No to "Wider War" -- Yes to Infinite Gitmo

Wired Magazine reports, Osama’s Dead but Congress Wants a Wider War

While the original Authorization tethered the war to those directly or indirectly responsible for 9/11, the new language authorizes “an armed conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and associated forces,” as “those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens.”

We don’t need a wider war.  We need a narrower and quieter one, a war where we take out terrorists and no one even knows.  A war where a bearded bomber suddenly turns around and wonders, "Hey, where's Achmed?  He never spends this this much time with the goats..."

We need to narrow our scope to military assistance for those nations who want our help and are willing to shed their own blood, not ours.  Our military is uniquely suited to such light footprints, military assistance, and silent operations.

The proposal is a big expansion of executive authority, giving the president the ability to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against those terrorist groups he decides are U.S. enemies. (Wired)

Executive authority? He already has it. Like any authority, if a president abuses it and brings negative attention on us, congress could take that authority away. That is how our system of checks and balances works. It is far superior to a new and expanded open-ended war on terror, which legal expert Karen Greenberg rightly calls “terrorism creep.”

Gitmo: A Model Prison

Here is where I part company with the article:

“But the administration’s stated antipathy to the new authorization makes sense when considering a major chunk of the proposal would keep Guantanamo Bay open practically forever.”

We should keep Guantanamo open forever. We should turn it into a model prison to house international criminals, invite in the EU, citizens of the world, the UN and the International Red Cross.  We could even invite in the International Criminal Court with their powdered wigs for the entertainment value.  But seriously, we need a venue outside US and European territory where we can prosecute dangerous international terrorists and other criminals who prey upon humanity.

In this brave new world of supranational criminal gangs and terror networks, we need a standing Nuremburg Trial, transparent and open to the world.  Establish an international legal framework and we could have a serious way to deal with the illiberal forces that threaten civilization. We should accommodate European sensibilities and strive to legitimize Gitmo as a kind of Spandau Prison for the new millennium.  I don't care if the Euros oppose the death penalty.  I'll settle for life in prison for convicted global murderers.  This will only work within an internationally-agreed upon framework.

Cut theAfPak Gordian Knot

There are two reasons we haven't kicked double-dealing Pakistan to the curb.  They have nukes, and we need their help to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. They grant us overfly rights needed to get from our gulf bases to landlocked Afghanistan, and we also do a lot of overland resupply from Pakistan.

Leave Afghanistan to sink back into it's corruption and violence, and we no longer need Pakistan. Let China have a go.

What do you think?

Further Reading:
Reason – Steve Chapman
Leslie Gelb – Mission Accomplished
Max Boot - Bin Laden's Death Changes Little

The Roots of Evil: Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan

It’s not often I agree with citizen of the world Thomas Friedman.  He’s the NY Times staff pseudo intellectual who writes glowingly of his admiration for the Chinese Poliburo.  In a rare spasm of lucidity, he nailed the Pakistan situation:

“Looking for Bin Laden became a side-business for Pakistan’s military to generate U.S. aid.  As the Al Qaeda expert Lawrence Wright observed in The New Yorker this week: Pakistan’s Army and intelligence service “were in the looking-for-Bin-Laden business, and if they found him they’d be out of business.” (Friedman - Bad Bargains)

Whatever we're looking for, a rotten pseudo-ally is willing to pretend to provide it

Iran:  Good People - Bad Government

Iran has a stranglehold on Lebanon via proxy Hezbollah.  It tentacles stretch from Afghanistan to Iraq and even to Venezuela and Argentina.  If Iran had a people’s revolution that brought true parliamentary democracy to the country (Iranians are more capable of democratic success than any other country in the region), that would put a stop to funding these global terrorists.  A newly-democratic Iran would have too many pressing issues at home for it to mess with funding terrorists, and no legitimate government wants to cultivate trouble with other nations, especially via such direct violence.

Why was Obama silent as the Iranian protesters were being slaughtered by the Revolutionary Guard?  Is it because they didn’t have Muslim Brotherhood or Al Qaeda membership cards?  I pray to God we are clandestinely helping the free people of Iran topple their rotten regime.

Saudi Arabia:  America's Most Shameful Alliance

We protect them in exchange for oil, and the Saudis maintain a pact with the Wahabbis.  Out of this dynamic metastasized militant Islam that has infected the globe:

During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent some $75 billion for the propagation of Wahhabism, funding schools, mosques, and charities throughout the Islamic world, from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Yemen, Algeria and beyond. ...  (Friedman - Bad Bargains)

We sought out and cultivated a relationship with Pakistan.  This is the grain of truth that spurs conspiracy nuts to claim the CIA trained Bin Laden.   The Pakistan bargain resembles our Saudi one;  We pay them to marginally cooperate with our goals in Afghanistan (first against the Soviet Union, now against Taliban and Al Qaeda forces), and they pretend to comply.  Meanwhile the Pakistani army rules the roost, papering it all over with a sham democracy.  And they’re a member of the Nuts with Nukes club.

What both countries need is shock therapy. For Pakistan, that would mean America converting the lion’s share of its military aid to K-12 education programs, while also reducing the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan. Together, the message would be that we’re ready to help Pakistan fight its real enemies and ours — ignorance, illiteracy, corrupt elites and religious obscurantism. 

Ditto Saudi Arabia. We are in a ménage à trois with the al-Sauds and the Wahhabis. We provide the al-Sauds security, and they provide us oil. The Wahhabis provide the al-Sauds with legitimacy and the al-Sauds provide them with money (from us). It works really well for the al-Sauds, but not too well for us.  (Friedman - Bad Bargains)

All three countries are full of good people, but our relationship with them is dysfunctional.  We are the bogey monsters of America-hating Mullahs, and our every action is twisted into a sinister threat to Islam.    

Unintended Consequences

I heard an older caller to a talk show say his father called WW II “The war to make the world safe for communism,” and there’s some cynical truth to that.  When confronted with the dual threat of communism, and fascism, Churchill made the smart choice to leave fighting the Bolshies until after we had defeated the fascists.  It took us another 45 years after the first victory to achieve the second.

We made a deal with the Saudis and the Pakistanis to dislodge the Soviets from Afghanistan.  Did we defeat Communism only to make Southwest Asia safe for Wahabbism?

Inside, Outside

Inside outside...  Leave me alone...
Inside outside...  Nowhere is home...

I've never been an insider, even growing up in my home town.  I got on Facebook last year because I had found a family we lived next door to in Germany, but couldn't contact them without joining, so I did.  Next thing I know, all these people I grew up with were pinging me and I'm wondering why.  Can they really be that damned bored?

If I were interested in their lives, I would have looked them up when I go back to see the folks. 

I'm not an outsider either, but I am somewhat of a lone wolf.  I've lived so many other lives, awkward kid and misplaced adult being just a few.  Sometimes, being an American walking the streets of a foreign capital can feel comfortably inside, other times it can be very outside...

Thank God Raymond Davis is now outside Pakistan and back inside Colorado...