Al Qaeda Leaders Regaining Power
Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde wrote a depressing article for the New York Times. It seems that Al Qaeda leaders, who are hiding in Pakistan are regaining power of their terrorist network and that they have set up training camps for terrorists “in the tribal regions near the Afghan border”.
As the authors of the article point out, the Bush administration has said for a number of years now that Osama Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri lost control over their terrorist organization, that they were “detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.”
Things seem to have changed.
The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.
American analysts said recent intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with Al Qaeda. They receive guidance from their commanders and Mr. Zawahri, the analysts said. Mr. bin Laden, who has long played less of an operational role, appears to have little direct involvement.
Officials said the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But groups of 10 to 20 men are being trained at the camps, the officials said, and the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature.
Al Qaeda’s leaders fled to Pakistan. Musharraf isn’t doing much against them anymore (he even agreed to leave them alone)… Al Qaeda used the ‘rest’ in Pakistan to reorganize and … we now see that it’s building new ‘training camps’, that it’s preparing terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and, so the intelligence suggest, beyond…
When will something be done against this? And what? The war in Afghanistan was the initial response to 9/11. This war, the most important one regarding the global war on terrorism, has become the forgotten war.
Al Qaeda is responsible for 9/11. Al Qaeda should be destroyed. Al Qaeda had a safe haven in Afghanistan, it now has a new safe haven in Pakistan. Musharraf is offically America’s ‘ally’, but in the meantime he’s not doing anything to prevent Al Qaeda from regaining strength. Should the U.S., then, destroy the camps in Pakistan?
Should the U.S. go into Pakistan?
Obviously doing so will create a whole lot of different / new problems.
On the other hand, not doing anything isn’t exactly an option either. Not only is Al Qaeda active in Afghanistan, it’s also planning terrorist attacks against the West again. Bruce Hoffman, terrorism expert at Georgetown University, even said that Al Qaeda “is now functioning exactly as its founder and leader, Osama bin Laden, envisioned it.”
If nothing is done, Al Qaeda will carry out more terrorist attacks against Western targets. If something is done the U.S. faces the risk of losing even more support, creating more chaos, more deaths, etc.
Hot Air on this:
We might have enough troops to invade and occupy the tribal areas if Musharraf was willing to cut a deal on that, but (a) what could we possibly offer him to get him to effectively cede territory, (b) how could he hope to survive the irredentist backlash among Pakistanis, and (c) if you think 3,000 dead in Iraq is bad, what would the numbers look like with U.S. troops fighting Iwo-style cave-clearing warfare in the mountains of Waziristan with jihadis from every shinolahole in the Middle East streaming in as reinforcements?
Exit question: What now?
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross explains that the so-called Waziristan accord was destined to fail:
In the October 2 issue of the Weekly Standard, less than a month after the Waziristan Accord was signed, Bill Roggio and I provided the following analysis:
The agreement is, to put it mildly, a boon to the terrorists and a humiliation for the Pakistani government. . . . The accord provides that the Pakistani army will abandon outposts and border crossings throughout Waziristan. Pakistan’s military agreed that it will no longer operate in North Waziristan or monitor actions in the region. Pakistan will return weapons and other equipment seized during Pakistani army operations. And the Pakistani government essentially paid a tribute to end the fighting when it agreed to pay compensation for property destroyed during combat — an unusual move since most of the property that was destroyed belonged to factions that had consciously decided to harbor terrorists. Of particular concern is the provision allowing non-Pakistani militants to continue to reside in Waziristan as long as they promise to “keep the peace.” Keeping the peace will, in practice, be defined as refraining from attacks on the Pakistani military. Meanwhile, since the military won’t be monitoring the militants’ activities, they can plan and train for terrorist attacks or work to bolster the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan without being seen to violate the treaty.
It is unsurprising that the Waziristan Accord has failed: the truly astonishing news is that so many analysts waited until now to declare it a failure.
Daveed adds the following:
I spoke with a senior military intelligence officer about the Times article. He reports that the Times’s description that camps in Pakistan have “yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule” and its mention of “groups of 10 to 20 men” being trained is only a partial picture of the training camps in Pakistan. The Times article focuses on al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, camps where militants receive the kind of training that could enable them to carry out terrorist attacks in the West. But there are also larger military training camps — the kind that are used to train Taliban fighters to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, or to train Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, or other Kashmiri separatist groups. The training required to carry out a terrorist attack in the West is different than what is needed to fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir.
That senior intelligence officer also said that Al Qaeda’s leadership wasn’t “fragmented” at all in 2005. “Such assessments were essentially intelligence failures. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership was regrouping and gathering force during this period, and Western intelligence wasn’t aware of it. The reason we realize it now, he says, is because the strength of al-Qaeda’s central leadership has become blatantly obvious.”
Read Daveed’s entire post over at the Counterterrorism Blog.
Joe in D.C. concludes at AMERICAblog:
How George Bush let the people who attacked this country get away with it is really beyond explanation. How the Republicans in Congress let this happen defies explanation. Thanks to Bush and his GOP allies, the world is a much more dangerous place.
