Their cloaking device has failed and the U.S. is now pointing out that their fly is unzipped. Walter Scott, in his poem Marmion, argued that plots have a tendency to go astray.
The poem tells how Lord Marmion, a favourite of Henry VIII of England, lusts for Clara de Clare, a rich woman. He and his mistress, Constance De Beverley, forge a letter implicating Clara’s fiancé, Sir Ralph De Wilton, in treason. Constance, a dishonest nun, hopes that her aid will restore her to favour with Marmion. When De Wilton loses the duel he claims in order to defend his honour against Marmion, he is obliged to go into exile. Clara retires to a convent rather than risk Marmion’s attentions. Constance’s hopes of a reconciliation with Marmion are dashed when he abandons her; she ends up being walled up alive in the Lindisfarne convent for breaking her vows. She takes her revenge by giving the Abbess who is one of her three judges documents that prove De Wilton’s innocence. De Wilton, having returned disguised as a pilgrim, follows Marmion to Edinburgh where he meets the Abbess, who gives him the exonerating documents. When Marmion’s host, the Earl of Angus, is shown the documents, he arms De Wilton and accepts him as a knight again. De Wilton’s plans for revenge are overturned by the battle of Flodden Field. Marmion dies on the battlefield, while De Wilton displays heroism, regains his honour, retrieves his lands, and marries Clara.
It contains these lines, which doubtless British-educated Pakistanis know by heart.
Yet Clare’s sharp questions must I shun
Must separate Constance from the nun
Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!
Plots have a way of rebounding on the plotter. If Pakistan continues to war against its neighbors, continues to kill and bold-facedly deny it while their hands are dripping red, then that favor, in open or in secret, will one day be returned. The wheel of karma turns and it will turn the circle.
“No Way In” print edition at Amazon
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
I do not know if the mock-up of OBL hideout was built using only external observables or they’ve had access to blueprints. If I am allowed to assume that they indeed had access to blueprints, this would mean that US penetrated Pakistani environment much deeper than their ruling elite might find comfortable. And even if they used only externals, US detailed understanding of how Pakistani society functions must be very disturbing to the puppet masters there. +100 (as rumored) HDs now in US possession…
Tourists at the site: target rich environment.
I’m sorry, I know that makes me a cold hearted insensitive SOB.
That tangled web is also enmeshing the vile Obama administration in the aftermath of all their self-serving lies since smoking UbL. The lies continue – Clinton is apparently not best pleased by her frightened, hand-to-mouuth depiction in that now famous press photo. You know the one where the WH staff sits raptly watching the operation, the operation which we’ve been told today couldn’t have been watched because there was a blackout during the critical “kill” portion…
“Clinton: allergies, not anguish in my Bin Laden photo…”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/05/us-binladen-clinton-allergy-idUSTRE7442C420110505
Here is a short list of lies which continue to unravel in their face – the pace and number is shocking…
First Obama claimed to have authorized the killing.
Then we were told Panetta authorized it.
Then Panetta told us the Seals decided to smoke UbL on their own.
Obama claimed to have acted quickly.
Then we learned he took anywhere from 16 hours, to one week, to over six months (since last August) to “decide”.
We were told repeatedly there was a “fierce firefight”.
Then we were told there were no guards, that no shots were fired from UbL’s compound, and that there were only a handful of weapons at that compound. Of course some of this comes from the Paki side after the fact, and they are as apt to lie as Obama clearly is…
We were told ObL lived in luxury in a “million dollar mansion”, but when we saw photos, we saw a fly covered, mildewy cinderblock warehouse.
We were told simultaneously that the Pakistanis helped in the operation (Clinton), and that they were left completely in the dark until the operation had wrapped (Panetta, Gates).
We were told UbL died like a coward using a woman as a human shield.
We were told he fired a gun.
Now we’re told he “resisted” arrest and was killed.
And according to Paki sources, UbL’s captured daughter says he was captured alive and then executed by the SEALS.
Had Obama not serially lied since the incident to try and burnish his reputation, America would remain in the strongest position to simply dismiss the inevitable lies and propaganda emanating from the congenitally lying Muslims. Now, just as our enemy’s narrative will try to paint is as just as bad as the terrorists, OBAMA’s actions and lies serve to reinforce rather than counter the attacks. In grasping for plaudits, this disgusting egotist has dragged America into the cesspool of our Islamic enemy.
The critical part of a breakthrough is the exploitation. The Bin Laden raid also presents dilemmas for America, which I’ve described before. It inevitably opens a can of worms. President Obama can either try to re-close the can and try to find a way for Pakistan to walk back its actions of many decades; or it can use the Bin Laden raid to open up the rest of this can of abomination.
The real test of President Obama’s strategic competence is how he manages the crisis that is sure to emerge from the Bin Laden event.
So far the President seems to be following the first path. His decision to treat OBL’s body ‘with respect’ and not to display any ‘trophies’ gives Pakistan a chance to empty its pockets from the dinner jacket and pretend it didn’t know how the silverware and jewels got there in order to avoid a scandal at the party.
The problem is, the Pakistani militants don’t seem to know when to quit. Well if they knew when to quit they wouldn’t be militants. So they are likely to bluster and unlikely to turn a new leaf. That means, that as in Libya and even perhaps as in the Bin Laden case, President Obama will be forced into some Bushian response by Pakistani irrationality.
Pakistan is a complex society; that means there are probably many who understand just how a deep a hole the politicians have dug for it. It would be a mistake to tar them all with the same brush. But there are enough tarred by their own hand and more than glad to upend the buckets of pitch on their heads.
Just as in the Arab Spring some fires have got to burn themselves out. What is the best course? To stand back, light out and get behind the nearest berm? Or to get in with the rational Pakistanis and try to douse the blaze?
Tangled webs be tangled still
The knots be tightly drawn
The tangler thinks that it’s his will
Not knowing that the dawn
Will soon come flooding in with light
The strands in bold relief
And he’ll not see another night
Despite his cold belief
That he is smarter much by far
Than those that he would spin
And when the door then stands ajar
And death comes silent in
The room is filled with frightened screams
That he would not deceive
But tangled webs yield tangled dreams
And death will never grieve
If Pakistan continues to war against its neighbors, continues to kill and bold-facedly deny it while their hands are dripping red, then that favor, in open or in secret, will one day be returned. The wheel of karma turns and it will turn the circle.
No karma in Pakistan, you must be thinking of India.
In the ancient parts of the world with their tribal histories going back thousands of years, this is just stuff they do. Not like England would balance its adversaries against each other or anything, nor carve up its empire into chunks that couldn’t possibly amass significant power, or nothin. I think from the Pakistani point of view, they’ve lost a throw but the game continues forever.
The real test of President Obama’s strategic competence is how he manages the crisis that is sure to emerge from the Bin Laden event.
omg I won’t even try to parse that, y’all know already anyway, but kudos wretchard for being able to type that with a straight face.
Well with bills all ready proposed to cut off US aid military and monetary introduced in the US House of Representatives, motions for investigative committees to be formed in the House and Senate, and India starting to grow its military and increase its diplomatic offensive against Pakistan, Pakistan will be left with the Chinese for support. But just how reliable is China going to be considering its internal problems?
Polling is starting to indicate that the “bounce” that Obama is/was supposed to get from the Bin Laden kill varies from small to non-existent. The best sum up has been “Obama takes victory lap in clown car” in my opinion.
Also Bin Laden is dead but that doesn’t buy gas, milk, or bread.
1. The elimination of ObL makes it clear that we have grasped the wrong end of the stick in this theater. The problem is Pakistan. And, I am not sure we want to try to solve it. Pakistan is a mess, a failed state, with an enormous, ignorant and vicious population.
2. OTOH, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Most likely, only because the Chinese gave the nukes to the Pakis, but somebody needs to but this horse back in barn.
3. In the 19th century we solved a problem like Afghanistan, in our own western states, by putting the Indians on reservations and civilizing them. We no longer have the cultural confidence for such an undertaking.
4. India has a real reason to be concerned about Pakistan.
5. Our troops in Afghanistan are supplied through Pakistan. If Pakistan wanted to make our position untenable, they could.
6. We need to get out of Afghanistan.
7. We need to deprive Pakistan of nuclear weapons.
8. To achieve our ends we must ally with India.
9. Afghanistan’s highest and best use is as a nature preserve.
The Presidential level decision inherent in the Bin Laden raid was how authorizing it would affect the alliance structure in the theater. It was not in any tactical guidance he could give the SEALs.
By authorizing the raid, which was the right call, President Obama essentially turned the definition of friend and foe in the theater on its head. This was what he and Hillary should have been thinking about on that weekend: the effect of unmasking Pakistan and turning a country squatting on the LOC into an open enemy.
Maybe they didn’t think it through. Perhaps the magnet of Bin Laden pushed the question to the side. But on the day after, it may have been OMG time. That could account for why the NCA suddenly turned its victory lap into a ‘clown car ride’.
But it’s done now. And either President Obama continues to open the can of worms or joins hands with the Pakistani government in trying to unscramble the egg. I don’t think the egg can be unscrambled and the President, whatever his personal inclinations, is just going to have to live with the consequences of his decision.
America is played like a fool.
Now, whose to blame?
Pakistan is itself an object of improbability born in the vacuum of a fleeing British in a war weary world. The Pakistani’s were not born of the fear of under-representation but the greed of power and the resolve to exercise it; ripped from the carcass of India fell into the bowels beneath the Hindu Kush.
Mammon led them on–
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific. By him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
And digged out ribs of gold…
Milton
So nothing was the answer of Abrahams people except that they said: “Kill him or burn him.” Then Allah (Mammon) saved him from the fire. Verily, in this are indeed signs for a people who believe. Koran
…and the beast was borne upon the back of a devilish lie, that Satan’s progeny could vex the days of man, that light could be shadowed and drawn in like the dust over the embers of ebbing coals.
Pakistan is the pathogen that destroys Britain.
One cannot love God and Pakistan because Pakistan goes against god. It stand in defiance of god. Pakistan must go.
“Tangled webs . . .”, etc. And all these years I thought that was Shakespeare.
Pakistan’s ISI has emerged as the first defence line of the entire world because of its spectacular anti-terror achievements. Pakistan and its ISI has actually emerged as the main force of the globe to have achieved maximum successes in global anti-terror war. You all the top high value targets of Al- Qaeda were either caught directly by your ISI or with comprehensive support and assistance of ISI, it proves that ISI has left the CIA and other spy agencies far behind when it comes to draw a comparison in the performance of different spy agency’s performance in so far war on terror. Pakistani Generals have been carrying out anti-terror operations across Pakistan, it has made the world a much safer place. Whereas, CIA is just supervising the trafficking of Heroine and other drugs from Afghanistan.
Pakistan must stay and Pakistan haters must go
Long Live the Land of Pure..
It’s the Punjabis of Pakistan that rule the roost — and they certainly emulate the Prussians.
Their entire gambit in Afghanistan is two-fold: maintain the Durand Line ( so as to hang on to the EASTERN Pashtun lands ) and to milk America for revenue. Islamabad has a Roman sized military atop a withered economy.
Without American funding it will become impossible to maintain their boys in the trenches in the manner that they’ve become accustomed.
Ultimately, Islamabad is trying to be a serious player in South Asia even as their Indian neighbor is catching fire, economically, and pulling away. The Indian Navy is building a carrier task force fully capable of a distant blockade.
Such tactics would recreate the Cuban Missile Crisis climb-down; this time it’d be Pakistan that had to stand down. Her oversized army would be forced into irrelevance. The next conflict would be naval, electronic and propaganda.
Pakistan responds by building atomics at a shocking clip. She intends to have an arsenal larger than France or Britain — combined — as fast as she can go. American and Saudi funding has permitted this insanity to go on and on.
