Pakistan: The Real “Central Front” in Fighting Terrorists?
Nowadays it is standard for most Democrats and other opponents of President Bush’s Iraq strategy to highlight the fact that the Iraq war diverted resources from finishing the mission in Afghanistan and tracking down top Al Qaeda leaders like Usama Bin Laden. A press release issued today by Senate Democrats offers a meant-to-be punchy “tick tock” of the 2,283 days that Osama Bin Laden has been at large. One might debate the merits of this approach from a political communications standpoint, but the Democrats raise an important substantive issue here– the national security opportunity costs of Iraq. The standard Democratic criticisms, however, don’t address the fact that the “global war on terror” is a failure of conservative ideology, and not simply a massive misappropriation of precious U.S. national security assets. The hot spots where terror organizations thrive around the world – Gaza, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan– are places that have many of the same things conservatives want for America: there’s no government, everyone has a gun, and extremist religion dominates the politics.
How conservatives view the world and the role of government is at the core of America’s inability to tackle global terrorism in the six plus years since 9/11. Their push for ever smaller government at home, an obsession with tax cuts, and penchant for ignoring U.S. military commanders who argue that the threat posed by terrorist organizations has no conventional military solutions has had dangerous consequences. On President Bush’s watch, lawless zones of instability have grown. The threat posed by global terror groups morphed, mutated, and filled the spaces left in ungoverned corners of the world.
Nowhere is this more apparent than Pakistan. As the sun set on Karachi, I recalled the numerous terrorist incidents that took place here. Karachi is where Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and brutally murdered by Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in 2002. Considered one of the most dangerous places in the world by the U.S. government, the supplemental danger pay for U.S. diplomats posted here is equivalent to the pay in Baghdad. Last year, a U.S. diplomat was killed in a suicide attack near the U.S. consulate. In October of this year, about 150 people were killed in one of the deadliest terror attacks in history during a homecoming parade for former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Karachi is only one of several places in Pakistan where government authorities effectively have no control and terrorist groups thrive – there’s also the rugged terrain along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where many think Bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda leaders are, as well as the disputed territory of Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Does this mean that Pakistan is the “central front” in the war on terror as growing numbers of U.S. leaders assert – especially Democrats favoring a troop withdrawal from Iraq? No, for two main reasons – no central front exists in meeting this multifaceted, decentralized threat, and calling it a war leaves the impression that there is a singular conventional military solution to the problem.
The “war on terror” paradigm falls flat when one takes careful stock of the challenges posed by decentralized global terror networks and the conditions that allow them to thrive. Some members of the Bush administration recognized the rhetorical emptiness of their approach four years after 9/11, when they began searching for a new way to talk about the challenges. First the Bush administration road-tested “global struggle against violent extremism” in 2005, which went nowhere, and then it tried “Islamo-fascism,” which rankled many allies in Muslim-majority countries who thought they were fighting on the same side as the United States and expressed worries that the term implied a war against a major world religion. (Nevertheless, many conservatives, including leading Republican candidates for president, have continued to liberally use the term, and some conservative activists recently launched an “Islamo-fascism” awareness week.)
Bush administration critics did no better in articulating the challenge, providing vapid descriptors like the “war of ideas.” Even one of the better books addressing this challenge – The Good Fight: Why Liberals – and Only Liberals – Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again by Peter Beinart suffered from hollow sloganeering, as George Packer pointed out in his thoughtful review well worth re-reading. “Large ideas drawn from historical analogies can help as guiding frameworks, but the glamorous certainties they seem to offer are illusions; we still have to think for ourselves,” Packer wrote.
In Karachi, it is easy to become very cynical about the ideas offered up in America’s political debates and think tank white papers on how to tackle the challenge posed by terrorist groups. Even with the distance of more than six years since September 11th, Americans are still searching for the right approach to deal with those who attacked us. Pakistan may not be the central front in a war on terror because that’s not the most effective way of thinking about it, but the complicated issues in play here revolving around the terrorism issue provide some useful food for thought in examining how the United States can make a shift towards a more effective global strategy – the subject of tomorrow’s post.