Al Qaeda is back. Bin Laden has reasserted his authority. It’s really almost unbelievable.
This once again highlights the need to deal with failed states and lawless regions. Al Qaeda takes advantage of the anarchy in these areas to regain its footing and one can bet that they’re going to use this time and space to prepare for yet more terror attacks, including the potential of attacks against the continental United States.
more reason to lean on the Paks to get serious about Waziristan.
Ron Beas wonders at Middle Earth Journal
Do you feel safer with commander codpiece in charge of keeping you safe?
And lastly, Ron Chusid at Liberal Values:
If only George Bush hadn’t gotten confused over who was responsible for 9/11. If only we really were waging a war on terrorists, as opposed to invading the wrong country.
If only, indeed.
50 Responses to “Al Qaeda Leaders Regaining Power”
Al Qaeda Leaders Regaining Power…
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“If only George Bush hadn’t gotten confused over who was responsible for 9/11. If only we really were waging a war on terrorists, as opposed to invading the wrong country.”
Jeez Lousie, that has to be one of the most insane comments I have read from the Left. “Invading the wrong country”…by implication, invading Pakistan would be the “right country”.
One of the reasons Bush went after Iraq was that it was the low-hanging fruit on the Axis of Evil tree: its military was degraded; its terrain was flat, with limited cover from American air power and surveillance; it was not particularly populous, with only a few major urban areas to get bogged down in street fighting.
If Bush had invaded Pakistan to go after al-Quada…a country with nukes, a large military, mountainous terrain, large cities, sizable populations…it would make Iraq look like a walk in the park.
You know, I think I really want to see a Democrat in the White House in 2009.
I want to see these liberal blogs demand that President Obama/Clinton whomever invade Pakistan and kick al-Quada’s ass.
We all know that won’t happen. Instead, the NYT and these blogs will suddenly downgrade the threat of al-Quada to a “criminal matter” best left to Interpol.
Marlow: I think that he’s referring to Afghanistan. Not to Pakistan. I think that he means that if the U.S. would have focused completely on Afghanistan, the situation in the country and Al Qaeda’s strength now would be quite different.
Michael, you may be right in that regard.
But what precisely would these critics of Bush do differently? Focus on Afghanistan. Here is Kerry’s speech from 2004:
“As president, I will not subcontract the fight to warlords who are out for nothing but power and personal gain. I will help the government of Afghanistan expand its authority beyond Kabul to the rest of the country. I will lead our allies to share the burden, so that NATO finally provides more troops. I will show the world that America finishes what it begins.”
NATO nations providing more troops? As it is, the Germans in Afghanistan won’t fly helicopters at night. The French? The only NATO nations supporting the US with troops at the front are Canada and the UK.
But Al-Qaeda’s leaders are in Pakistan’s frontier provinces. How to get them out? Well, that is clearly easy for Bush’s critics. Just “lean” on Musharraf…
Today Bush is willing to authorize Predator strikes over the border, and Pakistan screams…and the BBC wrings its hands about cowboy Americans encouraging radicalism by civilian casualties in Pakistan.
Would John Kerry…with his famous “global test” for American actions…be so willing to violate Pakistan’s frontiers to strike at al-Qaeda? Would Clinton or Obama.
My prediction stands: the moment a Democrat is in the White House, al-Queada will be transformed into a police matter…and Osama will be represented as an insignificant crackpot not worth consideration….
You’re forgetting at least one country. I’d appreciate it if people would recognize the effort my country is putting into this.
I think that, at least this is my view on it, it could have been quite different if the war in Iraq would never happened at all. Would Al Qaeda have been able to flee to Pakistan if there was no war in Iraq? Would al Qaeda be able to sneak into Afghanistan if there was no war in Iraq and all the troops of the U.S. could focus on Afghanistan and if the U.S. would actually still have the support of European countries, etc.?
Don’t you think that the situation in the world would have been radically different?
The U.S. lost a lot of support due to the war in Iraq, not due to the war in Afghanistan: that war was quite universally considered to be lawful / legal / logical / etc.
Rather than get bogged down in Marlow’s tedious ‘tit-for-tat’ style of argument, I’ll return us to the core of Michael’s post. It is hard to take anyone seriously who won’t acknowledge that in America’s war on terror the Iraq detour was and is a strategic blunder of historic proportions.
The facts are simple- Those who planned and funded the murder of over 3000 American citizens on 9/11 were holed up in Afghanistan protected and supported by the Taliban government. An ultimatum was delivered, and on being ignored the appropriate action was initiated and brilliantly executed.
At this point the Bush Administration handling of the war was near perfect. with American troops revelling in being allowed carry out a mission that was clear in its scope and ambition- destroy the Taliban government, kill or capture Bin Laden, destroy all Al Qaeda networks, and leave.
