NOTE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And thanks for the link, Prof. Reynolds.
Shortly after the attacks of 9-11, George W. Bush announced a new focus for his adminstration and for America:
Why? Is it due in any way to Bush's conduct of what became known as the War on Terror, so derided by so many? To the Department of Homeland Security, or to better intelligence gathering and sharing by the CIA and FBI? Is there perhaps some validity to the "flypaper strategy", which some bloggers claim to have decisively debunked? Is it pure luck? Or is some other factor at work?
I don't know, and I invite discussion of this question in the comments.
As for why Bush has received virtually no credit for the amazing absence of further attacks, well, I have a good idea of the answer to that one.
FOLLOW-UP:
I suggest the Spinal Tap theory: Al-Qaeda isn't losing its strength; its attacks are just becoming more selective.
ANOTHER FOLLOW-UP:
An Al Qaeda spokesman says, "Hey, don't rush us, we're working on it."
Shortly after the attacks of 9-11, George W. Bush announced a new focus for his adminstration and for America:
We will direct every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war — to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.Four years later, terrorism remains a problem around the world, as we have seen in Bali, in Madrid, in Israel, in London, and, of course, in Iraq. Yet, it would seem, not in America. While America remains alert and, some would say, hypersensitive to the risk of another attack, none has come. Our buildings, our buses, our airplanes all are surely tempting targets to the likes of Al Qaeda and its sympathizers. Yet, four years later, they have not struck. In the tense days after 9-11, such a stretch of safety would have seemed like wishful thinking. And yet, that's what happened.
This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism.
Why? Is it due in any way to Bush's conduct of what became known as the War on Terror, so derided by so many? To the Department of Homeland Security, or to better intelligence gathering and sharing by the CIA and FBI? Is there perhaps some validity to the "flypaper strategy", which some bloggers claim to have decisively debunked? Is it pure luck? Or is some other factor at work?
I don't know, and I invite discussion of this question in the comments.
As for why Bush has received virtually no credit for the amazing absence of further attacks, well, I have a good idea of the answer to that one.
FOLLOW-UP:
I suggest the Spinal Tap theory: Al-Qaeda isn't losing its strength; its attacks are just becoming more selective.
ANOTHER FOLLOW-UP:
An Al Qaeda spokesman says, "Hey, don't rush us, we're working on it."
Homeland Security might be accomplishing a lot behind the scenes. Likewise, a tree that falls in a forest with nobody around might make a sound. It's hard to know for sure. I'll wait until we see pictures of federal agents subduing a pack of fundamentalists with bombs strapped to their chests, and then I'll wonder whether they're aping Francis Urquhart's "saving" of the King.
These things are easy to opine about, much harder to understand...
An attack on the U.S. by bin Laden would surely bring calls for shifting resources away from providing bodyquards for Moqtada Al-Sadr in Iraq and onto tracking down and eliminating Al Qaeda's straggled remnants. Moreover, it would likely lead to Bush's political enfeeblement, or even ouster, which is the last thing bin Laden wants.
This also explains why there have been attacks on most of U.S.'s closest allies in the Iraq war. The strategy is to force the U.S. to remain in Iraq, while peeling its allies off one-by-one, increasing the costs for the U.S. to remain in Iraq while at the same time, complicating any prospect of internationalizing the conflict.
Unfortunately, I do think an attack in the U.S. is inevitable and probably sooner than later. I'm not sure Bin Laden has full control over his followers. I've often wondered if some of the smaller attacks are independent people who might've had some terrorist training and just "set loose" to wreak havoc at their own will.
There IS validity to the flypaper strategy--er, stratergery. ;-) There's also the fact that just like our own Bush-haters, they think he's "crazy"; happily, "crazy" enough to obliterate the lot of them (the terrorists, that is).
Anyway, "bloggers debunking" national security policy just makes me laugh. Kinda like my six year-old trying to tell me how to drive because she heard someone on TV explain it. To paraphrase Walter Sobchak, "they're a bunch of f'n amateurs." An amusing hobby, I suppose.
That said, there is probably some truth to the idea they are deliberately not targeting America. We've taught them attacking America has very bad consequences; 9/11 had exactly the opposite effect on American policy of what they intended. They know more attacks will only further inflame American support for war -- at least, as long as there's a Republican president. Attacking Europe, on the other hand, has worked out better for them.
They can also see that the war, plus out of control political spending, is sapping our economic strength. If I were Bin Laden I would keep sending as many jihadis to Iraq as I could, encourage the peaceniks and anti-Bush crowd, make small attacks on the coalition nations, and generally try to draw the effort out in an attempt to pauperize the U.S. That is what they saw happen to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. I have no doubt they believe the same thing can happen to the U.S.
After all, February 26, 1997, was the 4-year aniiversary of the day that terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, killing six people, and injuring about one thousand.
My point (if it is not obvious) is that no conclusion can be drawn to explain the absence of terrorist attacks on American. It could have something to do with Bush's policies, or it could have something to do with the fact that al Qaeda doesn't employ blizkreig tactics.
I tend to think the latter. It's like trying to devine why California hasn't had a major earthquake in several years. It's not because the fault lines have gone away.
I also disagree with your faith that Homeland Security is doing great work behind the scenes. We now know of one place where America was vulnerable -- the New Orleans levee system. With some research, AQ could have discovered the very public information that the levees were in need of upgrade, and they could have learned the catastrophic results of a breach. Then, it is merely a matter of a truck or boat bomb.
You are absolutely right that a follow-up attack could come at any time (although we all hope it doesn't). Perhaps, though, our policy of going on the offensive, combined with tighter security at home, has made that next attack more difficult to execute than it otherwise would have been.
Bush's war in Iraq is the best thing that ever happened to bin Laden, with the possible exception of the funding and other support he got from the Reagan administration.
