We Remember

Throwing Israel Under A Bus

Global Jihad Linked to Flotilla

Israeli defense officials now say dozens of passengers who were aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, the scene of a bloody showdown with Israeli commandos Monday, are suspected of having connections to terrorist organizations. The Israeli Army says it's identified 50 passengers on the ship with terrorist links.

It's known the flotilla of 6 ships was in part organized by the IHH group in Turkey, which reportedly has links to Al Qaeda. And three members of Yemen's Parliament, from the Islah Party, were also among the more than 600 activists detained by Israel after ships refused to stop for Israeli patrol boats and were boarded by Israeli Navy SEALs who eventually opened fire, killing 9 people. The Islah party is also said to have shadowy links to Al Qaeda. Both groups certainly support the Hamas organization in Gaza.

Israel believes the larger danger is that Turkey, a NATO ally, is becoming a foe of the U.S. and Israel. Israel's intelligence Chief, Meir Dagan, told top government ministers here that Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan has "a dream of returning Turkey's dominance through going down the Islamic hall." He cites Turkey's warmer relations with the Palestinians and Hamas, and improving relations with Syria, Iran and others. Dagan described a new anti-Israel coalition. Turkey facilitated the flotilla and the Marmara is Turkish-flagged.

When Israeli commandos lowered themselves onto the deck of the Marmara they met a violent mob armed with bats, steel bars, knives -- and even guns ripped from Israeli troops who were beaten to the point they feared for their lives. Four of the Israelis were set upon, stabbed and shot, and are still in the hospital. Why then did Israel then send its Naval commandos down to the Marmara, armed mainly with paintball guns, into what was clearly much more than a mission of crowd control? The answer is Israeli commanders now admit it was a case of "bad equipment, bad tactics, and bad intelligence."

Had the team boarding the ship not been lowered one by one to be quickly overwhelmed by violent activists, had they been trained in crowd control, the outcome may have been much different, spared the bloody ending that now has the international community in uproar.

Even close allies are under pressure. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been wobbling between supporting Israel's right to defend its borders against Hamas smuggling and the need to show sympathy for 1.5 million Palestinians under a 3-year blockade struggling to get everything from medical supplies to food. Clinton won't condemn the blockade, even though Israel itself is increasingly questioning keeping it in place, considering that Hamas manages to smuggle arms from underground tunnels in Egypt regardless.

The defense official's claim a portion of the activists aboard the 6 ships had such serious links to extremist groups raises more questions about who in Israel ultimately approved the bungled plan to board the ships. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's inner cabinet is said to be fuming about not being consulted on the actual details of the raid and is demanding answers now. Israel's political leaders and top generals are trying to avoid taking responsibility for the "fiasco at sea," as one newspaper headline screamed here this week.

A top general told Israel's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this week that Israeli commandos also used some "gray" tactics at sea on the other 5 ships, an indication they may have somehow disabled engines on the ships. But they decided not to do the same to the Marmara, the large cruise ship where most of the activists were, fearing they would create another kind of humanitarian problem by stranding hundred of activists at sea without food and water and creating a different kind of spectacle.

There are now two more ships on course to attempt to run the Israeli blockade on Gaza, arriving sometime later this week. This is a war for world opinion and Israel knows it. But an army source told me "we will also do everything necessary to stop these ships too." Israel still believes the blockade is necessary at any cost. But the price Israel is paying is still being tallied internationally in terms of weakened support in Europe and even in America.

Robocop's Comment:



According to the UN and American Libtards, these are "activists". Reality, Hamas is a terrorist organization, associated with the very people the United States is at war with. We routinely confront terrorists in international waters. Obama is throwing Israel, our best ally in the Middle East, under a bus. He has the practice.

Arizona Sing-A-Long: Read Immigration Law!

READ ACTUAL LAW HERE

Public Service Message 05.19.10

LINK

BLOG

Let's Wise Up About Who and What We Are Fighting

Fox News

Just as there is “organized crime,” there is “organized terror.”

The presidents of the United States and Afghanistan have met. Can the strained relations between the two allies be repaired? Or will the American public’s patience with the difficult US and allied counter insurgency war against terrorism unravel? Much is at stake. Particularly whether we know our enemy and how to defeat it.

Entrenched in the public’s mind is the idea that Al Qaeda and Usama Bin Laden were behind the World Trade Center attacks of September 11. Like that attack, we think loose bands of individual terrorists remain the real threat we face, such as the Times Square bomber. So Americans rightly ask “Why are we in Afghanistan and Iraq?” And “Why don’t we just treat this like a law enforcement issue? With good police work we can stop the attacks before they happen.”