At this stage the US had the support of all right-thinking nations. The intelligent agencies of the world were working along side their American counterparts to ensure Al Qaeda were destroyed once and for all. An important and crushing victory was at hand and then…
Iraq, and thousands of American troops dying and trapped in a civil war that will turn Iraq into a playground for extremists for years to come; the scrapping of alliances vital to any American government serious about protecting American citizens, and the shredding of our moral standing in the world which in times past allowed America to make its statements and be believed.
And now we hear that Bin Laden and his fellow butchers are busy reconstituting their murder camps.
Particularly upsetting has been the spectacle of Republican after republican stepping to the podium to condemn any who dare highlight the catastrophic consequences of our Iraqi engagement rather than confront what needs to be done to defeat the terrorists.
Yes Michael I think it would be different, but I also think it’s a disgrace that most European countries have walked away from Afghanistan (which I see the Dutch have sent a large number of troops to make up some of the losses). It’s too bad we didn’t send in 100k+ troops to try to secure the Afghani border and have a better chance at preventing widespread Taliban/Al Qaeda escape.
On a side note, I just realized that Operation Enduring Freedom is a terrible name, but I guess the Taliban is living up to it!
Sorry Michael…didn’t mean to diss your country. It was just that the only countries I knew that were taking casualities on the front lines were the Canadians and the Brits.
MVG said: “Would Al Qaeda have been able to flee to Pakistan if there was no war in Iraq?”
But they did flee into Pakistan, before the invasion of Iraq.
I note on the BBC this morning about the bombings of the “Friendship Train” between Pakistan and India. Musharraf vows revenge, but this has happened before.
I point this out to note the complexity of Pakistan, and the limitations of the central government to control the various Islamic terrorist groups (most of the victims of the bombings were Muslim).
I would disagree about Iraq poisoning relations with Europe. Gitmo would still have existed. The same for rendition. I would point out the BBC staged Panorama program 3 days after 9-11 in which the former US ambassador was almost reduced to tears by the mocking slow clapping of the audience who blamed the US for all the troubles of the world, and saw 9-11 as a well-deserved comeuppance.
Europe would have found some reason to beat the US over the head. Always has.
You may be right. A focus on Afghanistan might have limited the power of the Taliban. However, it may have equally radicalized the Muslims in Pakistan, with tens of thousands of would-be jihadis just over an international frontier.
In which case, the liberal blogs that bash Bush would be hammering him over his intervention in Afghanistan which every expert knows chews up foreign armies like the British and the Russian (recall Robert Fisk’s articles early in the Afghan war that the Taliban were cleverly leading ZBush into a trap in Afghanistan).
Please note, MVG, that I am distinguishing your balanced assessment from the Bush Derangement Syndrome evident on liberal blogs reviewing this story, like “Brilliant at Breakfast” which declared in full tinfoil hat mode:
“Every day, the notion that this Administration allowed the 9/11 attacks to play out because it would help them justify their agenda becomes less crazy.”
Truflo, it may be tedious to ask the question…how would you have accomplished this?
You liberals criticize the assumptions of the war planners before Iraq.
Yet here you assert it would have been simplicity itself for the US to have crushed al-Quada in Pakistan’s North-west frontier where they had decamped within days of the fall of Kabul.
God, I truly do wish for President Obama to come in with his magic wand and deal with al-Quada in Pakistan once and for all.
I realize that Marlow.
MVG said: “I realize that Marlow.”
Thanks.
Please note guys, I’m not defending the Iraq war in this argument. I am a conservative Realist in the Scowcroft/Bismarck mode. Bush Jr. is an idealist activist.
I appreciate “counter-factuals” as these hypothetical arguments are known in history. However, there is a tendency in many of them to assume everything would have been so much better if…(e.g., If Kennedy had lived, there would have been no Vietnam, no race riots etc).
I am simply arguing that there is a good reason why Pakistan – the centre of global Islamic terrorism (the UK bombers etc)- is being treated with kid gloves by everyone. Iraq was simple in comparison to the horrors of a radicalized Pakistan (with its nukes).
[...] Michael van der Galien at The Moderate Voice: Al Qaeda is responsible for 9/11. Al Qaeda should be destroyed. Al Qaeda had a safe haven in Afghanistan, it now has a new safe haven in Pakistan. Musharraf is offically America’s ‘ally’, but in the meantime he’s not doing anything to prevent Al Qaeda from regaining strength. Should the U.S., then, destroy the camps in Pakistan? [...]
I think it’s pretty hard to deny that the invasion of Iraq soured what goodwill remained toward the United States. We insulted France, Germany and Russia in the process. Joke as you may, those three countries are not inconsequential powers.
Certainly, many of the radicals in Afghanistan fled into Pakistan, even before we launched our attack on Iraq. Not invading Iraq wouldn’t have changed that, but it could have had a material effect on a lot of other factors.
1) We would have enough troops/equipment to secure Afghanistan
2) We could have trapped the radicals in Pakistan
3) Pakistan would be more afraid of us militarily, and might actually respond to some diplomatic pressure
4) We wouldn’t have created another terrorist recruiting/training ground
I am simply arguing that there is a good reason why Pakistan – the centre of global Islamic terrorism (the UK bombers etc)- is being treated with kid gloves by everyone. Iraq was simple in comparison to the horrors of a radicalized Pakistan (with its nukes).
