Point, Counterpoint
Apr. 7th, 2004 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weaktwosHere are some articles from around the web on the Clarke/Iraq bruhaha. Or bally hoo, if you prefer.
First, from Salon.com:
How the war in Iraq has damaged the war on terrorism
A terrorism expert formerly on the National Security Council explains why Richard Clarke is right and Condoleezza Rice is wrong.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Jessica Stern
April 7, 2004 | Richard Clarke's argument that the war in Iraq was a distraction from the war on terrorism deserves extremely careful examination. He and other analysts are right in their assessment that the troops and focus needed to fight al-Qaida in Afghanistan were transferred to Iraq. Even more troubling, attacking Iraq strengthened the terrorists at our expense.
The Bush administration justified the war, from a national security perspective, with three principal arguments.
First, there were the purported links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein and the notion that the global war on terrorism required getting rid of those two threats. President Bush explained in September 2002: "You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam when you talk about the war on terrorism. They're both equally as bad, and equally as evil, and equally as destructive."
Second, there was the problem of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which Bush felt were so dangerous that they had to be taken out with a preventive war. "The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, showed what enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what ... terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction," he said. Bush warned that waiting until Saddam attacked would impose immense and unacceptable risks to the free nations of the world.
Finally, there was the danger that Saddam would turn those weapons over to al-Qaida. Bush raised the danger that "al-Qaida becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world."
There are several problems with the notion that a war in Iraq could in any way reduce these threats. Setting aside the argument that Saddam was attempting to forge some kind of an alliance with al-Qaida, an idea whose veracity has not been proven by U.S. intelligence, there is the broader question of whether attacking a rogue state could further our goal of wiping out a terrorist movement. Terrorist groups and rogue states should not be conflated, as military strategist Jeffrey Record argued in a report published by the Army War College. Terrorists -- especially suicidal ones -- have no return address and cannot be deterred, while rogue states have to worry about retaliation. The claim that rogue states are likely to be more easily deterred than terrorists has been argued by many academics, one of whom happens to be serving as the national security advisor. In her January 2000 article in Foreign Affairs, Condoleezza Rice argued that Iraq in particular could be deterred because any use of weapons of mass destruction would mean "national obliteration."
But the greatest threat America faces today does not stem from "rogue states" but from weak ones and the terrorist groups and purveyors of WMD that thrive within their borders. This has been clear to some of us who have dealt with terrorism for a decade or more. After 9/11, the fixation on enemy states as the most important threat to U.S. national security can no longer be seen as just quaintly old-fashioned. It is now a dangerous fixation. Rogue individuals and groups are not only the most important source of danger with regard to terrorist threats to American civilians, but -- as the case of Dr. A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb who traded his knowledge to the North Koreans and others, makes painfully clear -- they are also important sources of weapons of mass destruction and expertise.
Moreover, by attacking Iraq without sufficient preparations for creating a functioning state, we have created precisely what the Bush administration had identified as a major threat to world security: a weak state unable to police its borders or to maintain a monopoly on violence. Failed and failing states can no longer be viewed exclusively as humanitarian crises, but must be seen as threats to international security because of the opportunities they offer to terrorists. The Bush administration claimed to have learned this lesson from the events of 9/11. The 2002 National Security Strategy declared that the events of that day "taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders." But the decision to attack Iraq, ignoring all efforts by the State Department to create a blueprint for a functioning state, suggests that the lesson was learned only in a theoretical sense.
The false idea that the United States is engaged in a crusade against the Islamic world is a critical component of the Islamist nihilists' worldview, and spreading this idea is critical to their success. The unprovoked attack on Iraq, followed by an occupation that is widely perceived as inept and arbitrary, even by our British ally, has confirmed this view among potential sympathizers. Every time American troops shoot into a crowd, even in self-defense, the image of America as a reckless, ruthless oppressor is highlighted. Televised pictures of American soldiers and their tanks in Iraq are a "deeply humiliating scene to Muslims," explained Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih, who calls the war in Iraq a "gift" to Osama bin Laden. Unsurprisingly, terrorist recruiters are using the war and the continuing occupation to mobilize recruits -- not only inside Iraq but outside as well. Intelligence officials in the United States, Europe and Africa have reported that the new recruits they are seeing since the war became imminent are younger, with a more menacing attitude.
