Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appeared before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) at Guantanamo Bay last Saturday. In the transcripts released by the Department of Defense, the headline was that Mohammed confessed that he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. This of course is not surprising or new since he had already taken responsibility in a June (or April depending on which version of the story you like to believe) 2002 interview with an Al Jazeera reporter.

The Washington Post reports about Mohammed’s 9/11 involvement from "A to Z":

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed to his Guantanamo Bay captors that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday.

In his first public statement since his capture in 2003, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets for more than a decade. He told a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he is at war with America and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate reality of that conflict.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," Mohammed told a panel of military officers through a personal representative, who read off a list of 31 terrorist acts that were either carried out or planned but not executed. According to transcripts Defense Department officials released last night, Mohammed later spoke in broken English and Arabic, saying: "For sure, I’m American enemies."

This news of Mohammed’s confession in front of the CSRT will land with a thud. It is not new news. His claims to being involved in a large number of other real and would-be attacks have a tinge of hyperbole to them. However, what he said in a long and rambling statement during the CSRT will likely be the real story from this sorry episode. According to the transcript, Mohammad declared in halting and fragmented English [I’ve included the bulk of the statement below. It is long but is worth reading]:

What I wrote here, is not I’m making myself hero, when I said I was responsible for this or that. But your are military man. You know very well there are language for any war. So, there are, we are when I admitting these things I’m not saying I’m not did it. I did it but this the language of any war. If America they want to invade Iraq they will not send for Saddam roses or kisses they send for a bombardment. This is the best way if I want. If I’m fighting for anybody admin to them I’m American enemies. For sure, I’m American enemies.

…

I consider myself, for what you are doing, a religious thing as you consider us fundamentalist. So, we derive from religious leading that we consider we and George Washington doing same thing. As consider George Washington as hero. Muslims many of them are considering Usama bin Laden. He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence. Even we think that, or not me only. Many Muslims, that al Qaeda or Taliban they are doing. They have been oppressed by America. This is the feeling of the prophet. So when we say we are enemy combatant, that right. We are.

…

But I’m asking you again to be fair with many Detainees which are not enemy combatant. Because many of them have been unjustly arrested. Many, not one or two or three. Cause the definition you which wrote even from my view it is not fair. Because if I was in the first Jihad times Russia. So I have to be Russian enemy. But America supported me in this because I’m their alliances when I was fighting Russia. Same job I’m doing. I’m fighting. I was fighting there Russia now I’m fighting America. So, many people who been in Afghanistan never live [leave]. Afghanistan stay in but they not share Taliban or al Qaeda. They been Russian time and they cannot go back to their home with their corrupted government. They stayed there and when America invaded Afghanistan parliament. They had been arrest. They never have been with Taliban or the others. So many people consider them as enemy but they are not. Because definitions are very wide definition so people they came after October 2002, 2001. When America invaded Afghanistan, they just arrive in Afghanistan cause the [they]  hear there enemy. They don’t know what it means al Qaeda or Usama bin Laden or Taliban. They don’t care about these things. They heard they were enemy in Afghanistan they just arrived. As they heard first time Russian invade Afghanistan. They arrive they fought when back than they came. They don’t know what’s going on and Taliban they been head of government. You consider me even Taliban even the president of whole government. Many people they join Taliban because they are the government. When Karzai they came they join Karzai when come they join whatever public they don’t know what is going on. So, many Taliban fight even the be fighters because they just because public. The government is Taliban then until now CIA don’t have exactly definition well who is Taliban, who is al Qaeda. Your Tribunal now are discussing he is enemy or not and that is one of your jobs. So this is why you find many Afghanis people, Pakistanis people even, they don’t know what going on they just hear they are fighting and they help Muslim in Afghanistan. Then what. There are some infidels which they came here and they have to help them. Bu then there weren’t any intend to do anything against America. Taliban themselves between Taliban they said Afghanistan which they never again against 9/11 operation. The rejection between senior of Taliban of what al Qaeda are doing. Many of Taliban rejected what they are doing. Even many Taliban, they not agree about why we are in Afghanistan. Some of them they have been with us. Taliban never in their life at all before America invade them the intend to do anything against America. They never been with al Qaeda.

…

They way of the war, you know, very well, any country waging war against their enemy the language of the war are killing. If man and woman they be together as a marriage that is up to the kids, children. But if you and me, two nations, will be together in war the others are victims. This is the way of the language. You know 40 million people were killed in World War One. Ten million kill in World War. You know that two million four hundred thousand be killed in the Korean War. So this language of the war. Any people who, when Usama bin Laden say I’m waging war because such such reason, now he declared it. But when you said I’m terrorist, I think it is deceiving peoples.

