Thoughts on the UN attack

There’s a lot of blogosphere speculation about the “who?” and the “why?” of the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad — see Matthew Yglesias, David Adesnik, Glenn Reynolds, Juan Cole, and — in a heartbreaking post — Salam Pax. As I’ve said before, such speculation often leads commentators to fit overly neat narratives into messy ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

There's a lot of blogosphere speculation about the "who?" and the "why?" of the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad -- see Matthew Yglesias, David Adesnik, Glenn Reynolds, Juan Cole, and -- in a heartbreaking post -- Salam Pax. As I've said before, such speculation often leads commentators to fit overly neat narratives into messy realities. However, this New York Times news analysis of the bombing, which has a paragraph that just startled me:

There’s a lot of blogosphere speculation about the “who?” and the “why?” of the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad — see Matthew Yglesias, David Adesnik, Glenn Reynolds, Juan Cole, and — in a heartbreaking post — Salam Pax. As I’ve said before, such speculation often leads commentators to fit overly neat narratives into messy realities. However, this New York Times news analysis of the bombing, which has a paragraph that just startled me:

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. But it seems clear that any improvement in the standard of living of Iraqis is viewed by opponents of the occupation as a victory for the United States and its efforts to create a stable, democratic Iraq.

So the question is, what group is nihilistic enough to see victory in the mass immiseration of fellow Arabs and the destruction of international supportagencies? While the B’aathists are contemptible, while in power they were always clever enough to play the United Nations off the U.S. and Great Britain. This attack has the feel of someone incapable of making such distinctions yet willing to hit soft targets. In other words, an Al Qaeda subsidiary. So, my money’s on Ansar al-Islam. UPDATE: William Dyer is less than pleased with the Times coverage of the bombing (link via InstaPundit).

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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