Perhaps most troubling, the occupation has given disparate groups from various countries a common battlefield on which to fight a common enemy. On a Web site described by the U.S. government as "jihadist," Dr. Hani al-Sibai, the director of the London-based Al-Maqrizi Center for Historical Studies, explains, "When the United States occupied Iraq, the border was actually uncontrolled." Iraq, he says, "is currently a battlefield and a fertile soil for every Islamic movement that views jihad as a priority." He emphasizes that Iraq is a "better place" than Afghanistan for waging jihad "in terms of the language, features of the people, and popular sympathy -- whether in Iraq's Sunni regions or its neighboring countries." He notes that "the continuation of the anti-occupation resistance will produce several groups that might later merge into one large group." Very few of the participants in the Iraqi "jihad" are members of al-Qaida, he says. "Nevertheless, the role of al-Qaida and its sympathizers in Iraq is more like the salt of the earth and it's reminiscent of the role of Arabs in Afghanistan who lifted the spirit of the Afghan people, who fought and sacrificed thousands of martyrs." He describes a new network of Salafi and other jihadist Sunni groups that formed five months after the occupation began. The network consists of mujahedeen, ulema, and political and military experts, he says, together with a number of jihadist factions from the north and south that previously operated separately. He concludes, "Even if the U.S. forces capture all leaders of al-Qaida or kill them all, the idea of expelling the occupiers and nonbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula and all the countries of Islam will not die."
Even as the war is bringing various terrorist groups together, it is increasing tensions between the United States and its allies. The Polish president has suggested that he was deceived when his country agreed to participate in the coalition. The newly elected prime minister of Spain has announced he intends to withdraw his troops. As the Iranian cleric Rafsanjani noted gleefully in a sermon on the first-year anniversary of the attack, "They are getting drifted apart. A gap has appeared in this group which they call a coalition."
If attacking Iraq made things worse, what would it take to prosecute a war on terrorism successfully? A better strategy might employ the following elements: First, where they exist, we need to destroy terrorist headquarters and, when necessary, kill the killers. This strategy must be employed carefully, however: Wherever possible, we should avoid creating martyrs or enhancing our enemies' mobilization strategies. In many cases, it is likely to be more useful to persuade terrorists to talk to us than to kill them; and, second, when we select military targets, it is probably better to focus on operatives rather than inspirational leaders such as bin Laden or Sheik Yassin. While the world is definitely better off without such evil men, their deaths could inspire their followers to kill many more innocent people.
Third, penetrating the various groups that are fighting us and turning them against one another is a critically important goal. The terrorists, Mao tells us, aim to create spiritual unity between the officers and their men and between themselves and the people. They also aim to destroy our alliances. Our goal must be the reverse: to create tensions between the leaders and their followers and among the various groups that compete for attention and funding. We also need to strengthen our alliances and make them robust enough to withstand the terrorists' attempts to split us from our allies. The al-Qaida movement has been cleverly exploiting tensions over the Iraq war to split us from our allies.
Related to this, fourth, we need to strengthen intelligence and law enforcement networks both within and among governments. This requires maintaining existing alliances and creating new ones -- sometimes with states that don't always live up to our expectations in all matters. Once we understand that terrorism is the most significant threat we face today, it becomes easier to order our preferences and demands.
Fifth, we need to strengthen weak states, which are, as the Bush administration itself pointed out in its national security strategy, terrorist breeding grounds. Sixth, we must avoid feeding into the distressingly widespread perception that the United States is out to humiliate the Islamic world. We need always to be mindful of Mao's explanation that terrorists are fish swimming in a sea of ordinary people, whose occasional support the terrorists' may require. We are competing with the terrorists for the hearts and minds of the ordinary people who make up that sea. Finally, we need to minimize the risk that terrorists or their sponsors will acquire powerful weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction.
In addition to the purported links between al-Qaida and Saddam, the Bush administration claimed that the war was necessary because of Iraq's weapons-of-mass destruction program. Even granting the Bush administration its arguments, there were still serious problems with their case for invasion. The notion that Saddam might try to cultivate links with al-Qaida might have been a plausible theory, though no intelligence has been revealed to support it. And yet it seemed more than a bit far-fetched to envisage Saddam giving over weapons of mass destruction to an Islamist group with ideological links to local Salafists who aimed to destroy his regime. Indeed, attacking Iraq, without protecting its borders, has made it more likely that WMD components and expertise would end up in the hands of terrorists. Capt. J. Ryan Cutchin, the leader of the inspection team known as MET Bravo, told the New York Times that his team often arrived at sites identified as housing WMD after looters had stolen everything of value. We may never know what the looters -- or Baathist elements pretending to be looters -- managed to ferret away, he said. Once scientists know how to grow and disseminate biological agents effectively, new stockpiles can be rapidly rebuilt. Perhaps the most frightening prospect would be if some of Saddam's weaponeers provided their expertise to our terrorist enemies.