How seldom we get such a breath of fresh air and common sense (which isn't so common) on TPMCafe. I particularly liked: ignoring U.S. military commanders who argue that the threat posed by terrorist organizations has no conventional military solutions
I look forward to Mr. Katulis's next post.
ecotourism
WeGoEco.com
December 12, 2007 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Katulis,
Maybe I'm going all "old school" on this, but Pakistan is no "ally in the war on terror".
If, if, if. If there had been no A.Q.Khan, if he had not been running an open air market on nuclear weapons, if Musharrif had not pardoned him and then given him Pakistan's highest awards, if Musharrif had not extolled him as the person that made Pakistan the first Muslim nuclear power....
Then Pakistan would have still been the place that most American corporations shunned in the 80's and 90's because of the rampant corruption and bribery that was necessary to do business in the country.
So along comes Cowboy Bush, and instead of telling the Paki's that Osama was going to get caught, and they could be the one's to do it or we would be the one's to do it, but caught he would be, we started talking about "sovereign" territories and Pakistan's rights- even though they don't control the areas themselves- and let this tinhorn dictator off the hook and put him on the payroll instead.
I've blogged before about how the Bushista's are actually in bed with Al Qaeda, in symbiosis, as the ying and yang of the rationale for this abortive "war on a tactic". Without the spectre of these hate filled bloodthirsty Islamo-Fascists, how long could the neocon agenda have survived?
I think about as long as 'Ol Pervez without that 100 mil a month going to the Paki military-industrial complex.......
All Hail Paki lawyers! More guts than all our simpering Dems in Congress!
Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran
December 12, 2007 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
An excellent post Mr. Katulis, with strong partisan political technique tracking.
A couple of points:
I wouldn't call the Bush Admin war policy "conservative." You might call it "Neo-GOP-factional" or "Neo-GOP-snowball," but conservative it is not. The war policy is not the domestic policy, and you seem to discuss them interchangeably. The domestic policies of private gun ownership and small government do not cause terrorism in the US, so making that association with cultures and nations that are infrastructurally and politically non-analogous seems a stretch as well. I am not with you there.
The references to terrorism filling the ungoverned places around the world, such as Pakistani hinterlands, because of the Bush Administration policies could be countered by saying that those policies drove terrorist groups and their religio-tribal sponsors into the ungoverned areas. I'd rather hear some Afghan campaign commanders comment on that and see whether they would characterize it as you have as to the Afghan-Pakistani border.
The observation and discussion of opportunity costs of the mercenary international interventionalist adventure in Iraq are what I like most about your post. They are true and sound unless the evidence I have noted about the subject is false. Then I'd have to reassess. When someone like Alan Greenspan comes out and says matter-of-factly that Iraq was about oil supply insurance and says it was probably a good move because of that, the mercenary analysis seems to move to first place, not an ideological analysis.
December 12, 2007 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I may just be quibbling terminology, but today I heard Romney make the point that the Republican party was not going to be able to win the Presidency in 2008 unless they could unify the important Republican conservative groups: the economic conservatives, the religious conservatives and the foreign policy conservatives. [I paraphrase, but that was the jist of it.]
When I heard that [on NPR] I had expected his third group to be the libertarian conservatives, but it wasn't. It was the Neo-Conservatives. The three he named have certainly been a clearly identifiable group within the Bush Administration.
Those foreign policy conservatives have been allied with the other two groups, providing foreign wars and threats that justify the application of domestic conservative policies in a pattern that Naomi Klein called "Shock Doctrine."
I think it fair to say that the Bush foreign policy is, in fact, the conservative foreign policy, especially since Giuliani has been running for President using the most extreme form of it to garner conservative voters. That may be the only part of his campaign that is not currently crashing around his ears.
Bush's foreign adventures have been conducted primarily for their political effect domestically. They enable most of the extremist conservative domestic policies. Bush's foreign policy is also what the National Review wrote about as a major portion of the conservative platform. If NR and NRO support it, they are the key source of most conservative doctrine.
December 12, 2007 11:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
As good a quotation as any other ----
“Because mankind is intrinsically wicked,” [Leo] Strauss once wrote, “he has to be governed. Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and they can only be united against other people.” And [Shadia] Dury adds that this means: “If no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured.”
