Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

It is time to send George Allen back to the dude ranch. It is time to send Jim Webb to the Senate. I have started an ActBlue fundraising page to support Jim Webb and a few other candidates who need a little fundraising boost down the home stretch.

The candidates I am currently fundraising for are:

• Jim Webb (VA -Sen)
• Ned Lamont (CT-Sen)
• Claire McCaskill (MO-Sen)
• Jon Tester (MT-Sen)

You can click on the Actblue graphic to get to my fundraising page or you can contribute directly using the forms below.

To distribute your funds evenly among all the candidates, use this form:

 To contribute to a specific candidate, use this form:

Every little bit helps. No amount is too small. These candidates could sure use our support. You can contribute or fundraise by setting up your own ActBlue fundraising page.

"Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favor. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a Trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.

But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. The Prosecution’s case, at its close, seemed inherently unassailable because it rested so heavily on German documents of unquestioned authenticity. But it was the weeks upon weeks of pecking at this case, by one after another of the defendants, that has demonstrated its true strength. The fact is that the testimony of the defendants has removed any doubt of guilt which, because of the extraordinary nature and magnitude of these crimes, may have existed before they spoke. They have helped write their own judgment of condemnation.

But justice in this case has nothing to do with some of the arguments put forth by the defendants or their counsel. We have not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for the possession of obnoxious ideas. It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage in the civilization of which Germany was once a part. Nor is it our affair that they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well. The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of international law had it not been utilized to goosestep the Herrenvolk across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes. Their creed and teachings are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge, and intent.

…

Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the Counts charged against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgment of posterity would pronounce unjust would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this Prosecution." - Justice Robert Jackson, July 26, 1946, Summation for the Prosecution, Nuremburg Major War Figures Trial

In 1987, I visited the Plötzensee Memorial Center in Berlin. In Plötzensee there is a small brick shed that served as the execution chamber. During Nazi rule nearly three thousand people were executed in that small shed. They were either hanged from the eight hooks that line the ceiling or beheaded using a guillotine. I still remember standing in that death room, looking up at the hooks (the guillotine had long vanished), with hushed silence all around me. The death room was small, almost claustrophobic, yet the thousands murdered there testified to the ruthless efficiency of the Nazi killing machine.

Plötzensee stands today in silent remembrance of the evil that touched this planet in the first half of the Twentieth Century. From the ashes of World War II and the Holocaust were born the great institutions of civilized society.

Faced with the horrors of Nazi atrocities, the victorious allies, the United States chief amongst them, decided to try the Nazi leaders involved in the Holocaust. The Nuremburg Trials laid bare for the world to see the Nazi crimes and, at the same time, the fairness and justness of the rule of law. But as Justice Jackson noted in his summation at Nuremburg, "fairness is not weakness."

The Nuremburg Trials became the foundation for much of international criminal law that followed. Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1949 adoption of the Geneva Conventions owe much to the trials at Nuremburg. Beyond its legal ramifications, the trials were important in establishing the moral authority of the United States in the latter half of the 20th century. That moral authority found its most powerful expression during the Cold War - there was never any doubt during the decades of struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States about who was on the right side of history. John F. Kennedy carried that authority when he asked the world to "come to Berlin"; Adlai Stevenson carried that authority when he demanded an answer from Soviet Ambassador Zorin at the U.N. Security Council; and, Ronald Reagan carried that authority when he asked Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

During the 1990s, as Islamist extremism began to spread its claws over the globe, once again there was very little doubt that the United States was on the right side of this struggle and on the right side of history.

Then 9/11 happened. The entire world rallied to the side of the United States in the aftermath of the attacks. On September 12, 2001 the French publication Le Monde declared, "We are all Americans":

In this tragic moment, when words seem so inadequate to express the shock people feel, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as John F. Kennedy declared himself to be a Berliner in 1962 when he visited Berlin. Indeed, just as in the gravest moments of our own history, how can we not feel profound solidarity with those people, that country, the United States, to whom we are so close and to whom we owe our freedom, and therefore our solidarity?

