Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. " - President George W Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001

Liar.

While we foster chaos and death in Iraq, those who attacked us on September 11, 2001 and those who supported and harbored them, and continue to support and harbor them, still enjoy our patronage. The American people have been hoodwinked into a neo-conservative wet dream of a war while our real enemies enjoy freedom and state dinners at the White House.

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I lived in the Pakistani city of Quetta when I was a little younger than Senator Barack Obama was when he attended school in Indonesia. My father was the only Bangladeshi civilian to attend Pakistan Army’s elite Command and Staff College in Quetta. For that privilege the Pakistan army tried repeatedly to kill him. Today Quetta is a hotbed of Taliban activity and is a major center for the shadowy activities of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Like Obama, I suppose I need the Taliban beaten out of me! But I digress…

It is an open secret that the ISI helped establish the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Pakistan army and intelligence services have long supported Islamists. Islamists have provided Pakistan with a proxy force to fight in Kashmir and have provided a source of intelligence and mischief inside its arch-rival India. In return, the army and the ISI have given the Islamists a comfortable home in Pakistan as well as political power. It was Pakistan’s American backed military ruler who enacted the Hudood Ordinance in 1979 that implemented Sharia law in Pakistan.

Today Pakistan and the ISI continue to support the Taliban, as Washington turns a blind eye. In a courageous article in the New York Times, Carlotta Gall asked the question that Mr. Bush needs to answer to the American people: "Have Pakistani intelligence agencies been promoting the Islamic insurgency?"

Ms. Gall reports from Quetta:

Western diplomats in both countries and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies — in particular the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence — have been supporting a Taliban restoration, motivated not only by Islamic fervor but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence on Pakistan’s vulnerable western flank.

More than two weeks of reporting along this frontier, including dozens of interviews with residents on each side of the porous border, leaves little doubt that Quetta is an important base for the Taliban, and found many signs that Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them.

She continues:

The Pakistani military and intelligence services have for decades used religious parties as a convenient instrument to keep domestic political opponents at bay and for foreign policy adventures, said Husain Haqqani, a former adviser to several of Pakistan’s prime ministers and the author of a book on the relationship between the Islamists and the Pakistani security forces.

The religious parties recruited for the jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan from the 1980s, when the Pakistani intelligence agencies ran the resistance by the mujahedeen and channeled money to them from the United States and Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Mr. Haqqani said.

In return for help in Kashmir and Afghanistan the intelligence services would rig votes for the religious parties and allow them freedom to operate, he said.

…

The Inter-Services Intelligence once had an entire wing dedicated to training jihadis, he said. Today the religious parties probably have enough of their own people to do the training, but, he added, the I.S.I. so thoroughly monitors phone calls and people’s movements that it would be almost impossible for any religious party to operate a training camp without its knowledge.

She concludes her reporting with a quote from a local father who has lost his son to the ISI and the Taliban: ‘“All Taliban are I.S.I. Taliban. It is not possible to go to Afghanistan without the help of the I.S.I. Everyone says this.”

I called her reporting courageous, and here is why in a first-hand report from Ms. Gall:

My photographer, Akhtar Soomro, and I were followed over several days of reporting in Quetta by plainclothes intelligence officials who were posted at our respective hotels. That is not unusual in Pakistan, where accredited journalists are free to travel and report, but their movements, phone calls and interviews are often monitored.

On our fifth and last day in Quetta, Dec. 19, four plainclothesmen detained Mr. Soomro at his hotel downtown and seized his computer and photo equipment.

They raided my hotel room that evening, using a key card to open the door and then breaking through the chain that I had locked from the inside. They seized a computer, notebooks and a cellphone.

One agent punched me twice in the face and head and knocked me to the floor. I was left with bruises on my arms, temple and cheekbone, swelling on my eye and a sprained knee.

One of the men told me that I was not permitted to visit Pashtunabad, a neighborhood in Quetta, and that it was forbidden to interview members of the Taliban.

The men did not reveal their identity but said we could apply to the Special Branch of the Interior Ministry for our belongings the next day.

Make no mistake about it, this is how the Pakistani military and the ISI operate. I called the Pakistani leader, and our "ally", General Pervez Musharraf a thug a few months ago, and with good reason.

Carlotta Gall reports from Quetta at great risk to her personal security. Her reporting should prompt every American to ask the following of our commander-in-chief: Why are American bombs falling on Baghdad instead of Islamabad?

I quoted the Bush Doctrine at the beginning of this post. According to Mr. Bush’s own doctrine, we should be at war with Pakistan. Pakistan is harboring and supporting the Taliban. It is widely acknowledged that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are sheltering in Pakistan. There have been recent reports that the ISI itself is sheltering Mullah Omar in Quetta. Taliban are coming across the border from Pakistan and attacking American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. According to Mr. Bush, we should consider Pakistan a "hostile regime". Why don’t we?