The war in Iraq has split the allies, not the terrorists. It has turned Iraq into a Mecca for international terrorists, and mobilized local Shiite and Salafi jihadist groups that had previously posed a minimal threat. It has facilitated connections between terrorists and those with formal military experience in Saddam's army, the lethal nightmare that the invasion was supposed to have thwarted. Antipathy toward the United States, not only in Iraq and throughout the entire Islamic world, but in Europe as well, has become a dangerous trend exploited by terrorists. Even as we tout our successes in rounding up al-Qaida terrorists, the broader movement inspired by bin Laden and ignited by the invasion of Iraq is recruiting new nihilist minions throughout the world. The war in Iraq has not only been a distraction from the war on terrorism; it has strengthened our enemies in ways that continue to surprise and horrify us. Where will we be surprised next?
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About the writer
Jessica Stern is the author of "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill," a former staff member of the National Security Council, and a lecturer on terrorism at the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Then, from the wild 'n crazy right wingey-dingies from the National Review:
“Don’t Look at Me”
Dick Clarke’s reversed reality.
By Laurie Mylroie
In 1992, when Richard Clarke assumed the counterterrorism portfolio in the White House, terrorism was not a serious problem. Libya's downing of Pan Am 103 four years before had been the last major attack on a U.S. target. Yet when Clarke left his post in October 2001, terrorism had become the single-greatest threat to America. Clarke would have us believe this happened because of events beyond anyone's ability to control. He argues, moreover, that the Bush administration has adopted a fatally wrong approach to the war on terror by including states, particularly Iraq, in its response to the 9/11 attacks.
Clarke's tenure as America's top counterterrorism official is essentially contemporaneous with the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton took what had been considered a national-security issue, in which the U.S. focused on punishing and deterring terrorist states, and turned it into a law-enforcement issue, focused on arresting and convicting individual perpetrators. That was certainly an easier response, but it was completely ineffectual. In fact, it had created a very serious vulnerability long before September 11, 2001. Clarke's book, Against All Enemies is, essentially, an attempt to blame the Bush administration for 9/11, while exonerating Clinton (and therefore Clarke). The reality is quite the reverse.
CLARKE VS. ME
An audacious series of terrorist attacks began in the 1990's, starting with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center — one month into Clinton's first term in office. New York FBI was the lead investigative agency, and senior officials there, including director Jim Fox, believed Iraq was involved. As Fox wrote, "Although we are unable to say with certainty the Iraqis were behind the bombing, that is certainly the theory accepted by most of the veteran investigators" (italics added).
Clarke vehemently rejects this view, calling it "the totally discredited Laurie Mylroie theory." While this theory is indeed the central thesis of my book, Study of Revenge, one wonders why Clarke would not attribute it to Fox and the other FBI agents who did the hard work to uncover the evidence of Iraq's role. Gil Childers, lead prosecutor in the first World Trade Center bombing trial, was considered by other U.S. officials the expert on that attack. Childers described Study of Revenge as "work the U.S. government should have done."
Clarke's office was obliged to review the book in the spring of 2001. He dismissed it then, as he does now. He systematically ignores or distorts the information suggesting an Iraqi link to the 1993 bombing, including the critical question of the identity of its mastermind, Ramzi Yousef; as well as the identity of Yousef's "uncle," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks; along with the identities of other key terrorists in that remarkable "family."
Clarke maliciously misrepresents my argument on these points. After stating the obvious — that Yousef is indeed the terrorist the government says he is, Clarke writes: "That did not stop author Laurie Mylroie from asserting that the real Ramzi Yousef was not in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan, but lounging at the right hand of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad."
Yet that is not my position: "Ramzi Yousef was arrested and returned to the United States on February 7, 1995" (Study of Revenge, p. 212). This very serious dispute relates instead to Yousef's real identity. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has observed, "For Clarke to say something like that is like the 13th chime of the clock. Not only is it bizarre in and of itself, it calls into question...everything from the same source."
But while Clarke totally rejects the possibility that Iraq was behind the first attack on the Trade Center, he nevertheless entertains the possibility of a foreign dimension to the Oklahoma City bombing: "Ramzi Yousef and [Terry] Nichols had been in the city of Cebu on the same days.... Could the al Qaeda explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American?... We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned. We also know that Nichols continued to call Cebu long after his wife returned to the United States."