This administration has played right into bin Laden's hands. One point that many posters here don't seem to understand is that bin Laden and his ilk are first and foremost enemies of the Middle East's secular Arab dictators, who they see as apostates, the worst of all crimes against Islam. Moreover, as a practical matter, the bin Ladenists know the first step to restoring the Caliphate, their stated goal, is to overthrow Arab governments opposed to their fanatical view of Islam.
Bush's war in Iraq has devastated the ability of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, Sudan, Iran and others in the region to fight the growth of Islamic fundamentalist appeals such as bin Laden's.
Bush's war in Iraq has put the U.S. military in the position of helping enforce Islamic law at the hands of religious militia in the southern part of the country. Iraq's government has now concluded a military and economic cooperation agreement with Iran, a far more powerful and determined exponent of Islamofascism, than bin Laden could have every hoped to be.
No the peaceniks and Bush-haters were right: Bush's war in Iraq has destabilized the region, made it harder for our allies to openly support us, squandered goodwill in the region and around the world and, ultimately, locked the U.S. into a war where victory can't even be concretely defined, let alone obtained, and defeat is almost unthinkable.
Bush is definitely the MVP on bin Laden's team.
It doesn't seem that complex to me. Terrorists mass murder innocent people because of our involvment in Vietnam or whatever other distant lands we have sent our armies to.
Yeah-- because he's so big on diplomacy.
Thanks, Stereotypical Lefty, but I'll stick with the more obvious answer-- because every time al-Qaeda gets a guy with two brain cells to rub together, we swoop down in the middle of the night and haul him off, whereupon he gives up the next three guys.
Bush-hating peaceniks such as myself are bin Laden's worst enemy. We don't play his game; chickenhawks, neo-cons and other assorted militarists do.
Since you have such insight into his tactics and mindset, what's his point of view on Lefties with delusions of grandeur?
Consider the fact that bin Laden is still hiding out beyond the reach of civilization.
Terrorists are also arrogant and proud. They want every attack to be worse than the last.
This may change in the wake of the London bombings, but one has to wonder whether they seriously want the entire world to be like their own countries. Who would build their cars and explosives?
The Taliban was an easy target, but the US refuses to provide the follow-up support necessary to make sure Afghanistan does not slip back into chaos.
The Administration played a shell game with the American people by shifting focus from al Qaeda to Saddam (a secularist with regional ambitions), and using the "war on terror" to ramp up "defense" expenditures (and budget deficits) to record levels, including huge amounts on developing new nuclear weapons and useless Star Wars nti-missile defenses. We have seen a huge intrusion on civil rights and liberties at home, and our international image is now one of a besmirched and arrogant superpower that hardly even bothers to cover its actions abroad ("renderings", Guantanamo and military strikes) with a fig-leaf of justification under domestic or international law). I think the record is also clear that spending on "homeland security" has been been plagued by lack of planning or prioritization and by pork-barrel politics - with the twists that the Bush Administration and Republican Congress (1) are not the typical irresponsible "tax and spend" liberals, but "tax-cut, borrow and spend" partisans who prefer to enrich their wealthiest constituents, while pushing the costs onto future generations, and (2) have been quite eager to use such spending in a manner that rewards the "Red", rural states at the expense of the more vulnerable urban centers.
Osama doesnt give a s**t about traditional forms of diplomacy. That kind of stuff is for weaklings in his book. It is the diplomacy of a pimp-your whore get out of line you slap her until she does what you want. His idea of diplomacy is what we saw in Spain last March. Blow up something big so the weak and fearful will think "if we just do what they want they will leave us alone".
Osama made a big mistake on 9/11. He thought all Americans and American presidents were weak like what he had seen out of Clinton and the Europeans. He thought at the most he might suffer a couple cruise missles in retaliation and a couple UN resolutions which he would use as toilet paper, but that would make us do what he wanted in the end. Well, he has learned the hard way that he wasn't dealing with Clinton and most Americans are not weak sheeple like the Euros.
Now...
Memo to the commenters who thinks that the "peaceniks" are "Osama's worst enemies": You are wrong, you are his best friends. Here is a clue for you. If you have noticed he has not tried another attack in the US but has done some big ones in Europe. Why? Because he sees those people to be just like you and he "knows" that you will piss your pants, cower in fear and do exactly what he wants. You might say "look at France-they are 'Peaceniks' and anti Americans and he doesn't do anything to them". Well, guess what? He KNOWS that if he pisses off the French they can be even worse then the Americans. Ask any of your Islamist friends if they want to be in a French jail or Gitmo and they will say Gitmo hands down. They also know that the French when it comes right down to it care less about the pompous posturing of the UN then the Americans do and if they send the FFL in those guys are not going to play kissy face with him, they will cut his and every last member of his families throats and give them no more concern then a dead dog in the street.
If Osama is as ruthless and bloodthirsty as they suggest--and I do think he is--why is he "afraid" of U.S. retaliation? He has proved repeatedly capable of eluding U.S. capture or assassination himself, so why would he want to start playing nice now? His devotees are suicidal and that is literally their ONLY strength. This is what I mean when I say that chickenhawks and other militarists play his game, wheras peaceniks don't.
While it is obvious that the invasion of Afghanistan has partially denied bin Laden a haven, the proliferation of attacks since then are a clear demonstration that the haven wasn't necessary.
The militarists here actually argue that bin Laden is afraid to the attack the U.S. because he fears retaliation. Against what?? He holds no territory and any military assets he has are widely dispersed, concealed and deeply embedded.
