[above: Fort Leavenworth, Kansas]

Are all American communities in a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) mentality when it comes to housing detainees who are now in Guantanamo?

Not hardly.

The city leaders of Fort Leavenworth have rejected the idea of having them come there. But click on this story about it & see the comments from local readers, most of whom are retired military or connected to same, which include:

“What a bunch of SPINELESS GUTLESS so called ‘Leaders’ we have in this town. … [M]ost of us who are former military in town are behind the [transfer], BECAUSE we know the capabilities of the USDB [prison] Staff to handle the situation.”

“Incarcerating them in Gitmo without due process is one of the many reasons that the US is hated in the Middle East. The only way to change our image is to resolve those issues. We are a prison city, that’s what we do.”

“I’d be very proud of my city for actually playing a role in the war. [It's] not just in DC or NY. … We should rename it the ‘Global (minus Leavenworth) War on Terror.’”

(h/t Andrew Sullivan.)

Those readers certainly have a patriotic perspective on keeping the country safe that we would be wise not to ignore.

They “get” what’s at stake.

Why can’t the rest of us?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: President Obama removes one of terrorism’s biggest recruiting tools.

Read about it here, & a discussion about whether it’s the right thing here.

Today I heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio call this move a “political” one.

To which I say: well, duh.

But not ‘political’ in the way Rush is meaning (appeasing the left).

For too long we have failed to capitalize on the United States of America’s greatest weapon: the idea behind this country & the ideals it champions.

The Guantanamo Bay prison represented a step off of the path of those ideals. It said loudly to the world, “do as we say - not as we do.” Closing the prison sends a - yes, political - message around the world that we are better than that. & that our legal system can be effective in terms of meting out justice - even against those who would call for our destruction.

Some discussion on Talk 102.3 this morning brought to mind an analogy. Styles, et al were discussing what to do with the Guantanamo prisoners - & how we can’t have them mingle with the “normal” prison population, because they wouldn’t last longer than 2 seconds. They noted that America-bombers & child rapists are subject to the prisoners’ “own form of justice.”

That’s a perfect way of looking at the mindset behind the creation of Guantanamo.

The problem with the system is that it doesn’t leave room for justice. It keeps terrorist suspects off the streets .. but because we’ve thrown them down a legal rabbit hole, one that’s in my view ultimately self-defeating, many of the legitimate terror cases will never be given true justice.

Closing Guantanamo takes away a terrorist recruitment tool, & joins the battle where it really should be fought, & ultimately will be won - not in a physical location, but rather inside the minds of everyone around the world.

& there’s nothing that says we can’t hold a suspect extra-legally. But those cases should be both temporary & reserved for the very few, ones which we have clear-cut evidence on, & not just people picked up off the battlefield, or arrested in cases of mistaken identities who have languished in Gitmo hell for years.

We as a people are far smarter than that, & it’s a breath of fresh air to have someone in charge who realizes this.

(I should also note that I have the utmost confidence we are perfectly capable of housing these prisoners on U.S. soil. The fears of “well, what if we have a prison break?” can be dispelled if you think through logically the scenario about exactly how much damage a person in handcuffs & an orange jumpsuit could really do while on the run).

We need to have faith in our country, & the multitude of legal precedents of our criminal justice system.

We should not be afraid to try these cases based on evidence & the rule of law, & the rights that our Founding Fathers believed to be inalienable - not just to American citizens, but to the entire human race.

I, for one, would rather die while upholding my great country’s ideals than give those ideals up in the name of security.

FURTHER READING:

RedState says of Rep. Jack Murtha’s offer to house the Gitmo detainees in his district:

“I’m sure the people of his district are ready to greet Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with open arms and casseroles.”

How classy. & what’s your solution, again?