…

It would be widely definite that many people are oppressed. Because war, for sure, there will be victims. When I said I’m not happy that three thousand been killed in America. I feel sorry even. I don’t like to kill children and the kids. Never Islam are, give me green light to kill peoples. Killing, as in the Christianity, Jews, and Islam, are prohibited. But there are exception of rule when you are killing people in Iraq. You said we have to do it. We don’t like Saddam. But this is the way to deal with Saddam. Same thing you are saying. Same language you use, I use. When you are invading two-thirds of Mexican, you call your war manifest destiny. It up to you to call it what you want. But other side are calling you oppressors. If now George Washington. If now we were living in the Revolutionary War and George Washington he being arrested through Britain. For sure he, they would consider him enemy combatant. But American they consider him hero. This right the any Revolutionary War will be as George Washington or Britain. So we are considered American Army bases which we have from seventies in Iraq. Also, in the Saudi Arabian, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. This is kind of invasion, but I’m not here to convince you. Is not or not but mostly speech is ask you to be fair with people. I’m don’t have anything to say that I’m not enemy. This is why the language of any war in the world is killing. I mean the language of the war is victims. I don’t like to kill people. I feel very sorry they been killed kids in 9/11. What I will do? This is the language. Sometime I want to make great awakening between American to stop foreign policy in our land. I know American people are torturing us from seventies. [REDACTED] I know they talking about human rights. And I know it is against American Constitution, against American laws. But they said every law, they have exceptions, this is your bad luck you been part of the exception of our laws. They got have something to convince me but we are doing same language.

…

Killing is prohibited in all what you call the people of the book, Jews, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. You know the Ten Commandments very well. The Ten Commandments are shared between all of us. We all are serving one God. Then now [Thou not] kill you know it very well. But war language also we have language for the war. You have to kill. But you have to care if unintentionally or intentionally target if I have if I’m not at the Pentagon, I consider it okay. If I target now when we target in USA we choose them military target, economical, and political. So, war central victims mostly means economical target. So if now American they know UBL. He is in this house they don’t care about his kids and his. They will just bombard it. They will kill all of them and they did it. They kill wife of Dr. Ayman Zawahiri and his two daughters and his son in one bombardment. They receive a report that is his house be. He had not been there. They killed them. They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months they had been abused. So, for me I have patience. I know I’m not talk about what’s come to me. The American have human right. So, enemy combatant itself, it flexible word. So I think God knows that many who been arrested, they been unjustly arrested.

Mohammed’s statement demonstrates why the CSRT kangaroo courts are embarrassingly flawed. His statement demonstrates why due process is important, especially when the crimes being alleged are so heinous. Due process does not only protect the defendent’s rights, it also is a path to an objective finding of the facts. Without it we are left with dueling stories, nothing more.

Mohammed asked for witnesses, he was denied. The government called no witnesses, but instead simply read off a litany of charges. Mohammed then launched into an unchallenged and lengthy statement - one that would have benefited from cross examination.

Instead, Mohammed’s statement, unchallenged, has redefined the case against him. His statement is given further weight by the inherent unfairness of the "process" at Guantanamo Bay.

Mohammed achieved three goals. First, he declared himself a resistance soldier fighting an invader. He framed the war as one between the oppressor and the oppressed. He declared himself a revolutionary and compared bin Laden to George Washington. He pointedly did not say that he is fighting to impose Islamic law on the West. Instead, he railed against American foreign policy against his land and suggested that his goal was to cause an "awakening" about the ills of this policy. This argument does, and will have, broad appeal across the entire Muslim world and much of the Third World. Mr. Bush’s hollow argument about defending against an Islamist takeover of western civilization may rally his base here, but Mohammed knows exactly what rallies the base over there. If Mr. Bush wants to combat the spread of extremism, he needs to understand the power of the argument Mohammed put forward.