Let’s look at some facts first:

1. The Taliban were created in Afghanistan by the Pakistani ISI and the Saudi government five years after the Soviets left;

2. Al Qaeda [in Afghanistan]…was just one element in a "poisonous coalition of Pakistani and Arab intelligence agencies; impoverished young students bused to their deaths as volunteer fighters from Pakistani religious schools; exiled Central Asian Islamic radicals; ... and wealthy sheikhs and preachers who jetted in from the Persian Gulf”;

3. Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan were established in territory controlled by Hizb-i-Islami, Party of Islam. An Iraqi intelligence document, dated January 25, 1993, found by Americans in Iraq, states that “Iraqi intelligence established ties with Hizb-i-Islami in 1989 and had a direct relationship to its head and to which it provided financial support”; from these camps and from these state sponsors spawned the attacks of 9/11.

That was then. What about now?

1. Just as North Korea now ships weapons to Syria and Syria ships Scud missiles to Hezbollah, so do Gulf financiers now fund the terror groups in Afghanistan; so does Iran provide arms stockpiles to these same terrorists; so does the illicit narcotics trade combine criminal cartels and terror groups into a cooperative syndicate seeking power and money;

2. Much of the organized terror we face in Iraq is financed by ex-Baathists from Saddam’s regime, given sanctuary by the Syrian government, and recruits suicide bombers from the mosques and madras’s of North Africa;

3. In sum, just as there is “organized crime”, there is “organized terror.” And Iraq and Afghanistan are both countries in which the “terror masters” seek to establish their power and from which to organize and attack us.

We used to know this. For example, during the Reagan administration, it was widely understood that “organized terror” was largely the result of Soviet support and that of often allied states such as Libya, North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Syria and their associated terror groups. The attacks in Beirut and over Lockerbie were linked to Syria, Iran and Libya. The World Trade Center attack of 1993 was linked to Saddam Hussein. The Berlin disco bombing to Libya.

Iran is now described by our own State Department as the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism. A recent DOD report said Iran is supplying tons of weapons to terror groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. A year ago, the city of New York indicted a major Chinese company for selling missile and nuclear weapons technology to Iran.

In a lawsuit against the Saudi government, American survivors of the attacks on 9/11 demanded to be made whole. The U.S. government, in the form of Supreme Court nominee Kagan, acting as President Obama's Solicitor General, argued that the case should not be heard even if evidence proved that the Saudis helped Al Qaeda. The U.S. argued it would interfere with U.S. foreign policy: “…the princes are immune from petitioners’ claims” because of “the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.”

Amazingly, this “let ‘em off the hook” policy does not only apply to the Saudis. Legislation passed by the House and Senate sanctions firms doing energy business with Iran—a key sponsor of terror. But the administration wants exceptions created for China and Russia. And sanctions efforts at the U.N. are likewise too often watered down, allowing nation state “suspects” such as Iran to go free.

Yet law enforcement is pursuing those who financed the Times Square “bomber.” Why not those who financed 9/11 and who finance terror today? Shouldn’t we keep our eye on the ball?

Organized terror is the major tool of rogue regimes and their allies in seeking hegemony in various regions of the world. Terror groups can be created, controlled or penetrated by regimes and intelligence services. Attacks may look as if committed by “lone wolf” terrorists or small, loose bands of bad guys.

The Middle East happens to be the center of the world’s supply of oil and gas. He who controls this region of the world controls our economic destiny. The establishment of totalitarian Islam is but one means to that end. Getting America out is the first step.

So if we are going to fight, we have to understand who we are fighting, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, or here at home. We should understand that terror groups are often run by what Michael Ledeen calls “the terror masters.” And they together are part of “organized terror,” what Claire Sterling 30 years ago described as “The Hydra of Carnage”, the Soviet spawned terrorism we knew at the time as the Baader Meinhof, Black September, Red Brigades, FMLN, the PLO, and the IRA. As Yogi Berra said, welcome to the past, “it’s deja vu all over again.”

Muslim Terrorists Crossing US/Mexican Border

4 Scary Ways Terror and Immigration Are Tied Together

Fox News

Our own immigration system is so riddled with holes that terrorists can drive into our country in an explosive laden truck just like the Times Square bomb suspect did.

We can only hope that the Times Square near-bombing will focus our attention on the conventional wisdom surrounding from the left surrounding immigration reform. First there's the belief that no attempt at reform can succeed without a generous amnesty. Then, there's the belief that immigration "coyotes" and other scam artists do not associate with terrorists. And finally, there's the misguided belief that our relatively open border with Mexico, and thus by default the rest of the world, is no big deal, and can be resolved through the simple act of issuing more work visas.

In my own conversations with experts on immigration, the drug cartels and terrorism, it has always been an article of faith that while drug cartels certainly use illegal immigration as a conduit for smuggling drugs, terrorists are not welcome among the coyotes that smuggle migrants and vice versa. But that is changing.

In the laptop captured from a top FARC commander, evidence was found of links between Chavez and Russia (from where weapons and explosives would come and be transferred) and Hezbollah and drug syndicates (where FARC would help Hezbollah blow up pipelines carrying Mexican oil for America).

