It has been suggested that al Qaeda barely existed prior to September 11, but that a handful of Islamic extremists realized that, if the U.S. was going to blame this group, they should probably get organized and capitalize on their coming fame. That is to say that the U.S. accidentally invented al Qaeda. I’m not equipped to determine whether this is wingnuttery or if there’s something to it, but I was just reminded of something I’d forgotten: CNN’s September 17 report that Osama bin Laden said that he had nothing to do with the attacks. Which is sort of a weird thing to do, since generally after a terrorist attack the problem is sifting through the groups claiming credit to figure out which one really did it. But then, three years later, he took credit, maybe wanting to get in on the action. Perhaps al Qaeda was like Fight Club — big, bad stuff could have happened without bin Laden’s knowledge? (Via Reddit)
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The notion he didn’t do it is tough to square with the assassination of that Northern Alliance leader in Afghanistan (Ahmoud Shah Massoud?) on 9/9/01 and bin Laden bragging about having planned 9/11 on that videotape taken of him in Kandahar shortly after the attacks.
As for al Queada “barely existing” before 9/11, I’m sure that would come as news to those caught in those embassies in Kenya and Tanzinia in 1998 as well as those sailors killed on the USS Cole in 2000, among others.
Seems like wingnuttery to me.
Im trying to find a quote from a former CIA field officer (Robert Baer I believe) who said (and I am paraphrasing from memory) that “If a Bin Laden had not existed, we would have created him. Cant have a big budget without a big enemy…follow the money.
Eisenhower tried to warn us…
If there’s any conflict between those events and the concept that it barely existed, I don’t know what it was. After all, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole was organized and carried out by ten people, using nothing more than some explosives and a tiny boat. That doesn’t take a global terrorist organization to pull off.
I’m reminded of the Oklahoma City bombing. That was, what, three guys, and they all but demolished a federal building?
I am Bush’s sinking popularity.
The concept that terrorism is an police problem, more than a military problem, rests in some part on the notion that there aren’t really all that many all-out terrorists, who are coordinating their activities, anywhere. There may be millions who will applaud what a given terrorist does, but not many of them would do the same thing, themselves.
So, the whole notion of a war on specific terrorists has always been absurd to me.
Oh yeah, there are suicide bombers in the Middle East. But how many of them are part of their own region’s religious ancient conflicts, and how many of them are part of an international plot to hurt the United States? There are murderous gangs of thugs in lots of places, including this country, but how many of them are really taking orders from Osama bin Laden, or anybody?
So, I buy it that the manpower and reach of al Qaida was exaggerated somewhat in the run-up to launching the War on Terror and invading Iraq. How much I don’t know. Today at his press conference Bush acted as if al Qaida was the main source of trouble in Iraq, and defeating them there would end the violence. And, so it goes…
That’s a notion that I find far more frightening than the idea of a monolithic terrorist organization. We know that the people who commit particularly brutal acts of mass murder (labeled terrorism or otherwise) tend to suffer from significant anomie. They are unable to see that their victims are as human as they are. These are not people who join groups; if they joined a group, ironically, they may not feel so separated from the rest of society and be less sure that they should kill 32 people at their school, send exploding package to the homes of strangers, etc.
None of this should be meant to construe that there are not organized acts of mass murder. Of course there are. But if you have a nation state, we call it “war.” If you don’t, we call it “terrorism.”
And if you are the genesis of al Qaida, such as the ‘freedom fighters’ in Afghanistan in the 80’s, you would be called a CIA client.
“But if you have a nation state, we call it “war.” If you don’t, we call it “terrorism.”
I see your point, but in an era when non-state actors can cause tremendous damage (9/11), there’s gotta be some room between policing/courts and using the full weight of the military. I don’t know where or even how to draw that line, but the notion that KSM and some of the 9/11 plotters are mere criminals deserving of the full panoply of constitutional protections (Miranda, right to counsel, etc) doesn’t seem like a good way to win the war, er, police action.
The trouble is that the world is full of people (and nations) that don’t particularly like the U.S., but also don’t want to see us attacked. It’s in our best interest to persuade the rest of the world that we are in the right. Given that those who planned September 11th are so clearly in the wrong, this shouldn’t be hard. We should be able to win in the court of public opinion with one hand tied behind our backs. But, instead, it’s the accused with the metaphorical (and literal) hands tied behind their backs. Those on the fence about whether the U.S. is a force for good or for evil see that as clear evidence that we’re evil; after all, if we knew we had the right guys, we’d see no need to hobble their defense.
