It's not a war on one country, and it's not a war on one person.

When you hear someone whining about the fact that we haven't "gotten" OBL yet, it's clear that that person either doesn't get it, or is playing to those who don't.

Great article and synopsis of the situtation. It is likely to be the Forever War. I do not know how you convince the rest of the country to do this. Gen Petraeus has been unable to explain this in Iraq.

#1 from BillB at 12:37 am on Sep 30, 2008

It's not a war on one country, and it's not a war on one person.

When you hear someone whining about the fact that we haven't "gotten" OBL yet, it's clear that that person either doesn't get it, or is playing to those who don't.

Does the reverse hold true when a President announces that he will get someone "Dead or Alive" and doesn't? It is most certainly a war against one person, especially when this one person whose enmity towards the United States and Americans in general has spawned any number of plans to kill Americans and has succeeded in killing thousands.

Bill, you are the one that doesn't get it.

toc: It is most certainly a war against one person, especially when this one person whose enmity towards the United States and Americans in general has spawned any number of plans to kill Americans and has succeeded in killing thousands.

Say we do eventually succeed in taking out bin Laden. Do we then withdraw from Afghanistan? AFAIK not even Barack Obama is advocating this (though I wouldn't put it past him to change his tune once he's in office). If the next president intends to keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan after "getting" bin Laden, then I'd say that puts paid to your argument.

Everyday, lazy television-watching Democrat voters just can't comprehend that the problem is as serious as it is.

They still think Islamic terror will 'end' if Bin Laden is eliminated.

They are still foolish enough to think that 'US foreign policy' is the reason for Islamic terror. That is a very US-centric worldview, as it fails to explain why the same terrorists attacked London, Madrid, Bali (twice), Beslan, Bombay, and Islamic nations like Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc.

This blind spot about what Islamic terror actually is, is perhaps the biggest construct of denial in modern history.

There have only ever been two choices for dealing with Muslims who subscribe to Al-Qaeda's ideology : make them moderate, or exterminate them.

Western Society is just to peaceful and soft, at this point, to exterminate radical Islam.

Fortunately for us, Iraq is succeeding in turning that part of the region into a more moderate one. The fifth-column left's best efforts notwithstanding, Iraq is succeeding, and that means the first choice still has hope.

At some point, I am hoping that radical Islam clashes with Putin's Russia again. Putin may be useful in his ability to do what the West is unwilling to.

#4 from Joshua at 3:05 am on Sep 30, 2008

Say we do eventually succeed in taking out bin Laden. Do we then withdraw from Afghanistan? AFAIK not even Barack Obama is advocating this (though I wouldn't put it past him to change his tune once he's in office). If the next president intends to keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan after "getting" bin Laden, then I'd say that puts paid to your argument.

I don't know where you got that I was saying anything like that. My point was that I am not so cavalier about minimizing the importance of getting Bin Laden.

I do not think there are many more important missions that we have to accomplish than getting OSB. To my mind, we have a war against this one man no matter what other situations we are involved in.

toc: The WOT is far from over if OBL dies tomorrow.

Whatever his place (current or past) in the hierarchy of Al Qaeda, it goes well beyond him now.

When you hear someone whining about the fact that we haven't "gotten" OBL yet, it's clear that that person either doesn't get it, or is playing to those who don't.

I am whining about not having gotten Bin Laden and so are a ton of people who are more than willing to go world wide against Islamic radicalism. So, it is this blanket, simplistic statement of yours that I object to.

I am not as

#5 from GK at 3:11 am on Sep 30, 2008

Puts it:

Everyday, lazy television-watching Democrat voters just can't comprehend that the problem is as serious as it is.

Another simplistic statement.

It seems to me that one can not have the opinion that the invasion of Iraq and the occupation that followed to be not only a strategic blunder, but a diversion from the real job at hand of defeating Islamic radicalism.

Let me clue you in. There are plenty of Conservative "PaleoCons" that think the approach to this problem by this administration has been counter productive and plenty that see the inability to get Bin Laden to be a indicator of how inept they have been in pursuing an effective War on Terror.

The Republican Party is now in shambles. Their is an open Revolt against their leaders 6 weeks before an election. Their Presidential candidate is all over the place. The party has abandoned its core principles and the particular brand of fundamentalist Republicanism that I hear in both your comments nad that of GK's is not only simplistic, but counter productive.

I hope when we suffer a crushing defeat in this election, this sort of uninformed knee jerk reaction that has passed for political debate in the party since the rise of Rove will be purged, along with the NeoCon jibberish that passed for foreign Policy. I liked the Party a lot better when it had a brain.

