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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (151550)	11/11/2004 5:24:58 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Lest we forget, the "non-response" of of 1998-2000 became considerably more non-responsive when W took office and everybody started angling for an Iraq war. One account among many: It seems that by the time Bush took office, ''bin Laden fatigue'' had set in; no one had practical suggestions for eliminating or even substantially weakening Al Qaeda. The commission's statement that Clinton and Bush had been offered only a ''narrow and unimaginative menu of options for action'' is hindsight wisdom at its most fatuous. The options considered were varied and imaginative; they included enlisting the Afghan Northern Alliance or other potential tribal allies of the United States to help kill or capture bin Laden, an attack by our Special Operations forces on his compound, assassinating him by means of a Predator drone aircraft or coercing or bribing the Taliban to extradite him. But for political or operational reasons, none was feasible. It thus is not surprising, perhaps not even a fair criticism, that the new administration treaded water until the 9/11 attacks. But that's what it did. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, ''demoted'' Richard Clarke, the government's leading bin Laden hawk and foremost expert on Al Qaeda. It wasn't technically a demotion, but merely a decision to exclude him from meetings of the cabinet-level ''principals committee'' of the National Security Council; he took it hard, however, and requested a transfer from the bin Laden beat to cyberterrorism. The committee did not discuss Al Qaeda until a week before the 9/11 attacks. The new administration showed little interest in exploring military options for dealing with Al Qaeda, and Donald Rumsfeld had not even gotten around to appointing a successor to the Defense Department's chief counterterrorism official (who had left the government in January) when the 9/11 attacks occurred. I suspect that one reason, not mentioned by the commission, for the Bush administration's initially tepid response to the threat posed by Al Qaeda is that a new administration is predisposed to reject the priorities set by the one it's succeeding. No doubt the same would have been true had Clinton been succeeding Bush as president rather than vice versa. nytimes.com You may, of course, accuse Posner of "liberal bias" if you want, just for amusement. So now, W's got his war in Iraq, and it looks like he'll have it for a while longer. I imagine W's not that worried about bin Laden again, and it sounds like you're not either. Cool.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (151550)	11/11/2004 5:41:58 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

but they will have suffered a huge blow to their recruitment chances, if Iraq had become, or becomes sometime in the future, a decent place with political freedom. That's a fallacious argument, since Iraqi's were never known to be active in terrorism against the US. Everywhere else but Iraq has been the primary source of recruitment to date. Until, thanks to Bush, all that changed. Today, Iraq is yet another source of recruitment, and serves as ample justification for the terrorism inclined, living in other countries. Well done Bush! (someone tell him that reducing terrorism is supposed to be the goal)