Yet if the appellation went away, the conflict itself, shorn of identifying marks, continued.
Nonsense. The central battlefield of "War on Terror," we were told over and over, was Iraq. I can't help but notice that that "endless war" ended. To try to shoehorn drone strikes in Yemen into a "War for the Greater Middle East" is just silly. Drones can't overthrow a government. They can't control territory. They can't control mineral resources. They can't defeat a military in the field. They really are of very little use as a vehicle of geopolitical competition. All they can do is kill a small number of people once in a while, and you don't gain control of a strategically important region by doing that.
Whether you think shooting at al Qaeda commanders is a good idea or not, it really is not the same thing as toppling the Iraqi government by forces of arms, setting up a client state, putting hundreds of thousands of troops in the country, and setting up a system of permanent bases from which to launch future wars.
I remember back when it was mainly the right that did everything it could to conflate the very different actions of taking over Iraq and conducting counter-terror operations against al Qaeda. Now, it's mainly the so-called-anti-imperialist left.
as for ‘all lebanese factions’ many christians view hzb and the shia as potential guarantor of christian interests in lebanon, especially after the post-war saudi-ization of the lebanese economy.
That's what makes this episode so notable, and the speculation about a grand anti-Hezbollah coalition a possibility: these rockets were launched from a Christian/Druze area.
Like it or not, this is a political problem. To close Gitmo, Obama needs to win the politics of the issue, or Congress will just block any executive moves the way it blocked his closure order in 2009.
The last time Obama (and Holder) tried to win that political issue was when they proposed to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a New York City federal court. They fought the good fight, they made a passionate and convincing case, and they got their butts handed to them.
Four years later, bin Laden in dead, al Qaeda is a shell, and the end of the Afghan War is in sight and highly desired by the public. Let's hope the politics play out differently this time. That speech was a good start.
But hey, for Joe from Lowell and his ilk, Bush is now the measure.
I was replying to Michael Valenti, the commenter who raised that measure.
Predictably, you didn't have any problem with that measure until it was pointed out to you that it works in President Obama's favor.
If you object to that measure, kindly take it up with the individual who proposed it.
How will all the Obama supporters feel when they wake up the first Wednesday of November in 2016 and realize that President Ryan and Vice President Rubio now have legal claim to the absolute power of life and death over every citizen in the land without trial?
I read overheated, factually-indefinsible blatherings like this, and I wonder: are you really this misinformed, or are you deliberately bullshitting?
Why does it seem that despite the interstitial fog of surely knowledgeable noise, the above sounds like a case for counter-terrorist tactical technical questions driving strategy, policy, expenditures, STATE BEHAVIOR? As opposed to, you know, the other way around?
Sounds TO WHOM?
Have you ever read anything, other than your own comments, that didn't sound like that to you?
You've come up with a bunch of reasons why we shouldn't think about question. Sorry, JT, I've never been very good at not thinking.
Obama’s ratings are as bad as Bush’s were in the opinion polls throughout the Muslim world.
And Bush's ratings among Americans were once 90%. I'm left with the impression that approval ratings are not, in fact, the most reliable measure of a President.
I must have missed the parts of the speech where the President advocated for invading Iraq, keeping Guantanamo open, using torture, and fighting a global ideological war.
Even the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, the anti-drone outfit Professor Cole links to, puts the number of civilians killed at no more than 20-25% of total deaths.
Although I'm sure you could 'hear stats' that put it at 50:1 and 1000:1, too. The internet is a big place.
AQAP and other radical Sunni groups have grown in numbers and influence in Yemen during the period of US drone strikes, and possibly because of them. How effective, then, have they really been?
Effective at what? That "larger" AQAP doesn't appear to have become any more capable of conducting terrorist attacks against the US. Quite the opposite, al Qaeda's ability to project force against us has crashed since the ramping up of the drone program.
Inside the Beltway analysts are obsessed with atriting the enemy’s leadership cadre. But asymmetrical terrorist groups, some of them kin-based, don’t have that big a need for alpha leaders. Kill one, and a cousin will take over. Blowing stuff up also isn’t all that hard to do, so killing people who know how to do it doesn’t stop the bombings– others just teach themselves how to make and set off explosives.
With all due respect to your opinion, I find that of Osama bin Laden a great deal more convincing on this point. He was talking to his operational commanders about how the damage done by airstrikes was destroying his organization's ability to operate.
The efficacy of counter-terrorist tactics is a technical question that should be considered in it own right, not spun into a mush of wishful thinking that just so happens to inevitably comport with the policy preferences one arrives at from other directions.
Iran in 2013 is like Great Britain when it had hundreds of thousands of troops engaged in combat operations in France, North Africa, and - oh yeah - during the aerial bombardment implemented to prepare the way for Operation Sealion?
There are those who would call that a bit of a stretch.
Yes yes, everyone, of course it's always and everywhere justified to shoot at Israel.
And yet, that doesn't necessarily make it a terribly good idea. Nor does it indicate particularly good things about the Assad government or its grasp on power.
Saddam did this right before the coalition forces invaded in 1991.
The actions of the Bush administration are inconsistent with this analysis. They made a major commitment to move the significant military presence in Saudi Arabia onto permanent bases in Iraq. What country would want to make a failed state the host country for its regional military presence? The US puts major bases in places like Japan, Germany, and Kuwait - strong states without problems of internal disorder.
They also invested far too much money, political capital, and credibility into the nation-building project. They made the success of the new government of Iraq the measure of their decision to start the war.
They didn't want a failed state; they wanted a strong, friendly ally that would show the rest of the region how it was done. They were going to install Ahmed Chalabi and a flat tax, and glory in their great achievement.
Nor is the violence of the past week (or really the last month and a half) like that during the Iraqi Civil War of 2006-2007.
It is more like the bombing campaign that preceded and instigated the Iraqi Civil War - the series of atrocities against Shiite targets that culminated in the bombing of the Golden Mosque. That, too, was aimed at "deterring foreign investment and of keeping the new order from congealing."
That campaign had a large foreign element to it. It was mainly carried out by non-Iraqi, Sunni terrorists who were trying to produce a Shiite backlash against Iraq's Sunnis, in an effort to render the country ungovernable. It worked - they got their revenge killings and the spiral into civil war.
Professor Cole, have you done any digging into what role, if any, foreign Sunni jihadists are playing in these attacks?
Using the term "terrorists" to describe the Syrian opposition as a whole comes directly from the propaganda arm of the Assad government. That usage is a very clear "tell."
That interviewer reminds me of Fox News interviews with Dick Cheney circa 2002.
The Turkish authorities immediately rushed to blame the Syrian secret services and appealed to NATO. It is clear what this conversation will lead to. They evidently want to accuse the Syrian authorities like this and pave the way for an intervention and a sharp reaction on the part of the West or NATO. What do you think about this?
This was pretty rich, coming from the Russian Foreign Minister:
We do not consider it to be right that external players should engage in “socio-political engineering” and outline plans of some sort for the Syrians.
It really is depressing to see people who purport to be leftists buy into Henry Kissinger's theories about the need for dictators to provide stability (as if Gadhaffi's history of exporting instability and weaponry to the rest of Africa could really be considered stability.)