Helping nothing is that many of the people we’ve accused of being terrorists and held without any rights have turned out to be utterly normal people. Their stories have become known globally, and, again, those unsure about whether the U.S. is trusted see that as further evidence that everybody that we accuse is being set up. If that weren’t so, we’d be happy to give them the benefit of the rights normally afforded to all other accused criminals.
We can win this battle but lose the war. By abandoning our own ideals of justice and equality in the name of protecting those very rights, we show ourselves as being hypocrites at best and cowards, at worst. And that’s how a new generation will come of age around the world, mistrusting and even despising the U.S. and our interests. And that, of course, is how people come to want to harm us.
Better for us to stay true to the foundations on which this nation was founded. If these guys are guilty, we’ll nail ’em just the same, without even having to compromise our ideals.
Well of course the solution isn’t just a police action against criminals. Its about resolving a Palestinian state, addressing a corrupt oil-rich Arab elite, and getting Syria out of Lebanon. You know, the neglected art of regional diplomacy. Anyone that thinks that prosecution (criminal or military) will get us through this doesn’t have a feel for the righteous fury brought on by repression and occupation.
That was a stirring defense against “compromising our ideals.” It made me want to agree with you, but I just can’t because at the end of the day it means giving war criminals too many protections – protections they certainly wouldn’t enjoy if picked up on a conventional battlefield.
Here’s an exchange that highlights what I mean:
A few weeks ago, former White House aide Bradford Berenson testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the much-debated question of whether suspected-terrorist detainees should have habeas-corpus rights.
During one exchange, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) had this to say: “I don’t see how you can pick up someone in New York and say that his rights are different or less because he’s accused of being an enemy combatant, based on whatever information, as opposed to his being accused of being a murderer. . . .”
Berenson responded: “[W]e need to be clear about what that means. It means that if we had captured Mohammed Atta on September 10th, we would have had no choice but to treat him as a criminal defendant, which would have meant no interrogation, no intelligence, and the World Trade Center is coming down.”
Nadler interjected, “That’s exactly right.”
That’s just unacceptable to me. Like I said earlier, I don’t pretend to know the answers and I acknowledge that this is an incredibly thorny issue with which we must continue to grapple.
Remember, though, that right now we’re not even giving detainees the rights afforded to war criminals. Even that would be tolerable, and represent an enormous step forward from the current state of things. The important thing is that we establish standards that we ourselves are held to (such as the Geneva Conventions), thus showing that we’re willing to eat our own dogfood.
It doesn’t much matter whether those standards are those afforded to regular citizens or those that are afforded to war criminals. We just need a real standard, one that’s universalizable, and stick with it.
The idea that the US government should have a pass to secretly torture its own citizens without any form of oversight is an abomination, and is much more of an existential threat to this country than Islamic extremists have ever been.
The insistence that we should ignore our laws and our rights reminds me of this quote, from A Man for All Seasons:
That’s a powerful argument and an apt quotation…except for the fact that I’m not arguing the US government be free to torture its citizens. Instead, I’m suggesting that if intelligence leads the government to a mastermind or even worker bee of a terror plot yet to have unfolded, their hands need not be bound (pun intended) by the niceties of habeas, 4th & 6th amendments, etc.
If you can explain why you think treating Mohammed Atta as a common criminal in a hypothetical 9/10 capture is a good idea, I’m all ears. I just think the American people would rightly call for the prosecution for treason any administration that acted thusly.
Lincoln suspended habeas and it wasn’t the end of the Republic. It was “a new birth of freedom.” I’m not sure why Bush shouldn’t have the same tools at his disposal against an enemy many times more vicious than the Army of Northern Virginia.
Ah, another Jack Bauer acolyte. As I understood it, Hollywood was the source of all evil, but now it’s the justification for rejecting a couple hundred years of fundamental American values.
Huh.
So, you believe that any terror suspects who are US citizens should be given full due process and protection under the law? If so, either you’ve changed your tune or I simply misunderstood your previous arguments.
This is where we disagree. I consider the threat that Islamic terrorism poses to be entirely incomparable to the threat of actual civil war. You know, if the country is actively falling apart around you then yes, that’s the time that you should consider breaking the rules to pull things back together. I’ve yet to see an Islamic separatist state declare independence in the US, so I’m really not at all moved by the “well, Lincoln did it!” argument.
Let me begin by saying that I beleive the arguments you and Waldo have put forth are compelling and important, and it’s not my intention to cavalierly dismiss them. As in other matters of substantial change, I believe the burden of proof rests with those advocating for the change. Here, that’s me.
OK, to clarify, I believe that in the vast majority of cases when a terror suspect is arrested in the US that the current system of law enforcement with its myriad procedural safeguards for defendants is adequate to the task. That guy who wanted to blow up the transcontinental pipeline, or those wizards who wanted to destroy the fuel tanks at JFK, for example. That said, every now and again we’re going to have an arrest which does not result in the elimination of the whole cell. Earlier, I suggested that capturing Mohammed Atta on 9/10 would have done little to prevent 9/11 under the rules you’d force the government to play by. This was derided by some as pie-in-the-sky, Jack Baueresque, ticking-time-bomb nonsense. OK, what about Zack Moussaui (sp)? Would it really have marked the end of the US as a land of laws if the feds had involuntarily administered sodium pentathol (or whatever we’ve got now) to this guy after his capture? It just doesn’t offend my sense of justice.
Of course, this didn’t happen with Moussaui. We let him sit in jail as the Towers came down. The Bush administration was later criticized for not having “connected the dots.” I’ve always thought that was a particularly rich criticism coming from those who: 1.) erected the “wall of separation” between the FBI and CIA 2.) insist the executive not be allowed to tap phone calls between terrorists without a warrant, and 3.) claim to be kept awake at night by the “library card” provisions of the Patriot Act.
In short, the executive has got to have the tools to defend the nation. I believe that in some limited instances these should include the disregarding of an arrestee’s traditional rights. The how and when and who clearly need to be worked out, but to completely eliminate the option in all cases is, I believe, to court disaster.
We already have rules for disregarding a suspect or detainee’s rights, though, and that is in the form of warrants, in the form of FISA (which allows the administration to act without a warrant for a short period of time, until such time that a warrant can be retroactively acquired), and generally all via due process.
The claim that liberals “insist the executive not be allowed to tap phone calls between terrorists without a warrant” seems reasonable on its face, until you realize that the only reason this was a problem is if the administration can’t, even retroactively after a couple days, prove that those people are terrorists at all. Furthermore, you don’t even need to do that unless it concerns people within the US. If the US can’t retroactively prove that the people in the US that they’re spying on are terrorists, then we have no right to be spying on them, because if we waive the burden of proof, we’ve just given the government carte blanch to spy on anyone and everyone.
The same goes for interrogation. If we can show that the suspect meets certain standards, we can already interrogate them, but if we can’t, then the government has no right to do so. If there are problems with the system, lets solve them, but the answer from you and others is to throw out a couple hundred years of refined process in favor of something that would, as was earlier mentioned, better deal with the problems faced not in reality, but in a TV show.
Incidentally, I have no problem with the FBI and CIA better sharing information, but if there’s one thing governments throughout history have shown time and again, its that without oversight, powers grow, corruption grows, and rules mean nothing. And the Bush administration and its adherents have treated anyone suggesting oversight as being naive and traitorous.
Good points. I don’t think we’re going to agree. I’d note that liberals are not always so averse to throwing out a couple hundred years of history when circumstances call for change. Gay marriage comes to mind.
It’s not nearly often enough that people acknowledge this. Sometimes, no matter how high-minded the rhetoric and persuasive the arguments, two people get down to an issue where they simply disagree, for fundamental reasons, and that’s that.
You know, there’s a solution for these (fantasy, but I’ll just pretend they exist) scenarios where there’s a big scary mastermind terrorist in custody, and a ticking bomb in Union Station. And it doesn’t require a wholesale gutting of the Constitution. In fact, it’s already *in* the Constitution. It’s called a pardon.
Now wait, I know that most folks think it’s only there to keep possible witnesses against you quiet, but really, it was intended for more. And one of those purposes is to void grave injustices. So, if Jack Bauer really does save DC by knocking the shit out of the next Timothy McVeigh, there’s a way to make sure Jack Bauer doesn’t go to jail. Assuming that any prosecutor would be dumb enough to take it to trial, and THEN assuming a jury wouldn’t nullify things, you just pardon him.
But why do that when you can gut the Constitution instead, eh?
Seriously, yeah. Pull the guy’s fingernails out, stop the ticking time bomb, and not only will the nation throw a ticker tape parade for the budding Bauer, but the president will surely pardon him. Clearly, the bar’s pretty low for a pardon — this should be a lead-pipe cinch.
Come on. Take Moussaoui. What bureaucrat’s gonna risk career ruin and imprisonment b/c they have a hunch this guy might have details on a wider plot? What if he doesn’t know anything? You’re fucked.
There’s gotta be lawful, codified exceptions for agents of the executive to treat enemy “soldiers” captured in the US differently from run-of-the-mill criminals.
But you just acknowledged that you’re not sure he knows anything. You think there needs to be a lawful way to torture innocent people?
No, in such a case, I’d want someone to be sure enough to put their own life on the line before we go ignoring laws and torturing people.
Better yet, don’t torture anyone, because torture hasn’t been shown to work well at all, and in such a situation, I’d want people using techniques that actually work.