By the way, our dear leader's brilliant pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate is the last straw. We, the sane wing of the party, will regain control and the destruction of the party of so brilliantly executed by the NeoCons and Rovians will be repaired.

Trust me, it won't be easy.

TOC (#3), in the mid 1990s, we certainly thought this was a war against just one person. His name was Ramzi Yousef, and he was captured in January of 1995. The jihadi ideology is a problem far, far larger than bin Laden or even al Qaeda, stretching at least as far back as Sayyid Nosair and quite possibly as far back as Sirhan Sirhan (though he was more likely of the Palestinian nationalist branch of terrorism than the Muslim Brotherhood-derived branch), and when bin Laden is dead (or if he already is), the war will go on.

And yes, Iraq was a part of that, and there will be other campaigns like it. (My bets are on big wars in the Pakistani tribal areas, probably in cooperation with the Pakistani government; possibly Saudi Arabia; probably Yemen; possibly parts of Indonesia and the Philippines.) It's not enough to play whack-a-mole — we have to eliminate the state sponsors of terrorism that keep the ideology of jihad springing up over and over from ground we've previously cleared, or thought we had. We also have to use our diplomatic power to bring countries around and we also have to use our cultural power to bring individuals around. And we don't care if they like us in the end, just that they don't hate us enough to try to kill us. By that measure, an anti-American and anti-jihadi Iraq is fine, if that's what we end up with. As long as they are sterile ground for jihadis, I'm happy.

The thing is, there is not just one solution to the problem. There are many, many branches and many, many types of solutions to root out the hateful, twisted ideology that drives our enemies. As the Cold War and its aftermath show, ideologies die hard. I suspect that my grandchildren will still be fighting this war, even if they don't realize that it's the same one. I'd like to prevent that if possible, and thus I favor a faster war. Those who favor Afghanistan but not Iraq want a really slow war (but are still willing to treat it as a war, if they are sincere). Those who favor neither seem to think that they can avoid war altogether. (They're wrong.) Those who want the fastest war, who would be willing to basically take out any Muslim anywhere, are fortunately few and far between, though there is still room between their position and mine. (I, for example, would support war against Iran, while the really extreme fast war proponents would encourage and welcome it.)

In the end, though, it doesn't matter what we think. I believe it was Lenin who noted that it doesn't matter if you are uninterested in war, war is interested in you. The jihadis are interested in killing us, and so there will be war. Will there have to be another 9/11 first before we stop trying to nod off and forget, forget? Will we have to lose a city to a nuclear weapon first? We can choose to pay a price now, or a higher price later. But we have to pay a price to defeat the jihadi ideology, or the price of being defeated by it, in the end. Rational coexistence is simply not going to happen.

The war 'began' in Afghanistan, because of a confluence of events;
Brezhnev's overextension in supporting the Amin regime; encouraged by our retreat from Vietnam; Saudi anxieties after the Grand Mosque siege; the loss of regional confidence due to the fall of the Shah. Saudi money directed the course of the war.
At some point in the early 90s, Pan Slavic brutality in the Balkans and the Caucasus, became the great motivator (hence Zawahiri, Al Midhar, Moussaoui, Saeed Omar's treks) It is precisely the remoteness of the NorthWest frontier and the twisted interpretation of Pushtunwali that makes operating in that region, the most volatile. It does partially explain how the British Empire foundered more in that region in the 19th and early 20th
than anywhere else.

#10 from Jeff Medcalf at 5:33 am on Sep 30, 2008

Jeff,

I am well aware of everything you are saying and agree with it. That does not, to my mind excuse the fact that Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose nor does it excuse this administrations failure to capture and kill him.

I think it has been and is a failure in our foreign policy because he exists as a symbol of our failure of this administration to protect its citizens and to Islamic radicals as a sign of weakness.

Getting Osama Bin Laden is of paramount importance in the overall battle against Islamic Radicalism. Any one considering actions like his has to understand that our pursuit will be swift, unflagging and successful. Period.

I don't get this out of this administration and the excuse that this is not important because Islamic terrorism is such a big problem and will take so long to deal with doesn't wash with me. Any administration should be pressed daily on the hunt.

"Most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudis. All were Arabs. None hailed from Afghanistan. This is not coincidental. Al Qaeda’s politics are a product of the Arab world,"

Not really. In as much as they're effective they're a product of the West's using them as a proxy force (cannon fodder) to fight the Soviets in the selfsame Afghanistan. Without western money, weapons, and organizational support, these guys would still eat camel crap in their birthplace, whatever their philosophies. I mean, they would be nowhere close to be able to threaten the world.

