WaPo: Smoke of Iraq War 'Drifting Over Lebanon' (blow-back from Iraq War)

TRIPOLI, Lebanon -- Abu Haritha still carries traces of the battles he fought in Iraq, 500 miles away.

On his hand is a black ring, a gift from a fellow insurgent after he was wounded in the torso in Fallujah by shrapnel. "For the memories," Abu Haritha said. Under his black hair, peppered with gray, is a scar where, he recalled, a bullet had grazed his head. Every once in a while, he watches videos lauding attacks carried out on his former battlefield and celebrates the exploits of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed last week in Iraq. At times, he regales colleagues with stories of American fear.

But for Abu Haritha, that battle is over. As he sits in this northern city, Lebanon's second-largest, he waits for what he believes will be a more expansive war beyond Iraq, a struggle he casts in the most cataclysmic of terms. In the morning, he jogs; he lifts weights for hours at night. In between, with his cellphone ringing with the Muslim call to prayer, he proselytizes in streets that are growing ever more militant, sprinkled with the black banners that proclaim jihad and occasional slogans celebrating the resistance in Iraq.

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Abu Haritha's home, Tripoli, is one of the most visible manifestations of the war, a rough-and-tumble city being transformed by growing radicalism and religious fervor that may long outlast the death of Zarqawi and the U.S. presence in Iraq, now in its fourth year. Here, and elsewhere, that militancy may prove to be the inheritance of both the war and the Bush administration's professed aim of bringing democratic reform to the region.

...full article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/11/AR2006061100599.html

attack on Iraq is negatively impacting the future for may years to come...I pray we get a new regime in Washington that is able to reverse this dangerous trend. I am sure this story can be told about many many other neighborhoods in the Muslim world.

Contrary to neocon rationalizations, the US invasion and occupation Iraq is actually making us LESS safe, by bolstering long-simmering belief that US imperialism has subjugated and/or thwarted the rise of Islamic governments and/or countries. As a result, angry moslems are now more likely to heed the call of Radical Islam in mobilizing resistance to the perceived Crusader invader/occupiers of Islamic holy lands.

Consequently, the longer the US stays in Iraq, the more powerful Radical Islam becomes. Furthermore, the longer the US stays in Iraq, the more likely it becomes that an energized, yet incrasingly frustrated Radical Islam, turns to 'asymetric warfare' (terrorism) as a means of fighting back.

Bin Laden couldn't be happier, folks... Not only is the War in Iraq becoming 'externalized' to places like Lebanon, but it's quietly 'going global' as well. And as Radical Islam gains cachet throughout an increasingly 'wired' and shrinking globe - we can expect more London and Madrid style terror bombings, and the discovery of more 'Canadian home grown' terror cells. This is precisely why we must leave Iraq ASAP - the longer we stay, the less safe we actually become.

snip>

Less visibly, though, the war is building a profound legacy across the Arab world: fear and suspicion over Iraq's repercussions, a generation that casts the Bush administration's policy as an unquestioned war on Islam, and a subterranean reserve of men who, like Abu Haritha, declare that the fight against the United States in Iraq is a model for the future.

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Some see an American hand in Iraq's entropy; in their analysis, the United States and Israel are fanning the flames of sectarianism as a way to further divide the Arab world and create a region even more balkanized than today's. Others see a more deep-seated hostility in U.S. actions, a scorched-earth campaign to hasten an apocalyptic battle or, in Salih's words, the "politics of chaos."

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Well worth reading the entire article.