Newshoggers says of Bush’s choice to go outside our legal system:

If they’d just stuck with the existing definitions, all the Gitmo detainees against whom they could build a real case under the actual rules of law, without torture and without rigging the courts, would have been tried as POW’s already. If found guilty, the death penalty would have been warranted in some cases. I would personally have had no problem with that. That it hasn’t happened is a failure of the Bush administration, no-one else. They have proven themselves incompetent to shepherd America’s national security.

& Andrew Sullivan says

“Housing detainees in the US might not be the politically safe thing to do, but it is the only ethical and lawful action. I don’t see why American prisons are incapable of handing Gitmo detainees – they house domestic terrorists already. And how housing detainees in maximum security prisons impacts the American citizens residing nearby is beyond me.

…

What do we gain by keeping detainees at Gitmo? I understand that Republicans might find some political advantage in opposing Gitmo’s closure, but don’t see a logical reason for keeping it open. Trying detainees won’t appear legitimate unless we bring them under the American system, and if we do that some very bad men will go free. But that is Bush’s failing, not Obama’s. This was inevitable the minute the Bush administration decided to authorize torture.”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

[Sure, I'd guess he'd fly a plane. This is from a couple years back when his wax likeness flew to DC. It's one of my favorite pictures ever.]

Above: Sean Hannity, last night, who said:

“Well, one of the other things that I found pretty interesting is, you know, where would Abraham Lincoln be as it relates to Gitmo? Didn’t he put aside civil rights and even shut down press outlets and issues of habeas corpus as it relates to those issues? I think he’d be on a very different side on the Gitmo issue, don’t you think?”

No, I don’t think.

I’m on the side of this week’s Newsweek piece by another conservative, Christopher Hitchens:

“Until the Union itself could be considered safe and whole again, the Constitution—written for the entire Union and, in a sense, representing it—did not really apply, even though the president’s “inherent powers” most certainly did. (I give this as my own interpretation, as well as to distinguish Lincoln’s drastic emergency measures from some later and more recent ones. Hateful and menacing as it is, Islamic terrorism does not immediately threaten us with secession and disunion and the reduction of millions of Americans to involuntary servitude.)”

Emphasis mine.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

(left photo: Gilian Bolsover, Chattanooga Times Free Press. right: AP)

Fantastic article in this past Sunday’s Times Free-Press about Mike Acuff, a lawyer in Hixson, Tennessee (right) who volunteered to be on the defense of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the purported mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks:

“This country has gone wrong where we have put people in jail, changed the rules and haven’t given them a quick and fair opportunity to hear their cases,” Lt. Col. Acuff said.”

We can either torture these inmates or we can hand out justice.

We can’t do both.

Good for Acuff.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: clips of Presidents 43 & 44 on the Sunday talk shows yesterday.

I thought Obama’s handling of Cheney’s point was deft.

& thought the opposite was true for Bush’s labored defense of torture.

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty

5 different takes on what’s going on, after the jump.

Marvin Hier in the Wall Street Journal (h/t my Dad):

“Red Cross officials are all over the Gaza crisis, describing it as a full-blown humanitarian nightmare. Where were they during the seven months when tens of thousands of Israeli families could not sleep for fear of a rocket attack? Where were their trauma experts to decry that humanitarian crisis?

There have been hundreds of articles and reports written from the Erez border crossing falsely accusing Israel of blocking humanitarian supplies from reaching beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza. (In fact, over 520 truck loads of humanitarian aid have been delivered through Israeli crossings since the beginning of the Israeli counterattack.) But how many news articles, NGO reports and special U.N. commissions have investigated Hamas’s policy of deliberately placing rocket launchers near schools, mosques and homes in order to use innocent Palestinians as human shields?”

Writing in the Washington Post, former President Jimmy Carter says the conflict could have been avoided, based on his experiences visiting the region last year:

“We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.

After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.

Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel’s withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel’s unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.”