The silly militarists here imply that somehow, the U.S. could turn up the heat on bin Laden. Of course this means that, somehow, the U.S. isn't currently doing all it can against Al Qaeda. That may well be true, given the debacle in Iraq and it's drag on resources and will. Logically, then, the only thing bin Laden would have to fear would be a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, as that would the only way the U.S. could devote more resources to killing him and his network.
Osama would love nothing more than to see ANY of the region's nations further destablized by U.S. bombing and or retaliation. He despises nothing and no one more than the Saudi monarchy and dictatorships in Pakistan and Syria.
Or if that's too hypothetical, what country to you propose the U.K. attack in retaliation for the Al Qaeda-claimed bombings of its subway and buses?
When are the militarists going to wake up to the obvious fact that Al Qaeda thrives against near-absolute power. It grew out of a war against the Soviets, who had relatively few qualms about using maximum military force.
Art wishes, apparently, that the U.S. didn't have anyone willing to speak out against the war. Well, the Soviets simply jailed people who tried to do so and look how things turned out for them in Afghanistan.
To this day, the Russians are bleeding in their war against bin Ladenists in Chechnya. I wonder if Art would blame that on Russia's "anti-war left" or the ``chicken doves'' that rule the roost in Moscow?
How many more Beslans does it take to convince people like Art that what we're dealing with here isn't a military force that can be deterred or, even, defeated, in any conventional military sense of those terms. As much as Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have tried to make the war on terror sound like WWII, it could not be any more different.
Then there's Israel. Their "iron fist" policy has failed completely to halt the rise of bin Laden-style Islamic terrorism in Palestine. Instead, the relative power and popularity of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and their ilk has grown apace. Does Art want to blame that on Israel's failure to play rough enough?
Ironically, the most ruthless opponents of bin Laden-style Islamism have been Arab leaders themselves. Syria's army massacred an entire town, death estimates run in the thousands, after the Muslim brotherhood mounted a rebellion there in the mid-1980s.
Algeria's current government, with the tacit, at least, support of the U.S., has executed scores of political prisoners, merely ``disappearing'' them with no formal arrest, let alone a trial, and staged a coup to take power when an Islamic party's election win became inevitable.
To be sure, each of these regimes may have nipped full-blown rebellions in the bud, but all of them can only survive as totalitarian states, paranoid against all potential threats. Perhaps this is what Art has in mind for the U.S.
The record of Saddam Hussein's slaughter of radical Islamists is more widely cited, inasmuch has he has been a more convenient enemy of the U.S. Surely Art isn't suggesting this as a model for the U.S. response to bin Laden.
Against all this, bin Laden and Al Qaeda persists. The idea that he and his followers are "afraid" of U.S. retaliation is entirely without historical or logical basis.
The terrorists are stupid and weak. They can only succeed in a very permissive environment.
Also, GB has shown that any govt allowing terrorists to use their country as a base of operation, eg. Afghanistan, will be removed.
Bush also has everybody scared. Who is going to mess with him? Who did Bill Clinton scare?
Heh.
Please name one way in which this has affected your life at all, other than at the airport.
you seem to have all the answers on what "won't work." care to take a stab at what will? You claim fighting back has no effect, but what did ignoring the issue in the 90s do?
as for Israel? Iron Fist? you have got to be kidding. Would an iron fist have let Arafat back in the country? attempted to return 98% of the "disputed" territory with Clinton as their broker? released scores upon scores of convicted terrorists from their jails with every cease-fire agreement? I believe they would like use an iron-fist but when the entire UN (save the U.S.) spends all their time denouncing Israel as racist, it has worn them down. This meeting halfway business has just given Hamas-types more opportunities to claim victory.
Iron Fist? see China, Peoples Republic.
There is a reason why Al-Qaeda and sympathetic forces are being poured into Iraq where we can so easily kill them, it is that the success of "consensual government" as one poster put it will eviscerate the worldview that provides support to Al-Qaeda. They must drive us out and at least reduce the region to chaos. If the place fragments into two states which are stable and have consensual government where AlQaeda has no purchase and a Sunni/Arabist/Baathist failed state where they rule squalid rubble--and squalid rubble is all they can be seen to produce--then they lose small while remaining a philosophically viable option for disaffected would-be Islamists.
If Iraq remains a single state with constitutionally bounded multiparty representative government, and is a base for the United States to project power in the region--and particularly if the Iraqi example inspires movement towards similar government in the region--then AlQaeda loses big. In fact, if that happens, they have destroyed themselves by attracting American power.
The AlQaeda worldview can persist for several generations--how could anything else be expected, it has grown in strength to the degree it has in several generations--but ultimately even it has to show it can do more than blow up children and attract American bombs and soldiers if it is going to unify the Moslem world under it's banner. When it has nothing to show for a few decades, it will be as spent a force as the Ottomans trying for the gates of Vienna.
The "peacenik's" have no answer to Islamism's challenges except to hope they go away, when AlQaeda really has to be killed off for it's threat to be removed.
I do not support several of the moves made by the current administration towards that end, but the Iraq war is a move I do support.
Yours, TDP,
molon labe
montani semper liberi
para fides paternae patria
The Middle East has been a sordid waste of human potential throughout my entire life. Finally someone has come along who does not simply want to wink at it and acquiesce in the name of "stability" (the stability of the torturer) but has shaken it up. Not all of this will be successful, here or there something worse will come to power, but already the region is changing, and a decade from now we will only regret that someone did not do it in the 70s or 80s.
Before 9/11, bin Laden told an Islamic newspaper in London that he wanted to draw the United States into war in Afghanistan and drain us and defeat as the Mujahadeen had done to the Russians in the '80s. He was successful in that, but Round 1 went against him - though not decisively as he and almost all of his inner circle were easily able to escape and relocate.
Having failed for the time being to draw us into punching the Jihadi tarbaby, he must have been pleasantly surprised that we immediately turned around and invaded Iraq, giving him a second chance to execute his plan.
