September
11th -
the fault is a refusal to think ahead
By
Jonathan
Power
September 13, 2002
LONDON - It's ironic at best, dangerously absurd at
the worst, that a year to the week after President George
Bush made his initial decision to hunt down Osama bin
Laden in Afghanistan all the debate now is focussed on
Iraq and there is barely a word on the president's pledge
to "smoke out" bin Laden. Yet no one has produced hard
evidence of complicity linking Iraq with Al Qaeda.
Neither is Bush visibly pulling out the stops to hunt
down bin Laden in the mountains of Pakistan where he is
said to be hiding out. One can only conclude that this
Administration is not drawn to the boring business of
stealthy slow police work. It seems to prefer what the
Germans used to call a "frischer, fröhlicher
Krieg" (a short jolly war). But the Bush administration
is arguably not much worse than its predecessors
The fact is that bin Laden could have been caught and
arraigned in an American courtroom long ago. Just as
there is now ample evidence in retrospect that the U.S.
missed a half dozen chances of forestalling September
11th if its intelligence, immigration and police systems
had been more integrated and better run, there are plenty
of reasons for thinking that the Clinton administration
in particular is to blame for letting bin Laden slip
through its fingers for lack of a coherent legal
strategy.
Last October Samuel Berger, Clinton's National
Security Advisor, was quoted in the Washington Post about
an earlier effort to run bin Laden down. In a remarkable
confession he admitted that Sudan offered to turn him
over to U.S. marshals but "we have this thing called the
Constitution, so to bring him here into the justice
system I don't think was our first choice. Our first
choice was to send him some place where justice is more
streamlined". Three colleagues of Mr Berger made it clear
what Mr Berger meant: "they hoped that the Saudi monarch
King Fahd would order Mr bin Laden's swift
beheading".
The Sudan instead expelled bin Laden to Afghanistan
and from there he planned the bombings of the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the
American destroyer in Yemen and finally the devastation
in New York and Washington. This is one of the many
unanswered questions that have never had a full
airing.
Successive administrations, including this one, have
also failed to explain why they have decided to work so
closely with the forces that sponsored and financed the
Islamic militants of Al Qaeda- the military
infrastructure of Pakistan. The Musharraf dictatorship
has pulled off the incredible feat of persuading
Washington that its regime alone can prevent the
"Talibinization" of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, although
the fundamentalist groups, Jamiet Ulema e Islam and
Jamiat Ulema e Islam, were not very long ago the
military's partners of choice that were used to create
and sustain the Taliban.
This latter day mistake goes back to the 1980s when,
beginning with the Carter Administration, the U.S., with
appalling lack of foresight decided my enemy's enemy is
my friend. The U.S., falsely exaggerating the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan as the first step in a lunge
through the impassable terrain of Afghanistan and
Pakistan to a warm water port on the Arabian Ocean,
worked with Saudi Arabia to funnel arms through
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency to the
fundamentalist militants of whom bin Laden was one.
Moreover, large amounts of what became a multi-billion
dollar program were siphoned off to ignite the now
nuclear-dangerous insurrection against Indian rule in
Kashmir and Pakistan even used Al Qaeda camps to train
operatives who were to deployed in anti Indian terrorism.
If nuclear war does erupt on the sub-continent historians
will surely pinpoint this as one of the main provoking
causes.
The effort, combined with lack of foresight, that went
into building up the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan
was exactly in the mould of what came to be the rest of
the so-called "Reagan doctrine"- arming anti communist
"freedom fighters" in countries as diverse as Nicaragua,
Angola and Cambodia. Only in this case the legacy was not
just a war-torn country but also an army of would-be
jihad fighters. This is what has come back to haunt the
West- and Saudi Arabia too. As for Pakistan it makes this
politically fragmented country almost impossible to rule.
Only a Herculean effort by General Pervez Musharraf, in
return for major debt relief, economic and military aid,
has temporarily saved the economy and kept a dubious
electorate pointing in America's direction. It is
doubtful if it can last and the U.S. may well find that
one spin off from its planned war with Iraq is that it
might have to invade Pakistan to seal off its nuclear
weapons.
September 11 teaches us all manner of lessons but two
stand out. There is no substitute for long-term police
work and it is still evident- just as it was in Vietnam,
Central America and Angola - that it is the greatest
mistake to believe the U.S. can solve all and ever
problem by military might. So called "victories" have a
horrible habit of turning at best into today's disasters
and at worst into tomorrow's Frankensteins.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
 
|