Doing OBL's Job for Him

If you're reading this blog, you're no doubt familiar with the basic outline of Peter Bergen's argument in this new piece on how Bush blew the fight against al-Qaeda, but Bergen does an excellent job of highlighting one important but often neglected aspect of this, namely the extent to which al-Qaeda was really on the ropes in early 2002. Al-Qaeda was never that big, had been dealt a major blow with the Taliban booted from power, and hadn't a friend in the world. One can't know for sure, but there appears to be every reason to think that a focused, determined, responsible effort to stabilize and secure Afghanistan while simultaneously deploying the dread "law enforcement and intelligence" against whoever might be hiding elsewhere could have crushed the organization.

Obviously, that wouldn't have been an end to the troubles of the Muslim world or to have America's problems vis-à-vis the broader Middle East. But it really might have been an end to al-Qaeda.

Instead, for reasons that remain murky, the administration decided even before Tora Bora to start focusing its resources (not just money and personnel and equipment but also diplomatic capital and perhaps the scarcest resource of all: attention) on Iraq, resulting in what James Fallows has brilliantly dubbed "Bush's Lost Year". Everything seems to flow from the fact that the Bush administration didn't and doesn't really take al-Qaeda in particular or transnational terrorism in general all that seriously as a problem. The administration campaigned on the idea that the Clinton administration lacked focus and didn't mention terrorism as a priority that Bush intended to focus on. After the election, incoming Bush officials were briefed about the level of attention the outgoing Clinton team was giving to al-Qaeda from which they concluded that the Clintonites were too obsessed with terrorism. The Bush administration slow-walked Richard Clarke's proposals to step-up activities against al-Qaeda.

And then after 9/11, it's all been the same thing. Al-Qaeda is a super-important threat when the priority that has to give way to counterterrorism is something like the fourth amendment (warrantless wiretapping) or the sixth amendment (indefinite detention) or the eighth amendment (torture) or international or domestic law more generally, but when the competing priority is picking fights with Iraq or Iran or missile defense or Virginia Class submarines or tax cuts or West Bank settlers well then that's a different story.

It's maddening.

Comments

Instead, for reasons that remain murky, the administration decided even before Tora Bora to start focusing its resources (not just money and personnel and equipment but also diplomatic capital and perhaps the scarcest resource of all: attention) on Iraq

Matt, please read Cobra II if you haven't already. Iraq was a focus of Cheney and Rummy from day 1 of the Bush administration.

The reasons aren't all that murky, unfortunately. They viewed Saddam as a problem in the area, and the GWOT provided an opportunity to justify an invasion. They also believed that Afghanistan would not serve as enough of a lesson for the ME. It's called raw, unadulterated arrogance.

Posted by ProfD | October 15, 2007 10:58 AM

I'm not entirely sure if al-Qaeda really exists any more. What has it actually done since 9/11?

Posted by Peter | October 15, 2007 11:02 AM

"Settling Soviet Hash". . . invading Iran . . . defeating terrorism . . . . none of these would really be that difficult. We only need one thing: An army of Mini-Ditkas.

Take away the Chicago accents and the Bears jerseys, throw on some blue pinstripes and red power ties, and the parallels of self-delusion, grandiosity, and personal impotence are pretty astounding.

Posted by Ryan | October 15, 2007 11:13 AM

Peter -

Weren't the Spanish March 11 bombings supposedly al-Qaeda operations? Or did the US media oversell that connection?

Regardless, al-Qaeda as a brand seems stronger than it did in 2002 - but I don't know if that's because of al-Qaeda itself or because of the sales job that the US government has been making on behalf of al-Qaeda and their "fearsomeness". But that just gets back to Matt's title for this post...

Posted by NonyNony | October 15, 2007 11:16 AM

Weren't the Spanish March 11 bombings supposedly al-Qaeda operations? Or did the US media oversell that connection?

At best, the bombers were "inspired" by al-Qaeda, but in practice it was a strictly local operation.

Posted by Peter | October 15, 2007 11:28 AM

The best thing about Matthew's left-wing narrative is, of course, that it is complete BS. Take, for example, Matthew's statement "after 9/11, it's all been the same thing. Al-Qaeda is a super-important threat when the priority that has to give way to counterterrorism is something like the fourth amendment (warrantless wiretapping)..." Um, maybe Matthew hasn't been paying attention, but we've just learned that the NSA began working on the warrantless program before 9/11.

Posted by Al | October 15, 2007 11:37 AM

Al continually becomes more insane. Keep it up, Insane Al.

