One Utah

The 9/11 attacks came as a big shock, that’s an understatement. I was shocked all the more because the suicide attacks seemed utterly pointless– a costly, immoral symbolic act that accomplished nothing. That’s what it seemed like because we didn’t know the enemy. We have since learned that Al Qaeda had a specific strategic objective in mind. As James Fallows wrote in The Atlantic Monthly (subscription required) last September:

Documents captured after 9/11 showed that bin Laden hoped to provoke the United States into an invasion and occupation that would entail all the complications that have arisen in Iraq. His only error was to think that the place where Americans would get stuck would be Afghanistan.

We’ve had years of speeches from President Bush that basically went, “War on terror, blah blah, September the 11th, blah blah, support the war in Iraq.” After all, we were told again and again, Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. That’s a boneheaded concept. Josh Marshall points out on Talking Points Memo that “al Qaeda’s goal is to bait us into ridiculous and unwinnable wars that will sap our military strength and financial power. …we’re playing right into their hands.”

Meanwhile, the terror group’s leaders relax in their secure safe haven. Writing on The Huffington Post, Michael Smerconish points out the obvious– nobody is trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri anymore. We know that last September, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf reached an accord with tribal leaders that gave them enough autonomy to support a resurgent Al Qaeda. Since July, we’ve known that late in 2005 the CIA disbanded Alec Station, the secret FBI/CIA unit dedicated to finding bin Laden. Smerconish quotes Michael Scheuer, former head of Alec Station and author of the best-seller Imperial Hubris:

“Ultimately, we have had neither the focus nor resources to find and capture or kill bin Laden et al., and so almost by default we have had to hope that our Pakistani proxies would come to our rescue. Common sense should have told us that this was never going to occur. Why? Bin laden and his men and the Taliban are heroes to the great majority of Pakistanis - they beat the Soviets and are now beating the Americans - and Pakistani political stability could not survive Musharraf killing the population’s heroes.”

It’s an impasse. About 166 million people live in Pakistan, and the country already has a nuclear arsenal. If moderates ever lose control of the government, that’s not good for the USA.

This latest spate of analysis is occasioned by a Dick Cheney photo-op with Musharraf, following an intelligence assessment that senior Qaeda leaders based in Pakistan have re-established significant control over their global network and are training operatives in camps for strikes on Western targets. The Vice President said nothing in public during his brief visit to Pakistan.

UPDATE: Take down the “wanted dead or alive” posters. “I don’t know that it’s all that important” to find Osama bin Laden, says Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker. “So we get him, and then what?” Schoomaker said. “There’s a temporary feeling of goodness, but in the long run, we may make him bigger than he is today. He’s hiding, and he knows we’re looking for him. We know he’s not particularly effective. I’m not sure there’s that great of a return” on capturing or killing bin Laden.

This entry was posted Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Dick Cheney, Disaster, George W. Bush, Iraq, Taliban, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.