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| Book by CIA official slams US war on terrorism, Iraq |
| 2004-06-23 |
| EFL A book by an anonymous CIA official titled "Imperial Hubris," describes Iraq and Afghanistan as two "failed half-wars" that have played into the enemy’s hands and complicated the war on terrorism, reports said. BRILLIANT!!! An active spook Sh&^%$@ in our pool. |
| Posted by:Dragon Fly |
| #29 Clueless is probably right that we may not completely understand the islamofascist/al Qaeda types. I am a little stumpted. How do they sell a philosophy that puts the suicide bomber on a religious pedestal? How do they convince a mother that it is great to send her child wrapped in a bomb to kill himself and innocent people on a bus? How do they convince people that they are doing good - not just good, but Allah's work - by blowing up fellow Muslims by the 100s in Iraq? Yeah, I admit it. I don't understand these folks, not one bit. |
| Posted by: Sam 2004-06-24 2:43:39 PM |
| #28 TerrorHunter, I don't care if he's your best friend--this kind of book now in the public domain is detrimental to the war effort and not helpful except that it helps the Enemy believe that they are winning. The CIA has complete access to the Oval Office under President Bush which is a marked distinction to Clintoon's Administration when Slick Willy saw both CIA directors Woolsey and Tenet exactly twice in his 8 years in office. |
| Posted by: Jen 2004-06-24 2:31:19 PM |
| #27 Folks, I personally know and have worked with this individual. He is also the author of "Through Our Enemies Eyes." He's not a malcontent...or a Bush basher. He has called it as he sees it. The last 2 administrations have gotten it wrong when it comes to terrorism. He is correct. And until there's access to the oval office by intel officials OTHER THAN appointed staff and bureaucractic sychophants, little will change. And that's all that needs to be said. |
| Posted by: TerrorHunter4Ever 2004-06-24 9:11:26 AM |
| #26 rex, you're babbling and have gone completely off topic and off the comments, too. Frankly, without being in Iraq with our troops, I can't say how much we can "trust" the average Iraqi but they formed the transition government, have helped put down the al-Sadr insurgency, and are aware that they face death from the terrorists for "collaborating" but to a much lesser extent than they faced death and torture under Saddam. I think you're getting way too into an "Us vs. Them" scenario. Only a small percentage of the Iraqi population are the active enemy, hence our willingness to use ex-Baathists even. If these people are clearly not "dead-ender" jihadis, then why should we assume they're bad guys, too? At some point in the very near future, we're going to have leave Iraq to the Iraqis and pray that democracy catches on there and that they don't revert to an Islamist dictatorship again. As President Bush said, "Time to take the training wheels off." We have more war still to fight. And do yourself a huge favor: Read the Iraqi blogs--Iraq the Model, the Messopotamian, Hammorabi and Iraq at a glance (Google for links). You won't be sorry and you'll find that those Iraqis aren't all that different from you except that they've been through a very bad time under Saddam and are grateful to the US for liberating them. |
| Posted by: Jen 2004-06-24 1:22:22 AM |
| #25 No I do not read any Iraqi blogs, Jen. Call me close minded but I would not trust my pet parakeet with an Arab. Words are cheap, Jen, but it's actions that really count. I have yet to see any actions on the part of Iraqis as a whole that have won over my confidence or trust in them. There is absolutely NO REASON that Al Queda operatives should not have been "outed" by Iraqis, who can easily identify them as being "outsiders" in their neighborhoods.Please don't say that Iraqis are "fearful" and that's why they are not fingering the terrorists, because thatr is being awfully naive. Consider that ZERO GI's have been killed by Al Queda in Kurdistan, and Kurds have been subjected to genocide - if there are any Iraqis who should be fearful it is the Kurds, yes? But, no the brave Kurds, as persecuted as they have been, have a spine and a desire to help the US because they value freedom, liberation. Iraqi Arabs are not like the Kurds. Sunni/Shiite Iraqis are by and large stereotypical Arabs. They value hatred for infidels and until I see ACTIONS, not mere words, to the contrary, I have no reason to see them as allies and worthy of our trust and dreams. Call me cynical or call me a realist...your choice. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-24 1:03:06 AM |
| #24 Don't you read any Iraqi blogs, rex, like Iraq the Model? They like us fine over there. And anytime, you hear someone say the "p" word ("policy/policies"), head for the hills, because you've got a Leftist, an appeaser and a peacenik on your hands. That is a variant of the "Why do they hate us?" school. Again, this is not a valid part of the war conversation and never should have been. These bastards attacked our us and killed 3,000 of our civilians on our own soil. And as Robert Crawford pointed out, this CIA rat wasn't part of helping to stop 9/11 from happening when he had the chance. This guy is part of the problem, not the solution. |