Second, Mohammed argued that he was using the "language of war". According to the "language of war", during war civilians suffer. He cited Mr. Bush’s arguments about the Iraq war as an example of civilians dying in the cause of a greater goal. He justified the attack on the World Trade Center by claiming it as an economic target, and therefore within the "language of war". He likened his alleged torture and the killing of Iraqi civilians to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 by claiming an exception to the rules of war, allowed as part of the "language of war". The argument is hauntingly similar to George W Bush’s justifications for "bending" the rules in the service of justice. It is an argument that Zbigniew Brzezinski called "Manichean delusions" in his recent testimony in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Third, Mohammed drew a distinction between those who are fighting a defensive war to protect their land, like the Afghanis and the Taliban (and the Iraqis), and those who are taking the fight to the invader, al Qaeda. He then appealed to the Americans to spare the non-al Qaeda held at Guantanamo. By arguing that he was a real soldier and most Afghanis are merely caught up in a conflict in their backyard, he both gains sympathy from the population, and at the same time is able to portray himself as fighting for their interests. Any attack on America, viewed through this lens, is seen now as a means of fighting the invader or oppressor. This is al Qaeda’s version of the Doctrine of Pre-emption and of force projection. It has some appeal in the Muslim world just as Bush’s doctrine has some appeal in the United States.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, given his opportunity, made his points well. He made his points unchallenged because of the flawed CSRT process. The Bush administration, in a misguided attempt to deny Mohammed his rights, instead gave him a major platform to spread the very propaganda the Administration claims they are trying to silence by their draconian rules. That propaganda will earn Mohammed and al Qaeda more sympathizers and more followers in the Muslim world. Instead of a trial exposing Mohammed’s guilt in an atrocity that killed nearly 3000 people, we are left with charges backed by "classified" information and a statement proudly justifying his acts.

We have fallen a long way since Nuremburg and the eloquence of Justice Jackson. By denying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed due process, Mr. Bush has denied us, the rest of the world, justice.

There is news out of Somalia today that the United States has attacked suspected al Qaeda operatives. It remains to be seen whether we have indeed killed those responsible for the 1998 embassy bombing or not. I have my doubts.

I am not particularly encouraged by the source of the intelligence:

U.S. officials say that the United States received assurances from both the Ethiopian and Somalian governments in the last two weeks that, should they obtain intelligence concerning the whereabouts of the al-Qaida operatives, they would pass it on to the United States.

I guess the "Somalian government" passed on the intelligence. If so, I would not hold my breath.

The Bush Administration has long accused the recently defeated Islamic Courts Union (ICU) of harboring al Qaeda. However, tangible proof has been lacking. Seeing an opportunity, thugs and warlords in Somalia banded together to fight the "terrorists" in Somalia. They called themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, or ARPCT for short. The ARPCT fed off the Bush Administration’s one-dimensional anti-terrorism policy. We funded these thugs until they were routed by the ICU. I wrote the following back in June when Mogadishu fell to the ICU:

The ARPCT is a recently rebranded group of Somali warlords who were funded by the United States. They were just routed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu by Islamist militants. The ARPCT warlords are now on the run as the Islamists, known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), establish control over war-torn Somalia. The United States claims that the ironically named ICU harbor al Qaeda members and therefore pose a danger to the civilized world. The ICU has thus been branded as "terrorists" for harboring al Qaeda. Seeing an opportunity to cash in, the always opportunistic Somali warlords refashioned themselves into a group of  "anti-terrorist" militias. In the "us" versus "them" world of George W Bush, these thugs became "us" and thus became worthy of our support.

Since February, with US financial backing, the ARPCT has engaged in fierce fighting with the ICU. But the ICU gained influence in Somalia by offering the people what they had been craving for decades - a sense of security and stability. When the warlords decided to stop fighting each other and rebrand themselves as the ARPCT they were now fighting against the stability provided or promised by the ICU. The people of Somalia were tired of the warlords and rejected the ARPCT in favor of the ICU. One by one, towns fell under the control of the ICU as they advanced on Mogadishu, until finally Mogadishu also fell a few days ago.

The talibanization of Somalia has begun. Just like in Afghanistan, the Somali people are unsurprisingly choosing security over constant violence and insecurity. With no functioning central government, the people have turned to the ICU for protection. In return, the people have accepted Islamist control over their lives. This is an essential concept that the Bush Administration repeatedly fails to understand. If given a choice between democracy without security and security without democracy, the people will overwhelmingly choose the latter. Failure to grasp this obvious fact and wallowing in an ideological soup that preaches "freedom is on the march" will have the opposite effect. In fact, in much of the world where the United States has engaged militarily in the GWOT, freedom is on the ropes. This is true for Afghanistan, this is true for Iraq, and this is true for Somalia.