Sorry, Chicken, but that's not true, the original 19; including Al Midhar and Al Hazmi; were recruited by the Russian rerun in Chechnya and kindred conflict in Bosnia. It would be kind of hard to argue that was a Western operation. It could be said of Abu Zubeydah; being a Saudi-born Palestinian; that the Arab/Israeli
conflict was more a factor in his case. The rest can be chalked up to the ruling class dynamics of the Ilkwan vs the Saud; which included Bin Laden, much like the
19th century Russian example of the Narodniki and the Social Revolutionaries vs. the Czars.

Also Chicken, we never supported the Afghan Arabs, we predominantly supported the Northern Alliance.

Peter Bergen of CNN (we all know what a bunch of Republican flacks they are) had the following to say:

"While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don't make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.

Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency's Afghan operation in the late 1980s, says, "The CIA did not recruit Arabs," as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight, and the Arabs who did come for jihad were "very disruptive . . . the Afghans thought they were a pain in the ass." Similar sentiments from Afghans who appreciated the money that flowed from the Gulf but did not appreciate the Arabs' holier-than-thou attempts to convert them to their ultra-purist version of Islam. Freelance cameraman Peter Jouvenal recalls: "There was no love lost between the Afghans and the Arabs. One Afghan told me, ‘Whenever we had a problem with one of them we just shot them. They thought they were kings.'"

... There was simply no point in the CIA and the Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other. ... the Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding. The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA. So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading. The 'let's blame everything bad that happens on the CIA' school of thought vastly overestimates the Agency's powers, both for good and ill." [Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 64-66.]

"My point was that I am not so cavalier about minimizing the importance of getting Bin Laden."

I wish we'd gotten him, but he's Al Queda's PR man and organizer - not its operational, technical, or military leader. If we'd gotten him, he'd still serve the same purpose of inspiring the troops as a legendary martyr.

The best outcome has never been us getting Al Queda. It's always been better that someone else gets him, preferably in some comprimising or embarassing way, to decrease the value of any narrative about Bin Ladin. If the Pakistani's get him (I not particularly optimistic that they will, as much of their intelligence service is on the other side), it's a far better outcome than if we get him. If they get him dressed in a burka running like a coward or cowering in a hole while dying of AIDs, even better.

#16 from Celebrim at 11:06 pm on Sep 30, 2008

I wish we'd gotten him, but he's Al Queda's PR man and organizer - not its operational, technical, or military leader. If we'd gotten him, he'd still serve the same purpose of inspiring the troops as a legendary martyr.

I don't buy this either.

When Lee left Richmond, Grant went after him, lifting the seige. When Lincoln question Grant, Grant wrote back something along the lines that he did not want Richmond he wanted Lee. Sound thinking. Lee, at that point, was what remained of the soul of the south. Grant did not give two hoots about whether or not someone would worship Lee as a Martyr.

The best outcome has never been us getting Al Queda. It's always been better that someone else gets him, preferably in some comprimising or embarassing way, to decrease the value of any narrative about Bin Ladin. If the Pakistani's get him (I not particularly optimistic that they will, as much of their intelligence service is on the other side), it's a far better outcome than if we get him. If they get him dressed in a burka running like a coward or cowering in a hole while dying of AIDs, even better.

I think this idea is a bit to influenced by Madison Avenue thought. The best outcome is and always has been for us to have gotten him swiftly, have him do the perp walk and then hang him. I think it is a waste of time to fantasize about the packaging. Everything is not a marketing campaign.

#14 from narciso:
"Sorry, Chicken,"
That's OK, I have no stake in it :-).

" but that's not true, the original 19; including Al Midhar and Al Hazmi; were recruited by the Russian rerun in Chechnya and kindred conflict in Bosnia."
I'm not following: where are you getting with that?

"It would be kind of hard to argue that was a Western operation."
I didn't/wouldn't say it was. (?)

_"The rest can be chalked up to the ruling class dynamics of the Ilkwan vs the Saud; which included Bin Laden, much like the
19th century Russian example of the Narodniki and the Social Revolutionaries vs. the Czars."_
I don't understand your message. What are you trying to say? Could you give me the thesis in isolation? Btw, the Russians were terrorist no doubt, but in what cause? A bit of difference here. And they never bombed anyone outside of Russia, as far as I know. And no government or country, afaik again, supported them to influence some other country (Russia, in that case), they were totally self-sufficient, not a tool of a hostile foreign policy. The worst they ever did was blow up a czar or a governor (and a dozen bystanders, of course). Not foreign embassies, not thousands of random people. But again, most likely this is all irrelevant: like I said, I didn't understand your message, what you were trying to say. I saw your arguments, but don't see where you'd like to get to by using them.