The beacon of freedom, justice and liberty was attacked on September 11, 2001 and the world rallied in support. There was little doubt on September 12, 2001 that the United States would battle this extremism and come out victorious. There was little doubt that the United States would defeat this enemy and defend the ideals of freedom, liberty, and Justice Jackson’s fairness.

 That was then.

Five years later we have seen the willful destruction of a nation and its people over a fictional casus belli; we have seen the kidnapping and disappearing of individuals by the United States of America under the absurd sounding phrase "extraordinary rendition"; we have seen the rise of a modern variation of the gulag archipelago as American run secret prisons began to blanket the globe; we have seen the all too familiar justifications for torture posited by legal minds untethered by a moral compass; we have seen the detention of innocents on made-up charges presented in kangaroo courts; we have seen American torture practices roundly criticized by international human rights bodies; and we have seen the American President, George W. Bush, blithely declare that "we do not torture."

The Bush Administration has always committed or justified detention without charge and torture with a wink and a nod. However, last week it moved to legitimize its actions by writing torture into the law. The Bush Administration legitimized torture much in the same way other odious regimes have done in the past - they have redefined torture and then claimed that they do not "torture". So, small things like punching, kicking, cutting, and other thuggery are now not really torture unless you end up killing or seriously maiming the victim. They have also taken away the power of the Geneva Conventions by stating that the "Geneva Conventions" in effect do not exist for the purposes of defense against torture by the United States. Apparently, even if one could show that the United States violates the Geneva Conventions, the victim could not invoke the Geneva protections. They have left it up to the President to decide which methods constitute activity short of torture unless the method is a "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions - how very civil!

Ultimately, the Bush Administration’s retreat from international humanitarian laws and customs is not about the ability of the Administration to legally justify its position. It is about what kind of a country the United States is and wants to be. It is about the moral authority of the United States and its people. By broaching this discussion on torture and how to try to walk on the edge of the law without gravely violating it, the Bush Administration has already abdicated the moral authority of the United States on the issue. The era that began with the trials at Nuremburg has come to an end. The United States has declared that it is no longer important to be fair or just - the goal is to get your way at any cost. It is no longer important to uphold our values in the face of an onslaught from an enemy that seeks to destroy them. It is no longer important to show the enemy’s evils for what they are by holding them up for all the world to see in a forum that demonstrates the very values that we seek to defend and in a forum that makes it clear to all the stark difference between us and them. Justice Robert Jackson’s words no longer matter in this new era.

Now that we have abdicated our moral authority, the real question is what exactly are we fighting for?

[Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

Bill Clinton exposes the Fox News hit job and sets the record straight:

George W Bush explains why we attacked the wrong country:

Then..

And now…

[Via Taylor Marsh] Cyrus Nowrasteh, the writer of the ABC fiction entitled "The Path to 9/11" wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday defending himself and his script. His op-ed was titled "The Path to Hysteria: My sin was to write a screenplay accurately depicting Bill Clinton’s record on terrorism." In his op-ed Mr. Nowrasteh claimed that his script was an accurate retelling of history:

I felt duty-bound from the outset to focus on a single goal–to represent our recent pre-9/11 history as the evidence revealed it to be. The American people deserve to know that history: They have paid for it in blood.

…

I know, too, as does everyone involved in the production, that we kept uppermost in our minds the need for due diligence in the delivery of this history. Fact-checkers and lawyers scrutinized every detail, every line, every scene. There were hundreds of pages of annotations. We were informed by multiple advisers and interviews with people involved in the events–and books, including in a most important way the 9/11 Commission Report.

Anyone who saw the ABC movie and has read the 9/11 Commission Report knows that the movie did not "represent our recent pre-9/11 history as the evidence revealed it to be." I won’t spend time here rehashing the obvious.