December 13, 2007 4:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great point,Ellen. Cult dynamics, ain't it?
Incidentally, in days of yore, republican direct mail superstar Richard Viguerie revealed the secret of his success in two points: 1) People (read "conservatives") will give ten times the money for something they are against as something they are for. 2) 9 times in 10 people will do as they are told.
Neoboho
December 13, 2007 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why not "to go where man has never gone before, seeking out new galaxies,' and including the Prime Directive.
December 13, 2007 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Profligacy abroad isn't conservative. I realize a partisan concern is to use easily identifiable lables to load down the other side so that they sink on election day. However, the best way to do that is to challenge the conservatism of the conservatives.
I realize traditionally, conservativism as defined by the GOP has meant tight budgets except for a strong national defense and initiatives that spur economic competition and growth. However, even under that definition, it cannot be conservative to create adventures and unnecessary conditions requiring the sort of outlays we see in the defense budget. It is economically wasteful when we have technological alternatives to oil, and as Alan Greenspan candidly identified the Iraq occupation, it is about strategic oil access insurance. Dems listen to that sort of concern too, especially behind closed doors with connected seniors standing by who know how to stay in office.
What is not a necessary expense for the government to remain effective is not conservative. I wouldn't necessarily call it liberal, either. I'd call it waste. Liberal generally means invest heavily at home, if even in top heavy government-led initiatives, while conservative is supposed to mean efficiency, competition and strong defense.
Waste is not investment, doesn't build a strong defense, and tends to reward corruption, not competition. Corruption is anti-competitive, of course.
And yet, in another election cycle, folks could care less what's best for the country. It's more important that they be the ones with their constituency butter speader in the White House kitchen, and their preening wonks in the White House mirrors.
December 13, 2007 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
The domestic policies of private gun ownership and small government do not cause terrorism in the US
Yes they do. What you call "terrorism" overseas is the same thing you call "gang violence" in the US. In East L.A. as in Colombia as in Afghanistan, where the state is small, weak, and lacks popular support, tribal militias move in to take control over the economy and to contest the monopoly on legitimate violence.
When you argue that people need guns to protect themselves against state tyranny, you are arguing for a society that looks less like Mayberry and more like Baghdad. The Sunnis who were killing US troops in Fallujah were using their guns to protect themselves against what they considered the tyranny of an illegitimate state. Americans are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan because conservatives don't know how to engage in state-building, because they do not believe in the state or understand how it works or what it is for.
"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone
December 13, 2007 7:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. How many mass shootings have we had this month? Three?
Why did Tim McVeigh bomb a Federal Building?
December 13, 2007 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obviously, the "Central Front" in the War on Terror is the United States of America. What isn't so obvious is where the front line of said "Front" lies.
Rio Grande? Heathrow Airport? Tel Aviv? Baghdad? Karachi?
December 12, 2007 10:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Metaphor stretch alert.
A pretty deep front if it stretches from Baghdad (or any of the mentioned locales) to the U.S. A front that deep is not a front, it's a free-or-all. The battle lines are completely mixed, positions overrun, communications garbled. Time to retreat, retrench, advance to the rear. BTW, if the U.S. is the front, where are the REMFs?
The fog of war has entered our conversation.
December 13, 2007 4:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Some thoughtful and valid criticisms but I still don't see a plan offered here or anything to counter what conservatives are doing other than to say "do it better" or "just get out."
Maybe I am just a little slow but I don't see what your solutions are.
Saddam Hussein and terrorism. The rest of the story... http://www.regimeofterror.com
December 13, 2007 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Katulis briefly and effectively voices precisley what I - and many other TPM types have been saying for so long we almost forgot:
Terrorism is BY DEFINITION a sidestep around armies. Sicking armies on 'terrorists' is actually logically impossible.
When the Iraqis started fighting the US occupation that's not terrorism. Terrorism is when you DON'T fight the army.
Literally all the king's horses and all the king's men aren't 'winning' by creating even more zones of chaos - they're fueling the fire.
That's why the GOP's constant manly boasts about our brave fighting men (and by extension of course the brave, brave Senators who vote for war) 'keeping us safe' is just that: an empty and arrogant boast.