Clarke might have added that Nichols met his (underage) wife, Marife, on an Asian sex tour. He insisted on marrying her, although Marife did not want to marry him. She had a boyfriend, Jo-Jo, but her parents, believing they would gain a rich American son-in-law, pushed her into the marriage. After the wedding, Nichols remained only a week in Cebu, leaving Marife with some money to see her through her lengthy wait for her U.S. visa. She ran off with Jo-Jo, became pregnant, and sent Nichols a letter asking for a divorce. Yet he still insisted on marrying her — even though he scarcely knew her. FBI agents involved in the investigation speculated in their reports about whether this marriage might be a cover for conspiratorial activities. The regular ongoing phone calls to Cebu certainly underline that possibility.
DETAILS, DETAILS…
Intelligence analysts need to have a reasonably good memory, but Clarke's book is riddled with errors. Libya bombed Pan Am 103 in 1988, during the Reagan administration, not in 1989 under Bush 41, as Clarke claims; El Sayyid Nosair murdered Meir Kahane in 1990, not 1992; the Khobar bombing was after April 1996 (in June), not before. The 1982 U.S. intervention in Lebanon was not prompted by events related to Iran: Israel had invaded Lebanon to expel the PLO, and the U.S. then intervened to oversee the PLO's evacuation to Tunisia and otherwise to help establish a new government in Beirut.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has protested that Clarke quotes him speaking at a meeting he did not attend. Clarke claims that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz rejected his view that Osama bin Laden's threats should be taken with the same seriousness as those of Adolph Hitler. Wolfowitz, however, disputes that characterization, asserting that he himself agrees that Hitler is the prime example of why such figures cannot be ignored.
To bolster his claim after 9/11 that he had vigorously pursued the possibility of Iraq's involvement in the first attack on the Trade Center, Clarke wrote a memo stating that "[W]hen the bombing happened," he "focused on Iraq as the possible culprit because of Iraqi involvement in the attempted assassination of President Bush in Kuwait in the same month." But as Wolfowitz noted during the 9/11 Commission hearings, Iraq's attempted assassination of Bush was two months after the Trade Center bombing.
One person who worked with Clarke in government explains that he was never very good with facts. Facts slow you down and otherwise got in the way of his hard-charging style. Perhaps for that reason, Clarke was also prone to making things up.
Most egregiously, Clarke maintains that when Clinton hit Iraqi intelligence headquarters in June 1993, that attack ended Iraq's involvement in terrorism. But if the 1991 Gulf War did not do so, why should one cruise-missile strike achieve that goal?
Clinton was aware at the time of New York FBI's suspicions that Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing. Although Clinton said publicly that his strike on Iraqi intelligence headquarters was punishment for the attempted assassination of Bush, he also meant it to answer for the terrorism in New York, just in case New York FBI was correct. Clinton believed, as Clarke writes, that that strike would deter Saddam from all future acts of terrorism. By not telling the public that it seemed Saddam may have tried to topple New York's tallest tower onto its twin, Clinton avoided the risk (from his perspective) of a public demand that he take much more vigorous action.
That initial decision to deal surreptitiously with suspicions of Iraq's involvement in a major terrorist attack was reinforced by the ad hoc, all-purpose explanation for such assaults against the U.S. that emerged: Such activity was the work of loose networks, not supported by any state. This theory represented a 180-degree revision of the previous understanding of terrorism, and it provided a cover not only for U.S. inaction but also for terrorist activity on the part of hostile governments, particularly Iraq.
This was the flawed analysis that led ultimately to the attacks of 9/11. This, almost certainly, explains Clarke's over-the-top denunciations of those who have argued that Iraq was involved in the first attack on the Trade Center, as well as his repeated assertions that he searched for such evidence, but it was just not there. At stake is the question of who was responsible for our vulnerability on that terrible day. Clarke apparently believes that the best defense is a good offense.
— Laurie Mylroie was adviser on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton campaign. She is author of Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terrorism. She can be reached through www.benadorassociates.com.
I'm not so sure Ms. Mylroie is all that reliable a source. Others who were very close to our intelligence data seem to support Clarke's hypotheses.
Furthermore, in doing a search on Google, there is some evidence that she's a crackpot. I think the fact that she mentions the since debunked Prague Connection with Iraq and Al Qaeda lends credence to that assessment. I have had time to check on her criticisms of of Clarke's factual errors. But her Pan Am terrorism gripe is a little touchy. Technically, yes, it was not under Bush's presidency, but it was December 21, 1988, within days before his innauguration. By then, I would gather he was already involved in Presidential issues preparing to assume full leadership.
Anyway, in short, I still think the National Review is full o' crap. I know it is wrong to want to throttle conservatives like Hannity(maybe I should call him Assinannity or Headinassity), O'Reilly(I prefer O'Viley), but there are somedays when I think it would feel good to be a gangsta.