In a piece in today’s New York Times, Rashid Khalidi (like Marvin Hier above) tries to point out inaccuracies in the media about Israel’s role:

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Ross Douthat’s thoughtful examination of the conflict nearly leads him to throw up his hands:

“The answer is simultaneously simple and impossible: In the midst of a hotly-contested domestic political scene, they need to balance their short-term security concerns (all those rockets flying out of Gaza, in this case) against a twofold long-term goal - the need to incentivize Palestinians to stay within hailing distance of the negotiating table (which is awfully hard to do when you’re smashing through their cities in pursuit of Hamas rocketeers), and the need to act unilaterally, in the absence of a plausible negotiating partner, to preserve their state’s long-term viability in the face of the looming demographic time bomb (which is awfully hard to do, as Israel has discovered in the wake of the Gaza pull-out, without compromising your short-term security). And it’s the Kobayashi Maru-style impossibility of all this that makes something like the Gaza incursion so hard to analyze: It seems like a bad idea, but within the constraints that Israeli leaders operate under it’s possible that it’s the worst option except for all the others.”

& finally, Matt Yglesias tries to put this conflict in the context of all conflicts:

“…something I’ve heard from fans of this attack is rhetorical questions along the lines of “what would the United States do if we were being attacked by rockets from Mexico or Canada?” Of course with such hypotheticals, it’s always hard to specify the issue correctly. I assume if someone shot a rocket across the Canadian border in the general direction of Seattle that the Canadian government would arrest the guy. But you actually don’t need to get very hypothetical to ask what the United States would do if people felt themselves threatened by foreign killers — we’d do exactly what we did in 2002-2003, namely engage in a panicky, counterproductive, and immoral overreaction driven more by emotion, ego, and politics than by sound thinking about the situation. So I don’t really find it surprising that Israel is reacting in this way.

By somewhat the same token, I do read in the comments section what I would regard as a disproportionate level of shock and appalledness from some quarters about Israeli activities as if this action is some kind of unprecedented outrage in human history. The real outrage is how common and banal, how unsurprising and thoroughly precedented it is.

Those are just some of a myriad of viewpoints out there on the web.

What are yours? Post a comment!

FURTHER READING: Check out (from Pew) how the Gaza story is sucking up the news hole, even though most reporters aren’t allowed in.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Just like (yet, by definition, not at all like) in Iraq, the key is counterinsurgency.

An absolutely essential read over at Foreign Policy shows how General David Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy can lead to victory, including these so-called “paradoxes:”

Paradox 1: Some of the best weapons do not shoot.

Paradox 2: Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.

Paradox 3: The hosts doing something tolerably is often better than foreigners doing it well.

Paradox 4: Sometimes the more force is used, the less effective it is.

Paradox 5: Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.

If you care about victory over terrorism, you need to read this.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

“How did we transform from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers? One word: fear.

Fear is blinding, hateful, and vengeful. It makes the end justify the means. And why not? If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what’s wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock?

The simple answer is the rule of law. Our Constitution defines the rules that guide our nation. It was drafted by those who looked around the world of the eighteenth century and saw persecution, torture, and other crimes against humanity and believed that America could be better than that. This new nation would recognize that every individual has an inherent right to personal dignity, to justice, to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

We have preached these values to the world. We have made clear that there are certain lines Americans will not cross because we respect the dignity of every human being. That pledge was written into the oath of office given to every president, “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” It’s what is supposed to make our leaders different from every tyrant, dictator, or despot. We are sworn to govern by the rule of law, not by brute force.

We cannot simply suspend these beliefs in the name of national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground.

We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.”

-Leon Panetta, the man chosen by Barack Obama to head the CIA, writing in Washington Monthly last year.

As someone put it today, “This is a good day for America’s soul.”

