double-whammy
Mar. 29th, 2004 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rone"I would welcome it being declassified," [Richard Clarke] said. "But not just a little line here and there -- let's declassify all six hours of my testimony."
John Kerry cited a Bible verse Sunday to criticize leaders who have "faith but has no deeds," prompting President Bush's [...] campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt [to say that] Kerry's comment "was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack." [thanks todoctroid]
Is it just me, or can you feel the stress coming out of the White House these days?
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 01:11 pm (UTC)For all the to-ing and fro-ing about Clarke’s intentions and integrity, however, we’re basically back at the same old argument about who the enemy is. The Clintonite view – classically expressed by Clinton NSC staffers Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon in The Age of Sacred Terror is that we are up against a purely stateless terror network. Al Qaeda is its own independent thing, disconnected from Arab governments.
[...]
This way of looking at things has its advantages – principally that it spares the United States the unwelcome task of re-examining its relationships with its traditional allies in the Middle East, and especially with Saudi Arabia.
But this way of looking at things also has one big disadvantage: It’s not true.
Without the indulgence and complaisance of governments worldwide, al Qaeda could never have taken form. If the Saudis had cut off the flow of funds to al Qaeda, if Afghanistan had denied al Qaeda its territory, if Pakistan had not formed a tacit alliance with al Qaeda and the Taliban, if radical governments like Arab had not incited anti-American and anti-Western extremism, and if moderate governments like Egypt had not appeased it – minus all these ifs, al Qaeda would never have become the menace it has become.
President Bush’s achievement in the war on terror is to have seen the problem for what it is, without illusions – and then to have had the courage to act. Richard Clarke’s attempt to present the 1990s as a heroic age of struggle against terrorism is an audacious upending of the facts. The United States was hit and hit and hit again – and never even acknowledged to itself who was hitting it and who was paying for the hits.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 01:39 pm (UTC)Yeah -- the Administration's soft-touch handling of the Saudis is both puzzling and infuriating. Legit beef, there. Pakistan, or specificaly Musharraf, has been a lot less terrorist-friendly these days, and the continued attempts to blow up Musharraf underscore that. Yes, he's a dictator, and yes, the ISI is fucked up. I'm not much on realpolitik excuses, but all in all Pakistan is just low on the priority list. And as for 'ignored terrorism,' well, sure. We'd been ignoring terrorism since the 1970s. Without a sharp slap like 9/11, we would happily continue to do so. To me, saying the Administration ignored terrorism before the attacks is a null statement -- because the attacks changed things.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 02:17 pm (UTC)If the attack changed things, then trying to credit Bush for finally getting things right seems like empty praise; after all, how could he, or anyone, ignore the facts then?
I don't think Pakistan should be low on the priority list — they're nuke-enabled and could very well become a problem for the US (or the world) 10 years down the road. Not that this has happened before.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 03:01 pm (UTC)Spinsanity (http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030528.html), not exactly a rabid partisan for the Administration:
Hussein support for Palestinian intifada, not directly AQ related, from the al-Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,912938,00.html):
Don Dahler, ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/alqaeda_iraq020927.html):
Techcentralstation.com (http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html):
The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/527uwabl.asp), admittedly pro-Administration, has a long article about AQ/Iraq links, with some data on the Sudanese AQ strikes during the previous Administration.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 04:18 pm (UTC)The question then becomes whether all this was sufficient that an invasion of Iraq would actually be a sensible thing to do to fight al Qaeda. Right now, to me, the most troubling piece of data in this regard is the story of the Ansar al-Islam camp (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/) in the northern no-fly zone. Before the war, this was often cited as Exhibit A supporting Iraq's link to al Qaeda, even though it wasn't in the part of Iraq actually controlled by Saddam Hussein. More recently, there have been reports that the US military had the ability, the opportunity and the plan to destroy the camp without invading Iraq, but that this mission was put on hold in favor of a full invasion, and in the meantime the terrorists in question got away from there, and later ended up blowing up several hundred people during the occupation. (I also heard some claims that they were linked to the Madrid bombings, but that sounded fishy; at any rate it seems generally believed that they've been major players in terrorism in occupied Iraq.)