I spent the entire Iraq War insisting to the war's supporters that people like J Wolsch didn't exist, and that the claim that there were liberals and leftists who didn't think Arabs were capable of sustaining a democracy was nonsense.
The response to Arab Spring by so-called anti-imperialists has been quite enlightening to me.
What's growing thin, sir, is the habit of turning policy discussions into episodes of sharing your feelings about the man personally.
What progress? How about doubling fuel economy standards, shutting coal plants left and right, seeding alternative energy industries with the largest investments of any country in the world, and...
....wait for it...
achieving the largest greenhouse gas reductions of any country on the planet.
Oh, yeah, that progress.
or having the EPA not issue regulations on coal fired power plant emissions?
This is just a profoundly ignorant statement. The Obama/Jackson EPA has issued the most extensive, most stringent set of regulations about coal fired power plant emissions in history. From the coal ash regs to the mercury/toxics rules to the first ghg limits in history to the fine particulate regs, this administration has hammered the coal-fired power plant industry.
Why don't you do a little googling on the subject, because there seems to be a lot that has escaped your notice.
He’d have to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to convince people of the reality of the threat.
The bully pulpit is a myth.
Life is not an Aaron Sorkin movie.
In an era of intense polarization like this one, President Obama making a big public push for a cause would turn as many people away from that cause as win people over to it.
President Obama's progress on climate change policy has mostly been behind the scenes because he and his political team have determined that a big, public political push for greenhouse gas reductions would be a political loser.
"The objectively smartest political strategy for the Democrats just happens to line up with my own policy preferences" is the most overdone subject on the internet, and is almost always wrong.
Only in your mind, JT, could publicizing the presence of an infiltrator into an al Qaeda group and the disruption of their plot qualify as shining a light on wrongdoing.
What, exactly, am I supposed to cite as evidence to demonstrate that bragging about an operation success is not whistle-blowing?
This is an investigation into who leaked information designed to make the government look like an awesome disruptor of terrorist attacks, and toot either his own horn, that of his agency, or that of the administration.
What part of that qualifies as whistle-blowing?
Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and their accomplices claimed that blowing Valerie Plame's cover, in order to discredit her husband and protect the White House's political agenda, as whistle-blowing, too.
Just because you leak secrets doesn't make you a whistle-blower. Whistle-blowing is the act of publicizing wrongdoing, not bragging about your team.
I see it more as a First Amendment issue than a Fourth, but yes, the government stepped on their toes.
My point was that it makes no sense to defend this in terms of the AP having it coming, because they aren't the ones targeted, and getting them isn't what this investigation was about.
Well that’s what Holder would like us to believe. But then we have an interview with Janet Napolitano
We're here trying to do guesswork to weigh the competing interests and judge the appropriateness of the subpoena's breadth, based on contradictory media reports about a subject that involves information that is mostly secret.
This is another reason why a court, reviewing a warrant application, would have been the appropriate venue to authorize this request, or a modified version thereof.
What part of this story is supposed to involve a whistle blower?
This is an investigation of who leaked information intended to demonstrate what an awesome job the government was doing in disrupting a terrorist plot.
You seem to be using Karl Rove's definition of 'whistle blower' from the Valerie Plame investigation: someone who leaks information for the purpose of promoting the government's political standing.
The media didn't commit an alleged crime, and isn't facing consequences.
This isn't an investigation of AP running the story; this is an investigation of who leaked the information to the AP long before the story ran. The AP sat on the information for quite some time, at the request of the government, specifically in order to avoid screwing up the operation.
The problem here is about this braggart who went to the AP and blabbed about this awesome operation they were running. The AP's records were looked at in an attempt to find him, not to nail them.
Claiming the entirety of the AP was put under telephone surveillance secretly seems disproportionate to me, and not even remotely in line with the available facts.
I do think there are legitimate questions raised here, but can we please make at least a minimal effort to be truthful and accurate, instead of trying to be the loudest shrieker in the room?
There are those who would rather see a thousand Abu Salim prison massacres than admit that they were Wrong On the Internet, or that the United States could possibly have done something positive.
The charges by the opposition are absurd. Erdogan had excellent relations with the Syrian government for years, and worked very hard at that relationship in pursuit of a "We're friends with everyone" policy.
If the Pakistani version of the Supreme Court issues such an order, then it supersedes the authorization that the Pakistani executive branch had previously given to the US to conduct the drone strikes*, just as actions taken by the President of the United States under his Commander in Chief powers are valid, but can be superseded by Congressional action.
*You know, the one you pretended didn't exist, and had no legal meaning, until you read this post.
"Meh, who cares? Pretty much any random Pakistani."
"Yeah...hey, is that a person?"
"Uh...I think it's a goat."
"Well, let me know if you spot a person. We have standards, you know."
It "may be" inaccurate to say that that is how targets are selected for drone strikes in the FATA of Pakistan. Maybe. We can't really say one way or the other, but there is a distinct possibility that that is not actually how it works, although, at the same time, it might well be.
On your question about the rebels in Syria: several Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been providing weaponry to the Syrian resistance.
Reading your two points together leaves the impression that the US is involved in arming the Nusra Front (whether you meant to imply this or not), but that NYT investigation you mention also reported that the US was involved in the weapons shipments in order to steer them away from the Nusra Front and other jihadist groups, and towards more acceptable factions.
It doesn't seem to be working, though. The Nusra Front has only become a larger, more important faction of the resistance over the past two years.
"Clearly" the opposition are all terrorists (nice copy and pasting of the Assad regime's propaganda office), and "clearly" the opposition has used sarin gas.
A good way to tell when someone is bullshitting about Syria is the use of unambiguous terms like "clearly." The situation there is about as clear as old mop water, and anyone who claims otherwise is selling something.
Actually, JT, it seems to be the anti-interventionists who consistently define the Syrian opposition as a monad, pretending that they are all pretty much like the Nusra Front, while the pro-interventionists (and people in between, like the Obama administration) draw fine distinctions and speak in terms of the different factions.
The Russians have been using calls for a negotiated settlement, which will never be achieved, as cover for their pro-Baathist policy. So now we get to see exactly how much of a failure that track will be.
The West isn't trying to support al Qaeda or other jihadist groups in Syria. The US is working to steer the Gulf states' arms shipments away from jihadist groups, towards more moderate groups. This not-entirely-effective strategy has been the core of American policy towards the conflict for two years.
The US didn't supply Osama bin Laden in the Afghan War. Bin Laden set up his organization to be a parallel to the American/Pakistani organizations supporting the mujahadeen, for the specific purpose of allowing the war to be fought without the taint of working with the Americans. This is a beloved narrative, but there's never been anything but wishful thinking to support it, and Fisk should know better.
Comparing the Israeli strike to a theoretical Syrian strike against Israeli nuclear facilities is misleading. Israel didn't strike the government's stockpiles of missiles, and hasn't done so as this war has gone on for more than two years, but struck a shipment that was, allegedly, being sent to Hezbollah. An accurate comparison would be not a Syrian Air Force strike on Israeli nuclear warheads, but on a weapons convoy the Israelis were sending to the rebels in Syria.