Nice one Sham. The Pakistani’s are the source of most world terrorism. It should stand to reason that their creators know the most about their children.Whenever they need money to buy more explosives to murder more innocent people, all your generals have to do is sell out some of their low level drop outs.Pakistan is a terrorist state and is a danger to the world when they are not busy killing one another and their own politicians.
Land of Pure Evil.
“Even if it decided to amend its ways, the numerous terror groups it has spawned may yet continue to rampage on their own, like berserk Frankenstein monsters. Pakistan is its own worst enemy.”
Which is to say, Pakistan is an Islamic republic.
“President Obama can either try to re-close the can and try to find a way for Pakistan to walk back its actions of many decades…”
Wretchard, there is no way that Pakistan can walk all this back. Pakistan has lived in a world of its own creation since the traumatic split with India in ’47. They’ve had plenty of help since; particularly from Saudi financiers and members of the extended Saudi royal family. Since that time, Pakistan has been one of the leading sponsors of state terrorism with Afghanistan and India the principal victims. Over this time every government, every single one of them, has promoted a variety of extremist groups in order to conduct irregular warfare against India and Afghanistan. With respect to India, the proximate cause is Kashmir, but the ultimate cause is their own delusion in believing that they can foment a sectarian war in India and it’s enfeeblement if not utter collapse: It’s a delusion, but one that is believed at the highest levels. They fight for Afghanistan to secure what they perceive as historic rights, a position for defense in depth against India, and a ready source of irregulars to use in Kashmir, Mumbai, and elsewhere. This is central to who they are; it has become part of their cultural DNA. No government can walk back from their support of these groups without provoking a civil war. And no government will choose that course.
Of course, elements of the Pakistani military and intelligence knew that OBL was in Abbottabad. To believe otherwise, is to believe that any major intelligence agency – in particular India’s – could build with impunity and without detection a million dollar safe-house instead of OBL’s retirement villa/command center. Not bloody likely.
Pakistan is point of collision for two tectonic plates of pathology: in Pakistan you have a nexus for the pathologies of the Indian subcontinent (and those are troublesome enough) with those rolling out of North Africa and Southwest Asia. You end up with the worst of all worlds.
I think the President wanted to draw down in the Middle East; wanted to draw down in what he may have then believed to be the theater of war in SW Asia, Afghanistan. That was what he promised his political base. To give him his due, that was what he tried to do. Draw down abroad, engage, concentrate on his domestic agenda.
The trouble was that the War on Terror, whose existence he tried so hard to deny, was real. Bit by bit his plans were forced back. Iran told him off, his forbearance notwithstanding. Syria went up in flames, despite ceding them Lebanon. The Palestinian State issue became an irrelevance, no matter how much he tried to regard it as “central” to the region. The Arab Spring has forced him into at least one more war with maybe more to come.
And in SW Asia he could only “get Bin Laden” at the cost of proving what he himself would have wanted to deny. That America is under attack from rogue states through fronts. Worse, those rogue states are America’s allies.
Now can he withdraw from Afghanistan if it means giving it back to Pakistan? Can he engage regimes now that he’s declared that Democracy is the wave of history in the Middle East? All of his triumphs have come at the cost of imitating the policies of his despised predecessor. His base may pretend not to notice, but they wouldn’t notice an elephant in their living room if it was pouring them coffee and dancing the fandango.
President Obama has resurrected all of themes he sought so earnestly to bury. He has debunked himself beyond his wildest dreams. Even now he is creating a missile defense shield, even though he is trying to ease the sharpness of it by trying to share it with the Russians.
Yet the momentum of his mental blunders will continue to dog him even as changes course, all the while denying that he is. He has to make certain strategic choices which is loathe to make. He’ll need more than 16 hours to think them over. But reality is hard taskmaster and the President may find that what he wants to do is not the same as what he will be forced to do by the reality he wishes wasn’t there.
Wretchard @ #4: “The critical part of a breakthrough is the exploitation.” Indeed. And exploitation depends on having an objective and a strategy to reaching it. You don’t “back into” an effective exploitation. Obama appears to have stumbled into this whole development. Unclear whether he got rushed into nailing OBL now –inconveniently early to his re-election plans– possibly because of Wikileaks or other concerns that the target would bolt. But it seems that he’s had months and months to figure out his larger objectives and strategy, and then be ready to step on the gas as soon as OBL was slid into the deep. Maybe he’s doing that behind the scenes, sweating the Pakistanis into a whole new attitude. But if we are to judge by the competence of the “clown car” exploitation of the event itself, with endlessly reversing storylines, I don’t think the back-channel efforts will give us much. The guy’s an idiot.
Hope it doesn’t all go pear-shaped before November 2012. What will an aid-starved, humiliated, internally-riven Pakistan do between now and then?
Wretchard @ 9 said:
“This was what he and Hillary should have been thinking about on that weekend: the effect of unmasking Pakistan and turning a country squatting on the LOC into an open enemy. Maybe they didn’t think it through. Perhaps the magnet of Bin Laden pushed the question to the side.”
My guess is that Obama was focused on the up-tick in opinion poll ratings that a bin Laden kill would cause. Hillary probably did think it through but kept her mouth shut. It’s a mistake to assume that Obama has competence beyond reading a teleprompter.
Off topic but interesting. George Monbiot is arguably the world’s most intelligent idiot. The word “moonbat” is a play on Monbiot’s name (he’s the original moonbat). Monbiot just wrote an interesting article in the Guardian about how the Green Movement is “lost”, refer to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/02/environmental-fixes-all-greens-lost
Of course, Monbiot does not have a glimmer of a clue. However it is interesting that even the worst of the moonbats is starting to see the contradictions in his own ideology.
You aren’t making sense Annoyed Mouse. The success or failure in war on terror could only be anchored by Pakistan. We broke the Soviet Union if you remember. Yankees were not potent enough so they had to rely on Pakistan. Again u guys are depending on us in this global war on terror. When lil success is achieved, the CIA and your President takes all the credit and when there is a problem you guys start blaming Pakistan. Anyway, thats an innate mental disease and we have yet to find a cure for that.
Understand that from Khalid Shaikh Muhammad to Libbi, and from Mullah Baradar to Raymond Davis all these top terrorists were caught by Pakistan’s security agencies and handed over to U.S. And yea please don’t forget that Pakistan had provided information to the CIA about Osama bin Laden’s courier through whom the US got the Al Qaeda leader. So Pakistan is your friend and it is protecting you and rest of the world from the menace of terrorism. Grow up and respect Pakistan.
Shamyl…
Raymond Davis is our own agent, our deputy station chief in Pakistan.
The muj never had anything going until Britain and America solved their needs — with Pakistan raking off billions for herself and building proxy armies so as to conquer Kabul for herself.
You are correct in that Pakistan is ground zero for anti-AQ operations. All terror leads back to Islamabad and ISI. That’s now clearly established.
Pakistan, strategically, is like a lurking U-boat: only effective when undetected.
Once exposed, she is ruined. And since operations have been sustained almost entirely on the American dime — Congress is going to cut Islamabad off. Right now it’s just the first turn of the tourniquet.
We should demand that Britain arrest Musharraf and vigorously question him. He can’t know nothing.
Can’t JugEars just unleash India and then walk away whistling and let the cards fall where they may? An act of god, so to speak, with no DC involvement at all, whatsoever? India owes the Pak’s BIG time, and it seems to me that right about now would be a good time to play those cards. Or maybe wait a week or two and retrieve some really good Big Time Names from bin Laden’s computer trove to make really really sure the responsible ones will bite the dust and have *their* gorey last pictures splashed all over the world-wide internet too. I sincerely hope that Mushareff’s name is at the tippy-top of either an Indian list or a SEAL list.
Interesting how a society so totally concerned with the concept of “honor” is finding new and redder ways of ending up remembered as being dishonorable.
Once exposed, she is ruined. And since operations have been sustained almost entirely on the American dime — Congress is going to cut Islamabad off.
With any luck. Then Pakistan can eat its respect. When that runs out they may try China for their next meal, but may find that Beijing can be a rather more exacting a paymaster than Washington. Once they let the Chinese hook in, it will not be so easily extracted.
I only hope they do not try to play the same game with the Chinese and support an attack on Beijing or Shanghai to extract more money. The Chinese are not very sentimental. They know the sound of bluster and prefer the sound of fear.
Similar to the script of Red October, it seems the best scenario would be to have OBl in custody while everybody thinks he’s dead. To me that’s a more rational explanation for the elaborate funeral ceremony, his sudden and irretrievalbe disposal, supression of photos and the announcement of intelligence finds. Possible or too Hollywood or naive a thought?
Pakistan is a net exporter of violence and terror. Terrorists the world round go there for training to murder. India has no need for Pakistan but China would love to get a foot in the Arabian Sea. Gwadar may give them a taste but will it sate?
NahnCee @ 23 said:
“Can’t JugEars just unleash India and then walk away whistling and let the cards fall where they may?”
Welcome back, NahnCee. India and Pakistan are in nuclear stalemate. The Mumbai Massacre should have unleashed India but it didn’t. My guess is that India will stick its nose in after Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is compromised.
I would agree that Wretch is right on. If Pakistan doesn’t have a Bigger Fool lined up to take the place of the US/UK, where do they turn? And as a friend would say, combining Pak and Afghanistan is like combining two yard sales. At the end, you just have a bigger yard sale.
As far as I can tell, Pakistan is a much bigger NKorea except they have nicer towels.
The Times of India reports that things are sliding toward a crisis:
These demands for “respect” and “gratitude” and crowing about how only Pakistan can topple the Soviet Union have one defect. They are exceedingly poor salesmanship. I do not think some Pakistanis understand just how offensive these words sound. How hollow, disgusting, low-down and two-faced it comes across. Maybe Americans don’t understand how offensive they are to Pakistanis either. And in that case the feeling may be mutual and there’s not much future pretending otherwise for much longer.
What the “sober elements on both sides” can do to “save the relationship from total breakdown” depends mostly, but not entirely on President Obama. I think he would cut Pakistan some slack if he could. But Pakistan isn’t going to help him and is altogether too dependent on terrorism to have much else going for it. Therefore he is either going to have to throw his re-election chances away selling “respect” for Pakistan or go with the flow.
Threatening to boot out US personnel from Pakistan and pinching the supply to Afghanistan would be entirely the wrong political move for Islamabad. But doubtless they’ll threaten it from the pathological need for “respect”, thereby making it impossible for Obama to shield them, even if he wanted to.
You can’t unscramble the egg.
W @ 29: yeah, I just heard on the radio that US and Pakistan are in a d***-measuring contest. Only one winner likely from that exercise. If Pakistan sticks to rhetoric and fussing about how, next time, we need to send an RSVP to Islamabad before we bring the hurt, well, it will be manageable and even funny. If instead Pakistan decides to squeeze our logistics base for A-stan, then all bets are off. It will make it impossible for us to leave (as we seem to want to do) because that would look like acquiescence to its pressure. And yet we will have to push back, possibly with weapons free, into our own base area: putting heavy protection onto our logistics train and base. Incendiary as a geopolitical matter and unsustainable as a military one.
Tell me again how smart Obama is? Good thing he has a genius for Sec of State.
Sham, according to the World Bank Pakistan’s economy is about the size of Alabama, population 4.7MM. Grow up and respect Alabama.
This is very interesting and jibes with the photo:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/05/skulking-towards-bin-laden-obama-overridden-by-military-and-intel-officials-in-takeout-of-obl.html
atlas@31: I’ve found the original hi-res photo, blown it up, and Obama is definitely wearing a golf shirt and jacket. Lends credence to the assertion that he was fetched from the golf course.
It is not credible that POTUS would go golfing if he *knew* this was happening.