Our Plan A in Somalia was supporting warlords - and it failed miserably. Incidentally, these warlords should seem familiar:

Somalia, like Iraq and Afghanistan, has a complex political landscape that does not lend itself to the simplistic "us" and "them" rhetoric. There are no good guys in Somalia. The very warlords who now claim to be "anti-terrorist" forces were fighting the United States and presumably harboring al Qaeda in 1993. These are some of the very people who fought the United States during the first Battle of Mogadishu, which led to the deaths of 18 American servicemen. The Bush Administration has now decided to break bread with these thugs in an ill-conceived attempt at counter terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

Plan A having failed, the Bush Administration threw its weight behind the weak transitional government in Baidoa that was rescued from annihilation by the Ethiopians. It is this transitional government that has now taken residence in Mogadishu courtesy of Ethiopia.

So, just who exactly are the new government of Somalia. It should come as no surprise that they are warlords. A number of them fought the United States in 1993. One of them has a very well-known pedigree. The new interior minister, Hussein Farah Aideed, is the son of Mohammad Farrah Aideed. Mohammad Farrah Aideed was the warlord responsible for the deaths of 18 American servicemen in the Battle of Mogadishu.

To add to the warlord homecoming, other famous warlords such as Musse Sudi Yalahow, formerly of the ARPCT, have also returned to Mogadishu. Unless these warlords are reigned in, Somalia is on its way back to the chaos of the past decades.

So, when the news media refers to the "government of Somalia", think "warlords". And treat with skepticism any intelligence that they might pass along.

Having failed to find any WMD in Iraq, George W Bush has resorted to his "freedom" agenda. Mr. Bush repeatedly claims that "democracies don’t go to war with each other." His prescription for lasting peace in the Middle East and the end of terrorism is spreading democracy (by force) to the world. In pursuing his "freedom" agenda, George W Bush, and his poodle Tony Blair, have undermined democracy in the West. Their single-minded pursuit of what they believe is just and right has now become an existential threat to western liberal democracy and our way of life.

As much of a violent and dangerous threat al Qaeda is to the United States and its allies, it has never been an existential threat. It seems inconceivable that a small group of thugs can violently destroy a political and economic power as massive as the United States. However, what al Qaeda can do is cause the United States to cannibalize itself as it undermines the pillars of democracy in its own perceived self-defense. To do so, al Qaeda needs an unwitting and fiercely ideological patsy - it has found one in George W Bush.

Bush’s notion that democracies do not war with each other is debatable at best. However, the argument, even if it is accepted, is based on the belief that the inherent restraints within democratic society prevent those societies from engaging in warfare, except as an absolute last resort. Rudolph J Rummel, one of the early proponents of the "democratic peace theory", based his theory on Immanuel Kant’s notion of "Perpetual Peace":

Rummel’s response when asked why he believed democracies didn’t fight was to recall Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace, published in 1795.

Kant’s theory is that democratic leaders are restrained by the resistance of their people to bearing the costs and deaths of war. And a democratic culture of negotiation and conciliation, plus the hurdles to taking swift action, favours peace.

George W Bush, however, is actively undermining the fundamental pillar of the very theory he touts by his "stay the course" policy in Iraq. Mr. Bush says that he is not constrained by public opinion because he knows he is right. By proceeding with his policy against overwhelming public opinion, he has undermined the ideological basis of his crusade.

As George W Bush, and his poodle Blair, strain to "stay the course" against the restraints of democracy, they are beginning to damage the foundations of democratic society. One such restraint, as explicitly declared in Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, is the absolute authority of the civilian leadership of the military:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States

The continued pointlessness of the Iraq War is causing the military to publicly speak out against the civilian leadership that is asking them to sacrifice for a war with little or no public support.

Up until this week, most public opposition to the war has come from retired U.S. military generals. However, all that changed last week in Britain when Chief of the General Staff of the Army, Sir Richard Dannatt, spoke out against the Iraq War. Sir Richard called the coalition’s dream of bringing democracy to Iraq "naive" and he called for British troops to pull out as soon as possible. He also stated, rather unsurprisingly, that the presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil is fueling terrorism.

Sir Richard’s candid comments sent shockwaves in London and Washington. By week’s end Tony Blair, to salvage his authority, had to declare that he agrees with his army chief and that what Sir Richard was saying was "the same as we all are." Tony Blair had in effect lost control over his military. The military leadership was openly questioning the policy of their civilian masters - a recipe for disaster in any democratic society. Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair’s blatant disregard for the normal constraints of democratic societies in their quixotic pursuit of "peace" has led to this turn of events.

Another feature of a democratic society that leads to stability and not war, according to Rummel, is its guarantee of civil liberties. Recently Mr. Bush and his war machine have taken a giant bite out of our notion of civil liberties:

When President Bush rammed the bill on military commissions through Congress, the Republicans crowed about creating a process that would be tough on terrorists but preserve essential principles of justice. “America can be proud,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the bill’s architects.