As for the question of why the Syrian government would ship missiles out of the country, there is a very obvious answer: because the government has a massive advantage over the rebels when it comes to hardware, but not when it comes to personnel and foreign support, so they are using their weapons surplus to buy Hezbollah's support - either their political support (remember that Assad's old friends Hamas jumped ship on him), or to bring Hezbollah fighters into the fight.
Well, John, the UN's "clarification" seem to indicate that the habit of unquestioning accepting accusations about chemical weapons, when there isn't really plausible evidence, is just as wrong-headed when you do it than when the Iraq hawks did it.
If the U.S. could order the Saudis and Qataris to stop arming rebel groups, those countries wouldn't be arming an offshoot of al Qaeda that the State Department put on its list of international terrorist organizations.
Going after the guy who's led the fight to close the prison, instead of the people who have put the roadblocks in his way, seems profoundly misguided.
Turning this into a discussion about whether President Obama broke his promise is a tactic being used by those who want to keep it open to deflect attention from the underlying issue. People who get drawn into that discussion and direct their outrage at the White House are playing right into their hands.
Instead of worrying about a Kurdish state, Turkey should become its greatest champion. They should come out in favor of a Kurdish homeland that includes the Kurdish areas of Iran, Iraq, Syria and, yes, a little slice of eastern Turkey - either as part of a binational Turkish-Kurdish state (Turkurdia?) or as the guarantor of the security of an independent Kurdistan that is closely bound to Turkey economically, militarily, and culturally.
Don't think of it as losing a small slice of Turkey's rural east; think of it as gaining the the Kirkuk oil fields.
Have you ever noticed that whenever the subject is a county with higher per capita emissions than the US, you change the subject to total emissions, and whenever the subject is a country with higher total emissions, you change the subject to per capita emissions?
I think you make a serious error assuming that the Saudis and Qataris are operating as American clients. Just look at the disagreements over whether to arm the jihadist factions.
Professor Cole was arguing against intervention in Syria at the same time he was supporting intervention in Libya.
So was I.
I am still 100% convinced that the Libya operation was the right thing to do, and I am still 52% convinced that trying to do something similar in Syria would be a mistake, owing the differences in the specific situations. My opinion hasn't changed in the past two years.
"So you apparently would be pleased to see the US Government exercise hegemonic power over Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey?"
Just as happy as he is to see Russia and Iran exert hegemonic power in Syria.
See, the big bad US is always trying to expand its power (you know, like ditching Mubarak...uh never mind), but poor little Russia, well, it's understandable.
"We all know that the real reason for our ‘interventions’ has nothing to do with humanitarian goals"
"We" all knew that troops wouldn't be withdrawn from Iraq, that there would be BOOTS ONNA GROUND! in Libya, that the Libyan government would be dominated by Islamists, and that the CIA was working with the Mubarak holdovers after the revolution to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of power.
"otherwise we would not be supplying arms to radical jihadists who love to set bombs that kill civilians and point their fingers at the Assaad gov’t."
We're not; the US has been working to steer arms deliveries from the Gulf states away from such factions of the rebellion. Unless this is another thing that "we all know" without evidence.
"otherwise we would not be supplying arms to radical jihadists who love to set bombs that kill civilians and point their fingers at the Assaad gov’t."
Right, there was no Arab Spring in Libya or Syria, just outside troublemaking.
is it honest or accurate to say that Obama and his Secret Squirrels are not “intervening” in Syria?
Here's an easy way to answer that question: if 70,000 American troops landed in Syria next week, after a five days of an air campaign, would your response be "Meh, no big deal, just the same as what's been going on for two years," or would it "Yowza, this is a huge deal, this is the most terrible thing since Hiroshima on acid on steroids?"
Canceling the F-22 program, sticking to the timeline in Iraq and abandoning the bases, announcing a timeline in Afghanistan, getting involved in Libya, limiting the firepower we used in Libya, canceling the missile defense bases in Eastern Europe, including and sticking to the defense cuts in the sequester, pushing Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal...and that's just off the top of my head.
Sure, just look at how that 'wimp' Obama caved on using AC-130s in Libya, extending the withdrawal timeline in Iraq, or announcing a withdrawal timeline in Afghanistan.
Or canceling the missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.
He sure is pushover when the right criticizes his foreign policy!
John Kerry has a knack for taking on hopeless causes, putting in huge amounts of work, and achieving marginal improvements. I'll bet being the Obama administration's point man withe Pakistani government for four years was just a barrel of laughs.
I always liked that guy. Here in Massachusetts, there is no Kerry Bridge, no Kerry Building, no Kerry Library, no Kerry Program. He just puts his head down and, to use an NFL metaphor, blocks his man.
Have you considered the possibility that, two years after the Syrian uprising began, this isn't actually a plot by an Obama administration hankering for an excuse to fight another Iraq War, and is actually a chemical weapons problem that an administration which isn't looking to get into another war has to deal with?
Whatever you think about the distinction between chemical weapons and conventional weapons, it isn't some uniquely American or Obama-ite policy. It's been written into international conventions and treaties since the 1920s.
Enforcement of international bans on the use of chemical weapons needs to go through the UN. The flip side of that observation is, it's not just Obama's credibility that is at stake.
I don't think you have to sympathize with the other side to recognize the danger in aligning yourself with bad guys.
I trust you won't accuse me of being a Nazi sympathizer if I suggest that our support for the Soviet Union in World War Two produced some less-than-ideal outcomes. Heck, I don't even have to believe that our alliance was the wrong thing to do in order to make that claim. Sometimes, even the most necessary action can come back to haunt you.
Show me your examples of where Our Government has done anything in the way of encouraging or supporting what most of us think of as “democratic government” anywhere in the world.
The MacArthur constitution in Japan? The post-war German and Italian governments? Libya? Throwing Mubarak over the side?
Now, the Taliban, on the other hand: the US absolutely funded and trained people who went on to lead and fight for the Taliban. The connection there is very direct.
Riiiiiiiiight, just look at how terrible our relations are with the Libyan government, and how hostile Obama was to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government when he worked with them to stop the Israeli attack on Gaza.
The US spent the 1980s encouraging Muslim radicals to engage in ‘freedom fighting’ against the leftist government of Afghanistan, and that policy certainly is implicated in the creation of al-Qaeda.
You seem to be choosing your words pretty carefully here, to produce the impression that the U.S. was supporting bin Laden's organization during the war, without actually making that false claim directly.
In actuality, bin Laden did not take American money or work with Americans. He set up his organization to be an alternative for those who wanted to fight against the Soviets without working with Americans - first the fundraising organization, and later a fighting force.
It always struck me as funny that people thought bin Laden was receiving funds from the US, when he was famous for raising and distributing funds on his own, from his rich Saudi friends.
"Defense spending was flat in the previous decade" is a great argument against the theory that the arms race bankrupted the Soviet government, but it doesn't have very much to do with Afghanistan.
The theory that the Afghan defeat caused, or sped up, the collapse depends more upon the collapse of public morale and support for the government.
I'm pretty sure that the Emirates and the other Gulf states that are supporting the overthrow of the Syrian government by an opposition that includes al Qaeda aren't hoping that a democratic government emerges.
That's obviously who you were talking about, since those are the only countries doing that.
