Why do I have a feeling that

Jim Rutenberg was more responsible for this article than Michael Gordon?

In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership...

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

The American military and American intelligence agencies characterize Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a ruthless, mostly foreign-led group that is responsible for a disproportionately large share of the suicide car bomb attacks that have stoked sectarian violence. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, said in an interview that he considered the group to be “the principal short-term threat to Iraq.”

But while American intelligence agencies have pointed to links between leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the top leadership of the broader Qaeda group, the militant group is in many respects an Iraqi phenomenon. They believe the membership of the group is overwhelmingly Iraqi. Its financing is derived largely indigenously from kidnappings and other criminal activities. And many of its most ardent foes are close at home, namely the Shiite militias and the Iranians who are deemed to support them.

There are basically two reasons Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia can exist:

First, I imagine it's hard for a terrorist group to really make substantial progress on either obtaining a trademark or enforcing it. For example, I imagine if a terrorist group would like to call itself "McDonalds in Iraq" (led by Al Grimace), they could probably get away with it. Come to think of it, I bet a really successful name for a terror group right now would be "IPhones of Iraq". But if your goal is to want to sound like a mean, terrorist, bad ass in Iraq you would appropriate the name Al Qaeda and claim and swear affiliation.

Second, and believe it or not the most important despite the trenchant analysis above; people in countries have this uniform tendency to really hate an occupying army -- even well-intentioned ones -- when their modus operandi is to bring OVER FUCKING WHELMING FIREPOWER TO BEAR when civilians are present. That occupier normally gets blamed all around. If a marine or a soldier pumps 100 rounds into a building and kills a couple insurgents, but also kills a dozen civilians, Iraqis are decidedly NOT going to give the benefit of the doubt to the shooter. When a F-16 drops a 500-pound bomb on an insurgent (read Al Qaeda) hideout and kills a couple dozen women and children, the tactical success is overwhelmed by the strategic fuckup.

On the other hand when an insurgent kills himself and a couple dozen civilians with a car bomb, people are going to be pissed at the bomber who is now dead. But they are going to also be especially pissed at the group that is supposed to prevent such things...THE OCCUPIER, and there they are, reporting to the scene to observe the effects and patrol the perimeter. Bomber gone, occupier there. They'll not unreasonably decide two things; one, suicide bomber exists because of the occupier and two, bomb went off despite the control of the occupier. L0SE-LOSE.

The above are not unique historical events to the Iraqi occupation, they are true from time immemorial. The war exhausted populations of Germany & Japan were welcoming, but then they did not have to contend with either having the use overwhelming firepower post-occupation or deal with violent insurgencies. Further, Iraq is not some late 19th Century Philippines with an underarmed group under one guy on an isolated chain of islands. Of course, we also had a hell of a lot of soldiers in both countries, and their cultures were structured on various modes of obedience and subservience to authority. The Japanese had their Emperor, the Germans had substantial cultural affiliations with the occupiers, and of course, they were acclimated to both capitalism and authority. In our own national history, when Britain switched from mother county to occupier it was over. And there is no comparison between the violence of the British occupation between 1770 and 1783 and present day Iraq. In Iraq and to millions in Iraq, every goddamned day is a series of "Boston Massacres". And now it has been recommended that no prosecution go forward for the bulk of the Haditha Massacre. That may, under our system be justice that those enlisted marines. But, how do you think that is going to play with Iraqis? Thus, another political effect of an occupation.

Right now, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, survives because the population resents us about as much, if not more, as it resents them. When we leave (if we ever leave) there may be a higher grade civil war, but the first fuckers to die are going to be small, loathed groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.