Posted by Jennifer | October 15, 2007 11:42 AM

we've just learned that the NSA began working on the warrantless program before 9/11.

Al, you say that as if you think that the revelation that the adminstration was committed to lawlessness with or without terrorism is a good thing for your side . . .

Posted by rea | October 15, 2007 11:48 AM

I remember a fairly high-ranking military friend of mine telling me at a party in November of 2001 that we were going to go into Iraq. It was apparently pretty much a given inside the Pentagon around that time.

Posted by me2i81 | October 15, 2007 11:52 AM

One can't know for sure, but there appears to be every reason to think that a focused, determined, responsible effort to stabilize and secure Afghanistan while simultaneously deploying the dread "law enforcement and intelligence" against whoever might be hiding elsewhere could have crushed the organization.

It might have. A focused, determined, responsible effort would've involved a hell of a lot more manpower. I believe the theory is that Gore would've done this all differently, but I'm not seeing that, given the situation with Pakistan, and the general all-around reluctance to pay for the necessary manpower. Not to mention the entire issue of doctrine, when the incredible shrinking superarmy theory was ascendent. (Not a knock against Gore, a comment on the state of play in the inside-the-Beltway world at the time. Particularly given that the liberal hawks all thought Rumsfeld was great. In short, everyone had drunk the koolaid.)

One would hope that if the US committed seriously to fighting in Afghanistan, that that might've done the trick, but given that most people confused the tertiary objection of getting the Taliban (why, aside from OBL, would we care about the Taliban?) with the primary objective of killing OBL and the secondary objective of getting the ISI (it helps, of course, if you understand that that has to be an objective).

I was totally onboard with a serious committment to getting OBL (and was shocked when I realized that no one was up for that), but even putting 500k troops into Afghanistan would not have guaranteed his or Al-Queda's elimination, not if they could safely hide in Pakistan.

max
['Chance decides.']

Posted by max | October 15, 2007 11:58 AM

Warrantless wiretapping before 9/11? Scary

Did anyone catch that Bergen linked Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda? That's news to me. Bergen's extremely knowledgable and I believe him, but have yet to see the specifics on it.

Yglesias's narrative isn't that left-wing. The pacifist, peacenik left felt overthrowing the Taliban was criminal.

Posted by Peter K. | October 15, 2007 12:03 PM

Matt - good post. But understated.

It is worse than the fact that 9/11 changed nothing for the Bush administration. Not only did they not take Al qaeda seriously, they pretty much pursued a policy of preserving Al qaeda to keep a terrorist threat on tap. Hence, the puzzling decision not to guard the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, even when the European countries volunteered the soldiers; hence, the wierd pattern of bombing - in the weeks leading up to the 'siege' of Tora Bora, the U.S. airforce bombed indiscriminately in front of Tora Bora, but were refused permission to bomb behind Tora Bora, on the trail leading to the Pakistan border, even though spy planes had spotted heat in that area - that is, campfires. The explanation, given latter, was that they were afraid of killing civilian shepherds - this, after weeks of indiscriminate bombing had killed hundreds of civilians! It was a clear message - try to escape into Afghanistan and we will be forced to kill you, but escape back through the mountains to whereever, and we will wink at you.

The war on terror, and the multiple political and economic benefits reaped by the GOP and its corporate friends, would not have gotten off the ground with the terrorists all dead. The Pentagon knew this well. So did Bush. So did Rove, Cheney and the rest.

Of course, after that the GOP played another game, which would only work with the terminally stupid - which is, luckily, the GOP constitutency. On the one hand, they proclaim that the war on terror is like world war iv, except with tax breaks. On the other hand, they proclaim that Osama bin Laden is history, as Peter, in an obliging stooge way, puts it in his comment. Of course, we know that the London bombers were connected to Pakistan. We know that sometime in 2005, connections were made between Al qaeda in Iraq and Al Qaeda in Pakistan. We know that Al qaeda has trained Taliban troops, who each year attack with greater staying power in Afghanistan. But who cares? Not the GOP. The war on terror has always been about maximum symbolic violence that could entertain your average nice guy white middle class male, but even the lowest of the low, the stupidest of the stupid, the true believing Bushites, aren't stupid for free: it is the nice little pay checks going out to the engineering set, the middle managers, all the people in all that vast array of corporations who've fastened like parasites onto the more than three trillion dollars the Pentagon has doled out in the last five years that has paid them to be stupid. Thus, the incorrigibility of their disease.

Posted by roger | October 15, 2007 1:42 PM

Al-Qaeda is a super-important threat when the priority that has to give way to counterterrorism is something like the fourth amendment (warrantless wiretapping) or the sixth amendment (indefinite detention) or the eighth amendment (torture) or international or domestic law more generally, but when the competing priority is picking fights with Iraq or Iran or missile defense or Virginia Class submarines...