Now, we are tied up in Iraq every bit as much as Russia was in Afghanistan, doing ourselves immesurable harm in the eyes of millions of Muslims worldwide. Iraq has now become the recruiting poster and training ground of this new generation of Jihadists that Afghanistan was for the last generation. And, bin Laden has gone from the leader of a small, fanatical group of Islamic extremists in the desert to the definer and icon of a world-wide ideology.
In his eyes, I suspect, he is still getting plenty of payoff from the 9/11 attack and so sees little benefit in another attack at this time. The Picador has poked the bull and, as long as the bull continues to thrash about and charge blindly this way and that, has no need to poke it again. That's not to say he isn't ready and able to poke us again should our thrashing abate.
Perhaps bin Laden, well versed in the cultures and histories of the West, is merely following Napolean Bonaparte's famous dictum?
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
If you're a Syrian jihadi and you want to blow up Americans why would you go all the way to America to do it? You can walk to Iraq, and when you get there you have organizational support. Your support will probably order you to blow up some Iraqis instead of Americans, but by the time you figure that out you're already in theater and about to be destroyed by ISF and Coalition forces.
PS
Umm... No. Your perceptions are not accurate. Usually attempting to interrupt your enemy when they are succeeding, is a good approach, unless you want your enemy to win.
The only mistake bin Laden made was in thinking there would be no effective resonse to 9/11, if there had been no effective response it would have been a resounding success for AlQaeda.
We have at least two worldviews competing for the Moslem mind, the Islamist totalitarian regime and a much more liberal one of consensual government--the rule of popular law. Since the strictures of Sharia as the mullahs of Iran lay it down are severely unpopular even in Iran, I do not fear Iraq becoming an Islamist state by election. I also do not fear Iraq becoming an Islamist state by explosion--the tactics adopted by the Islamists and their Baathist fellow travelers have made them immensely unpopular in Iraq and even brought the Islamist worldview into question by the Moslem world generally. Blowing up Moslen children in Iraq is getting the Islamists nowhere, they are harming their own reputation much more than we are harmimg our own by opposing them--at a wonderfully high kill ratio of good guys to bad guys, somewhere between 1 to 40 to 1 to 200. Islamists are coming to Iraq to die, their moves in Bangladesh sparked massive protests against them, protests conducted by Moslems.
It is only among the feckless and clueless liberals of the West that the murderous Islamists have any currency, why is that?
It is in Iraq the Islamists are making a mistake, and I do favor their continuing it.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Hmmm. Guess GB's sleeping on the job, because Al Qaeda's still there and a lot of countries have yet to be "removed.''
A simple question for Joel: what country or countries does Al Qaeda currently use as a "base of operations?''
If they don't need a country as a base of operations, what use is it to "remove" the countries it uses?
A couple of pro-war posters have suggested that my position is that the U.S. should do "nothing" in response to 9/11 and other terrorist attacks.
Quite the opposite. My differences here are on what works and what doesn't, not on the need for action. Here's a few steps that would be good starting points:
1. Set a date for starting a gradual withdrawal from Iraq, with the initial phase being a draw down and replacement of U.S. troops with those of allied countries.
2. Embrace the Palestinian Authority's request for an international peacekeeping force to help implement U.N. resolution 242, which calls for the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories. U.S. support should include massive military assistance to the Palestinian Authority for the purpose of disarming militia opposed to it and arresting and trying those who refuse to comply.
3. Insist that Saudi Arabia fund half the cost of the Iraq war. Should they refuse, impose a tarriff on Saudi Arabian oil that would generate equivalent revenue. When are the wingnuts going to wake up to the fact that Bush gives these abominable Sheiks a free ride?
4. Fire Donald Rumsfeld for the torture at Abu Ghraib and make real the statement that torture under any circumstances is unAmerican.
Well, that's a start, anyway. But, of course, none of this is realistic as long as Bush remains in office, so the first step has to be getting him out of power.
Er, like Pakistan? We know that Pakistan is now the primary (though not only) haven for many of the fighters we once faced in Afghanistan. We know that there are also many in Saudi Arabia and in Bangladesh. So, why does the Bush administration give these countries a free pass?
Currently, two of Pakistan's four provinces are ruled by the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an umbrella group of radical Islamic jihad parties including our old friends, the Taliban, as well as the clerics who trained and directed them. The North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan are now completely under the control of radical clerics and are the training grounds for the Taliban fighters who cross over daily into Afghanistan to engage our troops.
Would that Joel were correct. It was easy and almost cost-free to go into Afghanistan. The country had a rogue government recognized and befriended by few in the world (though, ironically, their main supporter was our treasured ally, Pakistan), and we had the war lords to do most of our fighting and dying for us. It took little real courage, resolve, or comittment to sacrifice to do what we did in Afghanistan.
Iraq, too, was also an isolated rogue nation, still militarily weakened by the Gulf War, sanctions, and a decade of no-fly zones. It was also, so Bush's advisors thought, relatively risk-free - like Afghanistan, it seemed another case of low-hanging fruit.
Now, as President Bush finds that being true to his earlier bluster and bombastic promises would require an invasion and occupation of the northern half of Pakistan, a recognized nuclear power, BTW, there is sudden, stunning silence from the Oval Office.
Please spare me the hairy-chested assertions about this administration. They are too busy calculating the exquisite political consequences of every single action to act when there is a real cost to be borne. And bin Laden sits in smug comfort, watching the Iraq debacle on his satellite and releasing his smirking, taunting videotapes every couple of months.
