In the “war on terror,” looking for the “right front” makes diplomacy take a back seat

In her recent AlterNet column, Iliana Segura gets a lot right:

If the United States really wants to improve the situation in Afghanistan, it should start by ending the occupation. It should then cough up money for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. (One estimate puts the tab at $10 billion.) This is not just for the sake of Afghanistan, but for the sake of Americans as well, who are no safer today than they were when the planes hit the towers. Ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the first, crucial step in that elusive goal of "winning hearts and minds" that the United States claims to be so committed to in the region. As Iraq has demonstrated, occupying armies are not a deterrent to terrorism. Occupying armies breed terror.

Most important, it's time to stop thinking of Afghanistan as the "right front" of the so-called "War on Terror" -- an idea that has been perpetuated by everyone from Barack Obama to Jon Stewart (who idiotically told Colin Powell in 2005, "the Afghanistan war, man did I dig that. I'd like to go again") -- and start questioning the legitimacy of the "War on Terror" itself. It is an idea that has been utterly and catastrophically discredited, most recently by the most unlikely of institutions, the RAND Corporation, which recently released a report that undermined the notion that soldiers can fight a "war on terror."

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism," wrote Seth Jones, the lead author of the study. "Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory."

If the RAND Corporation, a think tank that traditionally operates in the service of war-making, no longer believes in the "War on Terror," why on Earth should we?

As did Nicholas Kristof (citing the same Rand research) in Saturday’s New York Times:

Our intuitive approach to fighting terrorists and insurgents is to blow things up. But one of the most cost-effective counterterrorism methods in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan may be to build things up, like schooling and microfinance. Girls’ education sometimes gets more bang for the buck than a missile.

A new study from the RAND Corporation examined how 648 terror groups around the world ended between 1968 and 2006. It found that by far the most common way for them to disappear was to be absorbed by the political process. The second most common way was to be defeated by police work. In contrast, in only 7 percent of cases did military force destroy the terrorist group.

I absolutely concur with Segura and Kristof that it is time to refocus efforts on aid, reconstruction, and negotiations, as I would concur with the Rand study (and some past presidential candidates) that fighting terrorists is best done by fighting crime rather than fighting wars. And, while I am not entirely ready to pass judgment on a complete withdrawal of every NATO body from Afghanistan, I would like to again go on record and restate that I thoroughly opposed the original invasion in 2001. At the time, it was instantly apparent to me—a person that witnessed the World Trade Center attacks and aftermath at close range—that the Bush Administration’s efforts (for lack of a better term) with regard to Afghanistan were all about revenge, domestic politics, and personal face-saving—and nothing else—and it amazed then (as it still does) that so many of my compatriots on this side of the political spectrum somehow thought this particular Bush war to be appropriate or well-considered.

As history has proven, the Bush Administration had no interest in the imminent threat posed by Osama bin Laden back in the spring and summer of 2001—just ask Richard Clarke. What’s more, as was very apparent at the time, the White House had little serious interest in unseating the Taliban prior to 9/11/01. The political and religious repression didn’t trigger action; nor did the misogyny. The shelling of the Buddhas of Bammiyan inspired as much of a response from Washington as did the bombing of the USS Cole—that is to say, none. In fact, soon after the Buddhas were destroyed, the Bush Administration sent $43 million to the Taliban for what was billed as “poppy eradication.”

Both prior to and after the attacks of September 11, the Taliban approached the US with offers to handover bin Laden—either directly or to a third-party country. Between mid-September of 2001 and the start of the bombing of Afghanistan, Taliban spokesmen made attempts to open negotiations with the US—offering to alternately give up the al Qaeda leader if there was “proof” that he planned the 9/11 hijackings, or turn bin Laden over to a third country pending investigation—only to be dismissed without consideration by a Bush Administration hot for a hot war.

None of this is meant to discount the horrors of life under Taliban rule for the peoples of Afghanistan. I was very distraught prior to 9/11/01 that the US wasn’t doing more—with regards to diplomacy, sanctions, and pressure on allies—to dislodge the mullahs. But if you want to argue that it would have been somehow morally repugnant to negotiate with the Taliban in 2001, I would ask what you propose to do about stanching a resurgent Taliban today.