FURTHER READING: Marc Ambinder on Panetta’s greatest challenges.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

(I don’t know whom to credit for this heart-rending picture - it wasn’t credited where I found it. I also don’t know if this is an Israeli or a Palestinian. But in terms of what this post is about, it won’t - & shouldn’t - matter)

One of the best bloggers in the business, Glenn Greenwald, warns us all against the dangers of one way to take sides in the Gaza conflict:

“If you see Palestinians as something less than civilized human beings:  as “barbarians” — just as if you see Americans as infidels warring with God or Jews as sub-human rats — then it naturally follows that civilian deaths are irrelevant, perhaps even something to cheer.  For people who think that way, arguments about “proportionality” won’t even begin to resonate — such concepts can’t even be understood — because the core premise, that excessive civilian deaths are horrible and should be avoided at all costs, isn’t accepted.  Why should a superior, civilized, peaceful society allow the welfare of violent, hateful barbarians to interfere with its objectives?  How can the deaths or suffering of thousands of barbarians ever be weighed against the death of even a single civilized person?

So many of these conflicts — one might say almost all of them — end up shaped by the same virtually universal deficiency:  excessive tribalistic identification (i.e.:  the group with which I was trained to identify is right and good and just and my group’s enemy is bad and wrong and violent), which causes people to view the world only from the perspective of their side, to believe that X is good when they do it and evil when it’s done to them.  X can be torture, or the killing of civilians in order to “send a message” (i.e., Terrorism), or invading and occupying other people’s land, or using massive lethal force against defenseless populations, or seeing one’s own side as composed of real humans and the other side as sub-human, evil barbarians.

…

For those who evaluate moral questions from that blindingly self-regarding perspective, anything and everything becomes easily justifiable.”

I would caution anyone from looking at this as a black-&-white issue. & I explained why I think this is important here, in this post from April 2nd.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

From a comprehensive & even-handed guest-post at the Washington Note by Daniel Levy, on why you should be paying attention to what’s happening in the Middle East this week:

“Bottom line - Arabs and Jews are killing each other - so what’s new?

And why on earth would America want to be involved?

Here’s the bad news folks - America is involved, up to its eyeballs actually. Today, after Israeli air-strikes that killed over 200 Palestinians in Gaza, the Middle East is again seething with rage.

Recruiters to the most radical of causes are again cashing in. If Osama Bin Laden is indeed a cave-dweller these days then U.S. intel should be listening out for a booming echo of laughter. Demonstrations across the Arab world and contributors to the ever-proliferating Arabic language news media and blogosphere hold the U.S., and not just Israel, responsible for what happened today (and that is a position taken, for good reasons, by sensible folk, not hard-liners).”

Levy’s solution:

Today’s events should be ‘exhibit A’ in why the next U.S. Government cannot leave the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to fester or try to ‘manage’ it - as long as it remains unresolved, it has a nasty habit of forcing itself onto the agenda.

That can happen on terms dictated to the U.S. by the region (bad) or the U.S. can seek to set its own terms (far preferable). The new administration needs to embark upon a course of forceful regional diplomacy that breaks fundamentally from past efforts. A consensus of sorts is emerging in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that this conflict needs to be resolved - evidenced in the findings of a recent Brookings/Council of Foreign Relations Report or the powerful statements coming from elder statesmen like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, themselves building on the findings of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group.

It will require tenacity and bold ideas - in framing the solution, bringing in previously excluded actors, creating mechanisms to implement a deal (such as international forces) and utilizing the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative - but the alternative is far worse, its what we see today and it guarantees ongoing instability in a region of paramount importance to the United States.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Above: on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, today.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Note this quote in the above exchange from Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl:

KARL: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

CHENEY: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

That’s not true, according to last week’s bipartisan Senate report (PDF file) on the topic:

“In December 2001, more than a month before the President signed his memorandum, the Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel’s Office had already solicited information on detainee “exploitation” from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), an agency whose expertise was in training American personnel to withstand interrogation techniques considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions.”

They were trying to figure out how to torture prisoners before any prisoners existed.