1. Only if you feel enemy should never be listened to to gather intelligence to avoid another Pearl Harbor or 9/11 do you oppose gathering SIGINT on enemy or potential enemy. Nor does America exactly believe that the whole world should be given our Bill of Rights protections or subject to dogooder laws that trump our sovereignity and Constitution.

2. I wasn't aware that POWs or unlawful enemy combatants enjoyed the right to trial in civilian courts. Someone should tell the surviving number of the 2 million Nazis we held in WWII w/o trial so they can start their civil rights lawsuits.

3. If the 8th Amendment on no cruel and unusual punishments applies to enemy interrogations in wartime, then surely it must also apply to infliction of the death penalty on the battlefield with no trial or judge at the scene evaluating whether or not a death warrant should be signed on the machine gunner shooting at the judge. Not to mention that most of ours, and the world's weapons are designed not to produce uniform death (without trial! without an ACLU lawyer having a chance to defend the enemy!!!) - but to produce significant numbers of wounds that attrit the enemy more than a KIA because it takes 3-5 more combatants out of the fight caring for the wounded soldier.
Would you rather be humiliated with an infidel female questioner (torture by some literalist's reading the treaty barring all "humiliating treatment) or have part of your face melted away by white phosphorous. Would you rather be interrogated in a cold cell, or have your leg blown off above the knee by two M-16 rounds.

The argument that the 8th applies to inherent cruelties of war is silly. And there is no "firing on the enemy is only self-defense" while interrogation is discetionary, argument. Most enemy killed are killed while they are no threat, clueless that they are about to be whacked or a splinter from a 500-lb bomb is about to chop their dick off and put them in medical care for months...

4. Japan has accepted NMD and most NATO allies have and are participating with us in developing systems that will offer partial, not perfect defense against rogue nation aircraft and missiles. No defensive system, none, is 100% perfect by itself. Nor, even with all defensive layers, can a regiment or nation ever be "perfectly safe" from harm by enemy attackers.

5. The need for the Virginia class sub and other high tech gear our military requires did not go away just because a relatively low tech Jihadi threat emerged. The Islamoids did not defeat Russia, rising China, N Korea's high tech militaries before setting their sights on us. The other nations remain military rivals, especially China, whose military ascendency in the Pacific is the real focus of all Rim nations plus India. We still have several military missions - all vital - all requiring different equipment and military skillsets than "terrorist/insurgent fighting".

The Virginia class subs in particular are needed because China is going wild building up a modern Army, Navy, and AF, plus cyberwar force. They built 8 high tech subs to our one over the last two years, and bought another 6 from Russia, which is also selling almost anything they can build or have in stock for China's near-future likely invasion and assimilation of Taiwan. We also need to reconsider conventional subs, as the Swedes, Aussies, Germans, and Dutch have fielded ultra-quiet long range airpack, fuel cell drive subs that are cheaper than nukes and ideal for us in shallow areas like the China coast and Persian Gulf.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 15, 2007 1:58 PM

It's a technicality, but torture of detainees is actually within the purview of the 5th Amendment (due process), not the 8th (cruel and unusual punishment). The 8th only governs punishment, i.e., after a trial and conviction.

Posted by Dilan Esper | October 15, 2007 1:59 PM

China's near-future likely invasion and assimilation of Taiwan

Batshit insane.

Posted by rea | October 15, 2007 2:12 PM

In other words, as we've maintained all along, if only Bush had focused on the problem and not the distraction, we might be walking around unafraid of our own shadows.

Posted by actor212 | October 15, 2007 2:28 PM

"Only if you feel enemy should never be listened to to gather intelligence to avoid another Pearl Harbor or 9/11 do you oppose gathering SIGINT on enemy or potential enemy. Nor does America exactly believe that the whole world should be given our Bill of Rights protections or subject to dogooder laws that trump our sovereignity and Constitution."

Chris,

American citizens are certainly deserving of Bill of Rights protection, aren't they? As usual, you are deliberately misstating what the controversy over warantless surveillance is about. It's not about whether the US governemt has the right to engage in warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance of our enemies. It's about whether foreign intelliegence surveillance conducted on AMERICAN CITIZENS should be subject to warrant requirements. Is it really unreasonable to expect the executive branch of the US government to provide justification for its foreign intelligence surveillance on American citizens to the judicial and legislative branches, or do you accept Dubya's argument that national security trumps both the Constitution and the sovereignity of the American people?