I know this isn't your main point, but: And what would have happened if Washington had just left the Communist government in place? Wouldn’t it have gone the same way as the former Communist regime of Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan?
But without their defeat in Afghanistan, would the Soviet Union have fallen, or fallen when it did?
Historical counter-factuals are hard, because you don't know how changing one detail would affect others.
Chuck Todd was an absolute ace when he was MBNBC's poll/data guy. He provided very insightful analysis and did an excellent job putting the results into proper perspective during the 2008 campaign.
But as an all-purpose pundit and teevee host, he is just the absolute worst spreader of dull conventional wisdom. David Gregory probably couldn't do any better no matter where he was put, but Chuck Todd has real talent and knowledge, and it's completely wasted these days.
First of all, a second bomb going off seconds after the first one is not designed to kill first responders.
Second, there isn't actually any evidence that the double-tap drone strikes are aimed at killing generic "first responders," or murdering civilians, or whatever dramatic language you decide gives you a thrill. Seeing who shows up after a strike, and firing at them if you identify them as legitimate targets, is quite a bit different from dropping a bomb to kill whomever shows up, like the Provo IRA used to do.
A reference to the OKC bombing is inapt here, because McVeigh didn't claim to be fighting in the name of religion. He once said in an interview that he didn't believe in Christianity.
Religions are more than their founding scriptures - as a Jew or a Catholic - and genuine, devout religious believers do things, convinced they are right according to their religion - that are forbidden in those scriptures all the time.
Muslims who commit terrorist attacks might be bad Muslims, but they are real Muslims. Christians who beat up gay people, likewise.
I don't think it's 'extreme callousness,' Tacitus. How many people call City Hall because of a pothole on the next guy's street?
There's certainly a dark side to this tendency to pay closer attention to what's going on locally than far away, but like any fundamental human drive, it has both positive and negative expressions.
Thanks for sharing your concern. My concern is that pervasive bias against any group tends to degrade one's ability to perceive and understand events involving that group. The attribution of universal human shortcomings to one's selected out-group is a rather common manifestation of prejudice.
I guess your point is that we are as bad as everyone else?
My point is merely to rebut a falsehood - the claim that overemphasizing local news over foreign news is uniquely American. You're the one who needs to link every observation to a grand theory, JT.
It does seem to me that this time, we at least don’t have the Chimp telling us to “go to the mall,” and Cheney and Wolfowitz gloating in the shadows… and there’s actually a sort of net maturity to the commentary (with strident outliers like Westboro and FOX) that says “wait for the investigators to do their jobs.”
Interesting point. I wonder how much that has to do with the pattern set from the White House, which has rather notably shied away from the panic-mongering and chest-beating that characterized the media strategy of the previous occupant, on this occasion and on others. Remember when Obama gave a few subdued remarks from a podium in Brazil before the Libya operation began? They just don't seem interested in using that microphone to whip people up. Maybe it's seeping down into the media.
And I've seen plenty of American news coverage of bombings in Iraq, Spain, England, and India.
But thanks for tipping your hand at the end. This isn't actually about a claim about news coverage. You just an excuse to take a shot at what terrible people Americans are.
Oddly enough, there are those who keep asserting that the "blows" that have so effectively rendered al Qaeda no longer "a viable organization" have actually served to increase the terror threat.
I think it's time to put that theory to rest, alongside "terrorism is caused by poverty."
A policy of extrajudicial assassination such as ours, which kills innocents in Pakistan and other countries, cannot help but hurt us and our people here, as karma circles around and back at us.
That's an interesting theory. Now here's one of the Muslim Brotherhood MPs in Egypt:
MP Izz al-Din al-Kumi condemned all violence that harmed individuals of any nationality. He discounted a return to the ‘war on terror’ atmosphere of 9/11, saying that al-Qaeda had suffered too many blows any longer to be a viable organization.
I'm rather more inclined to take his words seriously.
Try the human character. Do you think that Russian, Brazilian, Chinese, or Ghanan news media don't also pay more attention local events than those in other countries?
You seem to be the one indulging in American Exceptionalism here - just a derogatory variety.
MP Izz al-Din al-Kumi condemned all violence that harmed individuals of any nationality. He discounted a return to the ‘war on terror’ atmosphere of 9/11, saying that al-Qaeda had suffered too many blows any longer to be a viable organization.
And since we are all opposed to terrorist attacks like these, we can all agree that such "blows" amount to a positive good, right?
Anti-Semitism, pogroms, persecutions, prejudice in eastern and Western Europe are all the reason why Zionism was established.
So let's go to Southwest Asia, because that will solve everything.
The only logical and JUST solution was to RE-ESTABLISH our national home land and granting us the right to protect and govern ourselves.
I can understand someone coming to this conclusion in the 1940s, but to still believe it in 2013 is delusional. How many Jews were killed by rocket fire in New York over the past decade? How many suicide bombers walked into pizza places in Los Angeles during the 1990s?
Perhaps you should look up the term "national interest," since you enjoy using it so much. As it turns out, it doesn't mean "everything that a government does."
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The entire piece is based around a falsehood:
Yet if the appellation went away, the conflict itself, shorn of identifying marks, continued.
Nonsense. The central battlefield of "War on Terror," we were told over and over, was Iraq. I can't help but notice that that "endless war" ended. To try to shoehorn drone strikes in Yemen into a "War for the Greater Middle East" is just silly. Drones can't overthrow a government. They can't control territory. They can't control mineral resources. They can't defeat a military in the field. They really are of very little use as a vehicle of geopolitical competition. All they can do is kill a small number of people once in a while, and you don't gain control of a strategically important region by doing that.
Whether you think shooting at al Qaeda commanders is a good idea or not, it really is not the same thing as toppling the Iraqi government by forces of arms, setting up a client state, putting hundreds of thousands of troops in the country, and setting up a system of permanent bases from which to launch future wars.
I remember back when it was mainly the right that did everything it could to conflate the very different actions of taking over Iraq and conducting counter-terror operations against al Qaeda. Now, it's mainly the so-called-anti-imperialist left.
as for ‘all lebanese factions’ many christians view hzb and the shia as potential guarantor of christian interests in lebanon, especially after the post-war saudi-ization of the lebanese economy.
That's what makes this episode so notable, and the speculation about a grand anti-Hezbollah coalition a possibility: these rockets were launched from a Christian/Druze area.
Ah, yes, those military trainers at the UN immigration office.
Like it or not, this is a political problem. To close Gitmo, Obama needs to win the politics of the issue, or Congress will just block any executive moves the way it blocked his closure order in 2009.
The last time Obama (and Holder) tried to win that political issue was when they proposed to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a New York City federal court. They fought the good fight, they made a passionate and convincing case, and they got their butts handed to them.
Four years later, bin Laden in dead, al Qaeda is a shell, and the end of the Afghan War is in sight and highly desired by the public. Let's hope the politics play out differently this time. That speech was a good start.
But hey, for Joe from Lowell and his ilk, Bush is now the measure.
I was replying to Michael Valenti, the commenter who raised that measure.
Predictably, you didn't have any problem with that measure until it was pointed out to you that it works in President Obama's favor.
If you object to that measure, kindly take it up with the individual who proposed it.
