this is one of those endless debates that will continue down through history and so...what are we trying to get at here?)
Debate - so people are aware of different facts and opinions. Some will change their minds, some will continue to see only one side of everything, some will take a balanced approach and understand that it takes two to tango, two hands to clap and also be aware of past errors so that they may not be repeated in the future. Good luck with that! Here's a Washington Post article that reflects how we continue t make the same mistakes over again for short term gains...
Washington Post
Wednesday, October 3, 2001; Page A31
An Ally's Terrorism
By Jim Hoagland
Improvised in the horror and shock of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on
America, the Bush administration's initial diplomatic strategy bought
valuable time and space for the more serious and sustained response to
come. So let us praise that strategy and prepare to bury it as soon as
its limited utility is exhausted.
Napoleon warned that nothing lasts as long as the temporary. The first
risk of building a broad strategic coalition is that the construction
becomes an end in itself -- that photos of parades of foreign
ministers shaking hands and expressing sympathy get defined as success
and overtake effective action as the ultimate goal.
That is a temptation President Bush and Secretary of State Colin
Powell should resist without great trouble. Less obvious but equally
dangerous are the future risks involved in reaching out too broadly
now -- the long-term peril of recruiting and rewarding nations that do
not share U.S. values and interests. Some countries sign up primarily
to stall and limit U.S. action, not to facilitate it.
There's the rub of the coalition Bush and Powell have assembled in all
necessary haste. They have recruited to fight terrorism regimes that
practice or tolerate terrorism as a matter of policy. The inclusion of
such states at the center of the coalition undermines the sweeping and
noble war aims enunciated by Bush, who has promised not to divide
terrorists into bad and good camps.
The difficulties of keeping that promise -- and the huge stakes this
still-developing campaign has for South Asia -- were blasted home
Monday by a car bomb and guerrilla assault that wrecked the state
assembly in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir. At least 38
persons were killed in a gruesome attack on a building that, for
Kashmir inhabitants, matches the Pentagon and the World Trade Center
in symbolic value.
You would think the radical Islamic guerrillas who claimed
responsibility for Monday's attack -- the Pakistani-based
Jaish-e-Muhammed group -- might deserve to be at least called
terrorists. India implored the United States to put the group on its
terrorist list for earlier outrages. But Washington declined out of
fear that such action would undermine the regime of Gen. Pervez
Musharraf and complicate U.S. diplomatic goals.
This is diplomacy without vision and without the roots needed for a
long, difficult struggle against terrorism. It is delusional to think
that the United States can reform the Musharraf regime or elements in
the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan into responsible
partners to fight terrorism.
This is the lure of the quick fix. Previous administrations pursued it
in building up Saddam Hussein to protect the Arab world against Iran,
in counting on the Iraqi army to take care of Saddam in the wake of
the Gulf War, in betting that Mikhail Gorbachev's reform communism
could keep the Soviet Union together and in dozens of other instances
of short-termism.
Washington knows full well that Pakistan actively supports
Jaish-e-Muhammed and other guerrilla organizations that see terror as
the only effective tool they have against India. Members of these
groups freely tell Western journalists that they have trained in camps
in Afghanistan run by Pakistani intelligence services and then been
deployed into Kashmir. These terrorists are creatures of Musharraf and
the Taliban and soulmates of Osama bin Laden.
Theoretically it should be possible to set them against each other.
But Musharraf sees the Taliban's opponents in the Northern Alliance as
agents of India working for his mortal foes. Survival for him means
seeming to go along with U.S. goals while making sure they do not
actually get carried out. As a bonus, stroking Musharraf so openly
makes the stronger relationship Washington should be creating with
India more difficult.
American cooperation with Stalin in World War II is frequently cited
as an example of the necessity of dealing with the devil in times of
crisis. But the United States did not make the Soviet Union a
strategic ally while Stalin was still cooperating with Hitler. There
has yet to be a serious tangible act by Pakistan to break its alliance
with terror and earn the kind of trust the administration has
ostensibly extended.
Short-term goals of initial positioning, both military and political,
have largely been met. American policy will now drift into incoherence
if it continues to aim at assembling the broadest possible coalition
and cooperating seriously with regimes that are broken beyond repair.
With us or against us, the American president warned the world two
weeks ago. Others will believe those words only if Bush shows he meant
them.
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