| Posted by: Jen 2004-06-23 11:58:25 PM |
| #23 Yes, we have liberated 40-50 Million Muslims,Jen, but the verdict is still out as to whether or not these newly liberated Muslims will be pro-America. This author is suggesting these Muslims will still hate America because of our policies, which we cannot and should not change. The author is saying we are on a collision course with Muslims. I am not convinced that this is a hate Bush book. Evidently he criticizes Clinton as well. He is predicting a WWIII, and no, we would not want to start with drastic actions, but on the otherhand, we should be honest with ourselves when moderate approaches are not working instead of pretending they are. Anyways, we need to keep this guy on our radar-at least I will-and try to catch any TV interviews he gives. I don't know enough about him or the book to label him a "traitor" or a "visionary" for that matter. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-23 11:49:45 PM |
| #22 rex, no doubt--the MSpartisanM will get around to it just as soon as they've milked Bill Clinton for every drop of....whatever. Oh, yes--they'll be delighted. "Informed criticism" like this TRAITOR'S is not helpful to the conversation about the war right now. Unless and until the Bush Doctrine fails, I'm going with what the Commander-in-Chief has laid out as our current war plan. And Robert Crawford and Verlaine are exactly right; the WOT, as conducted by President Bush, is going pretty well--we've freed about 40-50 million people so far and taken a lot of IslamoNazis out of circulation, most of them permanently. Could we do it the easy way and bomb and kill the Middle East into submission? Sure. It's just not our style at this juncture. We do have to live on this planet after the WOT is over. |
| Posted by: Jen 2004-06-23 11:31:10 PM |
| #21 Look, there is a lot commented about this unknown author thus far, but the author doesn't have to be unknown. He could be like other cop-outs, quit the CIA and make a bundle writing a hate-Bush book like all the others. So, being unknown is not only disengenious, but is fool-hearted, and less profitable. If the Iraq invasion is so much playing into OBL's hands, why is it that so many of his rag-heads are getting taken down in Iraq. OBL must not be communicating with Zarqawi very well. Last time I checked, we have been relatively successful in chasing the Taliban and al Qaeda into the Pak-Aft mountains with no return sans periodic flare ups. Unknown should remain that way, book wise. |
| Posted by: Capt America 2004-06-23 11:30:15 PM |
| #20 Actually, Jen, the TalkingPoints interview with Anonymous was posted on FreeRepublic as supplemental information on the author. Fyi, I never heard of TalkingPoints before I got the link from FreeRepublic. I don't think[I might be wrong]that this guy wants any particular man in the Oval Office. I think he wants a President who will face the fact that this is a war on radical Islam and that there will come a day real soon when the President will need to authorize drastic military action in the ME, etc. if we are to survive as a nation. Since this guy criticizes BOTH Clinton and Bush for being too soft, I think it's unlikely he'd want John Kerry in the Oval Office. Perhaps he is a failed CIA bureaucrat - I don't know enough about him at this point..but he sure views his project which involved tracking down OBL as a "failed" undertaking. Maybe it's this bitterness that prompted him to write this book. I suspect this book will get interest in MSM. Hopefully he will be interviewed on FOX and we'll learn more about him and his agenda, if he has one. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-23 11:23:07 PM |
| #19 Mr. Fabulous is still one of the people who utterly failed to stop 9/11. His insight wasn't that keen in that case, was it? Verlaine's analysis of what you quoted is spot-on. This guy's an indiot; the temporal-inversion is the cutest bit. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-06-23 11:10:12 PM |
| #18 rex, notice how everyone's a critic these days and thinks they can do a better job in the WOT than Bush? Some write books like this clown and Dick Clarke, some post on internet forums (Ahem). The more compelling the alleged street "creds" the more useful the idiot, eh? Yet, Mr. Fabulous still has to remain anonymous. And who would Mr. Fab like to see as President--Pat Buchanan? These whiners are those with failed careers, who've seen their peers like Rumsfeld and in this case, Tenet, play starring roles while they spend the war putting toner in the copy machine. We are at war and all Americans, no matter how savvy or well-meaning need to lead, follow or get out of the way! This book, like the other Bush hit pieces, is "not helpful," to quote the Divine Rummy. And Rex,hon, one of these days you're going to have to pick between Free Republic and TalkingPointsMemo...unless you're either Bill Clinton or just plain schizophrenic. |
| Posted by: Jen 2004-06-23 11:03:56 PM |