Unfortunately for him, Bush doesn't allow opinion polls to shape policy when it comes to the GWOT. Instead, we've seized on bin Laden's great weakness and throttled him with it. That weakness is of course the power of freedom and democracy. Iraqis and Afghanis have overwhelmingly embraced them and rejected the Islamofascist vision Al Qaeda is selling. Osama's great movement to create an tyrannical Islamic superstate is a heap of ashes today, while democratization moves forward all over the Islamic world.
You haven't been following the news, have you? Pakistan has launched military operations to kill thousands of extremists in their country. The gov't is not exactly granting them "sanctuary." Sheesh.
1) Unrealistic. No other country has that capacity or willingness. Iraq needs to defend itself, and they're making great strides in that regard. The latest Tal Afar operation was led by their forces. Troop withdrawals will begin next year as our forces are no longer needed.
2) Are you joking? The PA is incredibly corrupt and actively promotes terrorism. Arafat stole billions of dollars of the aid people like you insisted we give them.
3) Beyond ridiculous. They'd just sell it to someone else.
4) Don Rumsfeld didn't torture anyone. Those that did misttreat prisoners were punished. That's American. Scapegoating for political purposes is unAmerican.
Excellent point - if we can just snap al Queda like a twig, as many here seem to suggest, what on earth are we waiting for?
The obvious reason the US has seen no further attacks since 2/11 01 is because he has been demoralized by being called stupid and cowardly and insane.
We hurt his feewings...
The fundamentalist Islamist forces in Iraq are not the relatively middle-class, educated, and westernized Sunnis from Baghdad and its environs to the west, but the majority Shi'ites who command the 9 southern provinces.
I would be very happy if you were correct about Iraq not becoming an Islamic republic, but the truth is that the underpinnings are already in place and we are now being presented with a fait accompli. The forces driving the "Islamization" of Iraq are the very people who were elected into majority representation in the January election - the alliance of the two major Shi'ite fundamentalist religious parties, the SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and Al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya (the Call to Islam Party).
Basra and most of southern Iraq are already under de-facto Shari'ah law and the religious militias have usurped or co-opted the security forces. Squads of religious police now roam the streets of Basra enforcing Islamic law, punishing women who appear in public bareheaded, just as they once did in Kabul under the Taliban.
Just last month, al Sistani's and SCIRI's al Badr religious militiamen invaded the office of the Mayor of Baghdad, threw him out, and installed an Islamic fundamentalist in his place. The new government of Iraq has already paid an official state visit to the Mullahs in Iran to pledge brotherhood and establish an official alliance - stopping off at the grave of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini to show their respects. Iran has pledged money and expertise to train their private militias.
Perhaps it would do you well to get your head out of the fantasmagorical blogosphere and look at the reality every now and then.
No, but the government is hunting with the hounds and riding with the hares. Musharrif dutifully launches periodic forays into the NWFT to placate his American allies, but is always careful not to go too far and further alienate the Pashtun religious parties that control two of his four provinces. Musharrif knows that the MMA is a hotbed of plotting against his own less-than-democratic regime, and that supporters have tried several times to assassionate him. But, he also knows that there is strong MMA support within his own ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and among the military's younger officer corps and he must tread a fine line.
You could liken it to Prohibition, where the local officials had to stage occasional very public raids on speakeasies and bootleggers to placate the citizenry - after which everybody returned to business as usual.
Sheeeesh.....
Musharrif tries to distinguish between the native Pashtun who make up the Taliban, MMA, and other indigenous radical groups, and the foreign al Qaeda fighters of Arab nationality. He is willing and eager to go after the Arabs and has helped in the capture of Qaeda leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, Ramzi Binalahibh, and Walid B'Attash. He has far less enthusiasm for going after the local Pashtun, though. Many experts feel that a continued Taliban presence fighting in Afghanistan actually helps Musharrif, since, as long as we see strategic benefit in supporting him, we will not support a larger Indian role in the region.
Professor Timothy D. Hoyt of the U.S. Naval War Collage, in his testimony to the House Committee on International Relations in October 2003 said that there is "substantial support for Al Qaeda and Taliban within Pakistan’s government, military and intelligence services."
Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah concurred in November 2003. The Afghan Ambassador to India, Masood Khalili, confirms that the Taliban forces fighting against us in Afghanistan are flowing into the country from Pakistan.
Right now, the headquarters and recruiting grounds for the Taliban forces fighting against American troops are not in Afghanistan, but in NWTP and Baluchistan, particularly in cities like Peshawar and Islamabad. The Musharrif government has little power and influence in these two provinces and the only way to shut down the Taliban and Qaeda forces and supporters would be if the United States committed our military. However, despite our government's earlier claims that we would pursue terrorists and our enemies wherever they went in the world, we are willing to rely on Musharrif to play his anemic win-some-lose-some game in the NTFT.
But, then, we're busy elsewhere, aren't we?
And who pays the tarriff? As with any tarriff, the additional cost will be passed on and borne by American consumers! Sure, that'll work.
Remember what Foote wrote in his first volume of the Civil War concerning Grant at a particular point, about how worried about a situation and finding the foe gone, that they were just as worried about him as he was about them.
My personal opinion is that our foes are currently bunkered in Iran supported directly by the government there and indirectly by our friends in China. I believe this because is the most sensible thing for all three of them. I believe that although it is not so hard to get somebody to blow themselves up (willingly or otherwise in Iraq) it is MUCH harder to get someone planted here with the knowledge, dedication and the skill to pull off a major hit when we are waiting for it.
Iran needs Bin Laden's boys to keep us busy in Iraq, while they develop the bomb. Our troops currently surround Iran on all sides and our Navy controlls the water. Iran is fighting us in Iraq to keep from fighting us in Iran in a war they can't win because a large chunk of their own people don't support them. It is a strategic move and a smart one.