But after 9/11 did we really treat Pakistan with kid gloves? Powell and Armitage gave Musharaff ultimatums of total destruction if he didn’t cooperate with us, which is how he became America’s ally. I do agree that recently we have treated them with kid gloves. In my mind Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are bigger threats than Iraq or Iran.
Marlowe,
Excellent points. I for one have never been as ‘angry’ about Iraq being a diversion as a lot of people are because I truly felt that militarily we had reached an impasse in Afghanistan. I think a lot of people who are armchair quarterbacking the situation are forgetting how the terrain, political and tribal situation of that region have prevented anyone from establishing lasting order. I do think that there should have been a much greater focus on rebuilding and modernization in Afghanistan, which would have addressed some of the root causes of the tensions there that foment extremist agendas and allow them to thrive.
Mikkel said:
Again, to the same point; I don’t even think that 100K+ troops would have done it. I don’t believe that border can be controlled, and the tribal warriors of that region want to keep it that way. Unless or until the people of that region want stability and modernization, there will be no peace and there will always be a safe haven for groups like al Qaeda. Musharaff is over a barrel (just as the Saudis have been for decades). These governments can’t actively oppose the Islamists or they will be targeted by them; the best they can do is try to walk a line between giving tacit support to the US and coalition without going too far. They play both sides in order to survive.
Marlow,
Not the simple thing, the right thing no matter how difficult rather than the easy which was to abandon the pursuit of the 9/11 killers, our real enemy, and go pick the low hanging fruit.
Like most ‘conservative realists’ you prefer to ignore the facts. Al Qaeda were very much a presence in Afghanistan long after the fall of Kabul. While it has never been proved conclusively, those charged with his capture are convinced Bin Laden was trapped at Tora Boro along with hundreds of his supporters in December 2001, the same month Kabul became the capital of the Afghan Transitonal Government and more than a months after it fell. Darn them pesky facts!
Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Komrad Marlow,
I don’t recall any Democrats, Liberal or far left, calling for us to leave Afghanistan or the Afghan war illegal. Nothing from Murtha, no resolutions. Only the ANSWER crowd and the Ramsey Clark’s question Afghanistan.
truflo- Excellent point- there has never been any kind of explanation why, when reinforcements were requested for Tora Bora the request was ignored. We heard a little later that OSB was not really that important. He resurfaced in 2006 in the president’s speeches for political purposes only(in one speech he mentioned OSB 17 times!). By then OSB had been elevated to the level of Hitler and Stalin.
I also wonder why, directly after 9/11, OSB’s relatives were allowed to leave the country no questions asked, and return to Saudi Arabia.
CS my sentence was shorthand for what truflo said. If it were up to me (with the benefit of hindsight of course and ignoring logistics) I would have had 100k soldiers with the bulk of them between Kabul and the mountains (to the east and south) so the northern push by the Northern Alliance would do most of the ground taking and our troops would cut off the main directions of escape.
Of course there’s no way we could fully control the outflow, but I would have had another 10-20k operating near the border doing search missions with another couple thousand as a quick reaction force to bring in specific weaponry and tactics whenever a nest of high valued targets was found.
As Kabul was captured I would then rotate about as many troops as we have now into there and move the rest into the southern half of Afghanistan to continue the fight.
CS I also think your last paragraph is 100% true and that’s precisely why combating terrorism is first and foremost an intelligence-police issue. I just think that in Afghanistan it was a military issue first (and one of the few places where that’s true) and we went in way too light.
I remember Al Gore saying something to this effect and this speech highlights some of his thinking. He (and now-Senator Webb) believed from day 1 we were ignoring both the primacy of law enforcement in tackling terrorism and the chance to treat Afghanistan as a true “shock and awe” campaign. They both also said months before the Iraq war that it was a mistake and predicted the international response nearly perfectly.
CS,
While a great admirer of you comments generally, in this particular instance I can’t quite follow your thinking.
Because, in your opinion, America had reached a military impasse in Afghanistan…what? It was a good idea to invade Iraq (because it was easy, according to Marlow)? Because that would further weaken Al Qaeda? Strike a decisive blow in the war on terror? Was a better option than staying and attempting to secure a vital base from which American troops could continue to hunt down its sworn enemies?
3000 American soldiers dead, countless more horribly wounded, Iraq devastated, 100s dying every week, those who can fleeing the country by the millions, Iran’s influence rising with every day that passes, America’s standing in the world so low no one believes a word we say anymore, and to top it all off ,Al Qaeda back in the business of training mass murderers.
None of this would have occured had the Bush administration stuck to the tough job rather than lied the country into attacking the wrong people.
Truflo,
I could not have said it better.
Truflo said: “Apologies for any inconvenience caused.”
Hahahaha…
I think you are right that Osama was probably at Tora Bora…but from the moment he escaped and crossed the Pakistan frontier the Afghan war was a dead issue. You could have had 250,000 troops in Afghanistan and it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Look…every single terrorist incident in the UK has Pakistani links…yet the UK isn’t demanding anything from Pakistan.
