Is the United States still looking for this man?
More than six years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States still does not have a coherent plan to destroy a key staging area for terrorist attacks into the country, according to an independent government watchdog.
Still, the administration's answer to this "clear and present danger" is to send more aid to Musharraf and trust that he will take care of our problem for us. We are still farming out the battle to Muslim generals who in spite of the diplomatic rhetoric and posturing clearly do not have our best interests at heart.
The strategy is at odds with the Bush doctrine of preemption. The head of the CIA has now verified that at least a remote part of Pakistan -- essentially a break-away Islamic province -- is harboring America's Enemy No. 1 and presenting a direct and urgent threat to the homeland.
Instead of carpet-bombing the terror camps and safe houses there (as opposed to the occasional drone-fired missile), we're playing a dangerous game of wait-and-see. If we have intelligence specific enough to know the type of terrorists al-Qaida's training along the Pakistan border, why aren't we acting on it?
This GAO report may be the most damning condemnation of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism efforts. The report goes on to say that the Bush administration has failed to develop any plan to address the Al Qaeda threat. Worse, the report finds that Al-Qaeda is now able to attack the United States and represents the "most serious" threat to this country.
The report's opinion of the Bush administration efforts speaks for itself. Not only have we not met our goals but we have no plan to meet our goals. Al-Qaeda can now attack the United States. Al Qaeda in Pakistan is the most serious threat. Al-Qaeda is using the Pakistan tribal areas to put the finishing touches on its plans to attack the United States.
It is really not a good thing to have incompetent people running this country.
The consequences of a "small" nuclear war would be widespread and long-lasting.
If you think a small-scale nuclear war between, say, India and Pakistan would only devastate part of the Asian subcontinent, think again. A new report suggests that the effects of a regional nuclear exchange would have global environmental impact. What can world leaders do?
The Guardian describes an extraordinary manifesto authored "by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists..." At first glance, the manifesto appears to mark a return to the policy of deterrence; a rueful admission that nothing but a revival of the balance of terror can now secure the West against forces that its publics are unwilling to mobilize against. That thought will ironically comfort many of those who lived through the long shadow of East versus West. After all, if deterrence kept the West safe against the Soviets for the long duration of the Cold War might not containment and the mutual balance of terror also safeguard it indefinitely against radical Islam?
Deterrence worked because it made peace the only alternative to utter destruction. But it worked against the Soviets because for all their belligerence could always be counted on to choose life. The Commissars may have been stupid but they were not crazy. Can the same assumption be made about Islamic radicals who desire death? From the point of a theocratic zealot the rational choice may be to hasten Armageddon.
On closer inspection the manifesto might not be about deterrence at all. It is about committing to prevent terrorists from acquiring WMDs at all costs. The reason Lord Inge's remark that "to tie our hands on first use or no first use removes a huge plank of deterrence" is so significant is that it brings the trigger point back from second-strike or launch on attack to one in which WMD acquisition itself becomes the casus belli. It is almost a form of pre-deterrence.
You know, when I wrote The Fate of the Earth, back in 1982, I said that, first and foremost, nuclear weapons were an ecological danger. It wasn't that our species could be directly wiped out by nuclear war down to the last person. That would only happen through the destruction of the underpinnings of life, through nuclear winter, radiation, ozone loss. There has been an oddity of timing, because when the nuclear weapon was invented, people didn't even use the word "environment" or "ecosphere." The environmental movement was born later.
So, in a certain sense, the greatest -- or certainly the most urgent -- ecological threat of them all was born before the context in which you could understand it. The present larger ecological crisis is that context. In other words, global warming and nuclear war are two different ways that humanity, having grown powerful through science, through production, through population growth, threatens to undo the natural underpinnings of human, and all other, life. In a certain way, I think we may be in a better position today, because of global warming, to grasp the real import of nuclear danger.
Pakistanis express anger at the U.S.
CIA Director Michael Hayden has publicly confirmed what was already known -- that Al Qaeda has found a safe haven in Pakistan, along the rugged border with Afghanistan. He said the haven is a "clear and present danger" to America.
This business about Pakistan being our ally is abject nonsense. Most of the country despises us. Musharraf and some of the military have been a fickle ally but they did at least occasionally take the fight to al Qaeda and the Taliban. They didn't do it with abandon, though, precisely because (a) the people of Pakistan oppose it(they are fine with having anti-Western jihadists operating from safe-havens within their country), and (b) Pakistan has always been a strong supporter of the Taliban (which Benazir Bhutto was key to establishing in Afghanistan) for both cultural and geopolitical reasons.