Kristof again:

“There is no battlefield solution to terrorism,” the [Rand] report declares. “Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended.”

The next president should absorb that lesson and revalidate diplomacy as the primary tool of foreign policy — even if that means talking to ogres.

That last point sounds like an endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama—and it very well may be—but Obama has also made it a point to advocate for an increased military presence in Afghanistan. While that might sound politically palatable and imminently pragmatic, it could well turn out to be counterproductive. It will be hard for any US leader, even one as naturally tactful as Obama, to maximize diplomatic efforts while still accepting the ineffective “war on terror” frame. Our next president should wholly embrace a proactive strategy of negotiated security instead of indulging in the reactive tactics of mechanized war.


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

When Bush pulls the trigger, remember who helped load the gun

As despicable as the lopsided vote on Lieberman-Kyl seemed last week, it seems altogether ominous now.

Though much was made of how the first paragraph of the amendment was “watered down” (it originally stated that US forces were to “combat, contain, and roll back” Iranian forces allegedly destabilizing Iraq, but this was seen as a too-thinly-veiled thumbs up to send troops over the border, so it was changed to the cumbersome “it should be the policy of the United States to stop inside Iraq the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies,” which is, frankly, comedic and not much better), it is the second paragraph that truly stands as a senatorial love letter to Dick Cheney.

After L+K gets done pandering to the fiction that there is some hegemonic transnational Islamic threat to the existence of the United States/Israel™, it sets about to “approve the listing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran as a ‘foreign terrorist organization.’”

As stupid as it sounds to lump a sovereign nation’s largest military force in with the various designated non-state antagonists in the GWOT™, when read in tandem with the latest revelations by reporter Seymour Hersh, the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment is the perfect method for Bush/Cheney madness.

Writing in the October 6 issue of The New Yorker, Hersh explains that White House warriors, seeing limited traction for their original reason for war with Iran—that being to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon—have shifted the strategic rationale to counter-insurgency. Under the new “plan,” US and British forces would conduct “surgical air strikes” against Revolutionary Guard headquarters and training camps, while American special forces would work inside Iran to disable antiaircraft weapons and Iranian command and control.

A few points:

• Moving goals posts—changing the rationale for war from destroying weapons of mass destruction to counter-insurgency to part of the GWOT™—whoever heard of such a thing???
  
  
• If surgical strikes with special forces behind the lines sounds a bit like war to you, that’s because it is war. As even a first term President John Kennedy realized before the October 1963 missile crisis, there is no such thing as a surgical air strike. Even today, aerial bombing is far from a precise tactic—collateral damage deaths of innocents have been manifold during Iraqi and Afghani raids—and few battlefield objectives can be accomplished with airpower alone. Air strikes will not completely immobilize Iranian forces, and they will likely provoke more of the behavior that Bush/Cheney and Lieberman-Kyl label as destabilizing influences—they are not the final battle, but, more likely (and intentionally) a prelude to a broader war.
  
  
• And, most importantly, by declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization—right here, right now—Congress has given Bush and Cheney all the “authority” that they need to attack them. . . anywhere. . . even inside Iran.
  
  According to Hersh, that’s exactly what they plan to do.

Make no mistake, as much as some senators, oh, say, like Hillary Clinton, want to argue that this resolution “gives us options to impose sanctions,” it is, in cold, clear fact, all that the current inhabitants of the White House need to start their next war. . . and claim that they have a congressional blessing—and the blessing of a Democrat running for president—to do so.

Bush may pull the trigger on a new round of bloodshed, but several Democrats—Sens. Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid, most notably—helped load the gun.


(And a PS to Sen. Barack Obama: Don’t think that skipping the vote on Lieberman-Kyl while making noise about how you would have voted against it lets you off the hook—it doesn’t. If convenient absence is your idea of leadership, then I suggest you lead yourself right off of the national stage.)