The Khan network gave Iran critical nuclear parts and information, without which they would be further away than they are now…yet the US hasn’t gone ballistic at Pakistan over this.
There is good reason for this: Pakistan is the Doomsday Scenario of Islamic terrorism. Musharraf barely has control over much of the country..he’s faced multiple assassination attempts. His intelligence agency does whatever it bloody well wants. There are countless madrasses and more Islamic militant groups than anyone can count. The country has a large population, lots of weapons, and nukes.
Kritter said: “I also wonder why, directly after 9/11, OSB’s relatives were allowed to leave the country no questions asked, and return to Saudi Arabia.”
In Fahenheit 911 Michael Moore claimed this was a set up deal arranged by Bush with the Saudis. Richard Clarke – no friend of Bush – promptly shot him down saying it was his call, and claimed full responsibility.
Comrade Rudi…you are right that only the extreme left (and extreme right, to be fair) has called for the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But I never suggested otherwise. Only that, if Bush had been insane enough to go into Pakistan after Osama, things would have gone south pretty damn quick and we would be looking at a regional catastrophe IMHO.
Truflo said: “…because it was easy, according to Marlow?”
Yes, it was easy…in comparison to North Korea, Iran or Pakistan.
All three would be horror shows of massive proportions…two with nukes…one at the nexus of 3 of the world’s preeminent economies: China, South Korea and Japan.
One of the reasons Bush and Co. picked Iraq was that it was an easy target in comparison. I think they are right. They could have gone into Pakistan…and all hell would be descending on the West right about now.
Basically, yes. I assumed that the planning of Iraq had taken into account the goal of deposing Saddam, replacing his govt with one that actually functioned, and having the ability to fight the inevitable influx of al Qaeda or other Islamist fighters. I now see that the planning was incredibly inadequate to accomplish all but the first goal, but that doesn’t mean the idea itself was flawed. It’s not stupid to lure the enemy from one region where we couldn’t defeat them to one where we (theoretically) could. While distracting them, we and the rest of the coalition in Afghanistan could have (should have) been giving aid and support to rebuild and modernize the country, so that al Qaeda fighters would not have had a safe haven to which to return.
And of course, it’s not that I would have felt that we should have randomly invaded another nation to lure al Qaeda toward; it was that there was a long term problem with Saddam Hussein AND he was a tyrant oppressing the people of Iraq, so that there was a chance to accomplish several goals with the Iraq invasion- an opportunity that was squandered through poor planning and half-hearted attempts.
Mikkel,
With all due respect, I think that you are speaking, as you admit, with
You have no way of knowing if the type of military strategy you describe would have been any more successful, while it undoubtedly would have resulted in far more casualties in Afghanistan and possibly more than we’ve taken in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
Iraq had little or no ties to terrorism, so why should we have invaded it even if was an easy target?
There are plenty of countries that are easy targets, but we have to have a good reason if we want to invade.
Chris,
How many other nations had a despot in control who had a history of using WMD on his own people, invading neighboring countries, making claims of having WMDs and denying access to UN inspectors, flaunting the impotent UN by disregarding (how many was it? 11 or so?) security council resolutions that condemned him for violating the terms of the cease fire to the war that pushed him back from the invasion of his neighbor, and had only been held in check by sanctions which would have resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis if not for the Oil for Food program- which was no longer sustainable because it had been corrupted?
Claims that the Bush administration randomly invaded a peaceful nation that abided by international law are ridiculous and ignore the history of the 1990s.
Marlowecan I agree with your perception of the Democratic base but I also think that the only reasonable policy prescriptions have come from (a very few) Democrats (and old-style Republicans that are no longer listened to by those in power). The Iraq War is actually a pretty good case of liberalism gone awry in my opinion. Sure there are migating factors about why it was invaded that only conservatives cared about, but the whole idea we could go in there and they’d sing kumbayah and realize their inner humanity is a pretty PC concept.
CS it’s true I have no idea whether it would have worked better, but it’s also true that as it was going on I thought to myself “what the hell are they doing?” I was astonished we could even capture Kabul with our strategy and even though I was near ignorant I knew there was no way we could catch most of the Taliban/Al Qaeda because they’d just slip away.
While we have no idea how alternative plans would have worked, it was evident to a lot of people that the one they picked was terrible. It’s also true we might have taken more casualities than we have so far, but as long as the stated objective was to hunt down Al Qaeda/Taliban elements (as oppossed to trying to pacify the whole country) I think the American people would have supported the mission better than they did Iraq. I don’t think my plan would magically solve the immense problems that Afghanistan has vis-a-vis warlords and an emasculated government and it’s trying to solve that problem that would be a waste of human life and treasure.
C Stanley,
I’m not saying that Iraq was a law abiding nation. I’m not saying that Saddam was Mother Theresa. What I’m saying is that Iraq was not an imminent threat and was contained (which is obvious given the evidence before and after the invasion). Despite our immense military budget, we still have to pick and choose our battles.