How will all the Obama supporters feel when they wake up the first Wednesday of November in 2016 and realize that President Ryan and Vice President Rubio now have legal claim to the absolute power of life and death over every citizen in the land without trial?
I read overheated, factually-indefinsible blatherings like this, and I wonder: are you really this misinformed, or are you deliberately bullshitting?
Why does it seem that despite the interstitial fog of surely knowledgeable noise, the above sounds like a case for counter-terrorist tactical technical questions driving strategy, policy, expenditures, STATE BEHAVIOR? As opposed to, you know, the other way around?
Sounds TO WHOM?
Have you ever read anything, other than your own comments, that didn't sound like that to you?
You've come up with a bunch of reasons why we shouldn't think about question. Sorry, JT, I've never been very good at not thinking.
Obama’s ratings are as bad as Bush’s were in the opinion polls throughout the Muslim world.
And Bush's ratings among Americans were once 90%. I'm left with the impression that approval ratings are not, in fact, the most reliable measure of a President.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
I must have missed the parts of the speech where the President advocated for invading Iraq, keeping Guantanamo open, using torture, and fighting a global ideological war.
You need to get better stats.
Even the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, the anti-drone outfit Professor Cole links to, puts the number of civilians killed at no more than 20-25% of total deaths.
Although I'm sure you could 'hear stats' that put it at 50:1 and 1000:1, too. The internet is a big place.
AQAP and other radical Sunni groups have grown in numbers and influence in Yemen during the period of US drone strikes, and possibly because of them. How effective, then, have they really been?
Effective at what? That "larger" AQAP doesn't appear to have become any more capable of conducting terrorist attacks against the US. Quite the opposite, al Qaeda's ability to project force against us has crashed since the ramping up of the drone program.
Inside the Beltway analysts are obsessed with atriting the enemy’s leadership cadre. But asymmetrical terrorist groups, some of them kin-based, don’t have that big a need for alpha leaders. Kill one, and a cousin will take over. Blowing stuff up also isn’t all that hard to do, so killing people who know how to do it doesn’t stop the bombings– others just teach themselves how to make and set off explosives.
With all due respect to your opinion, I find that of Osama bin Laden a great deal more convincing on this point. He was talking to his operational commanders about how the damage done by airstrikes was destroying his organization's ability to operate.
The efficacy of counter-terrorist tactics is a technical question that should be considered in it own right, not spun into a mush of wishful thinking that just so happens to inevitably comport with the policy preferences one arrives at from other directions.
Iran in 2013 is like Great Britain when it had hundreds of thousands of troops engaged in combat operations in France, North Africa, and - oh yeah - during the aerial bombardment implemented to prepare the way for Operation Sealion?
There are those who would call that a bit of a stretch.
Yes yes, everyone, of course it's always and everywhere justified to shoot at Israel.
And yet, that doesn't necessarily make it a terribly good idea. Nor does it indicate particularly good things about the Assad government or its grasp on power.
Saddam did this right before the coalition forces invaded in 1991.
The actions of the Bush administration are inconsistent with this analysis. They made a major commitment to move the significant military presence in Saudi Arabia onto permanent bases in Iraq. What country would want to make a failed state the host country for its regional military presence? The US puts major bases in places like Japan, Germany, and Kuwait - strong states without problems of internal disorder.
They also invested far too much money, political capital, and credibility into the nation-building project. They made the success of the new government of Iraq the measure of their decision to start the war.
They didn't want a failed state; they wanted a strong, friendly ally that would show the rest of the region how it was done. They were going to install Ahmed Chalabi and a flat tax, and glory in their great achievement.
Nor is the violence of the past week (or really the last month and a half) like that during the Iraqi Civil War of 2006-2007.
It is more like the bombing campaign that preceded and instigated the Iraqi Civil War - the series of atrocities against Shiite targets that culminated in the bombing of the Golden Mosque. That, too, was aimed at "deterring foreign investment and of keeping the new order from congealing."
That campaign had a large foreign element to it. It was mainly carried out by non-Iraqi, Sunni terrorists who were trying to produce a Shiite backlash against Iraq's Sunnis, in an effort to render the country ungovernable. It worked - they got their revenge killings and the spiral into civil war.
Professor Cole, have you done any digging into what role, if any, foreign Sunni jihadists are playing in these attacks?
And what about the babies in incubators?
Using the term "terrorists" to describe the Syrian opposition as a whole comes directly from the propaganda arm of the Assad government. That usage is a very clear "tell."
That interviewer reminds me of Fox News interviews with Dick Cheney circa 2002.
The Turkish authorities immediately rushed to blame the Syrian secret services and appealed to NATO. It is clear what this conversation will lead to. They evidently want to accuse the Syrian authorities like this and pave the way for an intervention and a sharp reaction on the part of the West or NATO. What do you think about this?
This was pretty rich, coming from the Russian Foreign Minister:
We do not consider it to be right that external players should engage in “socio-political engineering” and outline plans of some sort for the Syrians.
It really is depressing to see people who purport to be leftists buy into Henry Kissinger's theories about the need for dictators to provide stability (as if Gadhaffi's history of exporting instability and weaponry to the rest of Africa could really be considered stability.)
I spent the entire Iraq War insisting to the war's supporters that people like J Wolsch didn't exist, and that the claim that there were liberals and leftists who didn't think Arabs were capable of sustaining a democracy was nonsense.
The response to Arab Spring by so-called anti-imperialists has been quite enlightening to me.
Just curious: is Libya now a “liberal democracy?”
Yes.
I wonder how legitimately curious you could possibly be, if you don't know this by now.
What's growing thin, sir, is the habit of turning policy discussions into episodes of sharing your feelings about the man personally.
What progress? How about doubling fuel economy standards, shutting coal plants left and right, seeding alternative energy industries with the largest investments of any country in the world, and...
....wait for it...
achieving the largest greenhouse gas reductions of any country on the planet.
Oh, yeah, that progress.
or having the EPA not issue regulations on coal fired power plant emissions?
This is just a profoundly ignorant statement. The Obama/Jackson EPA has issued the most extensive, most stringent set of regulations about coal fired power plant emissions in history. From the coal ash regs to the mercury/toxics rules to the first ghg limits in history to the fine particulate regs, this administration has hammered the coal-fired power plant industry.
Why don't you do a little googling on the subject, because there seems to be a lot that has escaped your notice.
He’d have to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to convince people of the reality of the threat.
The bully pulpit is a myth.
Life is not an Aaron Sorkin movie.
In an era of intense polarization like this one, President Obama making a big public push for a cause would turn as many people away from that cause as win people over to it.
The Prez no longer has the credibility with the American people
And Pauline Kael didn't know a single person who voted for Nixon in 1972.
The danger of projecting one's own preferences onto the larger body politic is something observers of politics should work to avoid.
President Obama's progress on climate change policy has mostly been behind the scenes because he and his political team have determined that a big, public political push for greenhouse gas reductions would be a political loser.
"The objectively smartest political strategy for the Democrats just happens to line up with my own policy preferences" is the most overdone subject on the internet, and is almost always wrong.
If the outcome of ignoring regulations is bad, it invalidates the libertarian claim that there shouldn't be regulations.