George Packer says we need to make sure this vast strategic mistake isn’t repeated:

“The official sanction of torture and the woeful management of occupied Iraq are related pieces of a much larger epic: the first is marked by criminality, the second by bureaucratic ineptitude, but they are joined together as expressions and outcomes of the ideas and habits of mind of the highest officials in the Bush Administration.

Eventually the country will need, even if it won’t entirely want, the whole story to be told. The best way to tell it would be to reproduce the 9/11 Commission—to convene a single bipartisan panel, with the authority to look into the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and of the war on terror, and give the panel full investigative power, even if its conclusions put some of the principals in legal jeopardy.

The next Administration and the next Congress will have to decide whether it’s worth the agony to look back. The agony will be worse, sooner or later, if we don’t.”

& Glenn Greenwald decries the lack of coverage this story has gotten:

“Just ponder the uproar if, in any other country, the political parties joined together and issued a report documenting that the country’s President and highest aides were directly responsible for war crimes and widespread detainee abuse and death. Compare the inevitable reaction to such an event if it happened in another country to what happens in the U.S. when such an event occurs — a virtual media blackout, ongoing fixations by political journalists with petty scandals, and an undisturbed consensus that, no matter what else is true, high-level American political figures (as opposed to powerless low-level functionaries) must never be held accountable for their crimes.”

An Illinois politician caught being corrupt? How many times has that happened?

An administration willfully disregarding the most fundamental tenets of not only our nation but our fundamental nature as a civilization? How many times has that happened?

Finally, an 18-year-old reader writes to Andrew Sullivan:

“I’m 18 years old. My politics are still amorphous, shaped largely by my parents’ prejudices (both are liberals). I’m pro-life. I come from a prosperous background; I’m suspicious of big government and increasingly likely to support tax cuts. I’m becoming more viscerally opposed to the ‘nanny state’ as I study law; the rhetoric of many liberals on personal responsibility is becoming increasingly objectionable to me.

And yet, I can not, within the reasonable future, support the Republican Party? Why?

Torture.

I still haven’t come to grips with the idea that American soldiers, those who our culture is brought up to value and respect, could commit acts of torture, on the orders of an American administration. The internet is a libertarian place.

…

…I cannot imagine how anyone else of my age can look at these reports, look at these pictures — and then vote for the GOP in the foreseeable future. It’s beyond my understanding.”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

[above: Toothache Springs, Philmont Scout Ranch, New Mexico, 7:21pm, July 26th, 2005]

.

“€œTheir weapons are hate and terror. … The enemy’s goal is to make us more like them. This nation’s main mission is to not forget who we are … to hold our ideals even more tightly… We are going to win the war against this bunch of chumps because we are better than them, not because we are more inhumane.”

Who said it?

Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, an ex-Navy judge advocate general.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

[above: Iraqi detainees suffering at the hands of the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib.]

Do these pictures upset you?

I hope so.

& even more upsetting than that is this bipartisan Senate report (PDF file) on detainee abuse & how it became national policy.

It wasn’t just ‘a few bad apples,’ as was reported at the time.

No, the responsibility lays squarely at the feet of this man:

Andrew Sullivan:

“It is the most sobering indictment of high government officials in the U.S. since Watergate. And, in the gravity of crimes, it is a far more profound violation of the law and the constitution and the security of the United States than Watergate ever was. Bush’s crimes are far greater than Nixon’s - because war crimes are far graver than burglaries. And there is no statute of limitations for war crimes.”

[Sullivan's focusing (typically expertly) almost exclusively on this issue today, & he puts into words my feelings on this topic. Read more here, here, here, here, & here. (warning: the last link has a graphic photo).]

There is nothing, in my view, that recruits more terrorists to the cause than this scandal. & we had better start holding the highest-of-high-ups accountable for these crimes if we ever expect to defeat our greatest threat.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

The enormous challenges remain in Afghanistan; read more about it here, here, & here.

(note: it’s another one of those days, so posts here will be brief)

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

This is part of why I was so perplexed when Sarah Palin mocked ‘community organizing’ in her convention speech last September; does she not realize how it’s leading us down the path to victory around the world?