Unfortunately, Mr. Graham was wrong. One of the many problems with the new law is that it will only make it harder than it already is to separate the real terrorists from the far larger group of inmates at Guantánamo Bay who were bit players in the Taliban or innocent bystanders. Mr. Graham and other supporters of this dreadful legislation seem to have forgotten that American justice does not merely deliver swift punishment to the guilty. It also protects the innocent.

…

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 makes it virtually impossible to contest a status tribunal’s decision. It prohibits claims of habeas corpus — the ancient right of prisoners in just societies to have their detentions reviewed — or any case based directly or indirectly on the Geneva Conventions. Even if an appeal got to the single appeals court now authorized to hear it, the administration would very likely argue that it cannot be heard without jeopardizing secrets, as it has done repeatedly.

The new law championed by Mr. Bush and the congressional Republicans allows the government to detain individuals without the right of those individuals to challenge their detentions. That is a license for abuse. This law prohibits habeas corpus, an idea the framers deemed so important, that they included it in the text of the Constitution itself, not in an amendment to the Constitution. Article I, section 9 of the United States Constitution states:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

We are neither facing a rebellion nor an invasion. Yet, we have suspended habeas corpus.

Bit by bit, the fabric of democracy is being undermined by Mr. Bush’s "War on Terror" and his Iraq War. We are fighting them "there" while losing freedoms here. We are undermining our democratic institutions in trying to spread "democracy" abroad. At some point, our leaders must be held accountable if democracy is to be preserved.

We can start to hold our leaders to account starting November 7th. Have no doubt that we are now facing an existential threat to our democracy from within. As we face the real enemies from outside that seek to harm us, we must guard against the forces from within that strike at our very foundations. George W Bush and his rubber stamp Republican congress have brought this challenge to our democracy. On November 7th, we are called upon to defend our democracy.

"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]

[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.

"Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels." - Albert Einstein

In Salt Lake City yesterday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned against moral confusion in George Bush’s crusade against reason. Mr. Rumsfeld asked his fellow citizens to avoid confusion:

Every war involves mistakes, setbacks and casualties, Rumsfeld acknowledged, and every army has members who do not live up to high standards. However, those negative factors cannot overshadow the hundreds of thousands of honorable men and women who serve with humanity and decency in the face of constant provocation, he said.

“That is important in any long struggle or any kind of long war, where any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere,” he said.

The Secretary went on to counsel resolve in combating what he called "a new type of fascism." This new "fascism", or "Islamofascism" as the Bush Administration likes to call it, is apparently similar to the old fascism of quainter times (as Alberto Gonzales likes to refer to most of human history). Mr. Rumsfeld urged all of us to keep our inner Neville Chamberlains in check in these trying times:

Drawing parallels to efforts by some nations to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II, Rumsfeld said it would be "folly" for the United States to ignore the rising dangers posed by a new enemy that he called "serious, lethal and relentless."

I completely agree with Donald Rumsfeld. We should not ignore dangers posed by new enemies, nor should we be morally or intellectually confused about the rightness of our cause. Because I agree with Mr. Rumsfeld, I urge Mr. Rumsfeld and his boss, George W Bush, to abide by this advice or step aside and let those who can meet these challenges carry the burden.

Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush have ignored the real enemy in this war, a certain bearded man named bin Laden, in favor of pursuing their neo-con fantasy of making the Middle East safe for oil exploitation. While we wallow in the quagmire of Iraq, Osama bin Laden and his cohorts enjoy the benefits of a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. By any standard, allowing the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks to roam free 5 years after that horrible day is a dereliction of duty on the part of our leaders. It is also a symptom of intellectual confusion, if not intellectual dishonesty, that in response to the 9/11 attacks the Bush Administration attacked a country, which by Mr. Bush’s own admission, had nothing to do with those attacks:

Q What did Iraq have to do with that?

THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q The attack on the World Trade Center?

THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it’s part of — and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case.

There you have it: al Qaeda attacks us and we attack Saddam Hussein. It is the superpower equivalent of a toddler’s temper tantrum.

Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush led us into the war in Iraq with images of mushroom clouds in our cities and flowers at our soldiers’ feet as they liberate Iraq. Either they were intellectually and morally confused when they sold us this quagmire or they were lying. Since the invasion, the Administration’s moral confusion has grown by leaps and bounds. After their initial casus belli of WMD fell apart, the Administration trotted out the "freedom is on the march" argument. To this day they claim that invading Iraq was the right thing to do even when the very rationale for the invasion has been so thoroughly discredited.

