IN A speech at the American Enterprise Institute, the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, used this nightmare vision to lash those who have argued it is time to begin withdrawing US forces from Iraq. "Iraq is part of a larger plan of imposing Islamic radicalism across the broader Middle East, making Iraq a terrorist haven and a staging ground for attacks against other nations," Cheney said.
"In light of the commitments our country has made, and given the stated intentions of the enemy, those who advocate a sudden withdrawal from Iraq should answer a few simple questions: would the US and other free nations be better off or worse off with [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi, [Osama] bin Laden and [Ayman] al-Zawahiri in control of Iraq? Would we be safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?"
The suggestion that a jihadist takeover in Iraq would follow a US withdrawal verges on preposterous. It is the latest in a parade of straw men dispatched to scare up support for wrongheaded and failed policies.
There is no question the jihadists would like to seize a country as a base for wider operations. But they have nowhere near the capacity to achieve this in Iraq. Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq and other radical Islamist groups have bloodied US forces, the fledgling Iraqi Government and the Shiite population. The jihadist organisations lack the heavy weapons and the manpower that would be required to seize control of Baghdad, to capture and hold large tracts of territory that are occupied by hostile Shiites and Kurds who outnumber Sunnis four to one, or to run the country.
Only with the rapid influx of tens of thousands of fighters from outside Iraq could jihadists win control of the country. That scenario is farfetched. Make no mistake: much of western Iraq is and will remain a terrorist sanctuary. But neither US forces nor Shiite-dominated Iraqi military units will be able to do much about that against an enemy that has an excellent early-warning system. It will be years before an Iraqi intelligence service can root these networks out.
The real threat is civil war. But here, too, it is not clear how much the US can do to prevent it. If the Shiites and Kurds do not ameliorate the grievances of Iraqi Sunnis, civil war is probable. Keeping US forces in Iraq in such circumstances would at best delay the inevitable.
There is a rich irony to Washington's argument about a jihadist Iraq. In the run-up to the war, the Bush team repeatedly underestimated the danger radical Islamists posed to US plans for Iraq. The Pentagon, for example, knew well before the invasion of Iraq that Zarqawi was in the country, travelling far and wide to prepare for the insurgency he planned to mount once the US invaded.
Moreover, the Administration had ample intelligence that the toxin ricin was being produced at Zarqawi's base camp in the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, outside the reach of Hussein's government. The military drew up plans for an attack. But the Administration declined to strike for reasons that remain unclear. Later, it portrayed Zarqawi as the key link between Hussein and al-Qaeda. We now know this was false. Now Washington holds up Zarqawi as the ultimate threat.
By blundering in Iraq, the Bush Administration has played into two jihadist claims: first, we are determined to occupy Muslim countries, steal their wealth and destroy their faith; second, we are a paper tiger that cannot accept casualties. By staying in Iraq, we confirm the former for many Muslims around the world and stoke recruitment and radicalisation. By leaving, we confirm the latter, thereby encouraging jihadists.
Our departure from Iraq needs to be orderly and serve our own interests. How long it takes should be, unlike our occupation of the country, carefully planned. It should not be postponed by the threat of some imagined cataclysm.
Daniel Benjamin is a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He served on the US National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999. He is co-author, with Steven Simon, of The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right.