That MSNBC report had unnamed military sources claiming that the camp was allowed to exist in order to bolster justification for the war. A somewhat less damning interpretation (http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001592.html) (at least to my mind) is that the attack was held off in order to avoid side effects that might jeopardize efforts (ultimately fruitless) to secure Turkish cooperation in the invasion. In any event, it appears that this was an opportunity to kill some al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in Iraq that was actually missed because of the Iraq war, and that these same people subsequently murdered hundreds. You'd have to win a lot to call that a net gain.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 04:35 pm (UTC)I think this statement buries an unwarranted assumption. The current war is not against al-Qaeda solely, but against the particular strain of guerrilla violence fueled by a blasphemous misinterpretation of Islam and the dysfunctional autarchies that shelter and enable that violence. An invasion of Iraq may or may not be a sensible thing to do to fight al-Qaeda; I think the position that it is not is an eminently defensible one. Invading Iraq is a sensible thing to do if your goal is a decades-long project to, essentially, destroy the predominant culture in the area and build up something less inclined to kill your citizens. Iraq was and is the best place to try to set up a model functional Middle Eastern democracy, because of its tradition of (relative) secularism, its large, educated middle class, and its (relatively, again) decent infrastructure.
re: al-Ansar not being in the area controlled by Saddam. Well, precisely. In the area controlled by Saddam, he could use the usual methods of control -- secret police, etc. In an area he didn't directly control, he had to use an underground terrorist organisation as a catspaw. His lack of control over northern Iraq supports, rather than undermines, the contention that his regime was connected to al-Ansar. In terms of letting the camp go unmolested, well, that's sticky. It's reminiscent of the Coventry dillema Churchill faced. Would attacking the camp unilaterally put Saddam on alert? Would the Turks be more pissed-off, perhaps to the extent of pre-emptively stealing a march on the Northern Kurds, something they came very, very close to doing as it was? Would a Saddam on heightened alert managed combat differently, resulting in greater immediate coalition casualties? It's too hindsighty for me to really answer effectively.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 04:53 pm (UTC)My impression is that "al Qaeda" is as much a brand name as a unitary organization; its allegiances can shift all over the place, and two people who have had connections with al Qaeda are not automatically going to be allies.
As for the long-term cultural-change mission... I suppose this is the place where we just agree to disagree, but I've completely lost any faith I had that this sort of thing is possible through invasions. The vaunted Iraqi secularism is probably going to be extinct in a few years, since it was basically being propped up by Saddam's quasi-Stalinist police state. As far as I can tell, the place is sliding toward theocracy and possibly religious civil war, and Bush is just trying to wash his hands of the whole thing as rapidly as possible.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 05:01 pm (UTC)Mrf? Zarqawi is aQ; I was talking about al-Ansar as the Kurdistan catspaw. Related to, but not identical to, aQ. One of the links upthread includes information on a 'nonagression pact' between the Hussein regime and aQ, for what it's worth -- all this info is necessarily sketchy and to be taken with seasoning.
My impression is that "al Qaeda" is as much a brand name as a unitary organization; its allegiances can shift all over the place
Fair enough; I've said as much to people who keep trotting out the 'OBL is necessarily and completely antipathetic to the Hussein regime, so they can't possibly be in cahoots, even against a perceived greater enemy' line.
I've completely lost any faith I had that this sort of thing is possible through invasions.
Good thing that isn't the primary, or even the only, tool we're using, then.
As far as I can tell, the place is sliding toward theocracy and possibly religious civil war
I disagree with that assessment quite thoroughly, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 05:06 pm (UTC)So what else are we using? Flooding the Iraqi market with consumables?
I disagree with that assessment quite thoroughly, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.
I hope you can show me how that isn't going to happen, because it looks likelier every day (that is, i don't want an assurance, i'm just wondering what is inspiring optimism in you).
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 05:16 pm (UTC)I read the draft Constitution, and a couple of analyses of that, taking into account how it plays the tribal factions off against each other in a fashion reminiscent of the 3-way tug of war between the branches of the US government, back when we still had separation of powers early last century. I read the reports of people who have been in Iraq, or are still there. Transnationals are making plans to open businesses. Unemployment has dropped by half (from an unbelievably shitty 60% to a still amazingly shitty 30%, but hey, half). There's a notable influx of expats from abroad, and by 'abroad' I mean 'the US.' Women who have held jobs and driven their own damn cars and walked down a mall in a miniskirt are going back there, with their kids and Playstations and Linkin Park CDs. It's not going to turn into Way, Way East Oregon overnight, but the reports I see from the field do lead me to the conclusion that the average Iraqi dude wants a job, dinner, and a little folding money, not to put the Taliban in charge.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 07:32 pm (UTC)