I don’t know the first thing about Pakistan, but I cannot imagine that all this happened with zero cooperation from the Paks. It’s just too far out. Yes, they played ball with bin L, but they could also betray him at the same time. And if you’re going to insist–as most everyone is insisting–that we didn’t whisper a word to any of them about anything until the whole thing was done, well, there isn’t room on my bald forehead to get my eyebrows as high as they would wish to rise.
John Brennan, the administration’s point man on such things, declared himself outraged at the fact that bin L was living “in plain sight” down the block, so to speak, from the military academy. Obviously people knew he was there, right?
Easy for him to say, but then again, consider the story of the real Don Corleone, whose name is Toto’ Riina. The capo di tutti i capi of the Sicilian Mafia. He lived in Corleone, down the block from the cathedral where Michael Corleone was married in Godfather I. He–Riina, the most wanted man in Italy–lived there for more than twenty years. Corleone’s downtown is maybe ten square blocks, maybe less, and the cathedral is on the main street. Obviously people knew he was there, right?
Well maybe they did. But for twenty years nobody in the very capable Italian anti-Mafia forces seemed to know it. And they must have spoken multiple times with every citizen of the little town. Maybe the whole town was sworn to silence, which is possible, but remarkable if true. Maybe the cops knew but preferred to ignore it. I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t know. I don’t know that either.
Since I don’t know much of anything, I’ve got two movie versions:
ONE: The Paks betrayed bin L to us because the relationship was getting too tense, even for them, and they thought we’d be pleased. All the finger-pointing from the Americans was set up in advance, to provide cover for the spectacular act of betrayal;
TWO: Obama has decided on a big, fast withdrawal from Afghanistan. The bin L operation lets him declare victory, and the branding of the Paks as enemies (at worst) or totally two-faced allies (at best) gives him cover to say “we’ve done all we reasonably could, and I don’t want to have any more of our heroic warriors killed or maimed in that God-forsaken place, and if we can’t get real cooperation from the Paks, we really can’t win a decisive victory.”
Again, I don’t know anything. All of this is sucked out of my (left) thumb (the right thumb is recovering from carpal tunnel). But I don’t believe the Paks didn’t know what was up, I can’t imagine we failed to alert some friends over there that we were entering their air space, and all the yelling at them, combined with the chorus of believers in the press and the Congress makes me very skeptical.
Roger, can we make the movie? Maybe we can make it with both scenarios, and show them on alternating evenings…
Michael,
I’m sure we told the Pakistani officials something. I’m equally sure it had very little to do with our actual intentions. I further believe the earlier incident with the CIA contractor who was there under diplomatic cover was part of the team tracking the courier who led us to ObL.
I doubt the Pakistani government COULD have kept such a secret from the ISI.
I have no doubt that the ISI would have warned ObL if they had known an OP was being planned or was executing.
Application of Occam’s Razor leads me to conclude the OP could have been made to work had the Pakistani Government been informed.
I further conclude that the ISI is either THE primary sponsor of Islamic Terrorism, or a willing partner to those who are. In either case it is crystal clear that the ISI is NOT under the control of the Pakistani Government.
I further believe that pulling out of Afghanistan now, or in the near future, is just setting up even greater problems down the road.
YMMV.
Correction to the above (fat finger error on my part):
Should read:
Application of Occam’s Razor leads me to conclude the OP could NOT have been made to work had the Pakistani Government been informed.
I would guess that there has been a change in influence within the Pakistan national security organizations. Some part was supporting and protecting Bin Laden, but our finding him has put some people on their heels.
But it is significant that in a garrison city, that is a bedroom community to the capitol, we did not execute a coordinated SWAT type raid along with the local authorities but rather were forced to conduct the same operation we would conduct deep behind the lines of a significant enemy state. And, that we had to destroy disabled military assets rather than let them fall into the hands of the ally.
well,Michael, it is possible Obama finally just ran out of money. (That “luxurious” compound looks like a dump to me.)
I believe you meant Osama… Obama has already run out of money. He just keeps printing more.
I think we have a winner.
So many questions. Let’s say the Pakistanis learned about Bin Laden – they could’ve looked capturing themselves as great prestige or angering the muslim world. Or, if a faction of a Pakistani group had turned Bin Laden over, they may have wanted to remain out of the picture and make it look like an American operation. A lot of Pakistani officials may never know whether it was entirely an American operation or not.
Or, the Americans may have done it all on their own. I can tell you this: India is very clear on what they feel is the Pakistani gov’t's connection to fundamentalist terrorism – clear enough to bring them to the brink of war had not clearer heads prevailed. The way we feel now about Pakistan is the way India has felt for a long time and the Mumbai attack only confirmed India’s feelings on the matter.
Michael, just a note on style. I stopped reading after, “I don’t know the first thing about Pakistan, but…” Coyly self depreciating in conversation, a show stopper in written pieces.
The second scenario is consistent with observations made by Walter Russell Meade concerning the greater flexibility OBL’s death now allows regarding Afghanistan. In his OBL obit,”Bad Man Down”, he doesn’t anticipate a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan, but does see OBL’s death as giving more room for the diplomats to negotiate.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/05/02/bad-man-down/
Listening to the schizophrenic commentary coming from DC regarding relations with Pakistan, I wonder if the charade can be continued much longer. As I’ve noted elsewhere, we dispossessed the Mullah Omar-led Taliban of its status as a government when sanctuary was given to OBL, declaring their refusal to handover OBL tantamount to an act of war. If we are that fearful of consequences that might follow from acknowledging the Pakistani military, ISI and government as the duplicitous sponsors of state terrorism that they are (ask India if not Afghanistan for confirmation of that point), then we might just as well concede publically our willingness to be blackmailed because that’s exactly what our actions betray; our billions in “aid” nothing more than an annual payment of tribute.
The impression that this unwashed media-reader has of all of this is that the whole Afghani/Paki/North African/Saudi/Yemeni/Syrian Theatre is a very bloody Hall of Mirrors hovering as a mirage.
Won’t the next step be to press the Pakis to cooperate more by eliminating the radicals in their midst (perhaps by imposing martial law) or by giving up the nukes?
I don’t know the first thing about Pakistan, but I cannot imagine that all this happened with zero cooperation from the Paks.
As I noted in a comment on Radosh’s post that Israel, which has supported the US all these years and enriched American companies with its technological expertise, has been bashed by some for the loan guarantees and aid received, while Pakistan which has been receiving some 1.5 billion since 9/11 from the US, has had OBL holed up in a building some 30 miles from its capital, and not a peep from those complainers.