After the 9/11 attacks the Saudis said that the Osama “killed by Obama” chose 12 Saudi hijackers for the atrocity in order to drive a wedge between the US and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
So perhaps Osama arranged to die at West Point Pakistan in order to drive a wedge between Pakistan and the US. He also staffed the Pakistan Military and Security Services with his men so they could leak his address to the CIA. Then after waiting a year he called Leon Panetta and threatened to call a press conference and embarrass the President if they didn’t come get him. “You’ll know who I am,” he taunted, “I’ll be the one wearing the bomb.” Only he never intended to wear a bomb. It was his idea of a trick. They would kill poor old defenseless him and then the European Criminal Court would indict the Obama who so foolishly killed Osama. As a result of this nefarious plan, Obama will only be able to vacation in the US. Forever.
The irony that this entire situation is too rich to ponder.
The inconsistent versions of the event are nothing more than a vain effort to avoid the obvious; the Nobel Peace Recipient essentially greenlighted a targeted assassination. I suspect BSO was fully aware of the contradiction which is a likely explanation for the alleged 16 hour delay in the decision. I also suspect that the ramifications with regard to Pakistan / Afganistan were not entirely thought through. (16 hours of presidential indecision (alone time if the story is true) does not fit the mold of strategic / long term decision.
With regard to Pakistan I expect BSO to revert to form; hit the reset button and attmpet egagement with promises of larger carrot. Despite the grandstanding of various members of congress, Pakistan will eventually recieve its cash if for no other reason than attempt to avoid further exposure to reality.
hdgreene @ 34 said:
“So perhaps Osama arranged to die at West Point Pakistan in order to drive a wedge between Pakistan and the US.”
SpeakEasy’s comment @ 31 on the previous thread has the ring-of-truth. Osama bin Laden was under some sort of house arrest as an ace-in-the-hole for the Pakistanis. IMHO, that’s a reasonable explanation given that Osama’s best strategy would have been to flee Pakistan. Likewise, holding bin Laden under house arrest would have been Pakistan’s best strategy given they had to maintain a balancing act between appeasing the United States while not infuriating their own Islamic fascists. The interesting questions are how long did the United States know of Pakistan’s duplicity and why did we time the raid to kill bin Laden as we did?
Eggplant….
The Davis Affair triggered the timing.
The ISI had rolled up all of his agents — among whom were the ones tracking OBL to Abbottabad.
Hence, Leon Panetta had to assume that ISI would already be staging a fresh hid for OBL.
Delay became impossible.
“the effect of unmasking Pakistan and turning a country squatting on the LOC into an open enemy.”
Time to hang a Mission accomplished banner and get the puck (hockey play offs) out of Dodge.
Nothing more to do in Pakistan-Afghanistan.
With the troops in Ft. Bliss or Ft. Hood there isn’t much chance of having their supply lines cut.
My theory is the whole deal is an attempt by this administration to control the News cycle. Berry has gotten 4 days of no Libya, Syria, Gas Prices, Unemployment numbers, etc, ALL of which are more important then some nutter living where the housing bubble hasn’t burst yet. The worst thing the USA can do to Pakistan is just walk away. Let them stew in their own juice. Nothing of importance to America in that part of the world.
Let our grandchildren decide on the whens and wheres of re-opening communications with them.
The most likely result will be to push them into China’s arms. Looks like the old 2 birds, 1 stone trick to me.
Walt, you have exceeded your own excellence yet again. Keep lifting the bar. That is the purpose of life.
I think there is the very real possibility that Pakistan looks so strange because there are multiple Pakistans. Elements in the Paki military may well want to get rid of its civilian government. Parts of the government may wish to reduce the influence of the military. Other elements in the government may want to create an Iranian-style Islamist state, as do outside elements. There are no doubt drug runners who would rather see no government at all.
And all of the above want a war going on in Afghanistan against a superpower because it makes it so much easier to skim off the cream of the aid going there. And besides, without the war they are no more than Somalia without the piracy option; no one outside India would give rat’s rump about them.
The Pakis, Iran, the house of Saud, Hamas, Hizballah, and AQ everywhere. This is a culture war. Therefore, the ROE should read shoot, and destroy if need be, let G-d sort out any mistakes.
Thank you, and next target please.
“Threatening to boot out US personnel from Pakistan and pinching the supply to Afghanistan would be entirely the wrong political move for Islamabad.” It will also mean that Moscow will step up and offer even more transit rights to the U.S. if the Pakistanis turn a blind eye to more Khyber Pass truck torching.
People tend to forget, or rather Belmont Clubbers and 99.9% of Washington never knew, that when Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexus passed away in 2009, the Chief of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces was crying on national television remembering his priest/confessor and friend. Speaking only for himself, Senor Equis finds it a bit easier to sleep better at night knowing that the commander of Russia’s nuclear forces is an Orthodox Christian, or at least publically professes to be one, and therefore views himself as having to face the dread judgement seat of Christ for his time here on Earth.
The head of Russian Railways, Vlad Yakunin, is typical of Russian executives of his generation in having four or five years of his CV not listed (i.e. he was a company man in the old USSR’s best functioning company). However, he is also a major patron of the Russian Orthodox Church, which not coincidentally has been a major part of the Russia-Israel reapproachment (the Israelis gave the Church back some land that Czar Nicholas II’s grandfather bought in Jerusalem). And yet the RR trains are now openly carrying NATO bullets and other material across the steppe into Kazahkstan and then to the other ‘Stans where it’s loaded on trucks.
This ‘civilizational’ component of the War on Terror has been widely ignored by those who would prefer to view Russia as a perpetual enemy of the West. As the Russians’ pipeline dispute with China this week shows, they naturally tilt West, even if they still think a secret faction in Washington and London dreams of cracking up the Russian Federation using Caucasian Muslims as a battering ram and looting Russian resources, 1990s-style.
On September 12, 2001 Pakistan was offered a deal and took it: allow the US to pass through to Afghanistan, or we will burn a road through.
Even though it became clear they were a (large) part of the problem, we stuck with the deal, and offered them pocket change as well.
They were never necessarily happy with the deal, Pakistan barely a country in the first place, and not even in control of half their geography, with a long-standing (if twisted) interest in keeping Afghanistan broken and crazy. It’s like if you put Arkansas in charge of Mississippi, when they were living in obsessive fear of Alabama. Everybody is a geopolitical player!
But then, that doesn’t mean we were ever happy with the deal, either.
What it comes down to, is Pakistan may moan, and we may bomb, and that’s what they call a certain kind of marriage.
When can we expect the ever popular “Day of RAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!?”
“Therefore he is either going to have to throw his re-election chances away selling “respect” for Pakistan or go with the flow.”
That may well be correct. Retail politics is changing in the US due to many things, but in no small part to what this site and many others like represent. What used to be a subject discussed and debated in the public square only by those “allowed” to speak, i.e. the pros, now nearly everyone can get in on the act. Politicians may not read a site like this but they recognize instinctively when a meme is in the wind out there with voters. And if voters are scowling at Pakistan, you safely bet that some enterprising politicians in DC will use it to their advantage if they can. In this case, it will not be surprising if Republicans in Congress try to hold up Pakistan funding if only to put the Administration and congressional Democrats in a position of having to justify publicly the continuation of aid. How they do that, in the aftermath of what appears to be OBL’s five year Pakistani vacation, without making it sound like the aid is an act of paying tribute or blackmail will be fun to watch.
What we SHOULD do is immediately cut off all of the billions of aid to Pakistan, throw our full support to India, and set up an ongoing task force that tracks Pakistan nukes with an associated elite military squad trained to take them out at a moment’s notice.
However, what we SHOULD do and what we WILL do are two different things. Does anyone realistically think that anything will change in our relationship with Pakistan? The leftist oligarchy that controls our society is dedicated to a thinly-disguised agenda of weakening America. Their useful idiots the Bush neocons are dedicated to nation building and exporting democracy. The only thing that will happen now is a few behind-the-scenes empty threats, and after that, back to business as usual.
Article linked by Atlas may not be accurate in every detail, but there is too much detail that corresponds to what is known to be true to ignore.
I have followed Leon Panetta for over 30 years and feel confident that if anyone would have and could have pulled this off, he would be the most likely candidate, having deep connections with Congress, the Military and HRC, and being one of the few certifiable adults in the Whitehouse Madhouse.
btw: The head of the House Intelligence Committee (Republican) kept them up to date throughout.
(no doubt ommitting the palace intrigue)
—
“In my initial communication to you of these events I described what unfolded as a temporary Coup initiated by high ranking intelligence and military officials. I stand by that term. These figures worked around the uncertainty of President Obama and the repeated resistance of Valerie Jarrett.
If they had not been willing to do so, I am certain Osama Bin Laden would still be alive today. There will be no punishment to those who acted outside the authority of the president’s office. The president cannot afford to admit such a fact.
What will be most interesting from here is to now see what becomes of Valerie Jarrett. One source indicated she is threatening resignation. I find that unlikely given my strong belief she needs the protection afforded her by the Oval Office and its immense powers to delay and eventually terminate investigations back in Chicago, but we shall see. “
Does anyone have any browser suggestions for dealing with the Gargantuan Bloat of PJ pages?
Someone mentioned Firefox not able to use edit function, likewise IE, but worst of all is computer repeatedly being brought to it’s knees, wasting memory and cpu cycles as if they could be provided by Bernanke’s QE3.
Look at the photograph of Mrs. ObL’s passport (presumably of Arab/Muslim origin). What’s missing?
Mrs. ObL #5
One should not forget that Pakistan is a Commonwealth nation: The dialog between London and that fellow who seems to have no use for Churchill should be interesting in the wake of Abbottabad. And, this does seem to put a bit of crease in Jim Bennett’s Anglosphere model.
“btw: The head of the House Intelligence Committee (Republican) SAYS PANETTA kept them up to date throughout.
(no doubt ommitting the palace intrigue)“
Doug @ 47: IE works well if you make the site restricted. Can’t edit tho.
I can’t restrict it like that at work and I see the page with full bloatware. Ugh. Some other news sites even worse. Numbnuts web “designers”.
I hope your stories of mutiny are unfounded, that kind of thing spreads. OTOH “Emperor Leon The First” has a nice ring to it.
I’m in full agreement with ‘Morton Doodslag’ (#3) above, but I will take it a step further. Throughout the blogosphere there is endless speculation about Obama’s actions and what kind of fallout they might have, but I think most of it is based on erroneous assumptions. The more I’ve learned about this man, the more I am convinced he is nothing but a vile narcissist who is unworthy of the office, and that his true motivations can be boiled down to the following:
- Does it boost his ego and/or his public image?
- Does it reduce American power and/or standing in the world?
- Does it conform to the hard-left agenda?
- Can it be peddled in such a way so as to obfuscate any or all of the above?
With those assumptions, everything he does makes perfect sense. The results of the above are then apparent to anyone with eyes to see…
- Instead of certainty, there is confusion.
- Instead of clarity, there is obfuscation.
- Instead of trust in the American government by Americans, there is suspicion.
- Instead of unity, there is dissonance.
- Instead of opposition, there is infighting.
…and finally the most important…
- Instead of anyone else rising to leadership, there is Obama still in power.
in re: #13 Shamyl [interesting nick according to the new lookup feature]
We know that we have SVR minders. We seem to have Turkish minders, although there may be more than a bit of overlap between the two. It seems that we have acquired a Lashkar-e-Taiba/ISI delegate. The closer we get to reality, the more of these visitors we seem to get.
#4 & #9 Wretchard and #19 oMan
Thinking through the consequences of his actions, and exploitation of what we have learned are the keys. I am also betting that very little thought was given to the strategic effects of the Osama hit. That said, I do not expect there to be much in the way of exploitation of what we have found. The trumpeting of what we have found seems designed to give everybody at risk a chance to go to ground and cover their tracks. Obama could not politically survive if it got out that his procrastination let OBL get away. This does not mean that the same spotlight will be on him if we fail to follow up. His entire world view militates against his taking action to defend against foreign attack.
Delay is his friend.
#8 Walter Sobchak
Let it be written, let it be done. Especially #’s 4-9. The only things I [who by definition am not a "nice person"] would add is that on the way out we help bring #9 to pass, take out the Pak. nuclear stockpile and infrastructure permanently, and leave word that if either country or anyone we think might be related to them however distantly even looks at us funny …. that it might well rain nukes dipped in pig dung.
I know. Such will not come to pass. There are too many in this country who have a vested interest in concealing the threat until it is too late. Yet I suspect that this Middle Kingdom pyrotechnic training exercise that is pleased to call itself our government is going to find that more and more Americans realize that we are in a existential war with the Ummah, and that Pakistan is a major theater of that war.
Subotai Bahadur
The pices of real estate now called Pakistan and India have long been a region of intrigue and generally skulduggery between the great European Powers and the locals. Since the Cold War, things have been ever ever fluid in the dance between India, Pakistan, Russia, China and the USA. Pakistan’s manoeuvring is nearly always about India and I think that motivation is driving the Pakistani actions right now.
To cut a long, post 1947 story short, India presents itself as a secular non- confessional constitutional republic. Pakistan has always been a confessional formally Muslim state. The young Pakistan did not court the same friends as India. In 1947 she was much weaker than India with a tiny trained Civil Service and divided geographically into East and West Pakistan. Immediately after independence she lost her most able leader (Jinnah).
With little confidence in democratic forms of government, Pakistan has often been ruled by authoritarian soldiers whose stated aims have been military parity with India, economic development and the safeguarding of an Islamic society. After 1955 (in spite of the 1959 treaty with the USA, Pakistan drew closer to China and India grew closer to the USSR. For example, When the US declined to provide arms to Pakistan during the 1965 war with India, Pakistan asked for Chinese help and received some, although the Chines gave less assistance than Pakistan hoped for.
My wild guess is that Pakistani actions surrounding the killing of Osama Bin Laden have something to do with India but since Pakistan suffers from a split personality, the manoeuvring has gone into the ditch. In other words, Pakistan has made some monumental error in it’s schemes against India because its national brain trust is factionalized and the factions are fighting.
At least, that is my wild unsubstantiated guess.
From the perspective of fundamental American interest–which must dominate our policy
1/ Make a deal with Iran
2/ Make a deal with KSA
3/ Make a deal with Iraq
Ensure our energy needs during the transition to other supplies
Get out of the doomed religious/tribal/ land quagmire in the ME–as Gen Petraeus commands
It is not Americas problem-
End all handouts to the leeches/ parasites in the ME and SW Asia– Pakistan, Israel and Egypt.
Let us focus upon improving the American economy and our national debt–if Obama solves our domestic economic problems then he deserves to be reelected
Because that is what is most important to Americans–the economy.
Sorry Subotai @53 but if you’re referring to Senor Equis, I am an American.
And most of the flood of propaganda I saw on 08/08/08 was in favor of an American ally that had screwed up monumentally, started a war, and had someone else finish it, to quote Dana Rohrbacher (presumably also the Orange County Republican is under KGB influence, right?). How Misha’s minions could have paid for it all themselves, I leave to your imagination — the short answer is they didn’t, but like many proxies, Georgia was thrown away once it was no longer useful.
The Russian position only received support much later, from Der Spiegel of all folks, though of course, the hardcore neocons and Misha the Tie Eater die hards can all say Germany is under Russia’s thumb, including its media. At which point of course, the story died. Much like BCers have been complaining about Libya this week — war? What war?
Where does Pakistan turn when it has sufficiently pissed us off?
China or Russia
Or Iran
Not a good choice (for us) in the bunch.
At least we should recall our ambassador, if not break off diplomatic relations. This government and our people are not our friends, have never been, and will never be. Let’s throw our support overboard and give it to India (which would also be a useful counter-weight to China).
By the way, there is some mighty fine literature on this thread. Good stuff.
Pakistan’s principle export is disease.
We should occupy the naval base the Chinese thoughtfully built and drive a corridor to Kandahar. Let the Indians have the Punjab and the Pashtuns have their own unified disorganized hell hole where they get to lord it over no one else. Declare independence for the Sind and the Baluchis, including those in Iran.
The rentier parasite exploiter pirate culture that Pakistan’s elite demonstrate in attempting to grow wealthy without producing any actual wealth is not a natural part of their South Asian heritage. It is an infection transmitted from the bedouin Arabs via Islam and the ghazi raiding party tradition. All pastoralists would periodically overgrow their resources and descend on the river valleys as raiders. Islam turned that into an inescapable social and psychological model.
Regardless of infighting or not within the Obama administration (which seems very likely even on a good day), the timing of this raid was probably driven by Panetta for various reasons:
1. The intel was CIA.
2. CIA assets in Pakistan were rolled, implying the ISI would reshuffle whatever they could and thought compromised, ASAP.
3. The announcement of Panetta’s move to DoD means he had a limited time-frame in which to finish what will undoubtedly be considered the high point of his CIA tenure, or risk handing it to Petraeus–who might not pull the trigger, frankly.
4. Wacking OBL has just given him enormous military cred. This will help a great deal with the DoD. If in fact he did it over the objections of the White House, that will only help him with military grunts (possibly not the political generals, though).
So even with this incomplete list we have Panetta with substantial reasons for pushing this forward. The precise timing of it–burying certain stories like the BC matter–may be calculated to ease approval, but I doubt was planned by Obama. Regardless, since training had been completed, there would be a limited window in which the SEAL team could be used at peak form; after that they would need to train for the next operation and ditch prep for this one.
The Republican House will push defunding Pakistan to the limit, and force the administration and Democrats to justify enormous sums to a country and regime now odious to America. This will greatly blunt any election credit Obama might gain from killing OBL, but he could capitalize on this move by running ahead and shutting down Afghanistan.
This last point is also important, since if Pakistan-US relations do go completely sour we can expect the logistics route to be cut. Withdrawing all equipment by air is not tenable, nor really is doing so through Central Asia. A belligerent Pakistan could force a katabattis by the most experienced part of the US military, right through it’s own territory. I don’t know if this is preferable to an orderly withdrawal, followed by inevitable return to Pakistan to remove the nukes when the whole place breaks down, or not.
–JC
With Osama Dead, a 9/11 Memoir
I wish I could do my fellow Americans the courtesy of rejoicing with them over the news that, at long last—and nearly 10 years after perpetrating the terrorist attacks that made him the most wanted man on earth—Osama Bin Laden is now well and truly dead. But I’m having difficulty working up the necessary emotions, and I’m far too exhausted to go around faking it anymore. It’s not that the news isn’t good, it’s just that it no longer seems to pertain to me. The cares of 9/11 and all the reactions that followed in its wake belong to a world that I departed from a long time ago. I cannot get close to that world or feel myself to be a living member of it ever again. I can only watch it as through a pane of glass, and make such observations as seem to me supported by the facts. My personal history differs from the greater mass of men; a wrenching private struggle that I did not choose stamped me with a different set of priorities at the time when others were experiencing the horrors of 9/11. As a result, an unbridgeable chasm has grown between me and the larger world, a distance that only seems to broaden and harden with the passing years. It was already very great when that fateful Tuesday morning dawned hot and clear, those many years ago.
What follows is my 9/11 story. Perhaps it is not the most dramatic or the most profound, but it does seem to bear upon the events in a nontrivial way—a way that may find an echo in the experience of others. In any case, it is personal, it is truthful, and it is mine. I hope it will be of some value, for it is the only tale I have to tell.
“Do you remember where you were when the first plane hit?,” goes the question that will ever be asked of the generations who were alive on 09/11/2001. Indeed we are never supposed to forget it, and indeed I never have. I was on a city bus, just east of 92nd and Sheridan, in Westminster, Colorado. I overheard the bus driver mumbling something to one of his regulars, seated just behind him. “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center,” he said. “They think it’s an accident. But now 30 floors of the World Trade Center are on fire.” Thus the day’s news began to trickle in.
I recall that I felt an immediate increase in my general level of bemusement; for in those days, dear reader, I walked around in a cloud of bemusement thick enough to chew. Please forgive me if I say that I felt no pain, or at least not any additional pain. I already had all the pain I could stand, and at that point in time we still had no idea what was really going on.
I was 20 years old at the time, and it’s safe to say that my life had never been worse. Not that it had ever been much good to begin with. The neighborhood I grew up in was poor and blighted; my family had been the very picture of alcoholism, physical abuse, and dysfunction. I spent my teenage years embroiled in drugs and vandalism, got into a few fights, and even dropped out of high school in my junior year. These events precipitated my first complete nervous breakdown—at the age of 16. Nevertheless (and by the grace of God), I somehow managed to avoid serious brushes with the law, and I was even able to return to school and graduate with my class. Having no other plans for my life, I allowed a friend of mine to talk me into applying at a fairly selective engineering college with him; and to my everlasting astonishment, I was accepted. However, nothing in my previous life had taught me how to live independently in civil society, and going off to college was too much of a culture shock for me. While I had always been academically talented, I lacked the moral and character virtues necessary to thrive in my new surroundings. My behavior in college is best left unmentioned, and let us just say that I returned home shortly thereafter, with less glory than shame.
That’s when things really fell apart. My parents divorced, their drinking accelerated, my father became suicidal, and my mother took up with a much younger dirt-bag and moved him into the house. I wasn’t about to stand for that, but I had few legitimate means of recourse. After several months of intolerable tension and infighting, I found myself kicked out of my home (hauled away by police actually, at my mother’s behest), temporarily confined to a locked mental ward (I had committed no crime, but the police felt it necessary to dispose of me somehow—I shudder to recall the complete annihilation of civil rights and personhood that I experienced then), and unemployed and broke. I oscillated between wandering the streets and crashing at my father’s apartment, to which I returned mainly to cook for him and to make sure he was still alive. He tried to kill himself at least three times during that period, and twice he tried to kill me. I struggled to make ends meet by working day labor at a construction site, and thereafter by troubleshooting for Verizon customers at a call center. I did not starve, but there were times when I was grateful to be able to buy a box of cereal.
I eventually landed a slightly better job at a department store, and I got myself back into university, majoring in philosophy this time. As a fulltime student, with a fulltime job and no car, I spent several hours each day on the bus. That’s where I found myself when the planes began to hit, and that’s why I had but little sympathy to spare on the occasion. I was in a daze, dear reader. My personal 9/11 had begun long before.
That miserable life of mine dragged on and on. I will not assail you with all the details; I will only say that the sadness and anxiety I then experienced pushed me to the ragged edges of endurance, and sometimes beyond them. I cried in my sleep, which was a scant four hours a night. I felt a nameless and hitherto unknown fear in my dreams. It was the fear of waking up, the fear of having to “put on” consciousness once again like an iron maiden. If you have never been chronically depressed, dear reader, I shall describe the sensation for you. It is a hyperawareness that never dissipates. It is rather like being rudely awakened from a deep sleep as though by a drill sergeant, banging trashcan lids and shining a flashlight in your face. In fact, the pain of bright sunlight on eyes used to deep darkness is exactly like the pain of despondency, only it does not fade with adjustment. It becomes a permanent feature of your waking existence. It is like a hot knife in your mind; it is like the shame of public nakedness; it is like falling through swirling black clouds with no solid surface to fall upon. You are driven to strain every nerve in search of a solution, although you have no idea where a solution might be found.
I was weak and humiliated. I was nothing in the face of the world. I felt as vulnerable and helpless as a pinkie mouse, a tasty morsel for some dread creature that had fared better in the fortunes of life. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that I read philosophy obsessively. I had a taste for the modernists—especially Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Tillich—because I felt like I was recapitulating in my own being all the angst and despair of Western civilization. I developed a great love for Oswald Spengler, because I knew that the horrors metastasizing in my own life were but the side effects of a greater societal decay. I dabbled in Baudrillard and Foucault, because I sensed that the electronic media had long been weaving a cocoon of hyperreality about me which I would have to dismantle if I was ever to think clearly. This last consideration would be of immense importance later on.
It is a dangerous matter to lose everything you’ve ever known, dear reader. Such turnings have driven many men to their graves. It is only slightly less dangerous to take seriously the convolutions of modern philosophy; and using them, to attempt to rebuild one’s worldview at the most fundamental level of system architecture. To do both at the same time is sheer madness. It is to creep within the very shadow of Barad-dûr itself. Yet that is what I did. By the grace of God, I had passed through the ultimate anxiety and found a path through the Dead Marshes.
It is regrettable that I did not read Aristotle at that time, but of necessity I began to think after his manner. I needed something good and stable to stand upon, needed to know whether or not reality could be trusted. I’m not sure if very many people know what it’s like to have to do metaphysics—not just to study it, but to actually do it (yes, and epistemology too!)—as if your life depended on it. When you stop treating philosophy as a speculative exercise and demand from it bankable results, you inevitably become an Aristotelian. It was in those awful days that I first started believing in God because it was reasonable to do so. It was then that I started to discover, in my own rudimentary fashion, “ontological proofs” for God’s existence, and something resembling the Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas. Looking back on those times, I am rather proud of myself that I was able to reinvent so sublime and noble a wheel, and under such impossible circumstances to boot. But I am also somewhat upset that nobody had ever taught me these simple truths in the first place.
That was the beginning of my regeneration. I had much to suffer yet, and I have much to suffer still. I will not bore you, dear reader, with the details of my escape from the Dark Tower of modernism, my eventual conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, or with any of my present labors. It remains for me now to talk about how these experiences shaped my interpretation of 9/11, and the subsequent US reaction.
(It’s a story about 9/11 after all, so let’s get back to the point.)
Forsooth, it was some time yet before I had attained the peace of mind necessary to pay attention to external events. When I began to do so again, I found a world very differently constituted from the one that I had left behind. Consider: I had watched virtually no television for the previous three and a half years. In the meantime, “Reality TV” had become a hit phenomenon, the tech-stocks bubble had broken and burst, and nevertheless a sort of internet-savvy chicness, a pink-shirt-and-Starbucking insouciance, had become de rigueur in middleclass circles. I was not online; I didn’t even own a computer. Cultural events of the highest magnitude had passed me by unawares. I had missed Super Bowls, hit television series, the advent of Britney Spears and the boy bands, the collapse of Enron—even the Millennium itself barely registers in my memory. I found that I did not care. I had broken with the world and moved on. I lost all taste for television and never again could I stay absorbed in a mere “show.” Furthermore, I had grown up somewhat. My trials had taught me something about human psychology, and about the dark motives and deceptions that seethe in the hearts of men. Finally, my natural skepticism and my encounters with Baudrillard had taught me to deconstruct the hyperreality of the electronic media. Unwilling to get burned by the world a second time, I wanted to perceive only the reality behind all impressions and dissimulations. So there I stood, bending my mind this way and that—scrutinizing, exacting, demanding—unearthing motives and plots, reading the telltale traces of all the edits and retcons and bluffs with which men inevitably polish their accounts. Such was the mindset I brought to bear on the news when I started watching the War on Terror unfold. It was just about this time that Secretary Colin Powell gave his famous report to the United Nations.
I wasn’t all that impressed. It’s not that I didn’t believe him, it’s just that I didn’t understand what the big deal was supposed to be. A couple of white rectangles on a satellite photo which might have been trailers; trailers which might have been mobile weapons laboratories—was that it? And what did Saddam Hussein have to do with 9/11 anyway? The report was pretty underwhelming just where I demanded to be blown away. Having developed the cautious habit of overestimating the competence of authority, I was expecting the high brass to present something like a Tom Clancy novel come to life. The tiresome lecture given by Powell didn’t satisfy my desire for certainty. This initial disappointment already left me with the feeling that something was very wrong.
That feeling was confirmed by my second, much greater disappointment. It was deeply unsettling to watch the entire news media suddenly effloresce with a number of quite improbable hawks. I found the jingoistic tone at FOX News—that prim, Protestant, from-the-heartland sort of cant which is so characteristic of their reportage—to be both artificial and unwatchable. I remember when the idea of “embedded journalists” was first mooted, and my distress when such an obvious propaganda tactic did not meet with the vociferous objections it deserved. I remember reading Michael Kelly’s editorial, “Making the Moral Case for War in Iraq;” and I remember, a few weeks later, when Michael Kelly became the first embedded Iraqi war journalist to die in his emdeddedness. But most of all, I remember the massive spectator enthusiasm that the media engendered for this war, the ribbons and lapel pins and terror alerts and stupid anthems, the Cult of First Responder Worship which sprang up at about this time (my recent experience of getting railroaded into the psych ward left me none too well-disposed towards the cops), and how people who one month ago couldn’t tell you the difference between a Howitzer and Mauser rifle would now gladly inform you that the battle wagon you saw on the TV screen was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and not, ahem, an Armored Personnel Carrier.
I couldn’t escape the impression that the whole thing was turning into a circus, but I was still willing to put up with all the media shenanigans on the theory that it was within the range of normal behavior for a people who suddenly had had war foisted upon them. However, once President Bush told me that I needed to help America in its hour of need by going shopping, I was done being generous—the romance was over for me. No longer could I maintain the belief that the captains running this war had any sense of the gravity of their actions. I remained a stalwart Republican of course, a two-time Bush voter and a (blech!) one-time McCain voter; but from that moment on, I was never quite on board with the Administration. Unlike the rabble-rousers on the Left, I always sustained that there was nothing particularly immoral or underhanded about our invasion of Iraq; however, I opposed the invasion on the rather quotidian paleoconservative grounds that it was being managed by idiots, that the objectives were unclear, that the probable benefits were slim to none, and at any rate it was much too expensive. This was the most commonsense position one could hold at the time, which is probably why it was shared by practically nobody.
That the war was largely a media creation none can now doubt. This is true for the obvious reason that relatively few American lives were directly impacted by it. If you were one of the 290 million Americans who were not in New York or Washington on September 11th, if your friends and relations made it through the day unharmed, and if you are not one of the several hundred thousand servicemen who have seen duty in Iraq or Afghanistan (or one of their kin), then your experience of the War on Terror has been something brought to you entirely via TV, news, and internet. Whether your personal opinion inclines toward supporting or opposing the war effort, it matters not; for in what meaningful sense can you support or oppose something that you have nothing to do with? The conclusion is that, for most Americans, the war nearly could have been forgotten (and would have been), were it not for the media’s constant reporting on it, and the manner in which it figured into the domestic policy debate. Important implications follow.
Let us take, for instance, the 9-11 “Truther” movement, execrable insult to good taste that it is. It was late in the year of 2004 when I first heard of them—on CSPAN of all places. I think I must have been flipping through television channels when I saw something that looked like an erudite policy debate. Since I happen to enjoy erudite policy debates, I tuned in for awhile. As it so happens, I caught maybe the last 10 minutes of what turned out to be some sort of blue ribbon Truther panel made up of engineers, professors, and other assorted wonks. Up until that time, it had never even crossed my mind to doubt the accepted version of the September 11th events. I’ll admit that I was intrigued, so I looked into the matter and thought about it carefully. However, I quickly decided that the entire Truther premise was ridiculous. It was so ridiculous, in fact, that one could not long hold to it without compromising one’s common sense. Why were so many “experts” in the natural sciences so willing to lend their names to something which quite clearly insisted upon the bastardization of their respective disciplines? I discounted the fringe benefits that would come from such a move, such as garnering instant popularity among a certain segment of the Left. It had to be some sort of higher-level game they were playing, or perhaps some deep psychological need that drove them onward.
Thus we come, dear reader, to the greatest catastrophe of them all: the general disengagement from reality which has marked this war from the beginning on both sides of the political spectrum. How could it be that tens of millions of Americans had already assumed that the US government was somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks, scarcely before the dust from the collapsing towers had cleared? How could it be that such carnage, so obviously inflicted by a foreign enemy, could so rapidly be subtilized into a paranoid accusation flung at the heads of the reigning administration? Could it be because, deep down, we all knew that the attack was no more than a fleabite, and that it wasn’t going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things? Didn’t we sense (oh, the heresy it would have been to admit it!) that a great battle had been joined, only it wasn’t the Global War on Terror (which merely occupied the visible wavelengths)? It was the battle for political capital on the domestic scene: that was the real object of desire. America the Hegemon herself was on the table, and the victor would control her destiny. In other words, the immediate effects of the 9/11 attacks were of so little consequence that, as soon as everybody had caught their breath, they each begin to think of how to turn the situation to their advantage; and the prize they fought for was the possession of America, the only real prize left in the world.
This will be easier to see if we examine first the case of the Truthers, and analyze their processes of belief formation. Such an analysis (admittedly barebones), would go something like this: There are many people in this country who naturally suspect the government of every sort of foul and malicious behavior. The exact etiology of these beliefs is something which we cannot go into in great detail about here, but let us just say that there is nothing especially abnormal or defective about such people. They have normal human aspirations, unfortunately cathected to the wrong objects. The basic explanation is that their beliefs feel good to them, and provide them with a narrative structure and sense of control over their lives. The essence of this sense of control is freedom from responsibility. Consequently, these people have a very ambiguous relationship with authority, since authority is the embodiment of responsibility. They hate submitting to it always, they will seize it for themselves when they can, and they will wield it arbitrarily when they have it. All ordinary symbols of authority, particularly the Church and the State, become their hated adversaries. The more they hate authority, the greater becomes their sense of power, and the more eager they are to appropriate authority and twist it to their own designs. They are the quintessential liberals and revolutionaries.
You will inevitably find such people gravitating toward progressivist causes, all progressivist causes, whether they involve ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class structure, environmentalism, or what have you. They may be under the impression that they actually believe in such causes, but in reality they are simply drawn instinctively toward any political movement calculated to oppose the ordinary power structure. The numerous contradictions in their belief system do not bother them, for it is not truth they are interested in. The secret logic of power knits together all their multitudinous designs. The 9/11 attacks provided them with an opportunity which was too good to lose, from their point of view. For them, it was just as if an oil tanker had broken up on a reef, which event they would have used to pillory Big Oil; or as if a child had died of secondhand smoke inhalation, which they would have used to pillory Big Tobacco. As it so happens, the Ordinary Authority dropped the ball on 9/11, so they used that event to pillory Big Government. An observation of failure quickly became an imputation of incompetence, which became neglect, which became complicity, which became malice. With these key psychological elements in place, there wasn’t much work left to do. The rest of the 9/11 Truther narrative is just literature, just as Marxism and Gender Studies are no more than literature at bottom, unreal in their very marrow. The only thing that matters is the power structures which such literature takes for granted, the power structures that can unite a mass of humanity in a common revolutionary purpose. These books know their own, and their own know them. There you have the anatomy of a Truther.
But we must admit that the Truther movement derived a lot of its impetus from the failure of Ordinary Authority to handle the situation properly. The Neocons, too, had their dreams and their visions, and they were no less opportunistic than the Libs when it came to converting 9/11 into the MacGuffin for the rather bizarre screenplay that followed. The trailer for that movie would have gone something like this: Imagine a realm of marvelous technological wonder and achievement, where Kantian Republics bloom in what once was hostile desert. Where a law called the Bush Doctrine brought peace to a troubled planet, and men from every corner of the earth raised purple fingers skyward in pledges of endless brotherhood. On the day when the towers fell, a nation arose from its slumber; a nation that would become a religion, a religion that would transform a universe!
Such is a peak into the mindset of our Neocon brethren, who with Francis Fukuyama and Leo Strauss were already contemplating the End of History when the smoke alarms started going off in the Pentagon. “This calls for an end of history,” they said; and they found in themselves men admirably suited to play the role of the Ender. Some time they had had to look forward to this, and they had not been idle. Thus it was that they were able to roll out the PATRIOT Act in no time at all, and the preparations were already in place for the invasion of at least two countries. The Department of Homeland Security they established, ostensibly for securing the homeland; and the TSA they did also establish, to secure everybody’s underpants. Flag pins they wore on their swollen chests, and duct tape they gave for our windows. A coalition of think-tankers and hick balladeers was assembled to give the movement some much-needed cultural cachet; and the End of History, a World Federation under the auspices of American democracy, was ever twinkling in their eyes.
If you’ll forgive me for waxing lyrical, dear reader, what I’m trying to say is that the Neoconservative Establishment’s immediate response to the 9/11 attacks was not to bring the terrorists to justice as efficiently as possible, but to implement an orchestrated program of world-improvement for which 9/11 was simply the convenient excuse. To this end they massively expanded the federal bureaucracy, spinning off new departments and offices at a breakneck pace. They appropriated to themselves new powers to surveil and detain the civilian population. And when it came time to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, to the military objectives of the campaigns was added the program of “nation building,” the deliberate attempt to remake the cultural aspect of whole regions of the globe. It was a farfetched notion at best: the sort of “Teach the savages to speak Americano”-type idealism that one often associates with tired colonial powers whose leading men have gone soft in the guts. Not only was this spectacle draining to watch, but it placed in an awkward position those of us who thought that America’s defense was still worth fighting for, and who felt obliged to defend the Administration’s prerogatives on that account.
So we see that while the Truthers and the Neocons opposed each other in rhetoric, in style and in substance they were really quite similar. They each had a dream they were trying to sell, and within that dream was cloaked the desire to control America’s future. They each offered up some rather flimsy justifications for the changes they were wont to inflict on American life; and they each showed, by the bungle which they made of affairs when the desired power fell at last into their hands, that a true grasp of the situation eluded their comprehension, and exceeded their capacities. The Neocons, be it said, were much closer to the truth, while the ironically-named Truthers were far away from it. But the tactics employed by the Neocons opened up a chance for the Truthers to play their gambit. If there were ever any solid and believable reasons for expanding the government and invading Iraq, the Neocons never presented them. What they offered instead was a sentiment, and the Truthers’ sure instinct for power sensed that behind that sentiment lay a bid for domestic supremacy. The Truthers, not to be outdone, countered with an alternative version of reality, saying, in effect, “You have your sentiments, and we have ours.” While the Neocons had some inkling of the truth, they never justified it: They offered unjustified true beliefs. The Truthers responded with unjustified false beliefs. And if the Neocons openly accused the Truthers of having ulterior motives, the Truthers would just stare back at them across the table, knowing that the Establishment had ulterior motives of its own, and that they would never willingly throw down their own cards. Thus was a situation created which was tailor-made to prevent any facts from coming to light. The War on Terror became kabuki theater in the battle for domestic sentiments. For where there are no facts, dear reader, sentiment rules.
And so the long middle years of the Iraqi invasion rolled on…2004…2005…2006. These were the years when the news media really came into its own as the decisive factor in shaping the national mood. It was an era of exposé books and hit pieces in the major periodicals (think Fiasco and Seymour Hersh). It was the setting for a fierce, protracted duel between Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly, and the networks they represented. And above all it was the Age of the Blogger, the advent of the independent world-improver. For now a new contender appeared in the lists of battle to add to the confusion and the noise. Across the crackling channels of cyberspace there arose a mighty din, an endless stream of commentary and criticism which inflated the 24-hour news cycle to thunderhead proportions. Long had this mass been kept silent. Before the internet came, they had lain in smoldering resentment; for, unable to breech the corridors of official publication, they had had to content themselves with firing off the occasional letter to the editor. But now, empowered by easy access to data and at least a theoretical audience, they woke up and felt that they were strong. Wielding Excel charts and Google Earth pics, they charged into the fray with all the gusto of their long-repressed emotion. And for once, high up in their unassailable battlements, the powers of the mainstream media were shaken. Pressing, clamoring, and inexorable, the Peanut Gallery was on the march.
I’ll admit that I was seduced, dear reader. There was so much going on in this Brave New World that I, too, wanted to be a part of it. Persons who had hitherto labored in obscurity were out there making names for themselves, and I thought, “Why not me?” After all I had read a little history and philosophy, and I had thought long and hard about these subjects. I could turn a phrase reasonably well when the proper mood struck me, and in the past my essays had met with some attention in some not too inconsiderable venues. I began to think I had a future in policy analysis. I wanted to make some meaningful contribution to society and thereby resurrect my life from the doldrums to which fate had consigned it; I wanted to be where the action was; and above all, I wanted to exercise my dearly-bought Baudrillardian skepticism and get to the bottom of things. Surely there would be an appetite for that?
So when the Great Host of the Peanut Gallery (shall we call them the Pea-orns?) went marching by, I eventually joined with the assembly. But I needed more information, needed to stay abreast of things, so it was unavoidable that I started watching the news again. This I did with an enthusiasm fit to balance the scales against my previous media fast. Every day I tracked the financial markets, meditating deeply on the foreign exchange rates and the spot price of commodities (though I don’t have a penny invested in anything). The foreign news, too, I watched, Deutsche Welle and the BBC. I stayed glued to CNN, MSNBC, and even to Charlie Rose (an interruptive blabbermouth he is, but he seems to get all the good guests). And I worked over everything I saw with the highest degree of philosophical exactitude I could muster.
I tell you this because I am now slightly chagrined by it. When I look back at my writings from that period, I am heartened by my occasional flashes of brilliance; but I am also unnerved by the overwrought thinkiness of it all: World-historical implications attributed to events of transitory significance, a trifling federal interest rate fluctuation parsed in Heideggerian terminology—and all of it couched in a tone that not infrequently exhibited signs of an underlying mental disturbance. I suppose I could be forgiven for that, though. I was effectively fatherless; I had no real life and no prospects; I was desperate for recognition and very insecure about ever being taken seriously, so I poured all my energy into every little post and comment. Needless to say, I took disagreement quite personally. I wanted to stand as a beacon in the storm, to acquire prudence and to become a man. In the end it appears that I was not entirely unsuccessful, although my success came in a manner that I never expected. For throughout the long middle years of the invasion, I could never repress the intuition that I was wasting my time “getting to the bottom of it.” Amid all the media smoke and noise, all the policy and theory and analysis that so delighted my intellect, I was missing out on what was really important. The key to understanding any war is not to be found in the annals of strategy and correspondence; it is found in knowing where you stand and what you are fighting for—and I didn’t. Home and hearth, family and friends, God and grace—those should have been my concerns. Although I greatly wished to be relevant to the times, all the events and decisions were taking place far beyond my reach (by design), and I had no means to influence them. By this time my impression of the War on Terror was one of pageantry repeated ad nauseum. The talking heads had chattered their teeth down to the nubs, and the trumpets had blared too long. I didn’t want another drink of this draught, thank you. I was getting queasy, and I was sobering up. It was time for me to go home, dear reader. I’d had enough.
Apparently the country, too, had had enough. The 2006 Congressional Elections swept into office a wave of Democrats, and nobody could have honestly said they were surprised by the result. The tide had turned, and the opposition was starting to win the battle for US sentiment. It is interesting to note that the sort of wedge issues which traditionally serve as a proxy for registering increases in liberal attitudes—the legalization of gay marriage, for instance—went down in ignominious defeat at the very moment when the party long associated with liberalism was garnering its biggest electoral victory in decades. But the American people were not voting for liberalism; they were voting for a return to normalcy. What transpired in the interim was, I think, a nation-sized version of my personal transmigration from initial enthusiasm to toleration to disgust. For by now it had dawned, even among those directly engaged in fighting the war, that the matter had become solipsistic, completely captured by the exigencies of domestic party politics. The American people felt like they were not being heard, and they were tired of needlessly shedding blood and treasure on a campaign for which they were offered no clear exit strategy, but every convenient excuse. What’s more, the time had long expired when the average person could see how his contributions to the war effort were making any difference. Under such circumstances, it was inevitable that support for the endeavor waned. And it will not do to say, as so many Neocons at the time were wont to say, that the only reason why so many unpatriotic Americans were able to criticize the war effort in peace and comfort, was because valiant men were defending them on distant fields of battle, spilling their blood for the country that they (at least) still loved, un-thanked and unappreciated. The truth is only a few cranks ever dared to disparage the efforts of our soldiers. Indeed not since World War II had American servicemen been lauded with so much genuine fanfare. It was the American people who were unappreciated, dismissed, and lied to. It was they who had seen their freedoms confiscated and their national deficits balloon. And it was then, in the long middle years, that the realization set in, grim and irrevocable, that the American people were just an object, a source of votes and revenues for the bureaucratic coterie in Washington, who managed the affairs of the world with an eye toward their own preservation, and took but little notice of the restiveness brooding throughout the land. So it came to pass that in November of 2006, the American people, without much ado, and admirable in their restraint, turned up in astonishing numbers for a midterm election, and voted to go home.
Finally, it was no coincidence that the long middle years saw attention to the Iraqi campaign increase out of all proportion to its importance in the actual War on Terror, at least as far as the domestic policy battle was concerned. Iraq: the word will forever remain synonymous with the War on Terror, even though the only proper theater of combat, if combat there must be, was arguably in Afghanistan. Thus it was that Iraq became the real bone of contention in the ideological conflict which ensued, the target of the most blistering criticisms as well as the object of the most pompous defenses. Depending on the ferocity of the particular attacker, the Administration’s motives for embarking on the Iraqi campaign were adjudged to be either imprudent or base; and these attacks naturally elicited rebuttals from the Establishment which sounded more like obfuscatory rhetoric than reasoned explanations. The acrimony that was engendered by this is what drove the entire debate, and much that should have been done or explained was left to fall through the cracks. It was only rarely, and almost as an afterthought to the intense media focus on the Iraqi theater, that somebody would moot the fatal question, “Hey, whatever happened to that Bin Laden guy?” Perhaps that was why many of us just assumed he was already dead.
Looking back, it is easy to see how the Tide of 2006 adumbrated the political reversals of 2008; and here we must pay heed to something we overlook only at our peril. The Republican Establishment bears the blame for the sole American defeat ever suffered in the War on Terror: the election of Barack Hussein Obama, the greatest “man caused disaster” ever to befall the country, greater by far than 9/11 itself. I said openly at the time that it was “love” that caused his election; but it wasn’t the love of him, still less the love of the liberal policies he represented. It was love for the America we once knew, love of home and peace and normalcy. The Republicans, with their endless prevarications, their bluster and bravado and ham-fisted insouciance, had practically assured the election of a Democrat in 2008; and beyond that, they assured the primary election of the most liberal, most exotic, most machine-oiled Democrat the country could find. Here we are left to ponder the irony of the fact that a man whose mindset stands closer to America’s enemies than to America’s, had the fortune to be leading the country on the day when America’s War on Terror finally swept to its conclusion.
So it was that on Sunday, May 1st, in the year 2011, the third in the reign of King Hussein I, the country rejoiced to learn that Osama Bin Laden had been found and destroyed. Almost immediately, though, there was cause for misgiving. The initial reports were much varied and contradictory; the body was ceremoniously dumped in an unknown sea; and after some initial waffling, we were informed that no pictures of the corpse would ever be made public. “Don’t you worry,” our government reassured us. “We have the DNA evidence. We got him.” Yet many people have remained stubbornly un-reassured. I’ll admit that I, too, succumbed to some temporary Obama Derangement Syndrome. After all, he certainly doesn’t deserve to go down in history as the president who felled America’s Most Wanted. From what we know about his character, we cannot put it past him to lie about such an event, or at least to distort the facts beyond recognition in order to enhance his own popularity. But whatever the true events were, it appears to me upon reflection that at least the kernel of the story must be accepted as fact. Bin Laden was either killed last week or he was already dead. I doubt very much that he is still alive.
One thing, though, I do not doubt: the American people deserve better than this. Here at the conclusion of this long and nasty conflict, we deserve better than an Obama photo-op and a breezy assertation that all is well, and never mind the lack of evidence. Haven’t we had enough of that attitude already? Isn’t this, in fact, more of the very same attitude that needlessly prolonged this war, and caused so much heartsickness and division here at home? It is good that Osama Bin Laden is dead, but it did not need to take 10 years. It did not need to come at the cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. It did not need to involve such draconian changes to American society as we have had to endure. And it did not require us to sell out to the Pakistanis, as so many marginalized voices long warned us we were doing. Let us take stock of all that has transpired since 9/11, and ask what changes we can now demand of our government, now that the man who started it all has finally met his demise. Don’t we now have a good enough reason for pulling out of Afghanistan? I think we have at minimum a good enough reason for getting rid of the TSA. Surely we can expect some of these changes to take place. If they do not, it is proof that the war was never about Bin Laden. It was always about domestic policy, about Washington and who would control its wealth-absorbing power; and that is a pretty sad commentary on the state of affairs. I think, after all is said and done, that the American people are at least entitled to closure. Closure and freedom.
So you see, dear reader, for me this war has ended pretty much as it began, in a collage of media reports that cannot be absorbed or assimilated, in an overweening government that permits no one to peer into its mysterious doings. And if I may be permitted to append a personal request at the conclusion of this overlong remembrance, let it be a request that all Americans now strive to retake the freedom and dignity which we let slip away in the terror of darker days. Let not Bin Laden’s legacy be an America sickened and spavined and reduced to groveling at the table of nations, but stronger, freer, and self-reliant. Let all those things that once were good and cherished, be so again. And if war should ever menace our shores anew, let us not forget who we are, and what we’re fighting for.
The long war is over, my brothers. Let’s go home.
I have often thought that the war in Afghanistan could not be “won” for the simple reason that no matter how many times the infection could be removed it would be re-infected from Pakistan. That is where the abscess lies from which all infections spread in the region. So long as we are willing to tolerate their toleration and protection of the Islamists in their country there is no point to prolonging the conflict in Afghanistan.
All it does is to give them a lever to extract aid from the US. Its time to take that away from them.
Matt @ 61: …
wow. quite an essay, brother.
keep a copy of that around. you may want to publish it someday, along with other essays you may write, or have already written.
if nothing else, you’re a heck of a writer.
now, in the style that I affect around here, let me toss off a few responses. I’m fascinated to see 9/11 and Osama’s demise through your biography. don’t we each see these events and all, through our own biographies!
but then there’s the opposite tradition, ranging from existentialism to the eastern schools of which zen might be the furthest, where the challenge is to accept what is without analysis or commitment, to ride the wave rather than seeking to master it. and why bring that up? because, if there’s a note in your essay that keeps ringing a bit off for me, it’s what I’m so often doing here, asking why anybody looks for logic in the world. oh, there’s a logic there underneath, but we should not underestimate the chaos. and one does ride the wave by gestalt, not by analysis (though if you want to build a robot to ride the wave, you’d best start by analyzing gestalt! but that’s another matter). so much of the world is mistaken or absurd, at the first three levels of analysis. which is why, we should remember to laugh.
when it is time to act one stops laughing, does what analysis one can, and goes all western and logical. yet even then, the zen idea of the unaimed arrow still works, the athlete’s “zone”, the vision materialized. you fire up that stealth helicopter, lock and load, and take the ride.
my personal take on the last ten years, from the fallen towers to the killing of the mad dog, depend no doubt on my own biography. I’ve got a few decades on you, so the events start at a later point in my timeline. they are quite a story nonetheless, and if like some hobbit who stayed in The Shire the whole time and reads Bilbo’s book about the strange events far away our own life seems to us more important, and whatever echoes affected us at home, well, we’re all just small people after all.
The ISI has been duplicitous not only to the USA but also to AQ and its affiliates. While the Taliban’s relationship to AQ looks to be ideological…it may well be that… given OBL hidaway in a Paki military retirement neighborhood–that the ISI’s relationship with AQ was based more on a personal relationship with OBL….that therefor OBL’s death moots ISI obligations to AQ. Nor why would OBL’s death promote greater trust between the ISI and the Taliban or AQ. Wouldn’t the proper role of the US be to encourage distrust between the ISI and Taliban/AQ and between Taliban and AQ?
This is how wars are won. Or anyhow how the war was won in Iraq.
–one thing about pain is that you cannot learn to cope with pain without experiencing it, and while the experience may not make a writer, no writer has ever lacked it.
62. Tcobb
Spot on. Why has this basic fact been denied for 6 years? It is like conquering Bavaria in 1945 and calling it Victory.
Under-reported:
http://www.ipcs.org/pdf_file/issue/136564802IPCS-Special-Report-26.pdf
http://www.bing.com/search?q=pakistan+china+military+treaties+agreements+relationship&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
…and more tangled web they weave
when erstwhile allies doth deceive:
http://strategic-discourse.com/2010/10/questions-raised-over-responsibility-for-nato-fuel-convoy-attacks/
…and that fuel, by the time it gets to the Khyber Pass, has a hundred bucks (or more, that figure is six months old) per gallon sunk into it.
51. Josh
Thanks, works great!
Restricting a website
Buddy,
Can’t say what I would do to Holder if I could, but:
Deuce said…
but, but, now that we got Obama, I mean Osama, Holder and the genius of Obama realize that the intel gather by interrogation frees up Holder from prosecuting the CIA agents that developed the info?
The sister of a Sept. 11 victim said President Obama on Thursday turned down her request to advise Attorney General Eric Holder to drop his probe of CIA agents whose interrogation methods may have provided information leading to the raid on Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden.
Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked and forced into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, told Fox News on Thursday that she made the request during Obama’s meeting with families of victims of the Al Qaeda attack.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/05/obama-turns-sister-11-victim-requesting-end-cia-probe/#ixzz1LYk6VVxo
…so, for the Paki gov’t/military, it’s hardly a security ”my way or the highway” proposition we’ve got toward them. It’s more of a ”my way or back to the Chi way”. Only our gov’t and press don’t talk to us much about that, do it. Sorta like supporting your out-of-work brother-in-law for ten years, only to find out he had quit his job because he had inherited a million bucks from his side of family, and had just accidentally on purpose never bothered to mention it to ya.
Whatta Guy:
“When the president approached her table, Burlingame said she told him that as a former attorney she knows he can’t tell the attorney general what to do – an assessment the president agreed with, she said.
“And I said, but that shouldn’t stop you from offering your opinion. After all, we wouldn’t be here celebrating today if they hadn’t done their job,” she said. “And they have the hammer of a possible indictment over their heads. Can’t you at least give him your opinion?”
The president replied that he wouldn’t, she said. She added, “And he turned around and walked away.”
Mere words cannot express my contempt…
doug, at least Holder is steady and consistent. He will invariably investigate and if possible prosecute the faintest shadow of any penumbra that might fall across anything America’s criminals and/or foreign enemies might benefit from, while perfectly reliably refusing to even acknowledge the most howling rackets and subversions running full speed and in the clear, ruining the economy, law and order, foreign policy, morale and patriotism, ethics, standards, mores, values, customs, practices, history, prospects, and civil and human rights, of the USA.
He’s what it looks like when the terrorists and/or subversives get the top job inside the administration of an American government agency.
But since he’s a Democrat, and (*cough*) a minority, he has exactly zero to fear from any public outcry.
People just can’t comprehend how destructive the guy is. For example, this is fresh at Instapundit:
***
BOB OWENS ON THE ATF GUNRUNNING SCANDAL: The U.S. government has effectively allowed weaponry to reach Mexican drug cartels, and now uses the violence they helped cause as a gun control argument..
Posted at 4:09 am by Glenn Reynolds
***
Note the passive voice. Instinctively –due no doubt to innate distaste of handling doo doo with bare hands –backing away from how the headline actually should read:
The U.S. government, using its licensing power and threatening criminal prosecution railroading, has bullied, bribed, and intimidated private US small businessmen to attack the nation and people of our neighbor Mexico, by smuggling weaponry to Mexican drug cartels, in order to use the resultant bloodshed to attack the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.
***
Now can you say “Macondo”? It’s not that hard. Just start with “Gangster Government” and do a little reading –soon it’ll roll right off your tongue and straight down into your thumping telltale heart.
The much talked about drama of raid by US commandos which is being further glorified by CIA’s publicity and propagation wing has been found out to be nothing else but merely an arm twister for ISI and Pakistan army, organized by Central Intelligence Agency of America to take revenge of their high level spy master (read terrorist) Raymond Davis who was exposed by Pakistan’s ISI a few month back and which caused immense embarrassment to CIA and the US government across the world.
But our Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has made it very clear that any similar action, violating the sovereignty of Pakistan, will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the rogue superpower called the United States. Whereas, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said, “it is an uneasy relationship but a productive one for both our countries and we are going to continue to cooperate between our governments, our militaries, our law-enforcement agencies, but most importantly between the American and Pakistani people.”
So the US and the rest of the world need Pakistan. The entire human race’s survival rests on the shoulders of Pakistan. And don’t you guys forget the sacrifices we Pakistanis have given in this war on terror.
Cost of war on Pakistan: more than 51 billion dollars and still growing
Pakistani Army Martyrs: double than the NATO/US casualties
Pakistani Civilian Casualties: Greater than those killed in Afghanistan
No other nation has given more sacrifices in the global terror war. And don’t forget that the US is not doing Pakistan any favor in terms of economic assistance. We are providing you the services and getting peanuts from your government in return. Pakistan is a brave, proud and peaceful nation but it has the potential to break superpowers into pieces.
Respect Pakistan.
–i won’t even go into the evidences for the several other incredible set-up crises which have so conveniently enabled lines of attack by this government on the warp and woof of American society. But Macondo is hand/glove with Gunrunner. If you think Holder has connections with Gunrunner, boy o boy, you should see his connections to Macondo. You can, too, if you want –it’s all out there. But unless you consider it a ‘smoking gun’ that a certain fella who knows drilling did not just coincidentally predict that a ”problem” would develop with the BOP forensic investigation, then the actual literal smoking guns of Gunrunner are the only ‘smoking gun’ –so far. Would note tho that most tried criminal cases reach verdict on evidence that is usually mostly circumstantial.
“The much talked about drama of raid by US commandos which is being further glorified by CIA’s publicity and propagation wing has been found out to be nothing else but merely an arm twister for ISI and Pakistan army, organized by Central Intelligence Agency of America to take revenge of their high level spy master (read terrorist) Raymond Davis who was exposed by Pakistan’s ISI a few month back and which caused immense embarrassment to CIA and the US government across the world.”
Gee, I thought we had some interest in a certain Mr. bin Laden and his notes and activities and cohorts.
Goes to show how easily fooled I am, I guess.
32. atlas
“This is very interesting and jibes with the photo”
Yes, it does seem hard to believe Obama ordered them to kill OBL and then go golfing. Well, he does like golf!
My guess is Obama reluctantly allowed a raid with minimum force necessary and left the timing of the operation in Panetta’s hands.
Likewise, two years ago, when Somali pirates had an American captain on their skiff, Obama gave orders not to use force unless American lives were in imminent danger and to negotiate.
They got the pirate’s leader to come aboard a US vessel to negotiate, and the SEALs waited until the other pirates (reportedly) pointed guns at the American and then expertly shot 3 simultaneously. Obama was a bit flustered by this result.
One gets the idea that here too Obama’s order was to use the least amount of force possible, and the CIA and SEALs used the level of force they thought necessary to make the mission a success while protecting American lives. Good for them.
55. Victor
You are not American.
I don’t pretend to be Turkish or Russian to give advice that would weaken those countries.
Wow, I was not aware of direct arms sales of that magnitude, Buddy.
Was aware of Gunrunner, in which Gun shops in AZ would contact ATF about suspicious buyers, only to be told to go ahead with the sales “to assist in tracking distribution in Mexico.”
—
GUNRUNNER: House committee tells what Holder won’t
During the exchange between Issa and Holder on Tuesday at the oversight hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee, the congressman – who has complained that he and Sen. Charles Grassley have both been stonewalled in their investigations about Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious – was blunt:
“”We’re not looking at straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General, we’re looking at you. We’re looking at your key people who knew or should have known about this and whether or not your judgment was consistent with good practices and whether or not, instead, the Justice Department is basically guilty of allowing weapons to kill Americans and Mexicans. So will you agree to cooperate with that investigation, both on the House and Senate side?
80. Doug & 76. buddy larsen
”We’re not looking at straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General, we’re looking at you. … So will you agree to cooperate with that investigation, both on the House and Senate side?”
This is all beginning to take on the aspect of a tragic, surreal joke. Holder & Co. have already demonstrated clearly that they have no intention of cooperating. In fact, they are treating these committee requests for information with deliberate contempt.
Until Grassley, Issa et al. drop their pathetic entreaties, start issuing Contempt of Congress citations and having the US Marshals enforce them, they’re just “spitting” into the wind.
bl@74: Now can you say “Macondo”? It’s not that hard. Just start with “Gangster Government”
I would add to Macondo and Gunrunner, the failing SEC investigation of Allen Stanford who is currently being hospitalized for prescription drug addiction. Madoff was on the wrong side of the gansters. Stanford, apparently, is not. Scott Coen of CNBC is covering the story. The Stanford “whistleblower” is being sued for back wages by the SEC-appointed legal counsel.
bl@76: Would note tho that most tried criminal cases reach verdict on evidence that is usually mostly circumstantial.
That’s probably because most criminal cases are A allegedly killed/stole from/or otherwise impugned B. Here’s the evidence.
Seeking criminal charges in “white collar” cases is muckier because the crime is as complicated as the evidence.
A few threads back, blert suggested pursuing civil charges relating to clawbacks rather than criminal charges relating to market transactions because the average jury wouldn’t be able to follow (at least not in the absence of intensive special ops-like training.) I thought of that when reading this: Andrews Kurth Sued for Malpractice Over Allen Stanford Work.
The Stanford investigation is stalling, apparently from counter suits. The Stanford deal may not be nefarious so much as trial lawyers doing what trial lawyers do.
Just imagine that the 2010 elections had gone the other way, and Issa was not running that committee. The logic is, the 1500 automatic weapons so far known to’ve been sent to the drug gangs by DOJ would have been more and more numerous, until eventually we would’ve had a huge, secretly-manufactured, scandal –replete with an MSM full of up close and personal [tm] true sob stories of murdered innocents –leading to shocking televised congressional investigations, the beaucoup sweating execs in the docket, showing that gun manufacturers are negligent and liable at the least for manslaughter in the second degree, and so forth, with the end result being lawfare kudzu until the federal government was in complete control of a much-narrowed and restricted 2nd Amendment, and a much-dwindled and zombified industry, and eventually a much more vulnerable American society waiting for our own Kristallnacht –that ‘event’ in 30s Germany, that signal to begin the holocaust, that ‘mobs’ perpetrated on da jooos, a day or two after the nanny-nazi’s government had completed the urban phase of a door to door collection of recently-outlawed privately-owned guns.
And lefties, should the story of Gunrunner later emerge after the Constitutional damage was long set in stone, would just shrug and remark that the administration was simply ”nudging” mother nature along, that sooner or later, what DOJ had manufactured was ”sure to happen for real, sooner or later, given enough time”.
IOW, the same thing they say about Macondo, once the ”man-caused” is presented in hypothetical form.
One wonders what would be next. An manufactured outbreak of bubonic plague, because some WH czar wants to control maritime commerce? “Lessee, what power and control can I seize today, on the basis of that asteroid certain to destroy Earth sooner or later?”
More pre-emptive vilification of veterans by the NYT:
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/06/nyt-tries-to-revive-the-crazy-vet-meme/
For me Samyl had the most interesting replys followed by Victor.
Victor is too obvious. Maybe cultural linguistics but he has not mastered idiom in this tough American forum. Nobody looks to Turkey for support anymore. Too long playing both sides.
Samyl has a difficult job. Pakistan is not in control of itself, even in critical military and security concerns. Yet we are supposed to accept this as business as usual. If part of the ISI supports or helps terrorists we should support those within the same organization who give the CIA base, and our military logistical base in Pakistan.
He hollers for respect when Osama bin laden was blocks away from their top school military intelligence for 5 years. You have not earned it. You are enemy now.
At the end of this day my thought us that we should continue to engage rather than withdraw. The advantage is here. We have little left to gain in Afghanistan. Our military is the best on the planet not just on paper but in hardest battlefields on earth. China, Russia, cmon you guys haven’t fired a shot in anger for how long now?
Pakistanis like Shamryl want to point to losses and sacrifices. Those are real. They exist because you cannot unify your country after all these years.
To: Aardvark
“Even if it decided to amend its ways, the numerous terror groups it has spawned may yet continue to rampage on their own, like berserk Frankenstein monsters. Pakistan is its own worst enemy.”
Which is to say, Pakistan is an Islamic republic.
Aardvark: You have no idea how right you are ;-} but, being an “Islamic Repub” is the symptom. Its the symptom of a mental disease, my friend- its that simple.
Shamyl/75 says Pakistan … has the potential to break superpowers into pieces
i would like to request that should Pakistan do this, the Texas piece NOT be attached to the Massachusetts piece. At least, not until the Kennedys are spent out and have fallen back into the merit system, where they will be signally unable to hurt anything anymore. Alas, this event is unlikely any time soon, as this family of dedicated high-taxation advocates keeps its trust money out of reach of its prescriptions for your family and mine, on the tax-haven island of Fiji.
Yep, whether Abbottabad or Camelottabad, ”shame” is only a silly word in the dictoinury
Matt, I’ve been thinking about your post, which bugged me. I think you go astray with your Truther vs. Neocon breakdown, principly because, to this day, I’m still not real sure what a Neocon is. It functionally breaks down to being a war supporter, particularly a Jewish one. It is really not that useful a thing.
In your narrative a major beef with Neocons springs out of a “let no crisis go to waste” kinda dynamic wherein 9/11 was used to justify eroding basic rights from Americans. Neocons did this in an effort to internally steer America towards them more than anything else, using 9/11 as an excuse. This is the real motivation behind formation of the Department of Homeland Security and so forth, and the Patriot Act. However, the Office of Homeland Security and most elements of the Patriot Act originated out of the Clinton administration; they predated the supposed rise of the Neocons. Also, regime change in Iraq as the defacto US policy also originated in the Clinton administration. Bush was initially very hostile to the Homeland Security moves, the expanded wiretapping and so forth that would become the Patriot Act. He agreed from the start with the regime change in Iraq policy. Everything but the last point changed after 9/11, to some degree. The Homeland Security Act had all kinds of supporters. In fact, the Bush administration almost walked away from it with the whole GOP over the unionization fight and had to be reeled back. (Note they’re set to go union now. The guys who really wanted it, got it, in a form that didn’t suit them, and never ceased hammering at shaping it back into what they originally wanted. Meanwhile, it’s toxic-sauce in the GOP. Ask Tom Ridge, asked to go in and take one for the team, if he could do it all over again).
I’ve concluded you’re still over-thinking it, that you still have some toxins of post-modern philosophy coursing through your veins, and that the problem was simpler than you assumed all along. The war unfolded quite logically from the initial conditions and initial perceptions and then from the responses of subsequent events.
Some of us have been involved with fighting this war in various capacities from the very beginnings until this day. This blog, and many others including Pajamas Media as an entity itself, were forged and came to light in the crucible of crisis that began right after those planes hit on 9/11 while you were on the bus. I’m saddened that you feel the history of the war has lurched from your aloofness on 9/11 to the strange terminus of intangible view of bin Laden’s demise.
For my own part, 9/11 stands as a day I became aware that we all were cocooned in a fiction. In reality, we are enmeshed with sick societies, as in ill-societies, with whose un-health we were forced at last to deal. This was a realization not that we should make war but that we were at war already. For our own health, in our own defense, the status quo in the Islamic world had to be challenged. And for their own health as well. That’ not a small point.
That’s been a tall order; it’s been a hell of lot of hard work. Many good men have lost their lives along the way. You cannot say it was nothing much. It was not nothing much. You cannot say the course of history would be the same had we done nothing, for you cannot know this. It was also not possible at the time to have done nothing. It was also not possible at the time to have limited action to Afghanistan (this STILL isn’t possible. Exhibit A: bin Laden in Abottabad). Radical Islam chose war on us.
We haven’t done badly in this war on terrorism, not at all. Obama can yet screw the pooch. But he has seen the impossibility of his original, damnable position coming into this. Hey, George Bush came into it wanting to be education president who would fix prescription drugs, tackle the budget, and touch the third rail, too. Only to be quickly overcome by events.
Reality sucks, and it’s not neat.
Shamyl: Pakistan … has the potential to break superpowers into pieces.
Ya know Shamyl, may it hasn’t dawned on you Paki’s but you have put your own collective heads in the noose, largely because of your nukes. What are we to do with you? With your Osama safe house bit, your country has now been fingered undeniably as a sponsor of international terror, and far too subservient to that cult religious excuse for banditry, rape and murder call Islam. We cannot let your treachery continue. If it weren’t for your nukes, we could treat you like Libya, or Syria, but now more than just few dozen Paki eggs are going to have to be broken to bring you nutters to heel.
Matt, I am sorry for your personal problems but I must agree with Cowboy. Your screed reads like a Philosophy Major buried in sophomoric intellectual pursuits, who hasn’t fully grasped the severity of the real world threat of Jihad.
My sources for this is Steve Coll, former CIA operative, in his books, “Ghost Wars” and “The Bin Ladens”. They are must-reads, and entertaining as well.
It’s Pakistan’s “CIA”, the ISI, that is so crooked. That’s why we did not alert them prior to the raid. Double agents all over the place according to Coll. He was in Afghanistan and Pakistan and all over the Mideast so he ought to know.
Further, the revered Dr. A.Q. Khan is running the Walmart of atomic weapons to his buddies China and North Korea over there. All of his work in building Pakistan’s nuclear weapons was done illegally. Plans stolen, parts bought in Europe under false pretenses (See, “Deception: Pakistan, the United states and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons” by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark). Both Pakistan and China are loaded with rare earths and they know their value. They can make yellowcake at the drop of a hat, which can later be turned into U235 and then into fissile material. Because this was done illegally, and under false pretenses that are unable to be monitored by the IAEA because we aren’t supposed to know.
Pakistan is powderkeg waiting to explode. Remember, there’s a lot of Pakistanis up in Toronto that would love to help out Al Quada, so I’m looking for trouble coming innocently over the Friendship Bridge from our Canadian friends to the north. Pakistan announced on Thursday that they wished for a cutback of US troops in Pakistan. I hope they would accept a proportional reduction in our foreign aid to them, or preferably, no aid at all.
@Subotai Bahadur
By definition, I am anything but a nice person myself, and I wholeheartedly agree with you.
The sooner Pakistan’s nuclear capability is taken out, the better.