David Brooks elaborates:

“The 2008 election results did not fundamentally change American foreign policy. The real change began a few years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It began with colonels and captains fighting terror on the ground. They found that they could clear a town of the bad guys, but they had little capacity to establish rule of law or quality of life for the people they were trying to help. They quickly realized that the big challenge in this new era is not killing the enemy, it’s repairing the zones of chaos where enemies grow and breed. They realized, too, that Washington wasn’t providing them with the tools they needed to accomplish their missions.

Their observations and arguments filtered through military channels and back home, producing serious rethinking at the highest levels.

In this new world, she continued, it is impossible to draw neat lines between security, democratization and development efforts. She called for a transformational diplomacy, in which State Department employees would do less negotiating and communiqué-writing. Instead, they’d be out in towns and villages doing broad campaign planning with military colleagues, strengthening local governments and implementing development projects.

Over the past year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has delivered a series of remarkable speeches echoing and advancing Rice’s themes. “In recent years, the lines separating war, peace, diplomacy and development have become more blurred and no longer fit the neat organizational charts of the 20th century,” he said in Washington in July.

Gates does not talk about spreading democracy, at least in the short run. He talks about using integrated federal agencies to help locals improve the quality and responsiveness of governments in trouble spots around the world.

He has developed a way of talking about security and foreign policy that is now the lingua franca in government and think-tank circles. It owes a lot to the lessons of counterinsurgency and uses phrases like “full spectrum operations” to describe multidisciplinary security and development campaigns.”

As I’ve said many times before, the man above, General David Petraeus, deserves a large amount of credit for pushing this change in our strategy. To whatever extent we are succeeding in Iraq, it’s in large part due to him. & the efforts of those low-level ‘colonels & captains’ who see how the advantages of community organizing can lead to a safer America & world.

If you haven’t already, you should print & read Petraeus’ counterinsurgency manual (major-big PDF file)

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

If you’re not paying attention to what’s been going on in India the past week, you should.

This post is an attempt for you to get your feet wet to become a more engaged global citizen.

Let’s start with a quote from Pakistan’s U.S. ambassador, Husain Haqqani, who sounded what I think is the right strategic tone to take yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

“The point we must remember is that we should not see this heinous act in the context of India-Pakistan relations. We should see it in the context of international terrorism. There are terrorists that have trained in all countries of the world, secretly. These are non- state actors.

I don’t think that this is the time for India or anybody in India to accuse Pakistan. It’s time to work with Pakistan.

Pakistan is now a democracy. India is a democracy. And as two democracies, we need to strengthen each other, rather than fall into the trap of the terrorists, who want us to fight with each other so that they can get greater strength.”

Walid Phares of the Counterterrorism Blog elaborates:

“At one level, to instill shock and awe worldwide, much like the 9/11 attacks. On the regional level, there may be another motive. Jihadis in Pakistan have been under pressure, especially under the new President (Asif Zardari), because of the ongoing military operations in Waziristan. The jihadis’ strategic objective was to break down the rapprochement between India and Pakistan. If that happens, Pakistan will be forced to pull back units operating against the Taliban and move them to the border with India.
That would ease pressure on the Taliban. Indian citizens are seething with rage, sensing a Pakistani link to the attack. How should India respond to Pakistan’s inability or unwillingness to go after jihadis?
This matter has to be internationalized: if we leave it to India and Pakistan, then anger will take over. The US, Europe and Russia should convene a meeting against the jihadi challenge.

Second, the Pakistan government must send out a strong signal that it will combat terrorism. Perhaps the Pakistan prime minister should visit Mumbai and declare from there that both countries are united in the fight against terrorism. Third, inside Pakistan, terrorist organizations must be given a strong message that ‘any attack on India is an attack on us’.