If the rationale for continuing American combat operations in Iraq is, principally, that we cannot allow anti-Western radicals to establish a platform from which they can launch 9/11-style operations, how can we conceivably turn a blind eye to the platform they have in fact established in Pakistan's border region? Try as it might, international law has not (yet) repealed the sovereign right of self-defense. We are not required by anything so vapid as "our standing in the world" to tolerate an al Qaedastan in Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, or anyplace else.
The majority of Pakistanis recognize that militancy is a major problem. A recent spate of suicide bombings in Pakistan's cities has brought that reality home. Meanwhile, the most extreme Islamic parties took the biggest hit in the February elections. However, says former Ambassador Schaffer, "that doesn't mean we all agree on what needs to be done." Dealing with a complex coalition will be a lot harder than negotiating with a military dictator. For the past six years, the U.S. tied Pakistan's cooperation in targeting high level Al Qaeda operatives and shutting down militant training camps to a $10 billion package of military and economic aid. The new coalition government might take a different tack on U.S. handouts. Sharif has said that Pakistan should rely less on such U.S. assistance.
Prime Minister Gilani promised this week to confront terrorism "with determination." But when it comes to U.S. cooperation, Gillani told the high-level State Department delegation, "all important policy matters and decisions on important national issues would be taken through the parliament." Not the Pentagon.
Pervez Musharraf, a U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, is out.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's party took a thumping at the polls Tuesday, while the party of the slain ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto won a plurality of votes. The really good news: Most Islamist political parties were trounced, too.
The result: Musharraf is out, and a new "moderate" coalition government will likely form. But how just "moderate" is the new government going to be? Will it be a useful American ally in the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban? And what will Pakistan's army do?
No matter who is president of Pakistan, the question of what to do about al Qaeda and other extremist groups will remain. Al Qaeda made repeated, but unsuccessful, attempts to murder President Musharraf. It succeeded in murdering Benazir Bhutto. One hopes that her party will be at least as committed to defeating the terrorists as was Musharraf.
When your policy involves relying exclusively on one increasingly unpopular leader, and that leader is demolished in an election, it tends to open "a host of new challenges." All the more so since by aligning ourselves so closely with Musharraf, we did real damage to our own reputation in Pakistan.
One interesting note: as far as I can tell, the Pakistani religious parties seem to have done very, very badly. I hope this means that we won't hear any more hyperventilating about the possibility that jihadis could sweep to power in Pakistan at any minute if we don't keep supporting dictators. The religious parties have never been very popular in Pakistan. They seem to be even less popular now.
Pakistani election works struggle over ballot boxes.
Pakistan voters make another stab at democracy today, going to the polls to determine their country's future -- and, to some extent, the future of America's war on Al Qaeda. Troops are on alert, ready to respond to violence; political parties are on alert, ready to protest any losses or signs of foul play at the polls.
Can Pakistan preserve its tenuous stability? Or will the election tip the cart?
The Taliban and al Qaeda seem to have a more consistent strategy than does the Musharraf government, the Bush administration, or NATO, and a growing stronghold in the tribal areas. Indeed, it is an increasingly open question whether Pakistan's preferred strategy for the tribal regions can produce a competent protect-the-people counterinsurgency campaign. Moreover, it's unclear that the Pakistani army--which may fear Bhutto's PPP more than Mehsud's forces--even wishes to learn the demanding arts of counterinsurgency. And finally, it's far from clear that American policy, driven by a too-often-mindless quest for "stability," and content to sell F-16 fighters, air-to-air missiles, and other high-priced baubles to Pakistan in place of the kinds of gear and training needed to address the threat, can stop acting as a enabler for the Pakistani Army's worst instincts.
The big problem — as verified by a poll released last month by the United States Institute of Peace — is that while the Pakistani public condemns Talibanism, it is also opposed to the way the war on terrorism has been waged in Pakistan. People are horrified by the thousands of civilian and military casualties and the militants’ retaliatory attacks in major cities. Despite promises, very little money is going toward development, education and other public services in the frontier region’s hot zones. This has led to the belief that this war is for “Busharraf” rather than the Pakistani people.
