[Peace-discuss] NYT/CIA encourage SW Asia war

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Astonishingly simplistic review -- well, it is in the NYT -- of two books on 
the US' enlarging war in SW Asia -- that manages not to mention oil! Ray Bonner 
knows better -- perhaps we can blame it on his editors. Since they deign to 
mention a book by an informed and insightful commentator, they have to pair it 
with a bit of ideological claptrap by a CIA man (and Obama adviser) from 
Brookings. When this is the level at which the matter is discussed in the elite 
media -- and the new administration -- the USG hasn't much to worry about in 
terms of criticism of its plans for killing people. --CGE]

	The New York Times
	January 18, 2009
	War-Room Debate
	By RAY BONNER

	THE SEARCH FOR AL QAEDA
	Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future
	By Bruce Riedel
	180 pp. Brookings Institution Press. $26.95

	THE DUEL
	Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power
	By Tariq Ali
	288 pp. Scribner. $26

One lesson from Vietnam was that the United States should not go to war without 
broad public support. One lesson from Iraq might be that we should not go to war 
without a vigorous public debate in which an administration’s claims are 
carefully examined and challenged. Yet we are on the verge of significantly 
expanding the war in Afghanistan, which will inevitably affect Pakistan as well. 
Unfortunately, there has been little or no debate about President-elect Barack 
Obama’s plan to send in more troops.

The pros and cons of continuing or escalating the war in Afghanistan and 
Pakistan can be gleaned from two recent books, “The Search for Al Qaeda,” by 
Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and adviser to three presidents, and “The 
Duel,” by the Pakistani writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali. One thing they agree on 
— and which was underscored by the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai — is that 
Pakistan is going to be at the forefront of foreign policy concerns for the 
Obama administration.

It’s hard to get more apocalyptic than Riedel. “Pakistan is the most dangerous 
country in the world today, where every nightmare of the 21st century — 
terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the danger of nuclear war, dictatorship, 
poverty and drugs — come together in one place.” It is, he adds, the country 
most critical to the development and survival of Al Qaeda.

The importance Ali attaches to Pakistan can be found in his subtitle: “Pakistan 
on the Flight Path of American Power.” The United States thinks it needs 
Pakistan now, he says, in order to fight Al Qaeda and the insurgents who are 
carrying out attacks on the NATO troops in Afghanistan (a recent attack on a 
100-­ vehicle convoy was launched from Peshawar), just as it needed Pakistan as 
a base for fighting the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan in the 
1980s.

The two men also agree that the threat presented by Al Qaeda has been 
exaggerated. “Its importance in the general scheme of things is greatly 
overstated by the West,” Ali writes. “It unleashes sporadic terror attacks and 
kills innocents, but it does not pose any serious threat to U.S. power.” 
Although Riedel calls Al Qaeda “the first truly global terrorist organization in 
history,” he also says that it does not have “a mass following in the Muslim 
world” and that it is “not on the verge of taking over even a single Muslim 
country.”

Where the authors part company is over what to do now. Expand NATO ­forces in 
Afghanistan, Riedel says. Withdraw all NATO forces from Afghanistan, Ali ­counters.

Riedel manages to distill the essence of Al Qaeda in just 150 pages. Among other 
things, he notes that the Islamic fundamentalists do not hate America’s values, 
only its policies. For Al Qaeda theorists like Ayman al-Zawahiri, “the goal of 
the West today is virtually identical to that of the original Crusades a 
thousand years ago, which is to dominate the Islamic world.” But Riedel’s 
analysis creates something of a problem for him. He acknowledges that enlarging 
the war in Afghanistan is exactly what Al Qaeda wants, just as it wants the 
conflict in Iraq to continue. “In its view, the ‘bleeding wars’ offer the best 
opportunity to defeat the United States.”

Ali’s book is more uneven than Riedel’s. He argues that Afghans recoil against 
the presence of foreigners and that even Afghans who have no truck with the 
Taliban will support Islamic fundamentalists over NATO. But Ali’s writing ranges 
from the poetic to polemical left-wing rant, and his detailed history of 
Pakistan will be hard for a non-Pakistani reader to follow. That said, his 
discussion of Afghanistan is highly valuable because of the questions it raises.

If the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, would that present a security 
threat to the United States? What if the Taliban were in power but did not allow 
Al Qaeda to operate in their country? (Both books make clear that they are not 
natural allies.) And what about the ill treatment of women? Liberating the women 
of Afghanistan was a justification that Cherie Blair and Laura Bush gave when 
the war was launched in 2001. Had this been true, Ali says sarcastically, the 
American invasion of Afghanistan would have been a “path-breaking conflict: the 
first imperial war in human history to liberate women.”

Ali and Riedel agree that the United States wants and needs a stable and 
democratic Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s called nation building. This is a 
laudable goal, of course, but is it achievable? Not, they say, unless the United 
States is prepared for a lengthy commitment. It cannot abandon the project 
halfway through as it did with Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Soviets were 
routed.

America may have succeeded in nation-building in Germany and Japan after World 
War II, but the task in Afghanistan and Pakistan is herculean, if not Sisyphean. 
Ali describes Pakistan as a “dysfunctional state,” adding that it “has been for 
almost four decades.” Predictably, given his left-wing views, he says the United 
States “bears direct responsibility.” At the same time, he notes that Pakistan’s 
elite and political leaders, past and present, have done almost nothing for the 
country’s poor. Almost a third of the population live below the poverty level. 
The educational system is appalling, which often means that parents send their 
children to madrasas, where they are indoctrinated by extremist clerics. 
“Corruption,” he says, “envelops Pakistan like a sheet of water.”

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with one of the lowest 
literacy rates. It is riven by ethnic divisions that make Iraq look like a 
rainbow coalition — just over half are Pashtuns (including the Taliban), about a 
quarter are Tajiks, with Uzbeks and Hazaras making up most of the rest. Warlords 
have led them all. These groups fight over control of the drug trade as much as 
they do over religion.

After seven years and billions of dollars in aid, Ali argues, nation-building in 
Afghanistan has produced “a puppet president dependent for his survival on 
foreign mercenaries” — Ali’s language for NATO troops — “a corrupt and abusive 
police force, a ‘nonfunctioning’ judiciary, a burgeoning criminal layer and a 
deepening social and economic crisis.” Even allowing for hyperbole, the picture 
in Afghanistan is not pretty. “It beggars belief to argue that more of the same 
will be the answer to Afghanistan’s problems,” he writes.

Riedel, on the other hand, wants an enhanced American commitment to Afghanistan 
on many fronts — “military, political and economic.” And while urging NATO to 
remain, he also calls for bringing in troops from Muslim countries, “especially 
Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.”

Which man is right, which one wrong? Whatever the case, their books are a 
starting point for a much-needed debate.

Ray Bonner is a Times correspondent who writes frequently on Central Asia.
	
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