I don’t think the lighting rod theory is valid, but I also don’t think the “increased recruitment” theories are valid either. I don’t doubt that now there are more angry Muslims ready to die for the cause. What I do doubt is their ability to find Al Qaeda to join now that they are on the run. From some reports I’ve read, those who want to join Al Qaeda in the 90s got training, funding, etc. Today, they get an “Attaboy, go get 'em!” over the internet and not much else.
One thing that Iraq and Afghanistan do accomplish is to cause the terrorists to fight soldiers who can defend themselves instead of civilians. In attacks on civilians, only the suicide bombers die, maybe a couple, and they get a pretty nice body count most of the time. Usually, the support and leadership get away and just use the next young recruit wanting to die for the cause. Now they are in a military battle. In this fight, they are losing more men, many of which would have been used for suicide bombings on civilians. If it does come down to a battle of attrition, we can win, it just depends on our will to see it to the end. We have more people, more money, better training, and the advantage of neutral ground(Al Qaeda doesn’t operate on their home turf, they operate on foreign land, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, so they have no home field advantage as the Vietnamese did.)
I always thought it was a bit of sarcasm until Karl Rove’s hand sock actually made reference to it in a rare press conference as a doctrine of strategic content. Actually, I myself made sarcastic use of the concept long before us troops were actually committed. Who knew I was only channeling Dr. Demento, sec/defense
btw–the recruitment part of the argument is 24 carat. A resisted occupation becomes a brutal occupation by definition. We are well down the path of “targetted assassination” (via missile from chopper) that has served Isael so badly. Our troops are routinely blasting about wildly with machine guns, with no particular target, to predictably horrific outcomes.
Perhaps, but the resistance is localized to one area. It is possible that occupation could turn into a disaster, but the Shiite and Kurd areas, where the majority live, could go just fine.
By all accounts, the primary reason the terrorists are trying to extend attacks to those areas is precisely because coalition troops there have their guard down. They are very accessible to the Iraqi people and generally don’t feel threatened. Thus, the Italian police HQ was very vulnerable. So provided the terrorists fail to make frequent attacks outside the Sunni areas, the occupation should continue to do well in the majority of Iraq.
So what if the angered, radicalized young Arabs can’t find Al-Qaeda? They don’t need to, even if they do have primarily fundie-religious motivations and not nationalist ones. What training and coordination does it take to shoot a couple of occupying soldiers in traffic, drag them out, and smash their heads with concrete chunks?