Thank you, and goodnight.
First, from Salon.com:
How the war in Iraq has damaged the war on terrorism
A terrorism expert formerly on the National Security Council explains why Richard Clarke is right and Condoleezza Rice is wrong.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Jessica Stern
April 7, 2004 | Richard Clarke's argument that the war in Iraq was a distraction from the war on terrorism deserves extremely careful examination. He and other analysts are right in their assessment that the troops and focus needed to fight al-Qaida in Afghanistan were transferred to Iraq. Even more troubling, attacking Iraq strengthened the terrorists at our expense.
The Bush administration justified the war, from a national security perspective, with three principal arguments.
First, there were the purported links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein and the notion that the global war on terrorism required getting rid of those two threats. President Bush explained in September 2002: "You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam when you talk about the war on terrorism. They're both equally as bad, and equally as evil, and equally as destructive."
Second, there was the problem of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which Bush felt were so dangerous that they had to be taken out with a preventive war. "The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, showed what enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what ... terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction," he said. Bush warned that waiting until Saddam attacked would impose immense and unacceptable risks to the free nations of the world.
Finally, there was the danger that Saddam would turn those weapons over to al-Qaida. Bush raised the danger that "al-Qaida becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world."
There are several problems with the notion that a war in Iraq could in any way reduce these threats. Setting aside the argument that Saddam was attempting to forge some kind of an alliance with al-Qaida, an idea whose veracity has not been proven by U.S. intelligence, there is the broader question of whether attacking a rogue state could further our goal of wiping out a terrorist movement. Terrorist groups and rogue states should not be conflated, as military strategist Jeffrey Record argued in a report published by the Army War College. Terrorists -- especially suicidal ones -- have no return address and cannot be deterred, while rogue states have to worry about retaliation. The claim that rogue states are likely to be more easily deterred than terrorists has been argued by many academics, one of whom happens to be serving as the national security advisor. In her January 2000 article in Foreign Affairs, Condoleezza Rice argued that Iraq in particular could be deterred because any use of weapons of mass destruction would mean "national obliteration."
But the greatest threat America faces today does not stem from "rogue states" but from weak ones and the terrorist groups and purveyors of WMD that thrive within their borders. This has been clear to some of us who have dealt with terrorism for a decade or more. After 9/11, the fixation on enemy states as the most important threat to U.S. national security can no longer be seen as just quaintly old-fashioned. It is now a dangerous fixation. Rogue individuals and groups are not only the most important source of danger with regard to terrorist threats to American civilians, but -- as the case of Dr. A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb who traded his knowledge to the North Koreans and others, makes painfully clear -- they are also important sources of weapons of mass destruction and expertise.
Moreover, by attacking Iraq without sufficient preparations for creating a functioning state, we have created precisely what the Bush administration had identified as a major threat to world security: a weak state unable to police its borders or to maintain a monopoly on violence. Failed and failing states can no longer be viewed exclusively as humanitarian crises, but must be seen as threats to international security because of the opportunities they offer to terrorists. The Bush administration claimed to have learned this lesson from the events of 9/11. The 2002 National Security Strategy declared that the events of that day "taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders." But the decision to attack Iraq, ignoring all efforts by the State Department to create a blueprint for a functioning state, suggests that the lesson was learned only in a theoretical sense.
The false idea that the United States is engaged in a crusade against the Islamic world is a critical component of the Islamist nihilists' worldview, and spreading this idea is critical to their success. The unprovoked attack on Iraq, followed by an occupation that is widely perceived as inept and arbitrary, even by our British ally, has confirmed this view among potential sympathizers. Every time American troops shoot into a crowd, even in self-defense, the image of America as a reckless, ruthless oppressor is highlighted. Televised pictures of American soldiers and their tanks in Iraq are a "deeply humiliating scene to Muslims," explained Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih, who calls the war in Iraq a "gift" to Osama bin Laden. Unsurprisingly, terrorist recruiters are using the war and the continuing occupation to mobilize recruits -- not only inside Iraq but outside as well. Intelligence officials in the United States, Europe and Africa have reported that the new recruits they are seeing since the war became imminent are younger, with a more menacing attitude.