Mr. Rumsfeld has been morally deficient in his handling of the Iraq invasion. He was morally obtuse when looting broke out after the invasion due to lack of security (a fundamental moral and legal duty of the occupier); he was morally obtuse when the abuses took place in Abu Ghraib; he has been morally obtuse as Iraqi civilians are being butchered at alarming rates; he has been morally obtuse while massacres like Haditha and rapes of little girls occur on his watch; and, he has been morally obtuse as he signed death letters of fallen American GIs using an autopen. Mr. Rumsfeld and the boss who continues to employ him have demonstrated ample moral confusion in the past 5 years.

We as citizens have a right, and indeed an obligation, to question our leaders’ actions when they do not appear to serve the interest of the people. If we abdicate our duty as citizens to hold our leaders accountable, even in a time of war, especially in a time of war, we will have aided in the descent of our society into fascism. When our leaders have marched us into a quagmire as a result of a war of choice, we are entitled to moral and intellectual clarity from those very leaders. We must demand of our leaders the truth at all times - "trust me" does not work in a democracy. A demand by a leader of blind loyalty from the citizenry is the primary ingredient in the soup of fascism.

Now is the time for a leader and statesman to lead us out of the dangers of our time and into a more peaceful world. Now is the time for intellectual and moral honesty. Now is the time for great ideals buttressed by sound execution. A generation ago, John F. Kennedy called upon the world to shoulder the burden of his time:

Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation," a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

His call to America and to the world remains as urgent today as it was in his time. This country and this world is yearning for a leader of vision and intellect who can rise above the talking points and the politics of division to lead us out of the moral confusion that this Administration has thrust us into. Sadly, George W Bush is not that leader.

[Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

In the spring of 2002, the Bush Administration scored a major coup against al Qaeda. The third ranking member of al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in a daring raid in Pakistan. This surely was a major blow to the terrorist organization and a triumph for the Bush Administration in its War on Terror.

News organizations at the time breathlessly reported the capture of Abu Zubaydah, the "perfect terrorist":

The planes arrived shortly after 2am, the city’s mobile phones were shut down, then the police radio went off air. An hour later the FBI was ready to strike.

In an upstairs room in a two-storey house in the Faisal Town suburb of Faisalabad, an industrial city in western Pakistan, a tall 31-year-old man was asleep. Around him, stretched out on pallets on the concrete floor, were a dozen associates: fellow Arabs, Afghans and Pakistanis. The only light inside came from a flickering computer screen and the winking of a fax machine. Just before 4am, on 28 March, the FBI went in.

The man, Zayn al-Abidin Mohamed Husayn, aka Abu Zubaydah, woke as scores of FBI men, shouting and throwing stun grenades, swarmed over the low walls enclosing the house and smashed their way inside.

While his colleagues tried to hold off the FBI with kitchen knives, Zubaydah tried to escape. As he ran, he was shot in the stomach, the groin and the thigh. The FBI took him first to Faisalabad’s Allied Hospital and then to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, 170 miles to the north.

This was the stuff of James Bond movies. The Bush Administration was ecstatic:

U.S. officials said they believe Abu Zubaydah can identify names, faces and locations of Al Qaeda operatives the world over and may also know where Usama bin Laden is hiding.

The White House confirmed the capture Tuesday, and while it acknowledged it was a "very serious blow" to Al Qaeda, it also said Americans were still threatened.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer described Zubaydah as an operational planner and key recruiter for Al Qaeda and a member of bin Laden’s "inner circle" who can provide a treasure-trove of top-to-bottom information about the terrorist group.

"He will be interrogated about his knowledge of ongoing plans to conduct terrorist activities. This represents a very serious blow to Al Qaeda," Fleischer said.

Soon, under "enhanced interrogation techniques", Abu Zubaydah started to sing like a canary. He was a treasure trove of information. He was involved in anything and everything al Qaeda. The Bush Administration had hit upon the mother load. This man was al Qaeda’s James Bond and Austin Powers rolled up into one. He was al Qaeda’s operational coordinator; he was a master of disguise; he was al Qaeda’s chief recruiter; he had briefed the hapless shoe bomber; he had planned to blow up the U.S. embassies in Paris and Sarajevo; he was connected to the plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in 1999. He also gave great tips. He tipped off U.S. authorities about a threat to U.S. financial institutions; about "possible al Qaeda attacks on large apartment buildings, shopping malls, supermarkets and restaurants"; about Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber". In short, he was a super terrorist - sans the evil cape.

