Fighting terrorists with loaded guns - The Pakistan problem

In the six years since the President’s daily brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States”, thousands have been killed, ten of thousands wounded, and billions of dollars spent on the “war on terrorism”. Not to mention the loss of American credibility, stature, and moral high ground due to the shame of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons, warrantless wiretapping, and the elimination of the 700-year-old Writ of Habeas Corpus. But according to a threat assessment by the National Counterintelligence Center (entitled “Al Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West”) and the National Intelligence Estimate, it has gotten us exactly nothing. In fact, Al Qaeda, the supposed target of the “war”, is as strong as it’s been since September 11, 2001.

The findings in the CIC report are not good, and the findings in the NIE are worse. Al Qaeda’s recruiting is up, planning is up, and their franchise operation, Al Qaeda in Iraq (which didn’t even exist six years ago), is thriving to the point where they have a network of suicide bombers coming to Iraq from all over the region, a network of supporters funding their operations, and have caused US forces to ally with former Sunni “insurgents” - many with American blood on their hands. The two reports have caused me to re-examine some of the Bush Administration’s most repeated statements about this “war on terrorism”:

“Two thirds of Al Qaeda’s leadership has been captured or killed.” The Bushies love to toss this one out whenever anyone questions whether or not we are “defeating” Al Qaeda. The implication being that the new Al Qaeda is the JV. However, it’s no secret Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the two top guys in the organization before and since September 11, 2001, remain free. And the NIE assesses that Al Qaeda has “regenerated” its “operational lieutenants, and its top leadership”, so they’re back to where they were in the summer of 2001, only a few miles to the West.

“We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” or the argument that the invasion of Iraq would minimize the terrorist threat at home. This is the line they use to counter the argument that the invasion of Iraq distracted from the fight against terrorism, centered in Pakistan/Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are/were. But the NIE says that Al Qaeda in Iraq could be used by Al Qaeda in Pakistan to carry out terrorist attacks in the US - and Al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t even exist before the invasion. So the idea that invading and occupying Iraq would make us safer at home is ridiculous since this Al Qaeda franchise, founded to resist the occupation and the puppet government, is the most likely vehicle by which the US would be attacked .

“Al Qaeda is on the run.” I love this one. Whenever anyone in the Administration was asked why the only remaining superpower and the biggest, baddest military force in the history of the world has been unable to find one man suspected to be traveling with a dialysis machine through terrain which would challenge a mountain goat, they’ve alternated between claiming he just doesn’t matter all that much and claiming he’s a fugitive who is running out of places to hide. Neither turns out to be accurate. According to the NIE, he has found a new safe haven to replace the one granted to him by the Taliban in Afghanistan: the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. And his new benefactor? Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.

It was President Musharraf who (following President Bush’s example in Iraq) refuses to send enough troops into the Tribal Areas to root out Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. It is Presidetn Musharraf who signed a cease-fire (since broken) with tribal leaders last September in which they promised to stop protecting Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in their areas – an agreement which Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said gave Al Qaeda the ability to “operate, meet, plan, recruit, and obtain financing in more comfort”. It is Pakistani intelligence who use Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters as proxies in their dispute with India over Kashmir and in their ongoing border battles with Afghanistan. In short, it is the Pakistani government which is providing both aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban in their fight against the United States of America. This, of course, calls the founding principle of the “war on terrorism” as laid out by President Bush: “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

The actions of President Musharraf show where his loyalty lies, and the actions of President Bush show that his words have ceased to have any meaning.

Bush is an actor in need of an exit line - The beginning of the end

When President Bush says something first, then senior officials repeat it in the press, there is a message he wants to send to my fellow Americans. That became clear last week when the President took the rare step of providing an “update on the situation in Iraq”, then National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to explain the unsatisfactory progress an interim report says the Iraqi government has made (or not made) on most of the benchmarks they have to meet in order to justify a continued American military presence.

The President basically ignored the findings of the interim report, mostly because the news was not good: unsatisfactory progress on every one of the major political objectives despite a significant increase in American casualties. In other words, our men and women in uniform are fighting to buy the Iraqi government time to work out their political differences, but they’re just not doing it. The worst part is that the President is claiming that the full report from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in September might look different from the interim report - even though the Iraqi parliament is taking a vacation for the month of August. In other words, whatever progress they’ve made up to now is the same amount of progress they will have made in September: none. But with the Secretary of Defense saying the solution in Iraq is political, not military, and Congress ready to pull the plug on funding, the President is in a bind. That’s why he’s moving to marginalize the Maliki government and seek a political solution in the provinces among the people.