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

Once Weren’t Warriors

I suspect that Kelly Anne Moore and I wouldn’t see exactly eye-to-eye on every issue. . . I mean, I don’t really know, I don’t know her, but. . . Ms. Moore served as chief of the Violent Crimes and Terrorism Section in the Brooklyn US attorney’s office from 2002 to 2006, and that term of service has me wondering if she came in with Bush appointee Roslyn Mauskopf, the USA for that Brooklyn office. Mauskopf was a protégé of former New York Governor George Pataki and a favorite of former New York Senator Al D’Amato who was viewed as unqualified for her post when her nomination was put forward back in 2002. Her current case against the “JFK bomb plot” “suspects” does nothing to convince me otherwise. Mauskopf is one of those US attorneys that Paul Krugman warned us about a while back—you know, one of the ones that weren’t fired by AG AG and his band of partisan White House brothers.

But I digress. . . .

Kelly Anne Moore, who worked under Mauskopf, has penned an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times that—whatever our other differences may or may not be—basically says what I’ve been saying for what is fast approaching six years: treat suspected terrorists as criminals, and try them in US criminal court.

The United States does not need a new and untested detention system for terrorists. The existing federal system has a proven track record of dealing with complex prosecutions.

Moore has personal experience, successfully prosecuting two Yemeni’s in 2005 for funneling money to Al Qaeda and Hamas, and seeing them put away for a long, long time. She argues that this case was as complex as any of those that might arise from a criminal prosecution of those detained at Guantanamo Bay, and gives plenty of examples. Moore also gives examples of other terrorist cases that have been successfully prosecuted in US courts, such as Ramzi Yousef, organizer of the 1993 WTC bombing.

Moore’s Times piece also explains the way in which many of the purported problems with prosecution in open court need not be the insurmountable roadblocks that the Bush/Cheney Administration make them out to be. But what interested and provoked me most of all was this paragraph:

Those who commit terrorist acts should be tried as the criminals they are, instead of the “warriors” they claim to be. If the Guantánamo detainees were prosecuted in federal courts instead of being designated as “combatants,” most by now would be serving prison time as convicted terrorists, instead of being celebrated as victims or freedom fighters.

To the first sentence, I say, right on! I have been arguing for as long as I remember that you don’t make “war on terror,” you investigate and prosecute people and organizations responsible for terrorist acts. By trying alleged terrorists in open court, you not only get to show the world what a bunch of crooks and creeps the suspects are, you get to demonstrate that America is a nation of principles and laws, unafraid to confront its enemies on a level playing field.

But notice that I said “alleged terrorists.” This is where I see a little daylight between Kelly Anne Moore and myself. You see, while Moore assumes that most of the Guantanamo detainees would be convicted as terrorists, I have serious doubts.

I don’t think I am going out on a limb to say that many still imprisoned at Camp Delta (we’re still calling it that, right?) likely never did much of anything you or I would call “terrorist.” At their very worst, many were soldiers of a sort, fighting for a disorganized alliance of pro-Taliban or anti-American forces. That would make them prisoners of war, and not detainees, or even criminals.

But others in detention were likely not even that. There are plenty of stories of afghani warlords rounding up prisoners for pay. Then there are the cases of political or tribal retribution, or flat out mistaken identities. And what of those that were just kidnapped by the US or its surrogates?

Whether there is enough evidence to convict any detainees such as those is an open question—and that still ignores the elephant in the room. One of the main reasons—I am certain—that the administration now resists trying these detainees in open court is because if they did, it would become more than obvious that these people were tortured. Moore does not really acknowledge this “roadblock” to openness in her Op-Ed.

Indeed, the former prosecutor is quick to hold up the recent conviction of Jose Padilla—as have many others—as an example of how a potential terrorist was convicted in federal court. However, while Moore mentions that Padilla was denied access to legal counsel for over three years while in military detention, she fails to point out that the jury that convicted Padilla never learned that fact.

Nor was Padilla’s jury allowed to hear that he was initially picked up on completely different grounds—he was supposed to be the “dirty bomber,” after all—but when the government couldn’t come up with enough evidence on that count, they quickly built a case around completely different activities for an entirely separate charge.

Most legal experts report that it was not surprising that Jose Padilla was convicted, given what the jury was allowed to know—implying or stating outright that had these other facts been present in the courtroom, a different outcome was at least a possibility.

Moore, while rightfully taking the Bush/Cheney Administration to task for this glaring failure in its “war on terror,” still seems to assume that most of those taken prisoner by the administration are terrorists. I cannot be so certain.

Still, I am certain that in the end, Moore gets it right:

Many people around the world have come to question America’s commitment to the rule of law. There are few places in the world where that principle is more hallowed than in the United States federal courts. The best course of action now, in dealing with terrorism suspects, is to use these courts — the keystone of American jurisprudence — and show the world that America can protect itself while it respects the rule of law.

I would add to her course of action that the US should also close Guantanamo, restore Habeas rights, and recommit to handling prisoners as detailed in the Geneva Conventions, but if we were to begin with hearings in open court, for all detainees, I have some faith that rest would follow.

If Kelly Anne Moore and I can agree on that—and I suspect that we can—then she and I can join forces to fight the real enemies of freedom.

Homeland Security: Thwarting the Aspirations of Idiots Everywhere

Another day, another “terrorist plot” thwarted—so glad we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here (more on that in a moment).

This past Saturday saw a US Attorney announce the indictments of four men with sketchy plans to blow up fuel tanks and/or pipelines that supply jet fuel to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens.

Why JFK airport? Here’s what the plot’s “mastermind” Russell Defreitas had to say:

"Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow ... they love JFK -- he's like the man," former JFK airport cargo worker Russell Defreitas allegedly said in a telephone conversation monitored by the FBI.

"If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice," Defreitas allegedly added

OK, show of hands, when I say JFK airport, how many of you still get all sentimental over Camelot? Hell, I live in NYC, often fly in and out of JFK, and am old enough (well, let’s say, “almost old enough”) to remember when people actually did get all choked up about the late president, and I cannot remember the last time I made the mental connection between the airport and its namesake.

But, while illustrative of my point, this is possibly the least of it. Defreitas, 63, a naturalized US Citizen from Guyana, and his co-conspirators apparently had zero technical knowledge and zero military training—not to mention zero money and zero explosives. To say that this plot was disrupted in its “planning” stages is an insult to procrastinators everywhere.

Oh, but, wait, apparently, these guys were “persistent,” according to investigators, and. . . wait for it. . . they had satellite images of the airport obtained from the internet.

OH. . . MY. . . GOD! Look at me, ma! I’m a terrorist!

All kidding aside (OK, some kidding aside), if guys are going around trying to get it together to blow something up—anything, really—law enforcement should probably intervene. But, is what we have here a case of terrorism interrupted? Have the DoJ, DHS, the FBI, and the NYPD thwarted a group of Islamic terrorists, or have they done little more than publicly shame a loose collection of idiot dreamers?

And, pardon my skepticism, but I am yet to be convinced that these guys were even as pitifully far along—and that would be not that far along at all—as the government says. Being a New Yorker, I am all too familiar with the case of the alleged Brooklyn Bridge plotter—a poor schlub who was clearly led down the path to prison by a zealous informant who was himself egged on by investigators. This JFK “plot,” too, relies on the work of a government informant, one currently awaiting his sentence for drug trafficking.

Further, even if we are to believe that Defreitas and friends had a “plot,” as it is outlined in reports, it was far from feasible on many fronts. Beyond the fact that blowing a hole in a fuel tank at JFK would almost certainly NOT cause a chain reaction that would send explosions and fire through the pipelines that lead into the tanks and the supply lines to the airplane gates, the “plotters” had planned to blow up the tanks with dynamite, which experts say would not get the job done (the walls would require several pounds of plastique, they say).

All of which is to say, much like Michael Powell and William Rashbaum said in today’s New York Times:

In case after case, from what authorities said was a dirty bomber to the Lackawanna Six, federal prosecutors hail arrests of terrorists and disruptions of what they describe as sinister plots. But as these legal cases unfold, the true nature of the threats can come into question.

(And while I might have been a little less diplomatic than Powell and Rashbaum, I want to congratulate them for actually putting it out there. Contrast their tone with that of Jeanne Meserve on CNN. It was her report that first told me that the fuel tank plot was likely not a prescription for mass disaster, it was there that I learned that plastic explosives would be required to breach a tank, and it was there that two experts appeared on camera to debunk the notion that this was a well-conceived plan. But it was in the intro and in the conclusion to Meserve’s piece that she insisted on saying that “expert opinion” was “split” on whether the plot would have worked. The only evidence of a split? An unnamed government aviation spokesman. That really doesn’t tell me “experts” are divided—especially since two of the actual experts were just on camera agreeing this was an ill-conceived plot—but it does tell me that CNN still clings to the false notions that administration spokespeople are credible, and that unbiased reporting means always presenting a counterpoint, even when it is devoid of substance, and then claiming there are two sides to the story.)