He was so dangerous he could not be kept at Guantanamo Bay for fear that he may use some al Qaeda mind meld technique to communicate with other detainees. So, he was "disappeared" into the CIA’s secret prison system somewhere overseas. There he became a prime candidate for some of the cool torture techniques that the Bush Administration loved and cherished. But soon doubts started to emerge about the quality of Mr. Zubaydah’s information.

Nonetheless, torture must go on. Enter John Yoo, a brilliant young lawyer working for the Justice Department. At some point, Abu Zubaydah had stopped being cooperative. So the CIA turned to the Justice Department for guidance on how to extract information from Zubaydah. That request prompted the now infamous "Torture Memo" from Mr. Yoo. Cool and fun techniques such as "waterboarding" were approved for the worst of the worst like Zubaydah. Once those newly sanctioned techniques were applied, Zubaydah was back to his old self again singing like he had never sung before.

Now, however, it has emerged that the reason Mr. Zubaydah’s information seemed so unreliable at the time was because he is mentally ill. It turns out that Abu Zubaydah was not al Qaeda no. 3 like previously touted, but in fact he was a low level "travel agent" who arranged travel for spouses and relatives of al Qaeda members. He also had multiple personalities that were fascinated with what clothes people wore. Ron Suskind, in his book The One Percent Doctrine, lays it out for us:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics — travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.

So, a low level al Qaeda member who was insane was causing the U.S. law enforcement authorities to jump through hoops chasing phantom al Qaeda plots. Sounds to me like a sinister al Qaeda plot to tire all of us out!

But how could the most powerful nation in the world be given the run around by a mentally ill detainee? It does not seem possible. It turns out that the U.S. response was being driven by George W Bush’s ego and his need to avoid embarrassment:

"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

This would be comic if not for the fact that the United States faces real dangers in this world. Instead of tracking real dangers down, the Bush Administration has been engaged in torturing a mentally ill man just because George W Bush did not want to lose face. There are many absurd reasons why tyrants and abusers torture people around the world - but this has to be one of the most absurd.

In light of the case of Abu Zubaydah, one has to ask how serious the Bush Administration is in defending this country? If given a choice between protecting the President from embarrassment and protecting the United States, which path will this Administration choose? And will torture litter that path?

 [Cross posted at Bloggers Against Torture]

Meet our newest best friends: the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, or, ARPCT for short. Our latest best friends are at the vanguard of President Bush’s Global War On Terror, or as those who know the lingo like to call it, the GWOT. So the ARPCT were our guys in the GWOT and so we bankrolled them. They were tasked with hunting down al Qaeda and eliminating them. The only problem was they did not have much support from the very people they were tasked to defend against the scourge of al Qaeda. To add insult to injury, when the people found out that the ARPCT was backed by GWB in the GWOT they actively turned on the ARPCT. So now the ARPCT is defeated and on the run. And with their defeat the Bush Administration has suffered an embarrassing setback in the GWOT.

The ARPCT is a recently rebranded group of Somali warlords who were funded by the United States. They were just routed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu by Islamist militants. The ARPCT warlords are now on the run as the Islamists, known as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), establish control over war-torn Somalia. The United States claims that the ironically named ICU harbor al Qaeda members and therefore pose a danger to the civilized world. The ICU has thus been branded as "terrorists" for harboring al Qaeda. Seeing an opportunity to cash in, the always opportunistic Somali warlords refashioned themselves into a group of  "anti-terrorist" militias. In the "us" versus "them" world of George W Bush, these thugs became "us" and thus became worthy of our support.

Since February, with US financial backing, the ARPCT has engaged in fierce fighting with the ICU. But the ICU gained influence in Somalia by offering the people what they had been craving for decades - a sense of security and stability. When the warlords decided to stop fighting each other and rebrand themselves as the ARPCT they were now fighting against the stability provided or promised by the ICU. The people of Somalia were tired of the warlords and rejected the ARPCT in favor of the ICU. One by one, towns fell under the control of the ICU as they advanced on Mogadishu, until finally Mogadishu also fell a few days ago.

The talibanization of Somalia has begun. Just like in Afghanistan, the Somali people are unsurprisingly choosing security over constant violence and insecurity. With no functioning central government, the people have turned to the ICU for protection. In return, the people have accepted Islamist control over their lives. This is an essential concept that the Bush Administration repeatedly fails to understand. If given a choice between democracy without security and security without democracy, the people will overwhelmingly choose the latter. Failure to grasp this obvious fact and wallowing in an ideological soup that preaches "freedom is on the march" will have the opposite effect. In fact, in much of the world where the United States has engaged militarily in the GWOT, freedom is on the ropes. This is true for Afghanistan, this is true for Iraq, and this is true for Somalia.