And on a related note, I find it interesting that by this criteria we should invade Israel:
Chris,
I’ve brought this up repeatedly but so far I don’t think anyone has addressed it. In my view, the reasons that Saddam was contained were Gulf War 1, the terms of the ceasefire, the sanctions imposed during the 90s, and the missile strikes by the Clinton administration. Unfortunately most of that was at the insistence and enforcement of the US, and the sanctions ran the risk of starving millions of people. The only amelioration to that was the Oil for Food program which was no longer sustainable. So, like it or not, the situation was reaching a crisis stage- regardless of whether or not Saddam had the capability to use WMD or provide them to terrorist networks at that time. He was clearly capable of doing so if he had the financing from oil sales, and he had shown motive to do such things. We had prevented him from doing so up till that point (with more success than we even realized since he continued to bluff), but we couldn’t sustain that because the Oil for Food program had become so corrupted that it had to be dismantled. In short, I felt we had reached the end of the road in containing Saddam and he had to go.
Mikkel,
Your statement about liberalism gone awry is apt and of course is backed up by the fact that the Neocons were in fact, once liberals. I guess I (mistakenly) believed that they had taken some of the good ideas of liberalism and married them to ideas that are more realistic. And, I found it appealing that the new foreign policy might move away from some of the traditional Republican, realpolitik Cold War strategies that frankly are not much more moral than is the policy of preemptive war. If we were doing harm through the invasion of Iraq, I saw that as balanced against the harm that was resulting from our containment strategies that were typical of past US foreign policy.
Even if that had been the idea , it was flawed, terribly. And for two reasons:
1. The enemy is not a standing army. It is a loose affiliation made up of extremists who believe all Muslim governments and people living outside strict, Shari’ah law must either conform or be destroyed.
2. To destroy those Muslim countries and peoples who refused to conform, radicalization of Muslims on a mass scale was needed. One such way to achieve this, as Bin Laden has stated, was to try and involve the United States in a mid east war.
In other words, invading Iraq was exactly what are enemies wanted us to do. What they didn’t want was a smart America using the intelligence agencies and apparatus of our friends and allies combined with strategic alliances with Arab countries who felt threatened themselves by the rise in Bin Laden’s popularity, to hunt down and destroy all its networks.
And, yes, of course it would have been hard work involving setbacks and defeats along the way, but it also would have been the right work with the right result. Unfortunately, instead of smart people we got dumb, dumber and a war in Iraq.
C Stanley,
It may have been reaching a boiling point. We can’t know that for sure now, but you could be right. Maybe if the looming humanitarian disaster was given as a reason for toppling Saddam, then maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today.
It was, Chris, but most people only heard what they wanted to hear. The WMD issue was played up because of the decision to get (at least tacit) UN approval for the invasion. There was no other way to “sell” the war under international war, so that issue was heavily touted in regard to the UN- but domestically there were also plenty of speeches where the administration talked about other reasons for the invasion.
Uh, sorry…that should have been “under international law.”
Actually, truflo, I’d argue that what OBL and Zawahiri wanted was to bog us down in Afghanistan (there are direct quotes from them to back that up), and I believe that what many people here are suggested would have done just that. I think we wisely estimated the degree to which we could ‘win’ there (toppling the Taliban and creating conditions for an elected govt to emerge) and then we stopped thinking of it as a military battle from that point on. However, I do think we underestimated the ongoing need for peacekeeping troops and robust reconstruction efforts.
C Stanely,
It was close to Wolfowitz’s reasoning for sure, but I’m not sure there was broad administration support for that line of thinking.
More importantly, the lust for WMDs and terrorist ties had a big effect on our military.
If W didn’t go to the war on the cheap in both military and reconstruction issues, Afghanistan would be different today. Maybe securing the Southern countryside would have finished off the Taliban. If money wasn’t wasted in Iraq, maybe the rural farmers wouldn’t be growing the poppies that contribute to herion use in IRAN and Europe. Seems W incompetence has created wide scale corruption to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we have a “surge” coming to Afghanistan and nobody seems to say anything.
I don’t follow your point here… can you elaborate?
C Stanley,
It was dangerous to conflate Iraq with the war on terror because it made some of our troops treat Iraqis like terrorists. Detainees were abused, suspicious Iraqis were shot on sight, along with some other “excesses.”
The focus on WMDs had other effects. We didn’t cleanup weapons caches that were all over Iraq, because we were afraid of bioweapons. Those caches helped fuel the early insurgency.
Those are just two examples off the top of my head, but I think they illustrate the larger danger of not having everyone on the same page as far as objectives and planning.
Well, if at first you don’t succeed….
Come to think of it, this is a bit of a twofer for Bin Laden, one failed state and the other failing.
I really don’t mean to be glib, the situation is just too tragic and appalling for the Iraqis and I apologise.
