The Real NIE Revelations

The Bush administration’s decision to declassify the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate yesterday revealed two truths about politics and the intelligence community, neither of which appear very complimentary. First, the Democrats allowed themselves to get outfoxed on national security yet again by allowing themselves to get hysterical and seriously misrepresent the conclusions of the NIE. As the Washington Post reports, Democrats made a lot of extraordinary claims about the NIE, which the report itself doesn’t support:

President Bush took the extraordinary step of releasing portions of the classified report, which was completed in April, to counter assertions made after information from the document was leaked to media outlets over the weekend. Reports based on those leaks said the report blames the war in Iraq for worsening the global terrorist threat — an interpretation that the administration calls a distortion of its contents.
Speaking at a White House news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Bush angrily called the leak a political act intended to affect the upcoming midterm elections. “Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes,” he said. …
For the third straight day, Democrats sought to draw attention to the issue with news conferences and political maneuvers. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) moved to put the House into secret session to discuss the intelligence estimate, but the motion was defeated along party lines.
“With such a devastating and authoritative analysis of the Bush administration’s failures in Iraq, the president and the Republican-controlled Congress now have a choice to make,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.). “Will they stubbornly follow a failed stay-the-course strategy that America’s intelligence community has concluded makes America less safe, or will they finally admit their mistakes and change course?”

In fact, the NIE doesn’t offer any conclusions about successes or failures at present or in the past regarding Iraq. The actual conclusions of the intelligence community about Iraq take up one paragraph and one bullet point in the four-page document, and both do not assess the success or failure of the Coalition. It does, however, point out the consequences of both in the future:

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.
• The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

It also lists the Iraq “jihad” as one of four main factors that fuel the spread of jihadism across the region, but note the other three:

Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq “jihad”; (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims – all of which jihadists exploit.

Factors one and three are directly impacted by the American forward policy of engagement that led to factor two. The “neocon” impulse to use democratization as a method to reform the area addresses both of these factors. Self-government allows Arabs to determine their own foreign-policy goals and gives Arabs the tools to eliminate corruption and injustice, or at least to greatly reduce it from Ba’athist levels of the past. Democratization also brings political reforms and a free market that resolves many of the oppressive triggers for radicalization by giving individual Arabs the freedom to create and own their own property and to protect it.
This is why we have to endure the Iraqi “jihad” until we succeed. The insurgency will collapse when Iraqis grow strong enough to defend themselves and rebuild their infrastructure in peace. In fact, no other strategy could possibly address factors one and three. Even if we packed up and walked out of Iraq, those factors would still exist — as they have for decades — and the fourth factor would remain from our economic engagement with the oppressive regimes that control the region. We have an opportunity to address all four factors by prevailing in Iraq.
What do the Democrats offer? Withdrawal from the one theater in which we face our terrorist enemy and the one place that has to replace a missing tyrant. If we continue our resolve, we can firm up a democracy as Saddam’s replacement and begin to address the factors that drive jihadism. As the NIE concludes, a victory in Iraq would seriously damage the radical Islamist movement, perhaps even mortally. We have no chance to strike a blow against them by retreating. Democrats have badly misrepresented this report and offer the one solution guaranteed to result in making the problem worse — as the NIE also concludes.