Perhaps most troubling, the occupation has given disparate groups from various countries a common battlefield on which to fight a common enemy. On a Web site described by the U.S. government as "jihadist," Dr. Hani al-Sibai, the director of the London-based Al-Maqrizi Center for Historical Studies, explains, "When the United States occupied Iraq, the border was actually uncontrolled." Iraq, he says, "is currently a battlefield and a fertile soil for every Islamic movement that views jihad as a priority." He emphasizes that Iraq is a "better place" than Afghanistan for waging jihad "in terms of the language, features of the people, and popular sympathy -- whether in Iraq's Sunni regions or its neighboring countries." He notes that "the continuation of the anti-occupation resistance will produce several groups that might later merge into one large group." Very few of the participants in the Iraqi "jihad" are members of al-Qaida, he says. "Nevertheless, the role of al-Qaida and its sympathizers in Iraq is more like the salt of the earth and it's reminiscent of the role of Arabs in Afghanistan who lifted the spirit of the Afghan people, who fought and sacrificed thousands of martyrs." He describes a new network of Salafi and other jihadist Sunni groups that formed five months after the occupation began. The network consists of mujahedeen, ulema, and political and military experts, he says, together with a number of jihadist factions from the north and south that previously operated separately. He concludes, "Even if the U.S. forces capture all leaders of al-Qaida or kill them all, the idea of expelling the occupiers and nonbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula and all the countries of Islam will not die."
Even as the war is bringing various terrorist groups together, it is increasing tensions between the United States and its allies. The Polish president has suggested that he was deceived when his country agreed to participate in the coalition. The newly elected prime minister of Spain has announced he intends to withdraw his troops. As the Iranian cleric Rafsanjani noted gleefully in a sermon on the first-year anniversary of the attack, "They are getting drifted apart. A gap has appeared in this group which they call a coalition."
If attacking Iraq made things worse, what would it take to prosecute a war on terrorism successfully? A better strategy might employ the following elements: First, where they exist, we need to destroy terrorist headquarters and, when necessary, kill the killers. This strategy must be employed carefully, however: Wherever possible, we should avoid creating martyrs or enhancing our enemies' mobilization strategies. In many cases, it is likely to be more useful to persuade terrorists to talk to us than to kill them; and, second, when we select military targets, it is probably better to focus on operatives rather than inspirational leaders such as bin Laden or Sheik Yassin. While the world is definitely better off without such evil men, their deaths could inspire their followers to kill many more innocent people.
Third, penetrating the various groups that are fighting us and turning them against one another is a critically important goal. The terrorists, Mao tells us, aim to create spiritual unity between the officers and their men and between themselves and the people. They also aim to destroy our alliances. Our goal must be the reverse: to create tensions between the leaders and their followers and among the various groups that compete for attention and funding. We also need to strengthen our alliances and make them robust enough to withstand the terrorists' attempts to split us from our allies. The al-Qaida movement has been cleverly exploiting tensions over the Iraq war to split us from our allies.
Related to this, fourth, we need to strengthen intelligence and law enforcement networks both within and among governments. This requires maintaining existing alliances and creating new ones -- sometimes with states that don't always live up to our expectations in all matters. Once we understand that terrorism is the most significant threat we face today, it becomes easier to order our preferences and demands.
Fifth, we need to strengthen weak states, which are, as the Bush administration itself pointed out in its national security strategy, terrorist breeding grounds. Sixth, we must avoid feeding into the distressingly widespread perception that the United States is out to humiliate the Islamic world. We need always to be mindful of Mao's explanation that terrorists are fish swimming in a sea of ordinary people, whose occasional support the terrorists' may require. We are competing with the terrorists for the hearts and minds of the ordinary people who make up that sea. Finally, we need to minimize the risk that terrorists or their sponsors will acquire powerful weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction.
In addition to the purported links between al-Qaida and Saddam, the Bush administration claimed that the war was necessary because of Iraq's weapons-of-mass destruction program. Even granting the Bush administration its arguments, there were still serious problems with their case for invasion. The notion that Saddam might try to cultivate links with al-Qaida might have been a plausible theory, though no intelligence has been revealed to support it. And yet it seemed more than a bit far-fetched to envisage Saddam giving over weapons of mass destruction to an Islamist group with ideological links to local Salafists who aimed to destroy his regime. Indeed, attacking Iraq, without protecting its borders, has made it more likely that WMD components and expertise would end up in the hands of terrorists. Capt. J. Ryan Cutchin, the leader of the inspection team known as MET Bravo, told the New York Times that his team often arrived at sites identified as housing WMD after looters had stolen everything of value. We may never know what the looters -- or Baathist elements pretending to be looters -- managed to ferret away, he said. Once scientists know how to grow and disseminate biological agents effectively, new stockpiles can be rapidly rebuilt. Perhaps the most frightening prospect would be if some of Saddam's weaponeers provided their expertise to our terrorist enemies.
The war in Iraq has split the allies, not the terrorists. It has turned Iraq into a Mecca for international terrorists, and mobilized local Shiite and Salafi jihadist groups that had previously posed a minimal threat. It has facilitated connections between terrorists and those with formal military experience in Saddam's army, the lethal nightmare that the invasion was supposed to have thwarted. Antipathy toward the United States, not only in Iraq and throughout the entire Islamic world, but in Europe as well, has become a dangerous trend exploited by terrorists. Even as we tout our successes in rounding up al-Qaida terrorists, the broader movement inspired by bin Laden and ignited by the invasion of Iraq is recruiting new nihilist minions throughout the world. The war in Iraq has not only been a distraction from the war on terrorism; it has strengthened our enemies in ways that continue to surprise and horrify us. Where will we be surprised next?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Jessica Stern is the author of "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill," a former staff member of the National Security Council, and a lecturer on terrorism at the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Then, from the wild 'n crazy right wingey-dingies from the National Review:
“Don’t Look at Me”
Dick Clarke’s reversed reality.
By Laurie Mylroie
In 1992, when Richard Clarke assumed the counterterrorism portfolio in the White House, terrorism was not a serious problem. Libya's downing of Pan Am 103 four years before had been the last major attack on a U.S. target. Yet when Clarke left his post in October 2001, terrorism had become the single-greatest threat to America. Clarke would have us believe this happened because of events beyond anyone's ability to control. He argues, moreover, that the Bush administration has adopted a fatally wrong approach to the war on terror by including states, particularly Iraq, in its response to the 9/11 attacks.
Clarke's tenure as America's top counterterrorism official is essentially contemporaneous with the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton took what had been considered a national-security issue, in which the U.S. focused on punishing and deterring terrorist states, and turned it into a law-enforcement issue, focused on arresting and convicting individual perpetrators. That was certainly an easier response, but it was completely ineffectual. In fact, it had created a very serious vulnerability long before September 11, 2001. Clarke's book, Against All Enemies is, essentially, an attempt to blame the Bush administration for 9/11, while exonerating Clinton (and therefore Clarke). The reality is quite the reverse.
CLARKE VS. ME
An audacious series of terrorist attacks began in the 1990's, starting with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center — one month into Clinton's first term in office. New York FBI was the lead investigative agency, and senior officials there, including director Jim Fox, believed Iraq was involved. As Fox wrote, "Although we are unable to say with certainty the Iraqis were behind the bombing, that is certainly the theory accepted by most of the veteran investigators" (italics added).
Clarke vehemently rejects this view, calling it "the totally discredited Laurie Mylroie theory." While this theory is indeed the central thesis of my book, Study of Revenge, one wonders why Clarke would not attribute it to Fox and the other FBI agents who did the hard work to uncover the evidence of Iraq's role. Gil Childers, lead prosecutor in the first World Trade Center bombing trial, was considered by other U.S. officials the expert on that attack. Childers described Study of Revenge as "work the U.S. government should have done."
Clarke's office was obliged to review the book in the spring of 2001. He dismissed it then, as he does now. He systematically ignores or distorts the information suggesting an Iraqi link to the 1993 bombing, including the critical question of the identity of its mastermind, Ramzi Yousef; as well as the identity of Yousef's "uncle," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks; along with the identities of other key terrorists in that remarkable "family."
Clarke maliciously misrepresents my argument on these points. After stating the obvious — that Yousef is indeed the terrorist the government says he is, Clarke writes: "That did not stop author Laurie Mylroie from asserting that the real Ramzi Yousef was not in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan, but lounging at the right hand of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad."
Yet that is not my position: "Ramzi Yousef was arrested and returned to the United States on February 7, 1995" (Study of Revenge, p. 212). This very serious dispute relates instead to Yousef's real identity. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has observed, "For Clarke to say something like that is like the 13th chime of the clock. Not only is it bizarre in and of itself, it calls into question...everything from the same source."
But while Clarke totally rejects the possibility that Iraq was behind the first attack on the Trade Center, he nevertheless entertains the possibility of a foreign dimension to the Oklahoma City bombing: "Ramzi Yousef and [Terry] Nichols had been in the city of Cebu on the same days.... Could the al Qaeda explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American?... We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned. We also know that Nichols continued to call Cebu long after his wife returned to the United States."