| #17 a) I read about this guy on FreeRepublic last night, #11, so maybe I should post the NYT article I read there. Perhaps it has more about his background than the article under discussion here. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/politics/23INTE.html ...the author is identified only as "Anonymous," but former intelligence officials identified him as a 22-year veteran of the C.I.A. who is still serving in a senior counterterrorism post at the agency and headed the bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999...Under C.I.A. rules, the book had to be cleared by the agency before it could be published. It was approved for release on condition that the author and his internal agency not be identified...The book itself identifies "Anonymous" only as "a senior U.S. intelligence official with nearly two decades of experience in national security issues related to Afghanistan and South Asia." It identifies a previous book, "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America," as being written by the same author... b)I think the guy is who he says he is because he needed to get approval from the CIA before he could publish the book and the CIA would have double checked his credentials, one would think. c) #9, I think the author is saying our military action has been underwhelming and we have not established domination. As for spreading democracy, the author states it's a waste of our energies and GI lives because lack of democracy is not the problem,rather Islam is the problem because it lends itself to militantcy when a charismatic leader like OBL uses it to couch his arguments for anti-American hatred and as a rallying cry for jihad. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-23 10:52:32 PM |
| #16 I left the following comment on another site in response to a comment from a lefty. The lefty's comment: "It's not every day that a top CIA counterterrorism official -- still serving in the government -- is allowed to publish a book that blasts the White House. But that's precisely what has happened. The book is titled "Imperial Hubris." The author is a veteran of the CIA for more than two decades, and is identified only as "Anonymous." Sources say he ran the hunt for Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999. Among his charges: . . . He says the biggest mistake made after 9/11 was that top intelligence community leaders were not fired." MY RESPONSE: So a "top CIA counterterrorism official" thinks that the "biggest mistake" made after 9/11 is that he (who claims to have "ran the hunt for Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999") was not fired? Makes sense to me. One thing [the lefty] left out is that "Anonymous" advocates aggressively prosecuting the War on Terror and killing as many Islamofascists as fast as possible. |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-06-23 10:49:38 PM |
| #15 Rex, the argument as presented by Marshall (whatever Anonymous' argument is) is fairly incoherent, so we'll tie ourselves in knots trying to sort it out here. But even stipulating all the contrdictory stuff and moving on to solutions, it's hard to see how our (by historical standards) rapid destruction of two enemy regimes doesn't fit into the category of "dominating the Muslim world." Amateurs talk hearts and minds and "recruits" -- professionals talk WMDs, sanctuaries, money, and aggressive actions including pre-emption to address same. We're taking prudent actions to deny the enemy heavy artillery (pre-empting or pressing most likely WMD sources), we're hardening the target, and strategically all the anti-US sentiment imaginable in weak/backward Muslim countries is irrelevant as well as mostly beyond our control. Current policy, and specifically Iraq and Afghanistan, make good sense regardless of the operating assumption WRT AQ's true motivations or its ability to appeal (in a mostly meaningless, abstract way) to the Muslim masses. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2004-06-23 10:42:23 PM |
| #14 There are so many things going on in the global jihad that have nothing to do with US policy or the Zionist entity. What does the jihad in China have to do with US policies? What about Sudan's war of extermination against Christians and blacks? What about the Muslim Brotherhood's war in Egypt? What about the insurgencies in Algeria, Kashmir, Chechnya, and Thailand? No, this jihad is much bigger than Al Qaeda's war with the US, and has to be attributed to bigger causes. |
| Posted by: virginian 2004-06-23 10:35:53 PM |
| #13 rex, I know when someone mentions talkingpointsmemo and Josh M. Marshall that they are invariably on the Left. Period. This book is just the latest hit piece on the Bush Administration and should join the others on the markdown table soon. |
| Posted by: Jen 2004-06-23 10:34:22 PM |
| #12 I would point out Osama said nothing about Israel before 9-11,that US had not invaded Afghanistan and Iraq prior to 9-11.Islamic crowds do not chant "US stop helping Russia!",they chant "Death to America".Rebuilding Afghanistan is said to be huge mistake,so what does he say we should do?If we had killed Osama and all of top leadership,leaving might have been an option.Failing to do that,killing a bunch of followers and then leaving would have proved to Osama and world,that US wasn't serious and had no stomach for war.The other choice,hunting Osama in Afghanistan hostile to US isn't serious.We are supposed to believe Osama wants US to retreat into total isolationism because some of his communiques speak of US policies,while the communiques that speak of evil Western culture and how it must be destroyed are to be ignored. All-in-all,books sounds like sour grapes of Mid-East specialist whose advice was ignored.(Read some post yesterday discussing how some of language in book seems fake-macho/insider,some language was how someone thought tough CIA operative should sound.Grain of salt.) Mark Steyn has excellent article on similarities to critics of Bush Iraq/WOT policy and Latin America in 70s and 80s. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2004-06-23 10:25:40 PM |
| #11 The author has 22 years experience with the CIA, the latter years being spent in a unit devoted to tracking Bin Laden. How do you know this? We don't know his name; the people who claim to have vetted him could quite easily be lying. I mean, God, look at how they've covered things like the 9-11 Commission -- when the statements don't agree with them, they lie. Also, don't forget that guy who lied about being an ex-Ranger. No one bothered to check his claims for, what, a couple years? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-06-23 10:18:36 PM |
| #10 Let's dutifully trudge through the indictment: The author lists what OBL hates about the USA. The author does not say OBL's reasons are valid, but rather that we cannot change our policies and therefore, we must come to the quick realization that unless we dominate the Muslim world, we will lose the war against radical Islam, because more and more Muslims are getting on board with OBL since OBL artfully presents his list of grievances against the USA in Koranic text. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-23 10:10:07 PM |
| #9 But he's peddling a false choice, Rex. We've taken and will continue to take aggressive military action -- and at the same time use other weapons, such as democracy, as the situation permits. We can stipulate his completely implausible pseudo-sophisticated view that AQ doesn't hate freedom -- and continue to use it as a weapon, since AQ sensibly and obviously is terrified of it. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2004-06-23 10:05:51 PM |
| #8 Very troubling that this guy (we'll dub him "Clueless," seems to fit better than "Anonymous") could have ever been in a position of responsibility dealing with life/death matters -- but perhaps it also helps explain the limp and ineffective early responses in the 1990s. The title is almost enough -- "Imperial Hubris". What sophomoric nonsense -- whether applied to the purported failed policies or the Afghanistan and Iraq operations. Let's dutifully trudge through the indictment: "U.S. support for Israel that keeps the Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall" (revealing that he puts this first, since it was tacked on to AQ propaganda only quite recently, and obviously in the typical transparent attempt to latch onto a broader audience -- also recall that AQ attacks on the US started and built in ferocity as .... the Palestinians were approaching having 90%+ of their populace under PA administration during the Palestinian-dynamited Oslo Process, and the White House seemed to be under the "thrall" of Yasser, who visited more than any other foreign leader during the Bubba Admin.) "U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian peninsula" (they were only there to protect strategic interests against obvious and even realized threats, e.g. Iraq in 1990 -- I guess to avoid annoying the august members of AQ we just have to go naked and hope for the best when it comes to global economic security) "U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan" (ah, the Temporal Inversion Theory of Causation at work again -- sort of like saying Japan had no choice but to attack Pearl Harbor, considering the US attack on Hiroshima; so among the "policies" that provoked AQ's mounting campaign of terror against the US starting in 1993, culminating in the September 2001 attacks, were US responses in late 2001 and 2003 - WTF??) "U.S. support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants" (damn! [smacks forehead] all we have to do is not support aforementioned countries against their murderous insane islamonut terrorist elements, why didn't we think of this earlier?) "U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low" (double whopper here: OIL PRICES ARE NOT LOW, YOU FUCK-WIT -- they are the most artificially inflated commodity prices in human history, as anyone with minimal economic literacy understands; and we are to understand that AQ wants to touch off a nuke in LA Harbor or Manhattan because we -- and every other importing country -- naturally seek moderation in OPEC price fixing? So I guess we'd better acquiesce to astronomically extortionate oil prices that will cripple us and impoverish half the planet -- THAT will mollify OBL and his psychopath medievalists) "U.S. support for apostate, corrupt and tyrannical Muslim governments." (at last, something not entirely preposterous -- but of course, AQ considers them "apostate" because while authoritarian and unsavory to varying degrees, these regimes aren't caliphates that would be far more