This "sociopath" was operating the way libertarians want him to be able to operate. I don't like the way it worked out. You?
It was a company own by a local politician who didn’t care about the laws that had been issued to protect the site.
I've highlighted the part that has to do with libertarianism for you.
Only in your mind, JT, could publicizing the presence of an infiltrator into an al Qaeda group and the disruption of their plot qualify as shining a light on wrongdoing.
What, exactly, am I supposed to cite as evidence to demonstrate that bragging about an operation success is not whistle-blowing?
This is an investigation into who leaked information designed to make the government look like an awesome disruptor of terrorist attacks, and toot either his own horn, that of his agency, or that of the administration.
What part of that qualifies as whistle-blowing?
Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and their accomplices claimed that blowing Valerie Plame's cover, in order to discredit her husband and protect the White House's political agenda, as whistle-blowing, too.
Just because you leak secrets doesn't make you a whistle-blower. Whistle-blowing is the act of publicizing wrongdoing, not bragging about your team.
Mark,
The AP’s right to privacy was still invaded.
I see it more as a First Amendment issue than a Fourth, but yes, the government stepped on their toes.
My point was that it makes no sense to defend this in terms of the AP having it coming, because they aren't the ones targeted, and getting them isn't what this investigation was about.
Well that’s what Holder would like us to believe. But then we have an interview with Janet Napolitano
We're here trying to do guesswork to weigh the competing interests and judge the appropriateness of the subpoena's breadth, based on contradictory media reports about a subject that involves information that is mostly secret.
This is another reason why a court, reviewing a warrant application, would have been the appropriate venue to authorize this request, or a modified version thereof.
What part of this story is supposed to involve a whistle blower?
This is an investigation of who leaked information intended to demonstrate what an awesome job the government was doing in disrupting a terrorist plot.
You seem to be using Karl Rove's definition of 'whistle blower' from the Valerie Plame investigation: someone who leaks information for the purpose of promoting the government's political standing.
The media didn't commit an alleged crime, and isn't facing consequences.
This isn't an investigation of AP running the story; this is an investigation of who leaked the information to the AP long before the story ran. The AP sat on the information for quite some time, at the request of the government, specifically in order to avoid screwing up the operation.
The problem here is about this braggart who went to the AP and blabbed about this awesome operation they were running. The AP's records were looked at in an attempt to find him, not to nail them.
Claiming the entirety of the AP was put under telephone surveillance secretly seems disproportionate to me, and not even remotely in line with the available facts.
I do think there are legitimate questions raised here, but can we please make at least a minimal effort to be truthful and accurate, instead of trying to be the loudest shrieker in the room?
There are those who would rather see a thousand Abu Salim prison massacres than admit that they were Wrong On the Internet, or that the United States could possibly have done something positive.
It's the "I woulda stopped the mass shooting with my concealed handgun" theory, on the the level of the nation-state.
The charges by the opposition are absurd. Erdogan had excellent relations with the Syrian government for years, and worked very hard at that relationship in pursuit of a "We're friends with everyone" policy.
...and waiting. And waiting.
And waiting.
If the Pakistani version of the Supreme Court issues such an order, then it supersedes the authorization that the Pakistani executive branch had previously given to the US to conduct the drone strikes*, just as actions taken by the President of the United States under his Commander in Chief powers are valid, but can be superseded by Congressional action.
*You know, the one you pretended didn't exist, and had no legal meaning, until you read this post.
That’s a damning charge that may be overstated.
"Hey, Bill, what's the target today?"
"Meh, who cares? Pretty much any random Pakistani."
"Yeah...hey, is that a person?"
"Uh...I think it's a goat."
"Well, let me know if you spot a person. We have standards, you know."
It "may be" inaccurate to say that that is how targets are selected for drone strikes in the FATA of Pakistan. Maybe. We can't really say one way or the other, but there is a distinct possibility that that is not actually how it works, although, at the same time, it might well be.
I guess that's just one of those known unknowns.
On your question about the rebels in Syria: several Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been providing weaponry to the Syrian resistance.
Reading your two points together leaves the impression that the US is involved in arming the Nusra Front (whether you meant to imply this or not), but that NYT investigation you mention also reported that the US was involved in the weapons shipments in order to steer them away from the Nusra Front and other jihadist groups, and towards more acceptable factions.
It doesn't seem to be working, though. The Nusra Front has only become a larger, more important faction of the resistance over the past two years.
"Clearly" the opposition are all terrorists (nice copy and pasting of the Assad regime's propaganda office), and "clearly" the opposition has used sarin gas.
A good way to tell when someone is bullshitting about Syria is the use of unambiguous terms like "clearly." The situation there is about as clear as old mop water, and anyone who claims otherwise is selling something.
Actually, JT, it seems to be the anti-interventionists who consistently define the Syrian opposition as a monad, pretending that they are all pretty much like the Nusra Front, while the pro-interventionists (and people in between, like the Obama administration) draw fine distinctions and speak in terms of the different factions.
I couldn't believe the Israelis' stupidity in conducing those strikes. What a gift to Assad!
It's called "calling their bluff."
The Russians have been using calls for a negotiated settlement, which will never be achieved, as cover for their pro-Baathist policy. So now we get to see exactly how much of a failure that track will be.
This is the Russia that has increased its military spending while the US has been reducing ours, right?
The Putin who fought the Chechen War, right?
You seem to be ignoring the decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11.
http://www.cfr.org/geoeconomics/trends-us-military-spending/p28855
US military spending dropped by about 30% in constant dollars, and more as a % of GDP, at the end of the Cold War.
I'm sorry, Curtis, I couldn't hear you over the sound of Osama bin Laden's bullet-ridden corpse splashing into the Indian Ocean.
You were saying something about "over his head?" I hear the water is pretty deep off Pakistan.
Fisk bungles quite a few facts in this interview.
The West isn't trying to support al Qaeda or other jihadist groups in Syria. The US is working to steer the Gulf states' arms shipments away from jihadist groups, towards more moderate groups. This not-entirely-effective strategy has been the core of American policy towards the conflict for two years.
The US didn't supply Osama bin Laden in the Afghan War. Bin Laden set up his organization to be a parallel to the American/Pakistani organizations supporting the mujahadeen, for the specific purpose of allowing the war to be fought without the taint of working with the Americans. This is a beloved narrative, but there's never been anything but wishful thinking to support it, and Fisk should know better.
Comparing the Israeli strike to a theoretical Syrian strike against Israeli nuclear facilities is misleading. Israel didn't strike the government's stockpiles of missiles, and hasn't done so as this war has gone on for more than two years, but struck a shipment that was, allegedly, being sent to Hezbollah. An accurate comparison would be not a Syrian Air Force strike on Israeli nuclear warheads, but on a weapons convoy the Israelis were sending to the rebels in Syria.
As for the question of why the Syrian government would ship missiles out of the country, there is a very obvious answer: because the government has a massive advantage over the rebels when it comes to hardware, but not when it comes to personnel and foreign support, so they are using their weapons surplus to buy Hezbollah's support - either their political support (remember that Assad's old friends Hamas jumped ship on him), or to bring Hezbollah fighters into the fight.