I will, however, point the reader toward Mr. Nowrasteh’s credibility. In his op-ed, Mr. Nowrasteh protested:

In July a reporter asked if I had ever been ethnically profiled. I happily replied, "No." I can no longer say that. The L.A. Times, for one, characterized me by race, religion, ethnicity, country-of-origin and political leanings–wrongly on four of five counts. To them I was an Iranian-American politically conservative Muslim. It is perhaps irrelevant in our brave new world of journalism that I was born in Boulder, Colo. I am not a Muslim or practitioner of any religion, nor am I a political conservative. What am I? I am, most devoutly, an American. I asked the reporter if this kind of labeling was a new policy for the paper. He had no response. [Emphasis added by me.]

 Methinks Cyrus doth protest too much.

In June 2005, Cyrus Nowrasteh was interviewed by the conservative blog Libertas. In the interview, Mr. Nowrasteh is referred to as a "Persian-American whose family had to flee Iran when it was taken over by Islamic fundamentalists." I wonder if Cyrus was offended then by being labeled as a "Persian-American".

Mr. Nowrasteh also refers to himself as an "Islamic-American" in the interview in the following exchange:

GM: Now, you can’t make a miniseries about 9/11 without depicting Islamic terrorism. Has CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) contacted you with concerns about this?

CN: No - but I wish them luck. I’m an Islamic-American, and I’m the writer and producer of the series! (laughs)

I suppose Cyrus is a Muslim when it is convenient and at other times his is "not a Muslim or a practitioner of any religion".

Mr. Nowrasteh’s conservative credentials are also highlighted during the interview and he even offers advice to conservatives trying to make it in Hollywood:

GM: Very true. So Cyrus, you’ve been open in Hollywood about being a conservative. How has that affected your career?

CN: Well you know, I think there are a lot more conservatives in Hollywood than people think. But it’s not the predominant thing that’s driving me, my career, or my writing. To me that’s fairly personal. It’s a by-product for me of how I came to be in this country after a lot of people in my family had suffered under hardcore, radical fundamentalism [in Iran]. I think this country is about opportunity and about different points of view. I would not consider myself an overtly political person in one fashion or another. But look - my politics rarely if ever come up. I don’t think it bothers people one way or the other, because they see my stuff.

GM: Have you ever had any struggles with networks or executives who wanted you to change your material because they perceived it to be conservative?

CN: Yeah, but usually in mild and miniscule ways. If it’s not conforming to their vision of what it should be, I will usually justify it with the facts and what I think the audience wants or expects. I think there’s a real problem out there right now. I’ve read articles about the lack of boxoffice punch lately, and about the networks losing their ratings. I think a lot of that has to be with people ignoring the fact that the red states have televisions and movie theatres too, and a lot of times they get put off by Hollywood’s overt political agenda, so I try to avoid that.

…

GM: What do you think of Michael Moore?

CN: To quote Team America, he’s an out of control socialist weasel (laughs). Listen. I’m probably more of a libertarian than a strict conservative. In my writing and directing, I don’t want to just be a conservative version of Michael Moore. I’m here to tell a good story first and foremost - and that’s why I can navigate the networks and get my work produced.

GM: What advice would you give to aspiring conservative and libertarian filmmakers?

CN: Don’t tar all of Hollywood with the far left-wing brush. There are many people who may be open to different points of view, and you should try and engage with them. If your work is honest and truthful, people will connect to it, and it will eventually be produced. Also, you can just go out and make your own project. New digital technology today is really making that possible. Just be persistent, keep writing and creating, and you will get your projects made.

I guess a reporter might be justified in calling Cyrus Nowrasteh a conservative since he doesn’t seem to mind the label himself.

Contrary to Cyrus Nowrasteh’s protestations in the op-ed, he by his own admission is Iranian-American, politically conservative, and Muslim. I wonder what credibility he has when he claims to deliver us "history" when he cannot even truthfully represent himself.

 [Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

Step right up and answer the very first poll question on this blog!

Question: Which is worse?