The issue in Iraq is not between "surge" or no "surge". The issue is whether we should be there, even today, while our real enemies go unaddressed. I have to wonder if attacking the wrong country, while ignoring the real enemy, rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.

"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]

According to several news organizations Osama bin Laden has released an audiotape on a website claiming that Zacarias Moussaoui was not part of the 9/11 plot. According to a transcript of the tape Osama bin Laden also for the first time takes direct responsibility for the September 11 terrorist attacks. I am no bin Laden analyst and I do not play one on TV but I will go out on a limb here and postulate that the alleged bin Laden tape is not authentic. Much like the alleged Zawahiri letter to Zarqawi it draws too convenient a line between characters in this terror drama that do not necessarily play in the same sandbox.

The tape begins by playing defense lawyer to Moussaoui:

I begin by talking about the honorable brother Zacarias Moussaoui. The truth is that he has no connection whatsoever with the events of September 11th, and I am certain of what I say, because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers – Allah have mercy upon them – with those raids, and I did not assign brother Zacarias to be with them on that mission. [Emphasis added by me.]

This is a stunning admission by bin Laden if the tape is authentic. Not only is bin Laden claiming to have ordered the attacks, he is also claiming that he had direct operational control of the attacks in assigning who would carry out the mission.

Bin Laden the defense lawyer then wades into the weeds:

And among the things that confirm this fact is that the participants in September 11th were two groups: pilots and support teams for each pilot in order to control the aircraft. And since Zacarias Moussaoui was learning how to fly, it follows that he wasn’t component #20 from the teams which helped to control the airplanes, as your government previously claimed, and your government knows this fact with certainty. And if Moussaoui was studying aviation to become a pilot of one of the planes, then let him tell us the names of those assigned to help him control the plane. But he won’t be able to tell us their names, for a simple reason: that in fact they don’t exist. This is from one perspective, and from another perspective, the brother Moussaoui was arrested two weeks before the events, and had he known anything – however little – about the September 11th group, we would have told the brother Commander Mohamed Atta and his brothers – Allah have mercy upon them – to leave America immediately before their affair was exposed. And with this it becomes clear to even the novice investigator – not to mention the seasoned one – that there is no connection between him and the events of September 11th. [Emphasis added by me.]

Bin Laden, uncharacteristically, is making a plea for Moussaoui by trying to claim Moussaoui was ignorant. Here bin Laden makes an utterly illogical statement that after Moussaoui was arrested that he could have informed Atta. That simply makes no sense and the one making the argument appears to be quite unsophisticated.

Bin Laden then raises the other hot topic of the day, Guantanamo Bay:

And then I call to memory my brothers the prisoners in Guantanamo – may Allah free them all – and I state the fact, about which I also am certain, that all the prisoners of Guantanamo, who were captured in 2001 and the first half of 2002 and who number in the hundreds, have no connection whatsoever to the events of September 11th, and even stranger is that many of them have no connection with al-Qaida in the first place, and even more amazing is that some of them oppose al-Qaida’s methodology of calling for war with America. [Emphasis added by me.]

Up to this point al Qaeda has famously claimed responsibility for seemingly disconnected acts of terrorism. Here, by contrast, bin Laden is claiming that the Guantanamo prisoners oppose al Qaeda.

Then comes this remarkable passage:

Bush and his administration are aware of this fact, but they avoid mentioning it, for reasons not hidden to the discerning. Among these reasons is that it is necessary to create justifications for the massive spending of hundreds of billions on the Defense Department and other agencies in their war against the Mujahideen. My mentioning of these facts isn’t out of hope that Bush and his party will treat our brothers fairly in their cases, because that is something no rational person expects, but rather it is meant to expose the oppression, injustice and arbitrariness of your administration in using force and the reactions that result from that. This is from one perspective, and from another perspective, perhaps there will one day come from the Americans someone who desires justice and fairness, and that is the path to security and safety, if you are interested in it. [Emphasis added by me.]

Here bin Laden is complaining, of all things, about the American Defense budget. He then makes a plea for American’s to choose a different kind of leader.

Either bin Laden has thrown up the white flag of surrender here or this tape smells very much like the disputed Zawahiri letter to Zarqawi. If this is in fact bin Laden, it is quite clear from the tone and substance of the tape that bin Laden has lost control of al Qaeda and has been relegated to making pleas on behalf of third-rate al Qaeda wannabes. If this tape is authentic, then we have likely crippled bin Laden’s operation.

However, given the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the American difficulties in Iraq, the tone of this message seems hopelessly out of place. Why would bin Laden remove the ambiguity of his role in 9/11 just to defend Moussaoui? The payoff for him is not worth the loss of mystique. Most Americans have already concluded that Moussaoui is a crackpot who was a terrorist wannabe. There was no need for bin Laden to reiterate that point - doing so makes him look naive and desperate. Perhaps he is desperate, and if so, that is a good thing that all civilized people should take some satisfaction in knowing. But, more likely, this tape is a fabrication judging by its tone and its content. Our intelligence agencies have not yet confirmed its authenticity. I look forward to hearing the judgment of our intelligence analysts and I look forward to being wrong on this one.