Would Iran? (Snicker)
Well, John, the UN's "clarification" seem to indicate that the habit of unquestioning accepting accusations about chemical weapons, when there isn't really plausible evidence, is just as wrong-headed when you do it than when the Iraq hawks did it.
Looks like the UN is running away from Del Ponte faster than her tongue ran away from her brain.
It's interesting to go back through the thread here and see who was so ready to accept the claim as gospel. Ho hum, now all we need is...
The rebels have been capturing and using Syrian military weaponry for two years now. They started with rifles, and moved all the way to tanks.
Why would the capture of chemical stockpiles be so unlikely?
If the U.S. could order the Saudis and Qataris to stop arming rebel groups, those countries wouldn't be arming an offshoot of al Qaeda that the State Department put on its list of international terrorist organizations.
Seconded. This doesn't clarify anything - but it sure does knock down the narrative that the usual suspects were pushing over the past week.
Going after the guy who's led the fight to close the prison, instead of the people who have put the roadblocks in his way, seems profoundly misguided.
Turning this into a discussion about whether President Obama broke his promise is a tactic being used by those who want to keep it open to deflect attention from the underlying issue. People who get drawn into that discussion and direct their outrage at the White House are playing right into their hands.
Instead of worrying about a Kurdish state, Turkey should become its greatest champion. They should come out in favor of a Kurdish homeland that includes the Kurdish areas of Iran, Iraq, Syria and, yes, a little slice of eastern Turkey - either as part of a binational Turkish-Kurdish state (Turkurdia?) or as the guarantor of the security of an independent Kurdistan that is closely bound to Turkey economically, militarily, and culturally.
Don't think of it as losing a small slice of Turkey's rural east; think of it as gaining the the Kirkuk oil fields.
Professor,
Have you ever noticed that whenever the subject is a county with higher per capita emissions than the US, you change the subject to total emissions, and whenever the subject is a country with higher total emissions, you change the subject to per capita emissions?
I think you make a serious error assuming that the Saudis and Qataris are operating as American clients. Just look at the disagreements over whether to arm the jihadist factions.
Professor Cole was arguing against intervention in Syria at the same time he was supporting intervention in Libya.
So was I.
I am still 100% convinced that the Libya operation was the right thing to do, and I am still 52% convinced that trying to do something similar in Syria would be a mistake, owing the differences in the specific situations. My opinion hasn't changed in the past two years.
There's more oil there than there is in Somalia and Pakistan.
"So you apparently would be pleased to see the US Government exercise hegemonic power over Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey?"
Just as happy as he is to see Russia and Iran exert hegemonic power in Syria.
See, the big bad US is always trying to expand its power (you know, like ditching Mubarak...uh never mind), but poor little Russia, well, it's understandable.
"We all know that the real reason for our ‘interventions’ has nothing to do with humanitarian goals"
"We" all knew that troops wouldn't be withdrawn from Iraq, that there would be BOOTS ONNA GROUND! in Libya, that the Libyan government would be dominated by Islamists, and that the CIA was working with the Mubarak holdovers after the revolution to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of power.
"otherwise we would not be supplying arms to radical jihadists who love to set bombs that kill civilians and point their fingers at the Assaad gov’t."
We're not; the US has been working to steer arms deliveries from the Gulf states away from such factions of the rebellion. Unless this is another thing that "we all know" without evidence.
"otherwise we would not be supplying arms to radical jihadists who love to set bombs that kill civilians and point their fingers at the Assaad gov’t."
Right, there was no Arab Spring in Libya or Syria, just outside troublemaking.
is it honest or accurate to say that Obama and his Secret Squirrels are not “intervening” in Syria?
Here's an easy way to answer that question: if 70,000 American troops landed in Syria next week, after a five days of an air campaign, would your response be "Meh, no big deal, just the same as what's been going on for two years," or would it "Yowza, this is a huge deal, this is the most terrible thing since Hiroshima on acid on steroids?"
Obama has crossed the military on:
Canceling the F-22 program, sticking to the timeline in Iraq and abandoning the bases, announcing a timeline in Afghanistan, getting involved in Libya, limiting the firepower we used in Libya, canceling the missile defense bases in Eastern Europe, including and sticking to the defense cuts in the sequester, pushing Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal...and that's just off the top of my head.
Sure, just look at how that 'wimp' Obama caved on using AC-130s in Libya, extending the withdrawal timeline in Iraq, or announcing a withdrawal timeline in Afghanistan.
Or canceling the missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.
He sure is pushover when the right criticizes his foreign policy!
John Kerry. Messianic. Sure, that makes sense.
John Kerry has a knack for taking on hopeless causes, putting in huge amounts of work, and achieving marginal improvements. I'll bet being the Obama administration's point man withe Pakistani government for four years was just a barrel of laughs.
I always liked that guy. Here in Massachusetts, there is no Kerry Bridge, no Kerry Building, no Kerry Library, no Kerry Program. He just puts his head down and, to use an NFL metaphor, blocks his man.
Because they don't, and you just made that up.
That depends on what "trick" you want to "do."
Have you considered the possibility that, two years after the Syrian uprising began, this isn't actually a plot by an Obama administration hankering for an excuse to fight another Iraq War, and is actually a chemical weapons problem that an administration which isn't looking to get into another war has to deal with?
I see the great flip-flop on the credibility of UN weapons inspectors has began.
I remember when this sort innuendo was being used by the Iraq hawks to discredit Hans Blix.
Whatever you think about the distinction between chemical weapons and conventional weapons, it isn't some uniquely American or Obama-ite policy. It's been written into international conventions and treaties since the 1920s.
Enforcement of international bans on the use of chemical weapons needs to go through the UN. The flip side of that observation is, it's not just Obama's credibility that is at stake.
Bill,
I don't think you have to sympathize with the other side to recognize the danger in aligning yourself with bad guys.
I trust you won't accuse me of being a Nazi sympathizer if I suggest that our support for the Soviet Union in World War Two produced some less-than-ideal outcomes. Heck, I don't even have to believe that our alliance was the wrong thing to do in order to make that claim. Sometimes, even the most necessary action can come back to haunt you.
Show me your examples of where Our Government has done anything in the way of encouraging or supporting what most of us think of as “democratic government” anywhere in the world.
The MacArthur constitution in Japan? The post-war German and Italian governments? Libya? Throwing Mubarak over the side?
Now, the Taliban, on the other hand: the US absolutely funded and trained people who went on to lead and fight for the Taliban. The connection there is very direct.
Sure, Professor, but look at the American experience with Vietnam.
An overseas military debacle goes a long way towards undermining public confidence in the system overall.
Same is true of our Great US government.
Riiiiiiiiight, just look at how terrible our relations are with the Libyan government, and how hostile Obama was to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government when he worked with them to stop the Israeli attack on Gaza.
Narrative Uber Alles!
The US spent the 1980s encouraging Muslim radicals to engage in ‘freedom fighting’ against the leftist government of Afghanistan, and that policy certainly is implicated in the creation of al-Qaeda.
You seem to be choosing your words pretty carefully here, to produce the impression that the U.S. was supporting bin Laden's organization during the war, without actually making that false claim directly.
In actuality, bin Laden did not take American money or work with Americans. He set up his organization to be an alternative for those who wanted to fight against the Soviets without working with Americans - first the fundraising organization, and later a fighting force.