1. Being a racist?
2. Being a moron?
3. Being a racist moron?

George "Macaca" Allen and James Webb went boot-to-boot yesterday on Meet The Press (click for video) and this afternoon on a televised debate. After watching both appearances I am left to wonder whether it might not be a good idea to force Senators to pass a written test to continue to occupy taxpayer funded office. If any of you readers are able to explain to me what George Allen was saying about Iraq, I would be eternally grateful. I was only able to discern the following from the macaca man’s ramblings:

• be loyal to George Bush
• heck, even the French want Iraqi oil
• stay the course
• don’t tuck tail and run
• no retreat, no surrender
• al Qaeda wants to rule the world and place the capital of Binladenistan in Iraq
• Anbar is hard work
• gosh, the Kurds even run ads on the TeeVee

I think the choice in November for Virginians is rather clear. The choice is between two-digit IQ and three-digit IQ; between dude rancher and decorated marine; between macaca and man.

Last Thursday the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died after a long battle with breast cancer. After a long and successful career, her writings turned toward harsh criticism of Islam after the September 11, 2001 attacks. She has famously stated that Muslims "multiply like rats" and "the children of Allah spend their time with their bottoms in the air, praying five times a day.” Although she was critical of the Catholic Church for being weak in confronting the Muslim world, she had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI after which she praised him for his stronger stance against Islam:

“I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true,” Fallaci told The Wall Street Journal in a recent interview.

That was before Pope Benedict XVI waded into the intersection of religion and politics last week with his speech at the University of Regensburg.

In his speech the Pope quoted the Byzantine emperor Manual II Paleologus’s critique of Islam and its prophet Mohammed:

The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. [Emphasis added by me.]

The Pope went on to say:

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

In response to the uproar that was caused by the Pope’s speech, the Vatican initially suggested that the Pope’s speech had been misunderstood and that the Holy Father was criticizing violent jihad and extremism and not Islam itself. Today the Pope released a statement saying that he was "deeply sorry" for the reaction to his speech. His statement fell short of the apology demanded by Muslim leaders and in classic macaca-esque style he apologized for how his speech was perceived rather than the content of his speech:

At this time, I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.

These in fact were a quotation from a Medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.

Yesterday, the Cardinal Secretary of State published a statement in this regard in which he explained the true meaning of my words. I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.

However, I suspect most Muslims would be very reluctant to engage in dialogue after the Pope chose to say, though through indirection, that Islam’s prophet only brought things "evil and inhuman" into this world. The Pope’s choice of words and his use of the quotation was not a critique only of violent jihad, but a criticism of Islam itself.

The impact of the Pope’s words will be felt much more broadly in the Muslim world than the manufactured furor over the Danish cartoons. Certainly the extremists in the Muslim world will take this opportunity to practice violence (in that they need very little excuse), but more importantly these words will have impact on the moderate and majority Muslim population. After the papacy of Pope John Paul II, during which he made great strides in bridging the gaps between the world’s peoples, the Church under Pope Benedict XVI had already begun to pull back from such reconciliation. Pope John Paul II, who was the first Pope to set foot within a mosque, was revered and respected in the Muslim world as a man of God. Pope Benedict XVI was already viewed with suspicion in the Muslim world, even before Tuesday’s speech, after he removed Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald from his post that promoted dialogue with other religions:

One of the first signs of a toughening of the Vatican’s stance came with the removal from office of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald.

The British-born cleric ran a Vatican department that promoted dialogue with other religions. A distinguished scholar on Arab affairs, he was an acknowledged expert on the Islamic world.

The decision by Benedict XVI to remove him from his post, and send him to Egypt as papal nuncio, was widely seen as a demotion.

Some wondered about the wisdom of the move.

The Pope’s speech last Tuesday only served to confirm for Muslims concerns about the direction of his papacy. 

If the Pope had left out the reference to Mohammed and Islam at the beginning of his speech, his later call for dialogue and his position against violent spread of religion would have been warmly welcomed by the majority of Muslims. However, he chose for his own reasons to include criticism of Islam and its prophet.

Over the last century Islam has already been under attack from within by Islamism. Islamism is a political ideology that seeks to transform Islam into a political system from a religion. In that Islam the religion is quite distinct from Islamism. The rise of extremism in the Islamic world in the 20th century is intertwined with the rise of Islamism and in many instances the two are indistinguishable. On September 11, 2001, extremism (and Islamism) broadened its attack on Islam and brought it to America’s shores. After 9/11, there was a natural ally waiting to join forces with the United States in combating extremism and Islamism - that ally was the majority of the Muslim world. However, as we all now painfully know, the last five years have brought division where there could have been alliance.

