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

[C. G. Estabrook]

More than 25 years ago, as a NYT reporter, he exposed the El Mozote massacre
during the Reagan holocaust in Central America. (See the Wikipedia account.) He
was pilloried for it by the USG and the NYT -- perhaps he learnt his lesson.


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 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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