There's an FM station here in Chicago that plays all Christmas Carols during December. I had it on in the car and there was this 'song' with a mature white sounding guy talking - basically claiming we only have Christmas because of "brave men - willing to fight"
I nearly punched through my steering wheel it made me so mad. We have Jesus and toyland around the Christmas tree - because of war. The Prince of Peace - because of war. That's right.
My wife tells me she heard that they actually got so many complaints they stopped playing it.
Thank, literally, God.
December 13, 2007 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, what Republicans want is a very, very strong, unchecked government, but with no limits on an economy concentrated in a few private hands; guns for us; and our religion. (Here "us" does not necessarily include you and me.) Sound not so much like the governance in other states so much as the Republican vision of foreign policy.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
December 13, 2007 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have read with some interest Mr. Katulis' posts, trying to find if he proposes any solutions. Alas, it reminds me of the ad where the pricey consultants offer the final recommendations to the company CEO while offering no plan for execution!
What Pakistan has lacked is civil society and grassroots democracy. The saying is that most countries have an army, while in Pakistan the army has a country. The army probably controls 80% of the economy, and is in all facets of life. Them and a few rich families including those of former PMs Benazir Bhutto & Nawaz Sharif.
US policies are perpetuating this terrible situation. It started with Nixon and Kissinger's famous tilt to Pakistan during the 1971 war with India (when Bangladesh broke off from the yoke of West Pakistani Punjabi domination - when East Pakistan's Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won most votes in the national election, martial law was promulgated to deny him legitimate power). It continued with Zia Ul Haq because then Pakistan became the frontline against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. And today it is so-called frontline for the so-called GWOT.
Yet, there has been many exposes showing that all the military aid sent to Pakistan in the most recent episode of US stupidity has been used to purchase F-16s and heavy weaponry which are useless in the border provinces of Afghanistan, and only can be used against India in a future conflict. The Frontier Guards actually do not have any shoes, proper wireless, IR detectors, or even warm clothes and guns. Is any of this money making it to the proper causes? NO, a resounding NO! That and internal compulsions (China pressuring Musharraf to clean out Lal Masjid led to increased insurgency in Swat and Waziristan) are causing this failure to weed out terrorists in Pakistan. YET, the US continues its naive policy, and "experts" can only identify the problem, but offer no meaningful solution.
China is taking several steps to prevent any disruption of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This stupid administration is so dogmatic that they can't learn simple things even from China - on how to handle these internal compulsions of Pakistan.
The US mountaineer Greg Mortenson in his book Three Cups of Tea showed through personal courage and his own life how one can bring about permanent changes to even the worst Talibanized areas of Pakistan. This administration spat on those type of solutions. He reports that only 25% of the promised US aid for rehabilitation showed up in Afghanistan post 9/11 and even out of that, $640M was diverted to Kuwait for preparing for the war on Iraq! Read and weep in shame for America!
Civil societies must be built and encouraged as the first act. Musharraf has all but destroyed faith in the judicial system with repeated maulings of justice and independent judges. That and other civil institutions need to be slowly built. But before that, the grip of the army has to be loosened on the nation. That is a tall order, but one that only US with help from China (who at least must abstain from negative geopolitics) can bring about. Proper infrastructure must be built in the remote Hindu Kush areas for flow of goods and people. Primary education, specially for girls, must become commonplace in these remote areas. Leaders from civil life must be groomed to reel this primordial society back from the brink of the abyss. Not more hand wringing from the experts while US policies continue to arm the army to the teeth and support unpopular dictators and back room politicians.
December 13, 2007 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The standard Democratic criticisms, however, don’t address the fact that the “global war on terror” is a failure of conservative ideology, and not simply a massive misappropriation of precious U.S. national security assets. The hot spots where terror organizations thrive around the world – Gaza, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan– are places that have many of the same things conservatives want for America: there’s no government, everyone has a gun, and extremist religion dominates the politics.
This should be tattooed on every Democrat's forehead.
"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone
December 13, 2007 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
This should be tattooed on every Democrat's forehead
Actually I think it should be painted on every Republikan's back, along with a bull's eye.
December 20, 2007 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink