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April 03, 2004
Osama's Motivation, America's Capability
I have just been reminded of something I believe everyone has forgotten. The reason that Osama Bin Laden attacked America was because we had American troops in Saudi Arabia. And why did we have troops in Saudi Arabia? To protect Saudi Arabia (for oil reasons) from Saddam Hussein.
Osama Bin Laden believes that America should have no business with the Muslim world. Presuming that he is rational, we could just remove our troops from Saudi Arabia and the jihad would be terminated. But that would be a fool's bet. What we can count on for certain is that AQ continues to threaten peace and security all over, and that Bin Laden's rationale is not to be appeased.
But it is worth pointing out that we are at war with AQ because we went to war with Iraq in 1991. The Wahabists of Saudi Arabia started getting their knickers in a twist when confronted with the possibility of seeing American women driving military vehicles on the street.
Let me also add a notable contribution to clarification from Senator Joe Biden yesterday. (Yes I was listening to Franken again). The PNAC still finds acting against states as fundamental to the combat of terrorism. I concur and think it is wise despite the obvious consequences to priorities with regard to the deployment of American forces. Clearly in retrospect, it was a mistake to focus on anti-missle defense (whose very physics are a matter of intense debate) in contradiction to the priorities Richard Clarke would have had the Administration support in 2001. But none of that proves that actions against rogue states is a poor idea. Afghanistan is proof.
What the American military and its allies have proven beyond a doubt in Iraq is that it is capable of dealing with a rogue nation's army and can take down a tyrant. What America has yet to prove is that on the heels of such a coup, it can transition an entire nation more or less, to democratic rule. The failure of such a transition implies the reversion to the kinds of coups the CIA has orchestrated in the past, substituting one dictator for another. If you like the old style of puppets, then you should be cheering for the US to get out yesterday, constitution or no.
We also have not yet proven that we are capable of coordinating intelligence and alliances of the sort a global cell busting organization requires. After all it was the invocation of Chapter Five of the NATO treaty that got Germany, the UK and (yes) France, fighting along side Americans in the ugly back country of Tora Bora. I hear calls for more of this multilateralims but I don't hear it called for specifically with regards to joint military offensive action. I think the recent fighting in norther Pakistan which has dragged on for at least a week, demonstrates that covert coups are not going to work.
So someday we may have a new kind of Army - the kind Rumsfeld talks about. But we did what we could do well. Hopefully we'll get good enough, soon enough to rid the planet of AQ. But let us not forget that we must still deal with states, both friends and enemies. We are not constituted to do much anything else, unless you are particularly fond of the old CIA tactics.
Posted by mbowen at April 3, 2004 12:54 PM
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