Blake Hounshell of the Foreign Policy Institute says there are signs the terrorists have already succeeded:

“Cranking up the pressure on Pakistan may fit the public mood in India — and it may be smart politics for Singh and his ruling Congress Party — but it is folly as policy.

Who benefits in Pakistan when tensions with India rise? Precisely the anti-democratic hardliners in the military and intelligence services, and the Islamic hardliners who are their sometime allies, that India should want to see marginalized. As one South Asia analyst told Reuters, “The forces that are threatening the West, the forces that are threatening the civilian democracy in Pakistan and the forces who are acting against India are all interlinked to each other.”

We should pray that Singh has the wisdom and the political acumen to navigate this minefield more skillfully than he has thus far.”

The New Yorker’s Steve Coll:

“It is important, of course, to assume nothing about where the evidence trail in these latest Mumbai attacks will lead; in a forensic and legal sense, only the evidence matters, and there isn’t much of it available yet. Still, even if it turns out that the attackers were all rooted in India, and derived all of their training and supplies from mainland Indian sources (unlikely, but conceivable), this does not absolve Pakistan of responsibility for a foreign and intelligence policy, pursued relentlessly for twenty years, that deliberately sponsors and nurtures terrorist groups. India’s Hindu chauvinists have done their share to stoke Muslim rage within India; it is difficult to imagine, however, that without the proxy war conceived and supplied by Pakistan’s Army that scenes such as those now unfolding in Mumbai would have otherwise occurred.”

The Guardian’s Paul Cruickshank:

“The nature of the attack - something akin to scores of heavily armed terrorists storming the Waldorf Astoria and Ritz Cartlon in New York city and then going on a shooting rampage through Times Square and the Upper East side - suggests months of painstaking logistical and operational planning. Only an established militant group would have had the ability to carry out such an attack. The Deccan Mujahedeen is not such a group.

If capability and track record are anything to go by, it is likely that the attack was either carried out by Indian Mujahedeen, an indigenous Indian militant group or a Kashmiri militant group with ties to al-Qaida such as Lashkar e Toiba, or some combination of the two.”

The Global Americana Institute’s Juan Cole advises the Indian government to not follow the example America set after 9/11:

“Many Americans decided after 9/11 that since 13 of the hijackers were Saudi Wahhabis, there is something evil about Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia itself was attacked repeatedly by al-Qaeda in 2003-2006 and waged a major national struggle against it. You can’t tar a whole people with the brush of a few nationals that turn to terrorism.

Worse, a whole industry of Islamphobia grew up, with dedicated television programs (0′Reilly, Glen Beck), specialized sermonizers, and political hatchetmen (Giuliani). Persons born in the Middle East or Pakistan were systematically harassed at airports. And the stigmatization of Muslim Americans and Arab Americans was used as a wedge to attack liberals and leftists, as well, however illogical the juxtaposition may seem.”

What do you think?

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

Far greater than we yet realize:

“Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there’s the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.” - Matthew Alexander, who led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006

Please read the full piece, especially if you still think torture is an appropriate way to fight terrorism.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

This week’s horror in Mumbai has revealed yet more ways that the internet is threatening traditional media.

For one thing, I find this site far more instructive & up-to-the-minute - & therefore, worth relying on - than any traditional media websites. Barcepundit has been live-blogging the event ever since it began. This guy’s doing the heavy lifting for you, scouring the ‘net for the latest stories & information.

Plus, & I think importantly, reading this minute-by-minute account feels far more like I’m witnessing breaking news as it happens (even after the fact), more so than if I had plopped myself in front of the 24-hour news networks for hours on end.

Also in this vein: we often think of the internet being simply a threat to newspapers; but the internet is also forcing an evolution in the world of radio, too. Click here for an NPR story that talks about one channel on a blog-talk-radio site that got up-to-the-minute live reports from Indian journalists near the scene within hours of the attack.

These are just two examples, I think, of how the internet is forcing all journalists (me included) to re-think our careers, & discover new ways to bring news consumers our product.

