Forsaken By Allah

In addition to self-defense and the liberation of Iraq, there’s another reason for
regime change in Iraq: a quick and successful overthrow of Saddam will
dispossess Islamists and especially budding Islamists, that Allah is on their side.
Yes, I can hear the chorus: “But Iraq is a secular country, not an Islamist
country.”

True in terms of government, but Osama bin Laden has called an attack on Iraq
an attack on Islam, and Saddam himself uses the Islanic card whenever it suits
him. There is no question that a defeat of Saddam would be viewed as a defeat
of Islam in the most radical quarters, ie, those whom we most need to impress
orf the hopelessness of their cause. Christopher Hitchens:

It is
certainly curious, also, to notice that whether or not Saddam has given succor to
al-Qaida, the Bin Ladenist forces around the world have identified his cause with
their own. In Kurdistan they fight, at least “objectively” on Saddam’s side. In their
propaganda, they speak absurdly of an intervention against Saddam as “an
attack on a Muslim country,” as if regime change could alter the confessional
makeup of the country (which incidentally has many non-Muslims and Christians
and used to have an immense Jewish population). But why should one suppose
that Saddam’s defeat would increase the appeal of al-Qaida and, even if we
knew this to be true in advance, why should it make any difference?

…. In the early stages of the fighting in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, I remember
reading many peacenik arguments that the United States was playing into Bin
Laden’s hands and doing exactly what he wanted. (Noam Chomsky made a
particular point of this; others added that to kill Bin Laden would cause
thousands of new Bin Ladens to spring up in his stead.) I have never seen it
argued since that al-Qaida got what it wanted out of the Afghan operation. It lost
its only host government, it had to abandon its safe houses in Kabul and
Kandahar, it took an enormous number of casualties and had to flee
ignominiously, it saw hundreds more of its cadres taken to Guantanamo Bay,
and it may very well have left its charismatic leader somewhere under a rock. If
this was all part of God’s design, then he may well not be on their side.
[Slate]

Therefore defeat of Saddam is integral to the overall War on Terror.