonstration of his failure in Iraq. Such a demonstration could come at any time. If I were al Qaeda I would be thinking very hard about what to do. One effective tactic would be to kidnap a large number of Americans, in effect reproducing the Iranian hostage crisis that was so fatal for Carter. Another would be to destroy something critical and previously considered out of range. An absolute mistake on al Qaeda’s part would be to attack within the US, this would only galvanise support for Bush, seen as the strong war leader.

But this begs the question what are al Qaeda’s long term goals? Do they want to keep Bush because he’s a beligerent idiot who will give them their holy war? Or do they actually want to bring peace under their terms to the Middle East? This is the Riemann Hypothesis of the politics of international terrorism. Which way you choose to look at this question - and the answer seems unknowable, you just have to choose what to believe - affects the whole outlook for the middle east and for the larger picture of al Qaeda influence. I prefer to believe that their goals are to kick the heretic dogs out of the holy places and then just get on with life, but who’s to say that they aren’t set on expanding out of the Middle East and Africa and completely destroying their enemies? Terrorists are not known for their realistic goals.

The reason I’m stimulated to post this is that there has been a spate of bomb attacks concentrated on the fledgling Iraqi security forces. This is a successful approach. The forces are absolutely the most critical element of the reconstruction plan from a US-political point of view. Undermining them before they’re even started, by killing them in the field at a huge rate and even killing people queuing to apply for jobs, is going to maintain Iraq’s current level of chaos like nothing else. The Americans have said they will withdraw and politically have Bush has no other choice. When they do, Iraq will be there for the taking, a new Afghanistan staring down the barrel of years of power struggles.

The political ramifications of this on the US elections are difficult to measure. Firstly this will probably all really start to sink in after the elections have been held. Secondly all indications are that the people of America couldn’t really give a fuck. Louise was trying to convince an Texan driver to vote Kerry the other day. He was planning to vote Bush “because he’s from Texas”. We. Are. All. Doomed.

P.S. Yes, I’m back, but I’m too busy to blog, or post photos. I suck.