tyrannical -- so, translated, we've pissed them off by supporting regimes far less odious than the ones they would rather see installed; and the strategic question remains, what would this genius recommend instead?) The implicit logic of Clueless' indictment is that these policies should be changed -- as only that will address the "real" grievances that give AQ and others traction in the Muslim world. In effect, the US should experiment by obliging idiotic, baseless, or unacceptable misconceptions on the part of ignorant Muslims of ill-will, as manipulated by cynical and/or hostile regimes. Now there's realism and sophistication. The Afghanistan discussion is equally bizarre. We did precisely what Clueless claims to recommend -- annihilated AQ's presence in the country, their ability to use it as a sanctuary. His description of our operations above and beyond that accomplished goal is way off base. Our strategic interest is negative -- that the place not again become an AQ or other terrorist sanctuary/base. That interest can be secured in various ways, and current efforts to strengthen central control and advance modern practices in urban centers may ultimately fail but is a "no regrets" tactic. And it's topped off by the assertion that carthaginian policies of destruction will be "America's only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world." Uh, Clueless -- we don't HAVE "policies toward the Muslim world." We have policies towards governments and terrorist organizations. For example, we took down the odious and dangerous regime in Iraq, while we work closely with governments in Morocco and Malaysia on terrorism matters. All three Muslim countries. Get it? So OBL & Co. are thrilled with us taking down Saddam? Funny, the now-dead AQ ideologist (can't recall his name, killed in Saudi Arabia last year) who wrote one of the longer and more serious recent AQ documents spent most of it obsessing in detail about the threat to AQ and its aspirations posed by democracy in Iraq. Zarqawi said similar things in his captured letter a few months back regarding conditions in Iraq, especially the planned quick transition to Iraqi sovereignty. There's more to be said -- but why bother. Two depressing things in closing: the seemingly limitless supply of sophomoric policy critiques from senior government employees, and the seemingly insatiable media apetite for them. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2004-06-23 9:59:39 PM |
| #7 Denigrating tribal and clan relationships while promoting women's rights and democracy seems somewhat self-defeating if we want pro-America mindsets to germinate there. I guess those tribal and ethnic relationships are the reason why Afghanistan has, for centuries, been the Eden-on-Earth that everyone wants to migrate to. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2004-06-23 9:57:42 PM |
| #6 The author has 22 years experience with the CIA, the latter years being spent in a unit devoted to tracking Bin Laden. It appears he very frustrated with policymakers and the Clinton and Bush Administrations alike so it's not clear to me at this point that he is a DNC operative or that he is peddling "B.S." Maybe once the book gets more press and he is interviewed more, we'll learn more about what axe he is grinding. There are a few things he brings up which I personally agree with: a) This is not a war on generic "terror." It is specifically a war against radical Islam, and our political leaders need to properly identify the "enemy" in order for us to win. How can we win against a nameless enemy? b) The values we think are important are not what Afghanis and Iraqis think are important. Denigrating tribal and clan relationships while promoting women's rights and democracy seems somewhat self-defeating if we want pro-America mindsets to germinate there. c) OBL has articulated why he wants to defeat America. We have ignored his stated reasons and instead have supplanted them with our version of why he hates us[our freedom] and moreover, we think if we instill freedom around the world, OBL will be defeated. So the author is saying we are only hurting ourselves by basing a solution to terrorism on a false premise. On the otherhand if we would only listen to what OBL states, we'd realize that there is no way we can change our policies to satisfy him, and that we need to implement a "policy of brutal and unforgiving war" to keep America safe. So he's saying spreading democracy is not the answer but rather military domination. Whether that's tenable or not is questionable, but at least it makes you think about "worst case scenario" if nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan does not work. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-23 9:35:08 PM |
| #5 Anonymity makes it extremely difficult to prove his background. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-06-23 9:16:44 PM |