China has long term plans both economically, locally (Taiwan) and long term (parity or military superiority to the US) Helping Bin Ladan keeps our focus on those goals and also persuades him to turn a blind eye to their treatment of Islam which is much worse than anything you will see in the west, but for some reason no Jihad is declared against the Chineese (perhaps for the same reason why the Global Economic protesters never target stuff in China, they know they don't wear gloves. If Iran and Bin Laden's boys keep us busy China can catch up to the point were they can hit Taiwan without our intervention to worry about.
Bin Laden needs material, logistic and financial support. He also needs protection to continue to live (assuming he is still alive) the US has a long reach but it's not long enough to stop either China or Iran without war. It is the perfect ally for him and his goal to be the next Saladin.
The psi-ops of our foes (aided by our media) should not be unexpected. It is a smart move since they can't attack us any other way as effectively so they will carry on. Like any war we are going to lose some battles, both tactical and stratigic, but if we keep our heads we will win this war.
The fact is that for all of our openness and juicy tempting targets, the United States is not an easy country to attack. We are separated by an ocean and more from the central sources of Islamofacism, and the pathways into our country are not risk-free. Sure, individuals may slip in, but injecting a crew of terrorists for a coordinated attack could fail at any number of points. Retrospectively we are learning that the 9/11 plotters might have been detected and taken down several different ways. They were lucky, but back then America was also fairly unconcerned about the danger of a large-scale terrorist attack.
In addition there is the possibility (I hope probability) that terrorist organizations are better infiltrated and observed than before. You don't reveal undercover assets to deflect minor attacks, but you do sacrifice your assets for the big ones. Al Queda is on the run in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its infrastructure has been badly damaged and the integrity of its remaining resources are now questionable.
Finally, the U.S. provides no internal sanctuary to would-be terrorists. Our Muslim community does not contain a substantial pro-terrorist segment, and absolutely cannot be trusted by terrorists to shelter them and provide safehouses and other assistance. Any American Muslim is a potential "traitor" to terrorists. To terrorists this is a strange and inhospitable land filled with gun-toting individuals who can unexpectantly disrupt an attack at any time or place.
So let's not overestimate our enemy's capabilities nor underestimate our own intrinsic defenses.
Also, I really don't see how surrendering (for lack of a better word) in Iraq would help us. Do we really think that Bin Laden would "leave us alone" if we pulled the U.S. military from all Muslim and Arab countries back home?
Bin Laden has stated that he wants to kill all of the Infidels (that's you, me and everyone we know and care about).
As I stated above, I think that another attack is going to happen, but I also believe if it happened now, it would bring America closer together. Therefore, I believe Bin Laden is waiting for the right time. Possibly an American victory in Iraq would be the perfect time for such an attack as it would turn Americas' MSM attention back to Bushs' "failed" domestic policies, i.e. "The Patriot Act". That would counter a success story like a free Iraq.
The US was attacked and struck back with the most kick-ass military in the world.
It isn't likely that AQ wants another taste of US retaliation. Especially true if they believe GWB is a crazy cowboy.
It is not necessarily the case that the US is a primary target.... at this time. Instead, Sept 11th might have been a means to an end - - a bigger end than the tilting-at-windmills of taking us on in a major way at this time. Instead, Sept 11th might have been a high-visibility event: Osama's portion of THE CAMPAIGN. The objective over the next decade might be to remove the family of Saud from control over the home of Mecca and Medina. The dude claims that he became even more angry(incensed?) when American soldiers were based there. So if he liked us even less over that revoltin' development, wadda ya think he thought about the Arabs who let us bivouac there?
The prognostication that groups are steering the Arabian Peninsula down the path similar to Iran and Libya(aka 'to control things') ain't no product of a rocket scientist, yet I've not heard that this is a possible agenda. What could be more pathetic -- than overlooking this possibility by it NOT being presented then discussed in the public domain? Well here's what's more pathetic: six weeks after 9/11 our nation- its public forum of the MSM - was flooded with disgusting wimpy self-centered paranoia(IT'S UNBELIEVABLE!! was the mantra) - - consistent with resulting blindness to other possibilities. Naturally the federal government MUST deal with the probability of additional homeland attacks(and they'll occur given circumstances and time) but we need to check our premises. The possibility of an attack should be set within the possibility of other actions. Is Osama stupid enough to take us on so directly as we assume in this War On Terror paradigm? What could we be overlooking? My conjecture about THE CAMPAIGN is more an attempt to jar us from our current perseveration, than to claim that I know what those folks are up to. So here is one possibility that I thought of in late-October, 2001; by golly, history so far is consistent with that speculation.
Why do we expect there to be an attack soon after 9/11 and why are we amazed and relieved when four years passes and nothing happens? Bin Laden is in this for the long haul, kids.
Ask the question again in the year 2025, then I'll believe that the US has actually escaped an attack. Until then, I'm sure they're planning something, and the question is when, not if, they will implement the plan and whether our information is good enough to prevent the attack. Or intellegence was clearly and admittedly bad with respect to the "WMDs" in Iraq, what makes anyone think that it will be any better with respect to an attack? The best argument that they will is a reliance on hope, because without it we're left only with fear, which is no way to go through life.
In his book ``The Crisis in Islam," Bernard Lewis explains that Pakistan's support for the Taliban should be understood in terms of its identity as an Islamic nation. Without Islam, there is nothing to distinguish Pakistan from India.
Lewis writes: ``The name Pakistan, a twentieth-century invention, designates a country defined entirely by its Islamic religion. In every other respect, the country and people of Pakistan are—as they have been for millennia—part of India. An Afghanistan defined by its Islamic identity would be a natural ally, even a satellite, of Pakistan. An Afghanistan defined by ethnic nationality, on the other hand, could be a dangerous neighbor, advancing irredentist claims on the Pashto-speaking areas of northwestern Pakistan and perhaps even allying itself with India.''
1. Attacking America may look and feel good to the Islamic supremacists but doesn't really further their cause. Militant Islam watchdog Daniel Pipes has pointed this fact out on numerous occasions on his Web site, such as in this article. In his words, "[R]adical Islam has two distinct wings - one violent and illegal, the other lawful and political - and they exist in tension with each other. The lawful strategy has proven itself effective, but the violent approach gets in its way." RTWT.
2. Even violent jihad need not take the form of terrorism. One statement attributed to Pakistani Islamists, and quoted by a number of militant-Islam watchdog bloggers (including the aforementioned Daniel Pipes), claims that "in the next 10 years [Me: actually 7-8 years, as this quote's been around for a couple of years now], Americans will wake up to the existence of an Islamic army in their midst - an army of jihadis who will force America to abandon imperialism and listen to the voice of Allah."
Granted, this talk of "an army of jihadis" could be merely idle ramblings from a lone nutjob. But it suggests that not all Islamic supremacists envision jihad against the West taking the form of mere occasional terrorist attacks. As even the 9/11/2001 attacks didn't require an entire "army of jihadis" to pull off, it sure sounds like this guy envisions nothing less than a full-blown, sustained Islamic insurrection - in the United States.
The question this begs, of course, is whether this guy was really onto something. While we in America are fretting about (and at least trying to prepare for) nuclear bombings and other large-scale terrorist attacks, is al Qaeda slowly building up for a prolonged campaign of more conventional warfare on our soil instead? If we are ill-prepared for a WMD attack, we're even more so against something like that. Of course, Britain's MI5 has raised concerns about a similar Islamic rebellion brewing in the UK, which brings me to my third reason...
3. Even with the rise of democracy in the Middle East, all Islamic supremacists have to do is bide their time until about 2050. Given current demographic trends, that's when Europe is expected to become majority-Muslim, and thus ripe for Islamic supremacists to seize power. With the great resources, infrastructure and technology inherited from Europe's old governments, the Islamists could well dispense with terrorism and instead wage jihad against America the old-fashioned way.
Except that Islamic supremacists form a tiny, divided, outcast community within Islam. Indeed, nothing will bring a more certain, lasting demise to bin Laden and his ilk than the empowerment of the moderate Muslim majority, be it in Europe or elsewhere.
And the idea of an Islamic insurrection inside the U.S. is beyond ludicrous. As others have pointed out on this blog, the Muslim community in the U.S. is especially inhospitable to supremacists and is in a position to recognize it, even when non-Muslims may confuse it--as so many posters here have--with Islam in general.
What is it going to take to make posters here acknowledge that bid Laden doesn't represent Islam and that the battle is against him and his ilk, not Islam? At some point, you have to question the motives of people who insist against all evidence on blurring that distinction.
We are winning and we are lucky.
That is why there have been no attacks here.
The CIA and the FBI have gotten some of their priorities right and stopped a number of attacks.
Al-Queda has suffered heavy attrition. They are unwelcome (hated) in a number of places they formerly had support. A report from the Syrian border, talks about a group of 50 jihadists going into Iraq and 3 coming out.
The elections in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon are critical. It is like water to the Wicked Witch. Al-Queda cannot stand elections.
We are disliked by the old statis-quo liberals,
old Europe socialists and autocrats, because we are forcing changes that make them uncomfortable.
The courage of our military and our President is quite remarkable given the national suicide that is the apparent goal of our media and the Democrat Party. It must be tough to go out every day and fight the war on terror and know that you will be attacked by such bitter and ignorant people.
We are winning over there. What is less clear is if we will be sold out by the media and Liberals over here.
Please do name one of those places. My understanding is that Al Qaeda has never been welcome in any country except Afghanistan, where it established a beach head as an ally of the U.S. and the victor against Russia's occupation.
Al Qaeda is still unwelcome everywhere in the region, though popular support for the group has grown apace in Iraq, a place where the group had no foothold whatsoever prior to the U.S. invasion. Similarly, some observers say that Iran now finds it convenient to shelter Al Qaeda operatives, but I would be skeptical of that claim.
But again, Rob's claim has no basis in fact. There are no countries that formerly supported Al Qaeda and have since come to hate them.
The silver lining in all of this may be that Americans lose their appetite for expensive foreign adventures, and realize that we are better off with a slimmer government focussed on protecting the needs of the American people at home. As Chalmers Johnson has pointed out so well in "Bloiwback" and "The Sorrows of Empire", it is our own militarized foreign policy that is creating the risks that it needs more lives and money to fight.
As Paul Craig Roberts, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Reagan adminstration noted:
When will the Administration tell us honestly what this war is all about? What was so important about Iraq that was worth the risk of engendering the distrust of our allies and the hatred of Muslims, the loss of the lives of thousands of American soliers, the maiming of tens of thousands more (not counting Iraqi civilians, who don't matter), the expenditure of hundreds of billions, and permanent poisoning of American political discussion?
When will Bush supporters start to see all the damage that this administration has done, turn away from the rabid idealogues and start listening to sensible patriotic Republicans with real military experience such as Colin Powell, Chuck Hagel and John McCain?
Just ran across an interesting interview in the NYT of Richard Haass, who was Colin Powell's chief advisor and also served in national security and the State Department for Reagan and Pappy Bush. Haass now heads the Council on Foreign Relations and just published a book on how the US should capitalize on its present unique opportunity as the world's sole superpower. Here are some quotes on his evaluation of the Bush administration:
Are wonder how many of your readers are ready to listen to any criticism of Bush and the neocons, even from foreign policy experts on the right?
It would be easy for me to just say Saddam was an enemy of the U.S., sort of like Hitler, but that's not good enough for some people. I would like to direct those people who "feel" that Iraq had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda to this 2002 article from beloved CBS news.
But then if CBS is lying, then so is Fox (as I'm sure some of you will agree), and so is CNS, and The Weekly Standard, the telegraph.uk, and a list of others.
And let's not forget that in '99 Bin Laden was on the run and was offered asylum from Saddam. But even that fact didn't make the partisan 911 commision report.
And now we all know why the 911 commision is crap.
However, as I've learned on this blog, if there's no video tape of evidence, then it doesn't exist, to some people.
So before we start saying Bush made this stuff up about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, we should look at the mound of info that he was getting from all around him, from sources that we all have trusted from time to time.
Do you think GWB reached in his pocket on 9/12/01, pulled out some Beachnut, stuffed some between his cheek and said "You know fellas, Saddam seems like a good scapegoat, and he tried to kill my daddy, so let's git-r-done!"
LOL
The point is that any such ``links" were far less active, developed and threatening that the links between Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda, or Iran and Al Qaeda or, certainly, Pakistan and Al Qaeda.
Is it a measure of how desperate U.S. war propagandists are or how gullible their supporters are that a still disputed "meeting" between an Iraqi intelligence operative and an Al Qaeda rep in Prague is the centerpiece of evidence that there were ``links'' between the country and the terror group.
I think it's safe to assume, or surely to hope, that U.S. operatives managed to set up meetings with Al Qaeda as well as a way to gather intelligence. Yet the mere allegation of a meeting now becomes for the desperate supporters of this war prime evidence that Saddam may have given WMDs he didn't have to Al Qaeda. It is really beyond belief and I do wonder why I bother to even bring it up.
There are some much more defensible rationalizations of the war than this, and it would be a much more worthwhile exercise to rebut those, but I just can't help but slap down the moronic mythology that has been repeated so many times in the "MSM" about ''ties'' between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
You don't have to be a scholar of the region to now that the geopolitical motives of Saddam were diametrically opposed to those of Al Qaeda. They were mortal enemies. Of course their intelligence agencies had contacts and even discussed "cooperation" at some level, in the same way that the U.S. had counterintelligence, counter-counter intelligence operations and more with the Soviets. Did that mean anyone should have been concerned that the U.S. was going to help the Soviets conquer the world?
Saddam's Iraq was a bulwark against Islamic fanatacism. Bin Laden is the most dangerous exponent of Islamic fanatacism. Those are unassailable historical and geopolitical facts. Any ''ties" between those two entities were always insignificant.
If the Administration was most concerned about terrorism and al Qaeda, why would it not first finish the job of tracking down bin Laden and focus on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which have been his havens and the sources of his revenues and followers (what were the nationalities of the 9/11 suicide squads again)? Surely it must also have realized that displacing the Sunnis from power in Iraq would have created both a potent source of discontent among that ethnic group most committed to a united Iraq but with the least natural resource wealth?
If the Administration was most concerned about WMDs, why would it not focus first on ensuring that existing nuclear materials (the Administration may have feared Saddam’s intentions, but it was clear he had no capacity) do not leak out to terrorists (Bush has refused to fully fund the programs to lock down Russia’ old missile and nuclear sites and declined to take any action that would reduce the risk that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal will fall into the hands of the many domestic Taliban supporters there)?
Very clearly, our invasion of Iraq has frightened North Korea and Iran, but very counterproductively – they have both reacted by speeding up their nuclear weapons programs.
If the Administration was most concerned about promoting democracy and freedom, why has it not done anything concerning much easier cases, such as in Zimbabwe and the Sudan, and turned its attentions away from Afghanistan? Perhaps creating a democracy in Iraq has always been one of the Administration’s goals, but I can’t imagine that the Administration truly naively believed it could impose democracy by force in Iraq. In any case, look at the results – tens of thousands of civilians dead (uncounted by the Adminstration, but perhaps in the hundreds of thousands), and Basra under the control of Muslim fundamentalists who are persecuting secularists and women. Our invasion was strongly opposed by Turkey, the only modern secular Muslim democracy, and has stirred up Muslim fundamentalism and terrorist attacks there.
Clearly there was some other type of strategic calculus involved in all of this, by which the Administration was seeking both to benefit Israel and to exert an hegemony over Middle Eastern and Caspian oil, at the expense of Iran, China and Russia. What was this calculus, and what were our objectives? Has this worked and been worth the costs? Where do we go from here?
While the blame game is quite interesting and can be useful, but I think it is much more constructive to have a hard-headed analysis of GOALS and how we should try to achieve them.
From a security point of view, I tend to favor view that it is the enormous global military presence of the US itself that is a major source of instability, which in turn creates or "justifies" the "need" for the US to be everywhere at once. There is no now country in the world that poses the slightest military threat to the US. Would our security needs not be better served by slimming down our military and making others pick up the slack to shoulder the costs for "policing" the rest of the world? This would have the not inconsiderable side benefit of freeing up hundreds of billions of “defense” dollars (now totally devoid of public accountability and oversight, and spiralling out of control) that we could use to defend the homeland, control our boreders and to invest in our own needs and own economy (and to staunch the gaping budget holes left by the fiscally irresponsible Bush administration and Republican Congress)?
How much oil could the Federal government buy on the open market and distribute free for the hundreds of billions we spend annually on "defense" in the Middle East and on the Iraq war, without the uncontable costs in human lives there?
The fact remains that the US cannot deal unilaterally through our military with global issues that affect the US, such as terrorism, arms control, possible epidemics and development, population, environment and energy issues; these issues require cooperation from all nations. As the world's dominant power, the US is in a good position to lead the world, but query whether the Administration is sincerely focussed on any goal other than terrorism and whether its aggressive, go-it-alone approach is effective for these other issues.
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