Somalia, like Iraq and Afghanistan, has a complex political landscape that does not lend itself to the simplistic "us" and "them" rhetoric. There are no good guys in Somalia. The very warlords who now claim to be "anti-terrorist" forces were fighting the United States and presumably harboring al Qaeda in 1993. These are some of the very people who fought the United States during the first Battle of Mogadishu, which led to the deaths of 18 American servicemen. The Bush Administration has now decided to break bread with these thugs in an ill-conceived attempt at counter terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

What the Somali people crave is stability and security. The United States, instead of backing warlords, should perhaps try a defter approach instead. If Iraq has taught us anything, it should be that killing people is not the best way to win hearts and minds.

In an article in the Washington Post, John Prendergast argues for a more balanced counter-terrorism strategy to salvage the situation in Somalia. He states in part:

A successful counterterrorism effort would require the United States to pull the political and military threads together into a coherent strategy of broader engagement. U.S. officials and those from other governments throughout the region uniformly have told me that long-term counterterrorism objectives can be achieved only by American investment in the Somali peace process. Yet the State Department has just one full-time political officer working on Somalia — from neighboring Kenya, and he was just transferred out of the region for dissenting from the policy on proxy warlords. Somalia’s ineffectual transitional government remains confined to the shaky central town of Baidoa, where it is still struggling to overcome internal divisions.

A functioning government that could ensure security would be a win-win scenario for Somalis and the United States, enabling the state apparatus to address the criminality and extremism that undermine progress in the country. This would provide a real partner for the war on terrorism in an area that has a track record for exporting trouble.

The continuation of Washington’s current approach in Somalia would ensure that U.S. interests and those of other countries in the region remain dangerously vulnerable to terrorist attacks from this collapsed state. Continued fighting between Islamist elements and the U.S.-backed warlord alliance will breed resentment, attract recruits to the extremist cause and provide a training ground for new militants. The United States can no longer afford not to engage more deeply and directly in state reconstruction efforts in Somalia. It is in our national security interest to do so. [Emphasis added by me.]

Support for Somalia does not mean boots on the ground. After the experience of the 1990s it would be foolhardy for the United States to return militarily to Somalia. But, the only way to prevent the slide into extremism that is occurring in Somalia is to offer the people a viable alternative to the ICU. This will require regional involvement as well as involvement from the major powers such as the United States and Western Europe.

We cannot afford to let Somalia continue as a failed state. The Somali people crave and need a stable civil society and international investment and engagement can and will lead to a secure Somalia. The war against extremism is a war for hearts and minds. What is required is a lot of butter. Leave the guns at home.

From his secure undisclosed location somewhere within the borders of Pakistan or Afghanistan Osama bin Laden again outlines to the world his vision of the Apocalypse through the magic of audiotape. He calls for a ‘Long War’ against the Western world and delivers a long list of litanies against the West in an attempt to rally Muslims to his cause. Osama bin Laden is in the Clash of Civilizations business and he sounds almost desperate in his zeal to bring one about. In this endeavor he has many in the West on his side.

Osama bin Laden attempts, in his latest audio rendition, to associate himself with any and all sources of possible grievances that he imagines Muslims may have. His mantra is, "Hate the West at all costs". He wants very much to be part of the global rise in Islamist extremism. He wants to channel local grievances in Muslim countries against Government oppression into an unified global movement against the West. He wants to combine the disparate acts of desperate men into a coordinated attack on the West and Western values. He wants his long war between Islam and the West where the ultimate casualty is reason. However, his murderous lunacy is laid bare when he suggests that Muslims in Sudan should oppose international peacekeepers who may be deployed in an attempt to end the genocide in Darfur. Muslims of the world take heed: Osama bin Laden would rather that hundreds of thousands of Muslims were slaughtered than support peacekeepers from the West.

We, and I mean the larger we, should deny Osama bin Laden his long war. We who are the American Government and people, the Muslim Governments and their people and the rest of the Western World have been culpable indirectly and in some instances directly in the rise of global Islamist extremism in general and the rise of Osama bin Laden in particular. Bin Laden is the evil stepchild of Pakistan’s seriously misguided Inter-services Intelligence Agency (ISI). With American Government support through the CIA, the ISI nurtured, armed and trained bin Laden and the rest of the Arab forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s to fend off the Soviet Union. We should also thank the ISI for their generous support of the Taliban and any and all extremis