Zeyno Baran, the Nixon Center’s international security program director, outlines a view that Islamic political parties working to re-establish the Caliphate, represent a threat to US interests. Her article is published below and is followed by a response from Dr Abdullah Robin.

With the absence of WMDs proved conclusively, the only remaining justification for the continued presence of occupation forces in Iraq is the prospect of democracy rising out of the ashes of Iraq’s battered cities. Japan and Germany have been offered as examples of what can happen when America gets it right. But scrutiny of post-war events, and indeed of democratic societies in general, indicates that the chances of success in Iraq are marginal at best.

After 9/11 George Bush declared a ‘war on terrorism’ (WOT) and invited the nations of the world to take part. After 3 years, the WOT continues unabated and most commentators believe this will carry on for at least the next decade. Lone voices, like Sir Michael Howard the eminent British historian, have questioned the description of a ‘war’ since the beginning, but it is only recently that there has been sufficient interrogation surrounding the objectives of this war.

Men with anguished faces, stripped naked, quivering before snarling dogs. Women disrobed and dishonoured before the camera. Brutal beatings, drowning and more, all captured on film for a tormentor’s enjoyment later on, while at home with family and friends. I am referring not to the American penchant for cruelty, but to Saddam Hussain’s. The press had earlier published the lurid details, revealed by one of his former mistresses, of a dictator sipping gin at home on his sofa while in catharsis watching the videos of his screaming torture victims. Those videos were never found; they vanished, as did the much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction. No one doubts that the torture stories were true—that is what Arab dictators do, but what shocked the west was the litany of pictures and video footage of Americans torturing and raping their own prisoners in Saddam’s old dungeons.