True, but again those are errors of implementation, not proving that the concept was wrong or that it couldn’t have been done correctly with greater chance of success.
truflo,
You’re trying so hard to reaffirm your own opinion that you aren’t paying attention to mine. What if I’m right? What if committing more military effort to Afghanistan would have led us into a nightmare scenario there? What if we put 100K+ troops in and took heavy casualties, but without success? What if it turned out as I suspect (and I think Marlowe agrees) that ultimately we wouldn’t have been any more successful there unless we had invaded Pakistan, which would NOT have gone well.
You may not agree, but please don’t be so quick to dismiss this. Of course OBL and Zawahiri have attempted to turn Iraq to their advantage, and obviously they’ve had some success. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have done it because the alternative of continuing to go after them in Afghanistan may have been as bad or worse for the US.
I’m pointing out the dangers in having to lie and fearmonger when making the case for war. I have other reasons for opposing the invasion, but I’m doing my best to be a pragmatic imperialist
CS,
My last comment was glib, which I admitted, and you are right to slap me down, but I really feel you are missing a vital piece of the jigsaw here, and it starts with this simple statement:
You cannot win a war the people won’t support.
When George Bush delivered his ultimatum to the Taliban- hand over Bin Laden, destroy his networks, or we will invade your country, not just the people of America supported him, but the vast majority of right thinking people all over the world supported him.
Had he delivered the same ultimatum to Pakistan once it was known Bin Laden had fled there I am certain Musharraf could have handed him over and dismantled what was left of his network without losing power. More than that, it would have been the correct thing to do, no one anywhere could have questioned the rightness of such a declaration.
By changing tack and invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, by cooking the evidence and lying about contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Bush didn’t just make a bad strategic decision, he divided his country, lost the support, vital support, of the world and is now in grave danger of losing the war on terror.
I am not simply trying to reaffirm my own position, I am attempting to describe, with a clear head, the nightmare we have, not the one you imagine we might have had.
The whole world knows that the Democrat liberals are cowards in the face of their enemies. This cowardice will embolden the terrorists to commit more attacks and even try, once more, to attack our homeland.
To retreat and surrender to the radical Muslim fundamentalist terrorists would be a great glorious victory to them over the ‘Great Satan” and would tell them they can attack us anywhere in the world without fear, because America lacks the guts, fortitute and willpower to stay and defeat them.
All because the liberal Democrats and their politica agenda far outweighs the terrible ramifiactions a American military defeat in the Middle East.
War sometimes is a necessary evil. There never was
a bad peace or a good war. I’m proud of my service
and I view liberals as ingrates to all our our brave military men and women.
Hey liberal Democrats try blaming the radical Muslim terrorists for starting this war. They started it many years ago when they took our American hostages in Iran in 1979, and with many terrorists attacks after that which were unanswered.
We just can’t say we quit and go home. They will come to our soil and hit us again.
I’m so glad that there are brave America’s that can defend our great country like I did years ago.
Trying to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East is a noble thing. Sure, there will be terrorists who don’t want to see freedom and democracy in thre Middle East and want to live their ways of the past ie. 9th century.
If we don’t finish up in Iraq, we will be back there once again to try and clean up and even greater mess and there will be a much greater America death toll then for sure.
To retreat and surrender to these radical fundamentalist Muslim would give them great pride and the base and financial assets of Iraq in which to wage war against America and its allies all over the world.
For the best trainied and equipped military in the entire world to be defeated by IED’s and car bombs is an insane propisition.
We need and we will have the Iraqi people and military stand up and defeat their oppressors. To lose will be a travesty and one we will forever regret.
They’ll get Bin laden one day. My bet is that they know what area he is in and is contained. Have him suffer greatly in a cold filthy cave rather than have 3 hots and a cot in a nice US jail with dozens of liberal lawyers defending him and doctors to heal that filthy monster.
He isn’t calling the shots as the Iranians are responsible for many US casualties.
As we all can see day after day, the Iraqi people are animals. They’re killing each other by the dozens because of their religious caliph of who was the successor to the Prophet Mohammad.
The Iraqi’s could only be brought to stop their killing by a brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein. All through Iraq’s history is brutality, violence and death. Members of the Shia killing Sunni, or Sunni killing Shia.
It’s hard for us Westerners to believe that a people who rather choose violence and death over freedom and democracy. We don’t belong there. Let them kill each other.
I’m so tired of hearing all the Bush bashing and anti-war rhetoric in the media. The fact is, these people just don’t get it – 9/11 is just a distant memory to them. They don’t realize that the world of Islamic fascism is dedicated to destroying America. To put it simply: they want us dead. To put it more simply: they can do it. It appears to me that the Democrats feel that if we play nice, everything will go away. We are now, as a nation, in more danger than in the darkest days of the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
Are we going to wait until a nuclear bomb goes off on Wall Street before we respond to this threat? Will it take several dirty bombs to be detonated in Los Angeles, Detroit, Washington and New York before we realize the power of this enemy? I applaud the courage of President Bush in taking the fight to the enemy. These terrorists have the power to destroy our way of life.
Do you remember how our county was paralyzed after 9/11? Imagine an attack 10 times that. If you don’t think it could happen, just keep sipping your latte and worrying about global warming.