| #4 This guy is peddling a bunch of BS. His bottom line is that the US is justifiably hated in the Muslim world, which is basically what left-wingers and Muslims have been saying for a while now. The whole screed is a bunch of stream-of-consciousness bunk designed to fool people who don't know the history behind the names and places he's mentioned. He's gone completely native - all of the things leftists and Muslims attribute to American machinations are neither particularly bad, harmful to Muslims nor unique. Russia and China have killed many more Muslims than the US without incurring anywhere the same amount of oppobrium. If this guy is an active-duty analyst, let's hope that he gets retired real soon. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-06-23 8:38:50 PM |
| #3 Maybe it's Aris? |
| Posted by: Mr. Davis 2004-06-23 8:12:53 PM |
| #2 There's got to be more to this story. Maybe the administration wants to float the idea espoused by "Anonymous" that total war is necessary and the utter destruction of the Islamofascists is required to see how the public reacts. Maybe it's a Bush hater trying to stake out a position on al Qaeda that's to the right of Bush. Maybe it's Valerie Plame getting her revenge. Maybe he's a bitter, arrogant @sshole who was passed over for a promotion. Anyone else have other thoughts? |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-06-23 8:10:46 PM |
| #1 Here's a link to an long interview with the CIA author - excellent read, even if you cannot agree with all his points, he engages the reader. I have cut and pasted a few paragraphs to whet your interest: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_06_20.php#003082 Expanding Hamid Karzai's writ across the country is a recipe for violence, he writes: "After twenty years of war and ineffective or alien government in Kabul, the regions, subregions and tribes have never been more autonomously minded and jealous of their prerogatives." Democratization in Afghanistan, he believes, is a mirage. "We focus on issues that don't matter to Afghans--women's rights, democracy--and we denigrate those things that matter to Afghans--Islam, tribal and clan relationships, ethnic pecking orders," he says. Sometime soon, "you're going to have a government back in Kabul that looks like the Taliban, perhaps under a different name." The proper purpose of the 2001 war, he believes, was to use U.S. forces to annihilate the Qaeda presence in the country and do no more. With our inability to do that, our garrisoning of troops in Afghanistan and support of a weak central government of ethnic minorities provides little aside from an Islamist rallying cry against U.S. occupation--what he terms "an unmitigated defeat." Then there's Iraq. "[T]here is nothing bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq," he writes. All Muslims would see each day on television that the United States was occupying a Muslim country, insisting that man-made laws replace God's revealed word, stealing Iraq's oil, and paving the way for the creation of a "Greater Israel." The clerics and scholars would call for a defensive jihad against the United States, young Muslim males would rush from across the Islamic world to fight U.S. troops, and there--in Islam's second holiest land--would erupt a second Afghanistan, a self-perpetuating holy war that would endure whether or not al-Qaeda survived. The reason we've made these mistakes, he argues, is that we fail to understand that bin Laden doesn't hate us because of our freedom. Or, rather, while he does hate the licentiousness and modernity that the U.S. represents, it's not what compels him to declare war on us. Nor does an anti-modernist bent explain bin Laden's appeal across the Muslim world. Instead, it's what Anonymous identifies as six points bin Laden repeatedly cites in his communiqués: "U.S. support for Israel that keeps the Palestinians in the Israelis' thrall; U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian peninsula; U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; U.S. support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants; U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low; U.S. support for apostate, corrupt and tyrannical Muslim governments." Combined with his charismatic biography, bin Laden's strategic success has been to frame these arguments through a Koranic prism, "to convince everyone that U.S. policy is deliberately anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic," he says. Bin Laden's critique presents in resonant Islamic terminology a coherent jihadist explanation for practically everything Muslims can find offensive about the U.S.--the most deadly slippery slope there is. And the more Americans insist on treating bin Laden's anger with the U.S. as a pure hatred of freedom, the less equipped we'll be to answer him in a battle of ideas.Without the option to work for reform, a large portion of what Anonymous advocates is essentially a policy of brutal and unforgiving war. To secure as much of our way of life as possible, we will have to use military force in the way Americans used it on the fields of Virginia and Georgia, in France and on Pacific islands, and from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by the pace of killing …Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills--all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. … [S]uch actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody-mindedness is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America's only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-23 7:51:30 PM |