The President said he’d like to see us in a position in which our “troop posture” would be to guard Iraq’s borders, embed with Iraqi security services and train them, help them “deal with violent elements in their society”, and keep enough Special Forces to “chase down” Al Qaeda. He also introduced the new concept of “bottom-up reconciliation” on the grassroots level, which is different from “top-down reconciliation” which can only come from the central government in Baghdad. Both of these ideas, troop posture and bottom-up reconciliation, will be critical in the obvious exit strategy the President is considering. And despite what the President claims, this strategy will have nothing to do with any “results on the ground” in Iraq.

“Bottom-up reconciliation” is a tactic the US military is using in Sunni areas. What it means is that we’re willing to forgive those who have carried out attacks on Americans as long as they promise to turn their attention to Al Qaeda. We’ll even give them money and let them keep whatever weapons they confiscate from Al Qaeda in the process. This is designed to create an intelligence and support network separate from the central government. That way, when our footprint is reduced, our Special Forces will at least have baseline knowledge of who is supposed to be with us. Of course, this spits in the faces of the soldiers and marines who fought the “Sunni insurgency” earlier in the campaign, but this President has never thought much about the sacrifices made by our fighting men and women anyway. He needs to demonstrate that after seven months, the troop “surge” he announced in January has led to some kind of political progress, even if it doesn’t involve the Maliki government.

Prime Minister Maliki is no longer with us – and the President knows it. If, as the President claims, he has made it clear to the Prime Minister that our commitment to Iraq isn’t “open-ended” and if, as the President claims, he has made the Prime Minister aware that the increase in troop levels was designed to give the central government a safer environment in which to work out their differences, then the Prime Minister has clearly made his choice by not making deals with the Sunnis and the Kurds. He’s not making any political concessions to Iraq’s minority groups because he just doesn’t have to. He then kicked sand in the President’s face by saying the Iraqis could provide their own security if the US military pulled out because either way, the Shia own Iraq.

The exit strategy will be to say the US military is did what it could, the Iraqi security forces are doing everything they can, the tribal sheikhs are doing everything they can, but the central government isn’t passing any legislation, so it’s their fault. We will keep the Iraqi borders secure, train Iraqi security forces from secure locations away from the front lines, and keep Special Forces in the country to fight Al Qaeda, and President Bush can retire to Crawford, Texas and watch as the sectarian warfare he facilitated rages throughout the Middle East.

Winning should be a slam dunk for Obama - Barack is changing the game

Barack Obama knows what he’s doing. He’s changing the way campaigns are run. Or, as he puts it in his new book, “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.” From one black man to another, all I can say is, “word.” Because after him, the game will never be the same.

The second quarter fundraising numbers are in – and they spell bad news for anyone not named Obama. He raised an unprecedented $32.5 million, with $31 million to be used in the primary campaign and with $10 million coming from online contributions. That’s more cash for just the primary than Hillary Clinton raised in total for the quarter ($27 million) and more than John Edwards has raised all year ($23 million). More importantly, he’s gotten over 258,000 people to contribute to his campaign, more than the top three Republican candidates combined and more than the infamous Clinton donor list (which took 25 years to compile) - and he did it in only six months.

There is no viable Republican candidate. Voters are practically screaming for something different in Washington, D.C. and the only Republican candidate who can “unite the right”, Fred Thompson, may be a lot of things, but an agent for change isn’t one of them. The “second tier” of Democratic candidates will be all but gone by the time the results of the Iowa Caucuses are in on January 14th, and will certainly have faded away after the New Hampshire Primary on the 22nd (except Dennis Kucinich, he’s in for the duration). That will leave Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards – who all have enough money to get to “Super Tuesday” on February 5th. But because no candidate who didn’t finish first or second in Iowa and New Hampshire has ever won the presidency, that will leave one of them (Edwards) desperate for a first place finish in Florida or South Carolina on January 22nd. Unfortunately for John Edwards, he lost his bid for the nomination in 2004, lost as John Kerry’s running mate, and will have lost in either Iowa, New Hampshire, or both by then - so he will reek of defeat. Desperation plus the stench of losing will not inspire voters. On top of that, Barack Obama is polling two-to-three times higher than John Edwards in South Carolina, Edwards’ home state. By February, the contest will be Obama vs. Clinton for the nomination.

When you listen to Republicans talk about the Democratic field, you always hear the same thing: Hillary is head-and-shoulders above the rest. Senator Obama’s detractors say that he’s an empty suit. They say he’s inexperienced. They say he speaks in generalities and has yet to explain what he stands for and where he wants to take the country. Basically, they say he lacks substance. I say they’re wrong. I say he’s changing the game. He knows there is no need to offer anything substantive while the field is still as big as a softball team. He’s got more than enough money and support to carry him through February, and by the time March rolls around, he will have enough delegates to be competitive with Hillary Clinton. And the only reason why Republicans are so high on Hillary is because they want to run against her (and her husband) and they are scared to death of the “Barack Now” movement.