What does it take to awaken the general public to the threat America faces from a fanatical enemy dedicated to destroying us? Apparently many learned nothing from the attacks on our embassies, the USS Cole, the World Trade Center and the murder of 3,000 citizens on 9/11. They’ve obviously forgotten the massive disruption of our economy.
The anti-Bush media hype and the incessant anti-war rhetoric, so reminiscent of the juvenile Vietnam War protests, serve only to undermine our military and embolden Iran, the linchpin in our war on terror. Iran is fueling the bloody Iraq insurgency and developing its nuclear program, but the protesters don’t seem to mind.
The recent Washington protesters, besotted with ego-driven self-righteousness and including the treasonous “Hanoi Jane,” publicly praise other nations and condemn our own. They risk our safety to further their left-wing agenda.
The Islamic fundamentalists have sworn to convert us “infidels” or destroy us. To withdraw our troops now is to fight later, but at a much greater cost in lives and money. Those who divide our country by opposing the president today will regret it tomorrow.
What does it take to awaken the general public to the threat America faces from a fanatical enemy dedicated to destroying us? Apparently many learned nothing from the attacks on our embassies, the USS Cole, the World Trade Center and the murder of 3,000 citizens on 9/11. They’ve obviously forgotten the massive disruption of our economy.
The anti-Bush media hype and the incessant anti-war rhetoric, so reminiscent of the juvenile Vietnam War protests, serve only to undermine our military and embolden Iran, the linchpin in our war on terror. Iran is fueling the bloody Iraq insurgency and developing its nuclear program, but the protesters don’t seem to mind.
The recent Washington protesters, besotted with ego-driven self-righteousness and including the treasonous “Hanoi Jane,” publicly praise other nations and condemn our own. They risk our safety to further their left-wing agenda.
The Islamic fundamentalists have sworn to convert us “infidels” or destroy us. To withdraw our troops now is to fight later, but at a much greater cost in lives and money. Those who divide our country by opposing the president today will regret it tomorrow.
Marlowecan, if Iraq is what qualifies for “low hanging fruit” then our govt would be wise not to even attempt climbing trees for the higher stuff. Sad.
CS of course bin Laden wanted us to get trapped in Afghanistan, but in my opinion he severely miscalculated. When fighting against the Soviets, it was more or less an invading and occupying army, while in Enduring Freedom we had all the warlords on our side — it was mostly the Taliban who was an invading force (except down south). We didn’t even do that much fighting directly and would have had a lot of native help (although to be fair it’d be one ethnic group helping us in a hostile region) going into the mountains. I think bin Laden was full of hubris on this point because he envisioned that he could get the whole country and foreigners to rally around him.
That’s why I was trying to be clear that as long as our mission was against them specifically and not against “pacifying” (i.e. taking on the warlords) the whole country then I think we could have been successful, or at least had a shot. If the nightmare scenario happened and we got bogged down then the question is how we would respond to it. Bin Laden was counting on us to inflict massive casualties and rally muslims to his cause. The problem is that the Taliban is so extreme that there wasn’t much empathy with them outside of Pakistan and some of Saudi Arabia…and our invasion was seen as justified.
IMO worst case scenario would be that we would lose lots of troops and have to pull out, but have a lot less animosity (amongst the masses) than we had by invading Iraq. (OK real worst case is we would get Pakistan to help us and it’d bring down Musharraf and open up a terrible scenario but that’s more of an argument against having a GWOT in the first place rather than attacking a specific place).
mikkel,
OK, your explanation makes some sense but I guess where I disagree is that I don’t think we COULD have accomplished much more without trying to accomplish that pacification that you spoke of, because the warlords who oppose us are in that southern, mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They would have (and do) remained as a hostile influence allowing a safe haven for al Qaeda to lay low for a while and regroup.
truflo,
You are right to note that a war can’t be won without public support. I’m trying to show my perspective circa 2003; to me, the invasion made sense without the WMD justification and I saw the WMD intel being used as a legalistic justification to get UN approval. In hindsight I see that many Democratic voters saw the WMD issue as the central one, as a way that the administration “sold” them on the war, and so now they think that was a duplicitous sell.
Many Democratic leaders, IMO, weren’t sure whether or not to believe the WMD intel but they weren’t willing to take the political risk of saying so. Their calculation may have gone something like this: “If I vote against the war authorization and then an attack occurs as a result, then I’ll be responsible for that. If I vote for the war and WMD are found, I’ll be on the right side of history for having voted for the war. If I vote for the war and it doesn’t go well or WMD are not found, then I’ll be able to say that I only voted for it based on intel being ginned up.”
Knowing what I know now about how a lot of VOTERS saw the situation, I’d agree with you that Bush shouldn’t have taken us to war with a tenuous hold on public support. But I resent the way that the public has been played by both parties, the GOP led by Bush and the Dems led by those Congressmen who led their constituents to support the war but only if things went well or had a particular outcome. Hindsight is 20:20 in regard to the WMD issue but everyone was voting based on what was known at the time.
Where is Bin Laden?
http://www.crusade-media.com/news54.html