Now, let’s look at some of that true nature: None of the suspects in this current terrorist-like plot have connections to al-Qaeda. In fact, Defreitas and his family are Shiites. A couple of his children have spent time studying in Iran, but there is nothing out there right now to can dissuade me—or, in fact, the government—from calling this plot “homegrown.” If there are out-of-country links here (and I feel funny even putting it this way since this is such a half-baked affair), they are to Guyana and Trinidad. Iraq is not in the picture.

What is in the picture is another part of the Middle East, one that the Bush Administration has steadfastly refused to consider might be important to their “Global War on Terror.”

In one conversation taped by the FBI, Defreitas allegedly discusses an incident he says motivated him to strike JFK. He claimed he saw military parts being shipped to Israel, including missiles, that he felt would be used to kill Muslims.

He allegedly says he "wanted to do something to get those bastards."

As many have noted, one of the greatest failings of Bush’s foreign policy has been his unwillingness to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with any kind of seriousness or political will. The administration’s rhetorical and logistical embrace of Ehud Olmert’s Lebanese fiasco only exacerbated the problem. If Bush & Co. really wanted to do something about growing anti-American feelings in the Muslim diaspora, they would de-emphasize making war in Iraq and Iran, and re-emphasize making peace in Israel and Palestine. Russell Defreitas and his “coconspirators” only serve to reinforce that point.

And, while we’re talking about terrorists and their plots here in the US, what’s the latest on that whole anthrax thing? Anyone got a handle on that one? How about all the plots to bomb abortion clinics? What’s new there?

Yeah, thought so. . . .

But, rather than get serious about what’s real, or about what really might be the roots of our problems, administration apparatchiks would rather get all “lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!” over the weekend warriors from jihadi fantasy camp (and even that gives Defreitas, or the guys in Miami, or the “Fort Dix Six” too much credit). And that doesn’t serve the prosecution of these small time hoods any more than it does the so-called GWOT.

Raising the stakes on what should be low-level cases only makes convicting them on what they actually did do much harder, and makes it much more difficult to investigate future plots. As former federal prosecutor and once head of the criminal division in the US attorney’s office in Miami, Neal R. Sonnett notes:

There unfortunately has been a tendency to shout too loudly about such cases.

It has a bit of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight to it. It would have served the federal government well to say that.

. . . .

To the extent that you over-hype a case, you create fear and paranoia. It’s very difficult for prosecutors and investigative agencies to remain calm.

As Sonnett and the Times article imply, the drumbeating creates a climate of fear that drives public policy. I would add that such is no doubt the intention of the Bush Administration. Rather than looking for ways to effectively fight so-called terrorists here and “there” to help make Americans everywhere safer, idiots and ideologues in the Department of Homeland Security, or the Justice Department, or in many other US government agencies are looking for a steady stream of public relations victories to fuel the fear-based economy.

I believe it was a retired general who said this (and forgive me for not being able to find the exact quote): While it is understandable that Americans would be fearful following the attacks of 9/11/01, it is the job of our president to lead us away from fear, and not to constantly reinforce it.


Update: NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston is quoting an FBI source that calls this JFK plot “Fort Dix lite.” Yes, that’s right, this plot was less well put together than the hysterically unimpressive plan to attack Fort Dix planned by the Circuit City Six.

Update #2: A clarification—early reports were confusing, and so I was confused. I conflated two of the suspects in this “plot.” When I wrote in my post about a Shiite with family members that have studied in Iran, I realize now, thanks to another good Times piece by Manny Fernandez, that I was referring to Abdul Kadir, and not Russell Defreitas. Defreitas, it seems, was a sometimes homeless, often down-on-his luck, barely literate, former JFK employee who is divorced, and estranged from most of his family. Kadir is the practicing Shiite with a degree in civil engineering. It is Kadir that was once a Mayor and Member of Parliament in Guyana, and it is he that has the large family, some members of which traveled to Iran. I apologize for the error.

I recommend the entire Fernandez piece—it makes this so-called terror plot seem even more improbable.