& in my view it’s a development that’s nothing but healthy, both for the media & those who consume it.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

At long last, a conservative gets at the heart of what we should be debating about when it comes to our nation’s policy on torture (which, in my view, should be summed up in one word: Don’t).

J.L. Wall writes on a (conservative) review of Jane Mayer’s new book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story on How the War on Terror Turned into a War on the American Ideal:”

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

From “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World” (PDF file):

“Terrorism is unlikely to disappear by 2025, but its appeal could lessen if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorists that are active the diffusion of technologies will put dangerous capabilities within their reach.

Opportunities for mass-casualty terrorist attacks using chemical, biological, or less likely, nuclear weapons will increase as technology diffuses and nuclear power (and possibly weapons) programs expand. The practical and psychological consequences of such attacks will intensify in an increasingly globalized world.”

Read more about the report here.

Read a dissenting view of these predictions here.

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

al Qaeda’s in trouble.

Exhibit A:

DUBAI (AFP) — Al-Qaeda number two Ayman Zawahiri ridiculed US president-elect Barack Obama as a “house negro” and warned him against sending more troops to Afghanistan, in an Internet audio message released on Wednesday.

Zawahiri insulted Obama and other black Americans who have held high office in the US administration with the term used by the late Muslim black militant leader Malcolm X for slaves serving their white masters.

“It is true about you and people like you … what Malcolm X said about the house negroes,” he said, naming former secretary of state Colin Powell and the current secretary, Condoleezza Rice.

An English transcript of the speech in Arabic purportedly by the Al-Qaeda number two was provided by Al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab.

The tape features an old speech by Malcolm X in which he used the two terms, referring to house slaves who were considered more docile and on better terms with their masters than the slaves out in the field.

Obama’s transition team declined to comment on the tape, in which Zawahiri accuses the president-elect of siding with Israel.

But US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the insult exposed the anti-democratic values of Al-Qaeda.

“It’s just, you know, more despicable comments from a terrorist,” McCormack told reporters.

“And if anybody needed … more of a contrast between what … the West and the United States stand for, in terms of democracy and what these terrorists stand for, I don’t think you need to go any further than those comments.”

Now, why is this good news?

Because this is a message sent out of weakness, not out of strength.

Ilan Goldenberg:

“More than anything it demonstrates that Al Qaeda is genuinely concerned about an Obama presidency and views it as a strategic threat to its existence.

First and foremost, Al Qaeda is an organization that thrives on propaganda. It paints the United States as an evil empire that oppresses its own minorities and has little regard for the rest of the world. Al Qaeda uses these types of narratives to raise funds and recruit. The Bush administration played right into this trap. Its “with us or against us” mentality and invasion of Iraq damaged America’s image around the world and reinforced Al Qaeda’s narrative.

But Al Qaeda’s narrative is now under siege and it’s clearly uncertain about how to react. The election of the first African American President, one with a Muslim father, flies in the face of this narrative. It shows America as an open and tolerant society - not the oppressive empire Al Qaeda would like to portray. In fact, the overwhelmingly positive international reaction to Obama’s election is proof of the the threat Al Qaeda faces. As a 29 year old at a Bangkok Starbucks explained,

What an inspiration. He is the first truly global US president the world has ever had. He had an Asian childhood, African parentage and has a Middle Eastern name. He is a truly global president.

Thus, it’s not surprising that Zawahiri has resorted to calling Obama a “house negro” to try and paint him as just another American President. But this is clearly more a defensive and weak message than effective propaganda that might actually work.”

ALSO WORTH NOTING:

We didn’t get a pre-election message from Osama bin Laden like we did in 2004.

The going theory is that had bin Laden done that, & it did not dent Obama’s lead in the polls, that it would have been viewed as a sign that he is currently weak.

EARLIER ON VOTE 08: How ‘Hussein’ Can Be a Weapon

Post from: The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08