Posted by eltoro | October 15, 2007 2:44 PM

@eltoro: Maybe its my misinterpretation, but I think CF's main speculation was that OBL was kept alive as a source of intel, rather than due to military incompetence or as the Eastasia du jour. As for your point, don't waste nuance on Mr. Ford -- he's too busy polishing his racial slur-to-postcount ratio to bother with such twaddle.

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | October 15, 2007 3:40 PM

The Bush Administration also avoided attacking Abu Musab Zarqawi on three occasions before invading Iraq because his presence in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, in the no-fly zone, was the only evidence for their claim that Iraq harbored terrorists.

And at the same time they were letting Al Qaeda take refuge in Pakistan, the administration was saying "you're either with us or against us" and that countries that harbored terrorists were just as evil as the terrorists.

Posted by croatoan | October 15, 2007 4:37 PM

The Conservative agenda is to destroy Constitutional government while stripping it of as many assets as possible and restributing the loot among key oligarchs. At the end of the day, we'll be left with a permanent presence next to the Iraqi oilfields, manned by mercenaries.

That's "victory."

What's not to like?

Posted by lambert strether | October 15, 2007 7:32 PM

"One can't know for sure, but there appears to be every reason to think that a focused, determined, responsible effort to stabilize and secure Afghanistan while simultaneously deploying the dread "law enforcement and intelligence" against whoever might be hiding elsewhere could have crushed the organization."

I rather doubt that, for two reasons:

1) First of all, Afghanistan is a country that is NEVER going to be "secure and stable" until you get rid of the warlords - which basically means a major civil war or a major invasion on a par with Iraq - with likely the exact same results, i.e., everybody unites against the US/NATO.

2) Al Qaeda's leadership is sufficiently small that they can put themselves almost any place that allows jihadists to exist. Plenty of countries they could hide in.

What they need failed states or lawless territories for are for the training camps and to a lesser degree, recruitment.

And that's only because they have pretty stupid concepts of training is my guess. Most likely the only "training" going on in those camps is indoctrination. And you can do that almost anywhere, although it might be easier in such camps where the overall environment is more controlled.

And of course, if you're doing explosives training, it's easier to do it somewhere out in the boonies. But it's not critical. And there are plenty of places they could go to set up such camps, as long as they expected to have to move frequently anyway.

So the odds of "crushing" Al Qaeda are pretty small. Containing them, yes. Limiting their reach and impact, yes. Reducing their numbers, yes. "Crushing them", no.

And now that they're in probably one of the best places in the world to be holed up - the Pakistan Federally Administrated Tribal Areas covering ten thousand square miles - the odds of "crushing them" at all - without taking on the 3.3 million people in the FATA areas as well (not to mention millions of Afghan refugees) - is pretty slim.

The smart thing to do in 2001 would have been to bribe or persuade the Taliban in some way to hand over the primary Al Qaeda leadership. Supposedly negotiations on doing just that were done before the invasion of Afghanistan.

According to Wikipedia, "Before the United States attacked, it offered Taliban leader Mullah Omar a chance to surrender bin Laden and his top associates. The Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral country for trial if the United States would provide evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the attacks. U.S. President George W. Bush responded by saying: "We know he's guilty. Turn him over",[87] and British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the Taliban regime: 'Surrender bin Laden, or surrender power'."

In other words, Bush blew it because the US had no real evidence at that time that bin Laden was behind the attacks. Not to mention that Bush probably had no intention of NOT invading Afghanistan in any event. It was necessary to 1) get an oil pipeline; 2) jump start the heroin trade back up; 3) look like he was doing something about "terrorism" while he planned his REAL action in Iraq.

So instead of expending some covert efforts or other means to get bin Laden, Bush took the "easy" way out and invaded a weak, irrelevant country.

And now look where we are. Just like Iraq, a failed state, a failed counterinsurgency, and the resurgence of the enemies we're supposed to be "winning" against.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 15, 2007 9:50 PM

"Did anyone catch that Bergen linked Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda?"

Extremely unlikely, although in terrorist and insurgent circles, sometimes unlikely bed fellows are made, But it's usually on the basis of quid pro quo for particular needs rather than any actual "alliance". As an example, "you give one of our operatives sanctuary there, "we'll give one of yours sanctuary here". Or they'll do weapons deals or something. The PLO, the IRA, and other groups in the old days dealt with each other on occasion on such a basis.

But there is no ideological connection between Hizballah and Al Qaeda except that they both dislike Israel and the US. One is Sunni jihadist, one is Lebanese Shia nationalist.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 15, 2007 9:55 PM