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 extremist Islamist factions it could find around the world. The United States participated in the support of bin Laden and the rise of al Qaeda with full knowledge and understanding that this support of these radicals would lead to trouble for the United States in the future. When asked in 1998 after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa if he had any regrets in sanctioning U.S. support for bin Laden and the Taliban, the ever confused and factually challenged Senator from Utah, the inimitable Orrin Hatch, replied that "It was worth it". I wonder if the Senator still feels that way now.

Osama bin Laden wants a long war with the West and in this wish he gets ample support from this Administration. This is a war of attrition that the United States cannot win. It is a war that will only lead to continued growth of extremism in both the East and the West. The logic of this long war is easily exploited by bin Laden on one side and by the ideologues on this side. The "us" and "them" rhetoric that it encourages is simplistic yet powerful in its ability to bring about the triumph of hate. Now is the time for men and women of reason to stand up and speak out against this slide into madness. We are caught in a twisted version of Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic and we must break out if we are to triumph over it.

It seems to me that there is an alternative to this "us" and "them" logic and the dream that if we bomb Iraq, Iran and Syria somehow reason and Democracy will flower in place of extremism. Our current path, far from fostering Democracy and peace with the United States, is creating anger and resentment in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world. We are planting the seeds of future extremism by our actions today. We have neither the bombs nor the will enough to kill the new extremists faster than they are being created. So, I propose a different approach. I propose an approach that recognizes that the vast majority of the grievances in the Muslim world is not against the West but against the corrupt Governments that rule there. The United States is a target because of the support it provides these Governments and not because "they hate us for our freedom". Save the extremists and corrupt Governments that unwittingly fuel each other, all peoples of the world want freedom and security, so the notion that somehow the United States is hated because we are "free" is utter nonsense.

We can shorten bin Laden’s "Long War" and defeat him and his ideology by engaging in the new "war on terror" which should have the following components in equal measure:

• We should end active support of regimes in the Muslim world that oppress their peoples, deny them fundamental freedoms, and officially sanction extremist teachings. Examples of such regimes include, first and foremost, Saudi Arabia (the head of the snake, if you will), Egypt and Pakistan. We give billions of dollars each year to these Governments to prop them up. In return, these Governments engage in the systematic abuse of their citizenry. Like any addict, they thrive on economic and military aid from the United States. Their elite line their pocketbooks on the backs of their people. Is anyone surprised why their peoples are attracted to violent ideologies that target these Governments and what they see as their far away master? It is time for the United States to cut these addicts off and demand better treatment of the masses. If anyone thinks that my suggestion is naive, I assure you that the withholding of a few billion dollars of aid to Egypt will have the effect of focusing the mind of Hosni Mubarak in a hurry. The benefit of shifting policy is tremendous. It has the effect of liberalizing these countries and the more important effect of cutting the legs of the oppression that breeds hate toward the United States.
• We should support massive educational and economic development projects in Muslim countries. We should really drain the swamp instead of paying lip service to draining the swamp. There is no extremist ideology that can survive if the masses do not suffer from ignorance. Alleviating poverty and illiteracy are the two most important factors in combating extremism and the terrorism that so often follows.
• We should take the fight to bin Laden and al Qaeda. No amount of education, economic assistance or other acts of compassion will rescue the few who will continue to stoke hatred wherever and whenever they can. We should deal with these individuals with impunity. We will be vastly aided in our effort to hunt down and destroy the remnants of al Qaeda by our other efforts at improving the lot of the masses. Bin Laden and al Qaeda will find themselves increasingly isolated and without support as our efforts to drain the swamp start to take effect.
• Lastly the people of the Muslim world must join the struggle. They must join not in an "us" versus "them" sense. They must respond to actions by the United States to try to open up their Governments by not joining the ranks of the extremists but by putting internal pressure on their Governments. They must choose not between Islam and the West, but between Extremism and common sense.

The policy I have outlined above is obvious and has been suggested many times before - there is nothing new here. We do not need radical new ideas though, we simply need ideas that make sense. But I doubt that the current Administration in the United States has the will or the desire to change course to this new policy. They believe in bombs and not books. This is the "stay the course" Administration so any course correction is unlikely to occur. They have already set their course on the attack on Iran and I doubt anything as important as the dismantling of al Qaeda and Islamist Extremism will deter them from their chosen course. In any case, the efforts I outlined above require that the U.S. Administration have credibility with the Islamic world. This Administration has none. The change in policy may come when a new Administration comes to power in a thousand days. But as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. points out in his appeal today in The Washington Post, it promises to be a long Thousand Days.