By next spring, Hillary will have dug her own grave. She will have spent the better part of a year re-positioning herself as an anti-war candidate and trying to distance herself from her own vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq in the first place. And it will not work. Why? Because Barack Obama was the President of the Harvard Law Review, so he knows how to debate and he certainly knows how to frame an argument. Senator Clinton voted to give President Bush the authority to go to war, but without reading the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. She voted against an amendment which would have required the President to come back to Congress for authorization to use force in Iraq if the UN Security Council didn’t grant it, and from the Senate floor said Saddam had “given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members,” parroting the President’s justification despite any evidence to support it. So it will be child’s play for Senator Obama to expose her as a fraud.

With any Republican candidate marginalized, having bested the rest of the field, and having shown Senator Clinton as an opportunistic hypocrite, Barack Obama will be the last one standing at the Democratic National Convention in Denver next August. And I, personally, cannot wait to hear how he’s going to top the speech he gave in Boston in 2004.

Fighting amnesty left us all in the cold - Killing immigration reform

Every once in a while, a song perfectly illustrates the feeling or mood in America. In 1984, with the Soviet Union pulling out of the Summer Games in LA, there was Springsteen's "Born in the USA". In 1991, during the Gulf War, there was Whitney Houston's “Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl. And in 2007, there is John Mellencamp's "Our Country" - a tune mainly used to push Chevy trucks, but could very well be the soundtrack for the Republicans in fly-over America who got together to kill the most recent immigration bill.

When it comes to true immigration reform, there are well-intentioned people on both sides of the debate who will see any compromise of their core values as unacceptable - from liberals who oppose a guest worker program as exploitation of cheap labor and a way to keep wages down to conservatives who oppose any new laws until the southern border is secured. But because these people aren't standing in the way of making a deal, they are willing to be part of the solution: a "grand bargain" in which both sides get some of what they want, neither side gets all of what they want, and we get new immigration laws. Despite their ideological differences, these groups have one important thing in common: they're both in favor of tougher enforcement of existing laws. They make up the "enforcement first" camp and had it been left to them, a bill might have passed.

Unfortunately, there is a much more vocal, engaged group out there. They are the "enforcement only" people and for them, there is only one issue: the status of the "illegals" already here. And there is only one answer: round 'em all up and send 'em all back. As solutions go, "enforcement only" isn't practical. Immigration laws are federal and, by statute, can only be enforced by the federal government (usually through ICE and INS). However, neither of these agencies has the financial, human, or physical resources to investigate, detain, house, and deport millions and millions of people. But the "enforcement only" Mellen-camp doesn't care about "practical", they care about day laborers outside Home Depot and "press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish". This is the Republican base and they are tired of being ignored. After all, this is their country.

If we go back to 2001 and Mexican President Vicente Fox's visit to the White House in August, we can see President Bush, who learned a thing or two about immigration as Governor of Texas, was already out in front of the immigration issue. Events of that September shifted the focus to world events, but a deal was in place six years ago - with the White House leading the way. The issue re-emerged before the elections last year. Senate Republicans knew they needed a legislative accomplishment they could run on and Senate Democrats, despite the fact they were reluctant to give the Republicans such an accomplishment, went along. However, the bill's main opposition in the House, Republican Tom Tancredo (from the whitest suburbs of Denver), called it "amnesty", and other House Republicans scheduled field hearings during the summer recess to see what the base had to say. Of course, the base didn't like it. The bill died, and that was that until the President re-discovered his interest in the issue this year as a way of saving his doomed legacy.

Unfortunately for President Bush, his base's vision of what his presidency should have been is so far from what he delivered that they turned on him. Social conservatives who want Roe v. Wade overturned are unhappy about John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Fiscal conservatives looking for smaller government got more and more spending on new programs, national defense hawks got a poorly planned and horribly under-resourced military engagement (by a Secretary of Defense who ignored his own generals), and Libertarians got a national security apparatus which illegally spied on US citizens. Rank-and-file Republicans had suffered defeat after defeat, culminating in the electoral "thumping" in November, and tuned the President out on this immigration bill.

After all, he was working with Ted Kennedy, the man responsible for the 1986 "amnesty", to get it passed. The Republican base doesn't know much, but they know if Senator Kennedy is for something, they should oppose it. While they know they cannot allow their Senators to even dicuss a bill that might include “amnesty”, they don’t seem to realize that with ICE and INS overwhelmed, “amnesty” is the current state of affairs. Their hysteria to block this “amnesty bill” ensured that “silent amnesty” will continue well into the future and they've made President Bush a lame duck in the process. Fy-over America will regret this in November when they lose the Latino vote and give the White House and Congress to the Democrats, but for now, this is their country.