It always struck me as funny that people thought bin Laden was receiving funds from the US, when he was famous for raising and distributing funds on his own, from his rich Saudi friends.
"Defense spending was flat in the previous decade" is a great argument against the theory that the arms race bankrupted the Soviet government, but it doesn't have very much to do with Afghanistan.
The theory that the Afghan defeat caused, or sped up, the collapse depends more upon the collapse of public morale and support for the government.
I'm pretty sure that the Emirates and the other Gulf states that are supporting the overthrow of the Syrian government by an opposition that includes al Qaeda aren't hoping that a democratic government emerges.
That's obviously who you were talking about, since those are the only countries doing that.
A little light reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/world/middleeast/us-designates-syrian-al-nusra-front-as-terrorist-group.html
I know this isn't your main point, but: And what would have happened if Washington had just left the Communist government in place? Wouldn’t it have gone the same way as the former Communist regime of Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan?
But without their defeat in Afghanistan, would the Soviet Union have fallen, or fallen when it did?
Historical counter-factuals are hard, because you don't know how changing one detail would affect others.
Chuck Todd was an absolute ace when he was MBNBC's poll/data guy. He provided very insightful analysis and did an excellent job putting the results into proper perspective during the 2008 campaign.
But as an all-purpose pundit and teevee host, he is just the absolute worst spreader of dull conventional wisdom. David Gregory probably couldn't do any better no matter where he was put, but Chuck Todd has real talent and knowledge, and it's completely wasted these days.
First of all, a second bomb going off seconds after the first one is not designed to kill first responders.
Second, there isn't actually any evidence that the double-tap drone strikes are aimed at killing generic "first responders," or murdering civilians, or whatever dramatic language you decide gives you a thrill. Seeing who shows up after a strike, and firing at them if you identify them as legitimate targets, is quite a bit different from dropping a bomb to kill whomever shows up, like the Provo IRA used to do.
JT,
A reference to the OKC bombing is inapt here, because McVeigh didn't claim to be fighting in the name of religion. He once said in an interview that he didn't believe in Christianity.
....which serves only to demonstrate that religions are more than the contents of their scriptures.
That’s why Al Queda and the Taliban have political, not religious objectives.
Like the crusaders, who were fighting for Christendom much more than for Christianity.
Religions are more than their founding scriptures - as a Jew or a Catholic - and genuine, devout religious believers do things, convinced they are right according to their religion - that are forbidden in those scriptures all the time.
Muslims who commit terrorist attacks might be bad Muslims, but they are real Muslims. Christians who beat up gay people, likewise.
I don't think it's 'extreme callousness,' Tacitus. How many people call City Hall because of a pothole on the next guy's street?
There's certainly a dark side to this tendency to pay closer attention to what's going on locally than far away, but like any fundamental human drive, it has both positive and negative expressions.
Thanks for sharing your concern. My concern is that pervasive bias against any group tends to degrade one's ability to perceive and understand events involving that group. The attribution of universal human shortcomings to one's selected out-group is a rather common manifestation of prejudice.
I guess your point is that we are as bad as everyone else?
My point is merely to rebut a falsehood - the claim that overemphasizing local news over foreign news is uniquely American. You're the one who needs to link every observation to a grand theory, JT.
It does seem to me that this time, we at least don’t have the Chimp telling us to “go to the mall,” and Cheney and Wolfowitz gloating in the shadows… and there’s actually a sort of net maturity to the commentary (with strident outliers like Westboro and FOX) that says “wait for the investigators to do their jobs.”
Interesting point. I wonder how much that has to do with the pattern set from the White House, which has rather notably shied away from the panic-mongering and chest-beating that characterized the media strategy of the previous occupant, on this occasion and on others. Remember when Obama gave a few subdued remarks from a podium in Brazil before the Libya operation began? They just don't seem interested in using that microphone to whip people up. Maybe it's seeping down into the media.
And I've seen plenty of American news coverage of bombings in Iraq, Spain, England, and India.
But thanks for tipping your hand at the end. This isn't actually about a claim about news coverage. You just an excuse to take a shot at what terrible people Americans are.
The destruction, yes.
Oddly enough, there are those who keep asserting that the "blows" that have so effectively rendered al Qaeda no longer "a viable organization" have actually served to increase the terror threat.
I think it's time to put that theory to rest, alongside "terrorism is caused by poverty."
A policy of extrajudicial assassination such as ours, which kills innocents in Pakistan and other countries, cannot help but hurt us and our people here, as karma circles around and back at us.
That's an interesting theory. Now here's one of the Muslim Brotherhood MPs in Egypt:
MP Izz al-Din al-Kumi condemned all violence that harmed individuals of any nationality. He discounted a return to the ‘war on terror’ atmosphere of 9/11, saying that al-Qaeda had suffered too many blows any longer to be a viable organization.
I'm rather more inclined to take his words seriously.
The American character?
Try the human character. Do you think that Russian, Brazilian, Chinese, or Ghanan news media don't also pay more attention local events than those in other countries?
You seem to be the one indulging in American Exceptionalism here - just a derogatory variety.
MP Izz al-Din al-Kumi condemned all violence that harmed individuals of any nationality. He discounted a return to the ‘war on terror’ atmosphere of 9/11, saying that al-Qaeda had suffered too many blows any longer to be a viable organization.
And since we are all opposed to terrorist attacks like these, we can all agree that such "blows" amount to a positive good, right?
Christian Zionism did have a certain degree of influence toward the eventual creation of Israel in 1948.
Oh, no question, but that's a different question than whether the anti-Semitic expulsionism of the Middle Ages had such an influence.
I like the way "Sudan" and "Afghanistan" are, apparently, scary enough by themselves not to require scary adjectives in their names.
Is there any evidence that those early Zionist writers were influenced by the writing of Christian expulsionists in the 1500s?
Why Jews have no right to create their national state on their historical land?
Because the phrase "historical land" means "place where they hadn't lived for close to two millennia.
And because there were already people living on that "historical land" who had a real right to it.
Anti-Semitism, pogroms, persecutions, prejudice in eastern and Western Europe are all the reason why Zionism was established.
So let's go to Southwest Asia, because that will solve everything.
The only logical and JUST solution was to RE-ESTABLISH our national home land and granting us the right to protect and govern ourselves.
I can understand someone coming to this conclusion in the 1940s, but to still believe it in 2013 is delusional. How many Jews were killed by rocket fire in New York over the past decade? How many suicide bombers walked into pizza places in Los Angeles during the 1990s?
Lest you think all of the good news is overseas: in the first quarter of 2013, 82% of new power capacity in the United States was renewable.
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/24766
For March, that number was 100%. All of it. This isn't fairy dust anymore; it's happening.
Why?
Perhaps you should look up the term "national interest," since you enjoy using it so much. As it turns out, it doesn't mean "everything that a government does."
No, I'm talking about unforced errors, like the Koreans' repeated fizzles.
It's supposed to be "fissile," fellas. F-I-S-S-I-L-E. Perhaps what's going on is a translation problem.
Since there haven't been any embarrassing failures in the Iranian nuclear program, I find the connection to North Korea improbable.