Clarke might have added that Nichols met his (underage) wife, Marife, on an Asian sex tour. He insisted on marrying her, although Marife did not want to marry him. She had a boyfriend, Jo-Jo, but her parents, believing they would gain a rich American son-in-law, pushed her into the marriage. After the wedding, Nichols remained only a week in Cebu, leaving Marife with some money to see her through her lengthy wait for her U.S. visa. She ran off with Jo-Jo, became pregnant, and sent Nichols a letter asking for a divorce. Yet he still insisted on marrying her — even though he scarcely knew her. FBI agents involved in the investigation speculated in their reports about whether this marriage might be a cover for conspiratorial activities. The regular ongoing phone calls to Cebu certainly underline that possibility.
DETAILS, DETAILS…
Intelligence analysts need to have a reasonably good memory, but Clarke's book is riddled with errors. Libya bombed Pan Am 103 in 1988, during the Reagan administration, not in 1989 under Bush 41, as Clarke claims; El Sayyid Nosair murdered Meir Kahane in 1990, not 1992; the Khobar bombing was after April 1996 (in June), not before. The 1982 U.S. intervention in Lebanon was not prompted by events related to Iran: Israel had invaded Lebanon to expel the PLO, and the U.S. then intervened to oversee the PLO's evacuation to Tunisia and otherwise to help establish a new government in Beirut.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has protested that Clarke quotes him speaking at a meeting he did not attend. Clarke claims that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz rejected his view that Osama bin Laden's threats should be taken with the same seriousness as those of Adolph Hitler. Wolfowitz, however, disputes that characterization, asserting that he himself agrees that Hitler is the prime example of why such figures cannot be ignored.
To bolster his claim after 9/11 that he had vigorously pursued the possibility of Iraq's involvement in the first attack on the Trade Center, Clarke wrote a memo stating that "[W]hen the bombing happened," he "focused on Iraq as the possible culprit because of Iraqi involvement in the attempted assassination of President Bush in Kuwait in the same month." But as Wolfowitz noted during the 9/11 Commission hearings, Iraq's attempted assassination of Bush was two months after the Trade Center bombing.
One person who worked with Clarke in government explains that he was never very good with facts. Facts slow you down and otherwise got in the way of his hard-charging style. Perhaps for that reason, Clarke was also prone to making things up.
Most egregiously, Clarke maintains that when Clinton hit Iraqi intelligence headquarters in June 1993, that attack ended Iraq's involvement in terrorism. But if the 1991 Gulf War did not do so, why should one cruise-missile strike achieve that goal?
Clinton was aware at the time of New York FBI's suspicions that Iraq was behind the Trade Center bombing. Although Clinton said publicly that his strike on Iraqi intelligence headquarters was punishment for the attempted assassination of Bush, he also meant it to answer for the terrorism in New York, just in case New York FBI was correct. Clinton believed, as Clarke writes, that that strike would deter Saddam from all future acts of terrorism. By not telling the public that it seemed Saddam may have tried to topple New York's tallest tower onto its twin, Clinton avoided the risk (from his perspective) of a public demand that he take much more vigorous action.
That initial decision to deal surreptitiously with suspicions of Iraq's involvement in a major terrorist attack was reinforced by the ad hoc, all-purpose explanation for such assaults against the U.S. that emerged: Such activity was the work of loose networks, not supported by any state. This theory represented a 180-degree revision of the previous understanding of terrorism, and it provided a cover not only for U.S. inaction but also for terrorist activity on the part of hostile governments, particularly Iraq.
This was the flawed analysis that led ultimately to the attacks of 9/11. This, almost certainly, explains Clarke's over-the-top denunciations of those who have argued that Iraq was involved in the first attack on the Trade Center, as well as his repeated assertions that he searched for such evidence, but it was just not there. At stake is the question of who was responsible for our vulnerability on that terrible day. Clarke apparently believes that the best defense is a good offense.
— Laurie Mylroie was adviser on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton campaign. She is author of Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terrorism. She can be reached through www.benadorassociates.com.
I'm not so sure Ms. Mylroie is all that reliable a source. Others who were very close to our intelligence data seem to support Clarke's hypotheses.
Furthermore, in doing a search on Google, there is some evidence that she's a crackpot. I think the fact that she mentions the since debunked Prague Connection with Iraq and Al Qaeda lends credence to that assessment. I have had time to check on her criticisms of of Clarke's factual errors. But her Pan Am terrorism gripe is a little touchy. Technically, yes, it was not under Bush's presidency, but it was December 21, 1988, within days before his innauguration. By then, I would gather he was already involved in Presidential issues preparing to assume full leadership.
Anyway, in short, I still think the National Review is full o' crap. I know it is wrong to want to throttle conservatives like Hannity(maybe I should call him Assinannity or Headinassity), O'Reilly(I prefer O'Viley), but there are somedays when I think it would feel good to be a gangsta.
Thank you, and goodnight.
