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

[Morton K. Brussel]

If I recall correctly (It's been a long time now), Bonner was also on  
both sides, ambiguously,  during the Central American struggles for  
freedom from U.S. interests.

--mkb

On Jan 17, 2009, at 9:47 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [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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