Into this cauldron of division the Pope has now thrown in his hat. Already the extremists in the Muslim world are using his words to justify further violence and further destabilization of the Muslim world. In the West and in the United States, the far right is already using the Pope’s speech as approval, if not religious sanction, of a violent approach to confronting Islam. Neo-conservatives have been using "Islamo-fascist" as a synonym for "Islam" for quite some time - now they will find new life and a wider audience.

The Vatican is trying mightily to lower the temperature of this crisis. The Muslim leaders should also try to do the same. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, demands from prominent Muslim leaders that the Pope apologize are counterproductive and add fuel to an already volatile situation. I hope these leaders will come to their senses and join the Vatican in calming the waters. The Pope has expressed himself in his speech and the message has been heard. The Vatican, since then, has stated that the official position of the Church regarding Islam has not changed in spite of the Pope’s speech. Muslim leaders need to take the Vatican at its word. The alternative is to let the Islamists and neo-conservatives fight to the death at our expense.

 [Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

[Via Raw Story] President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan claimed on Tuesday that terrorism and extremism had been brought to Pakistan by the West. According to the Daily Times of Pakistan, Musharraf blamed the West for bringing terrorists and extremists to the region and Pakistan as a result of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan:

President General Pervez Musharraf has blamed the West for breeding terrorism in his country by bringing in thousands of mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then leaving Pakistan alone a decade later to face the armed warriors.

Musharraf told the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Tuesday that Pakistan was not the intolerant, extremist country often portrayed by the West, and terrorism and extremism were not inherent in Pakistani society. “Whatever extremism or terrorism is in Pakistan is a direct fallout of the 26 years of warfare and militancy around us. It gets back to 1979 when the West, the United States and Pakistan waged a war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,” Musharraf told EU lawmakers.

Musharraf apparently either does not know his history or was deliberately misleading the European Parliament. My guess is that Musharraf is pretty well versed in the history of extremism in Pakistan and was deliberately shifting blame to the West. No military man in Pakistan can ignore the intimate relationship between the Pakistani Army, the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Islamist extremists in Pakistan - they have a long and troubled history together.

The nation of Pakistan has its roots in a form of Islamic fundamentalism known as Deobandi. The Deobandi movement began as a reformist movement in India against British oppression. Over time, part of the Deobandi movement coalesced around the idea of a Muslim state in the Muslim-majority parts of British India. From that movement, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, translated as "The Land of the Pure",  was born on August 14, 1947. According to journalist Bertil Lintner, the Deobandi movement in Pakistan "through its network of religious schools, or madrassas, developed into a breeding ground for Pakistan-centered Islamic fundamentalism. Over the years, the Deobandi brand of Islam has become almost synonymous with religious extremism and fanaticism." It is in the Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan that the Taliban movement has its beginnings.

Though originally opposed to the creation of Pakistan, the deobandi and Islamist political party in British India, Jamaat-e-Islami, eventually embraced the idea of Pakistan. Their original goal, to form a Islamic state in all of India, now became the creation of a strict Islamic state in Pakistan.  The Jamaat-e-Islami has been a breeding ground for extremism in Pakistan from early in its founding. In 1971, when war broke out between East Pakistan and West Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami branch in East Pakistan joined the fighting on the side of the Pakistani army. The Jamaat-e-Islami were opposed to the secular nationalism of the Bengalis and therefore sided with the Pakistani military to try to preserve an Islamic state. The Jamaat-e-Islami took active part in the genocide of 3 million Bengalis in 1971. Jamaat formed notorious paramilitary units known as al-Badr and al-Shams to hunt down and execute secular Bengali intellectuals - most notably journalists, teachers, students, bureaucrats, scholars, doctors and poets. After the formation of Bangladesh at the end of the war in 1971, the Jamaat leadership in Bangladesh who had orchestrated the killings fled to Pakistan.

Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist parties in Pakistan received a significant boost in 1977 when Pakistani strongman General Zia-ul-Haq seized power in a coup d’état. In 1979, Zia-ul-Haq instituted Islamic Sharia law in Pakistan by enforcing what is known as the Hudood Ordinance. Since 1979 the Pakistani military and intelligence services have relied on the Islamist forces in the country for support and legitimacy.

After the Afghan conflict the ISI actively financed and supported both the Taliban and the Kashmiri militants. The Pakistani ISI formed the Islamist terrorist group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, a militant wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, to counter groups in Kashmir who are seeking independence. According to GlobalSecurity.org:

Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) is one of the largest terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir and stands for the integration of J&K with Pakistan. Since its formation the HuM has also wanted the islamization of Kashmir.

The HM was formed in 1989 in the Kashmir Valley with Master Ahsan Dar as its chief. Dar was later arrested by security forces in mid-December 1993. It was reportedly formed as the militant wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) at the behest of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, to counter the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which had advocated complete independence of the State. Many of the early Hizb cadres were former JKLF members.

…

The HM is closely linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami, both in the Kashmir Valley and in Pakistan. Overseas, it is allegedly backed by Ghulam Nabi Fai’s Kashmir American Council and Ayub Thakur’s World Kashmir Freedom Movement in the USA. The HM had established contacts with Afghan Mujahideen groups such as Hizb-e-Islami, under which some of its cadre is alleged to have received arms training in the early 1990s.

The HM is reported to have a close association with the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence and the United Jehad Council, and other terrorist organizations operating out of Pakistan. Hizb chief Syed Salahuddin also heads the UJC.

The nexus of groups like the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Pakistani military, and the ISI have nurtured and sustained terrorism and extremism in Pakistan since its inception. The 1979 Afghan war simply imported more militants into an already ripe and welcoming breeding ground.

It serves Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military and the ISI quite well to try to bury the long and sordid history of collusion between the military and the extremists. However, we ignore this nexus at our peril. To a very large extent extremism and terrorism in South and Central Asia has its roots in the Islamist movement in Pakistan. The very enemy we fight, al Qaeda, breathed its first breathe in Pakistan and now finds sanctuary within its borders. While George W Bush keeps his myopic and confused gaze upon Iraq and his Vice President profusely praises Musharraf, the extremism that we are presumably combating continues to thrive in Pakistan.

Five years after 9/11/2001, it is perhaps time to ask the General in Pakistan some tougher questions and expect some more introspection from him.

Tonight, marking five years since the attacks of September 11, 2001 President George W Bush declared: "Today we are safer, but we are not yet safe." Aiming for the rafters with his rhetoric, Mr. Bush continued:

Since the horror of 9/11, we’ve learned a great deal about the enemy. We have learned that they are evil and kill without mercy, but not without purpose.

We have learned that they form a global network of extremists who are driven by a perverted vision of Islam: a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance and despises all dissent.

And we have learned that their goal is to build a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations.

The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation.

Five years after the attacks Mr. Bush has found renewed vigor to go after the enemy. We have come to expect this from our President. He is a late bloomer. His 7-minutes of infamy on September 11, 2001 and his fiddling while New Orleans drowned have taught us that this President is slow to catch on.

In responding to the terrorist attacks on America, Mr. Bush did not fiddle. Instead he invaded the wrong country. Today he confessed that people often ask him why on Earth he would do such a thing:

I am often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat.

My administration, the Congress and the United Nations saw the threat.

And, after 9/11, Saddam’s regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take.

The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.

I wonder if the American public will continue to take Mr. Bush at his word on Iraq. Will the American people believe Saddam was a threat just because Mr. Bush says so? I wonder what evidence there is that the world is safer because Saddam Hussein no longer is at the helm in Iraq. The Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid, wrote in a Washington Post opinion column today that he believes Mr. Bush is losing the war on terror and we are definitely not safer:

In North and South Waziristan, the tribal regions along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, an alliance of extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda, Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, Central Asians, and Chechens has won a significant victory against the army of Pakistan. The army, which has lost some 800 soldiers in the past three years, has retreated, dismantled its checkpoints, released al-Qaeda prisoners and is now paying large "compensation" sums to the extremists.

…

If this is indeed a long war, as the Bush administration says, then the United States has almost certainly lost the first phase. Guerrillas are learning faster than Western armies, and the West makes appalling strategic mistakes while the extremists make brilliant tactical moves.

As al-Qaeda and its allies prepare to spread their global jihad to Central Asia, the Caucasus and other parts of the Middle East, they will carry with them the accumulated experience and lessons of the past five years. The West and its regional allies are not prepared to match them.

However, Mr. Bush is oblivious to the facts on the ground. There is an election to win in November and the "facts" must be fixed around the rhetoric.

Mr. Bush wants to convince Americans that the war in Iraq was not a distraction. How well he sells this point will determine the fate of the Republicans in November. So, a little fear mongering is in order:

Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone.

They will not leave us alone. They will follow us.

Mr. Bush is correct here. Pulling out of Iraq will not solve the problem of terrorism. However, neither will staying. Invading Iraq did nothing to diminish the terrorist threat to the United States. All evidence however suggests that the invasion in fact provided a wonderful recruiting tool for the extremists. Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda before Mr. Bush embarked on three years of chaos. After wasting the blood and treasure of the United States and Iraq for three years, Mr. Bush now wants to convince us that staying in Iraq somehow is holding a tide of terrorists back. Only a moron would believe that.

The real war against extremism is not in Iraq. It is, and has been for decades, in the streets of Third World Muslim countries. In this war the United States has often colluded with, and actively aided, the extremists against the secular forces.  To this day, the United States, and the Bush Administration in particular, ignores the toxic brew of extremism that emanates from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other so called allies. This brew has been mixing since well before 2001. 9/11 was America’s tragic exposure to the toxic mix that Muslims in the Third World have suffered through for decades.

Mr. Bush had the opportunity in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to join the battle against the extremists and on the side of the majority of Muslims. He squandered that opportunity. He chose instead to alienate the entire Muslim world in order to fulfill his own ideological goals. Mr. Bush, by his actions, has created a world that is more dangerous now than it was 5 years ago. Yet he claims that we are safer now than before.

Delusions cannot be substitutes for facts.

The first time I went to New York City was in 1979. My parents took us to all the famous landmarks on that trip. The three highlights of my trip were visiting the Empire State Building, riding the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and visiting the World Trade Center. I had brought along a 110 mm camera that I had won in a school raffle for the trip. Like thousands of other tourists I lay down at the foot of one of the Trade Towers, pointed my camera toward the sky, and snapped a picture of the enormous building rising above me. Of all the pictures I took with that little camera as a child, that was the one I loved the most. That pictures remains today buried amongst the thousands of photographs in my late parents’ family albums.

******

It was a Tuesday just like any other. I was getting myself ready for work - all set to stroll into work well after 9 a.m. Usually I turn on the television and watch CNN for a few minutes before getting in the car to head to work. On that morning I chose not to watch the news before heading out. As I got into my car, I recall thinking to myself that it was unusual to not hear any planes overhead at this time of morning. From my house just south of the runways at Dulles Airport, the morning air is usually filled with sounds of jets taking off or making their final approach for landing. This clear sunny morning, it was all quiet.

I turned onto Route 50 East and switched on my radio. I think I was tuned to CSPAN or WTOP. Oddly, instead of the usual news, it was Tom Brokow on the air. He was talking about an evacuation of the White House when my ears focused in. Then he was talking about the evacuation of Washington DC and the mass chaos on the bridges as people were fleeing on foot. I still did not know what was going on. Then Brokow mentioned that in New York two jets had crashed into the World Trade Center towers. Suddenly everything came into focus for me. I turned the car around and raced toward home.

I swerved into our driveway, burst into the house, ran upstairs to our bedroom. I screamed at my very confused wife to turn on CNN because "we are under attack" and mumbled something about war starting.

CNN brought images of fire and smoke. They replayed the video of the second plane disappearing into the second tower in a fireball. Later, what first appeared to be debris falling from the towers turned out to be mothers and fathers leaping to their deaths, some holding hands. We were watching the deaths of thousands live on television. Then came the collapse of these magnificent towers into dust and ash.

I picked up the phone and tried to call my friend and housemate from college. I knew he worked in the towers and would have been coming into work at the time. The phone lines were down - all circuits were busy.

I would not reach him until Friday. He was one of the lucky ones. He was under the towers getting off a PATH train when people started running into the station from the towers. The rumor was that there was a gunman in the towers. He hid briefly in the train and then made his way out to the street. He saw the North Tower on fire and ran toward Battery Park. The second plane flew over his head and struck the South Tower. He tells me that at that point he started running north and did not look back. When he reached West 4th Street, he felt the ground shake. He turned around to see the cloud and smoke of what was the collapse of the first tower.

I later found out that both of my college housemates were in the towers that day. My other friend was having breakfast in Morgan Stanley’s cafeteria on the 43rd floor of one of the towers. That trip to the cafeteria may have saved his life.

It was an ordinary morning for ordinary people going about their lives. The difference between life and death was random. 19 cowards decided to hijack 4 planes and use them as guided missiles against ordinary men, women and children. The thousands who died on that day were butchered because they were ordinary people who were defenseless against random acts of madness. Killing innocents is neither hard nor an act of martyrdom. It is an act of cowardice. It is an act of terrorism.

Terrorism on a massive scale was visited upon America on September 11, 2001. The land of freedom and liberty, of hope and prosperity, of ideas and ideals was under attack. The entire planet shuddered as those Towers fell.

******

From The Complete 9/11 Timeline:

(8:45-8:46 a.m.): Flight attendant Amy Sweeney is still on the phone with Michael Woodward, describing conditions on Flight 11. The plane is nearing New York City, but the coach section passengers are still quiet, apparently unaware a hijacking is in progress. Woodward asks Sweeney to look out of the window and see if she can tell where they are. She replies, “I see the water. I see the building. I see buildings.” She tells him the plane is flying very low. Then she takes a slow, deep breath and slowly, calmly says, “Oh my God!” Woodward hears a loud click, and then silence.

(8:58 a.m.): Brian Sweeney, a passenger on Flight 175, calls his wife, but can only leave a message. “We’ve been hijacked, and it doesn’t look too good.” Then he calls his mother and tells her what is happening onboard. She recalls him saying, “They might come back here. I might have to go. We are going to try to do something about this.” She also recalls him identifying the hijackers as Middle Eastern. Then he tells his mother he loves her and hangs up the phone. The mother turns on the television and soon sees Flight 175 crash into the WTC. The 9/11 Commission later concludes that the Flight 175 passengers planned to storm the cockpit but did not have time before the plane crashed.

(9:20 a.m.): A passenger on Flight 77, Barbara Olson, calls her husband, Theodore (Ted) Olson, who is Solicitor General at the Justice Department. Ted Olson is in his Justice Department office watching WTC news on television when his wife calls. A few days later, he says, “She told me that she had been herded to the back of the plane. She mentioned that they had used knives and box cutters to hijack the plane. She mentioned that the pilot had announced that the plane had been hijacked.”

(9:58 a.m.): Todd Beamer ends his long phone call with a Verizon phone company representative saying that they plan “to jump” the hijacker in the back of the plane who has the bomb. In the background, the phone operator already could hear an “awful commotion” of people shouting, and women screaming, “Oh my God,” and “God help us.” He lets go of the phone but leaves it connected. His famous last words are said to nearby passengers: “Are you ready guys? Let’s roll”.

******

Five years and one day ago, 2973 souls perished on September 11, 2001. 24 souls are still listed as missing.

• 2602 souls died in the World Trade Center. 24 remain listed as missing.
• 88 souls died on American Airlines flight 11.
• 59 souls died on United Airlines flight 175.
• 125 souls died in the Pentagon.
• 59 souls died on American Airlines flight 77.
• 40 souls died on United Airlines flight 93.

Rest in peace.

 [Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]