I'm not concerned about the links between terrorism and immigration because it's the issue of the day. And it's not because Arizona has passed legislation that enables local and state law enforcement to actually “enforce” a 1940 federal statute dealing with whether legal residents but not citizens of the U.S. have to carry “papers” (they do). Nor am I focused on it because the Senate is, once again, considering bringing up "compressive immigration reform."

No, the events that have made me even more concerned about immigration are four-fold.

1. Dozens of bomb plotters in attacks on the United States have used the immigration system to marry women here in America and thus gain citizenship faster and with less scrutiny than they otherwise would. This includes the bombing suspect arrested for attempting to blow up people in New York City and Times Square, a point made eloquently and most recently by Michelle Malkin.

2. In 2008, I testified before the Maryland State Assembly that driver licenses should not be given to those illegally in America. Remember Muhammad Atta had a driver’s license and when stopped in North Carolina for a traffic violation, the local police officer could not access immigration records to determine that Atta was here on an expired visa.

After testifying, I remained outside the hearing room and listened to a local Montgomery County representative to the Annapolis Assembly being interviewed by Mexican television about the oppressive nature of such a law as forbidding those illegally in the U.S. from getting driver licenses. She told a Mexican television reporter that there was really no such thing as an illegal immigrant: “They are all here simply waiting to adjust their status."

3. Then there is the news that Syria, probably via Iran and North Korea, has transferred Scud missiles to Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terrorist subsidiary of Iran. Remember, Scud missiles used to be what we thought about when thinking about missile threats from Saddam’s Iraq and Kim’s North Korea. It appears everyone has graduated—Kim to long range rockets and Hezbollah to Scuds!

4. Finally, there's the likelihood that Iran will get a nuclear weapon and transfer it to a specially created and trained terror group to smuggle it into the United States. Open borders make that an easier job. Scam marriages do too.

So, here we are congratulating ourselves for capturing the Times Square suspect when our own immigration system is so riddled with holes that terrorists can drive right across our borders in an explosive laden truck and with a driver’s license secured in any number of states blind to current threats. And we congratulate ourselves when our supposed potential peace partners, with whom were are so eager to engage, are either sending rockets to terrorists or building nuclear bombs destined for an American city.

Why then are Washington elites hell-bent on approving amnesty provisions as a part of what is known as “compressive immigration reform?" What part of “terror-sponsoring state,” “terrorist,” “open borders” and “bomb” do they not understand? And what do we make of the common complaint that we only wish to secure our borders and make our immigration system synonymous with “common sense” because we are a racist country inhospitable to ethnic groups other than “Anglos?" God, has anyone who claims this actually walked around any American city recently? Amnesty is objectionable because the person who gets to decide whether or not 16 million estimated illegal immigrants get to stay in this country are the illegal immigrants themselves!! They are, of course, “just adjusting their status."

Speaking of the millions of people already here illegally, David Broder quoted the late Senator Kennedy as being dumbfounded about why people could not understand why the illegal immigrants already here in the USA had to stay here. The assumption: we cannot send them home or they will not go home. And so if they wish to stay here in America, well, they get to stay here. And if jihadists intent on blowing us all to kingdom come, want to come here from rural Pakistan and marry an American citizen—well aren’t we all in favor of multiculturalism? (Parenthetically, what skills are we adding to the American workforce by such an immigration policy?)

Immigration policy is now, by default, no longer a question of whom we as Americans desire to accept into our country. It has become a question of who wants to come to America whether we like it or not. And that is why so many citizens of this country are supportive of the Arizona law and against the amnesty provisions of past immigration reform laws. We want our sovereignty back. We want to decide who gets to be future Americans—because we value American citizenship and believe it should not simply be given away, either through amnesty, sham marriages or some wacky notion of multiculturalism. And we care who comes in and out of our country. Especially if they are armed. Armed with a bomb. Or a nuclear weapon. Feeling safe?

Peter Huessy is Senior Defense Consultant at the National Defense University Foundation.

Right Wing Extremist Linked To Time Square Bombing Attempt

NOT REALLY. LOL But I bet that headline gave all visiting Libtards a twitch.

How about...

Pakistani Taliban Behind Times Square Bomb Plot, Officials Say

The investigation into the Times Square bomb plot has revealed that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the failed attack, top Obama administration officials said Sunday.

The investigation into the Times Square bomb plot has revealed that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the failed attack, top Obama administration officials said Sunday.

Despite conflicting claims over the past week from military and law enforcement officials, as well as Taliban leaders, Attorney General Eric Holder and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said that authorities now believe suspect Faisal Shahzad acted at the direction of the Taliban in Pakistan and was probably funded by them.

Brennan told "Fox News Sunday" that Shahzad had "extensive interaction" with the group, which he described as virtually "indistinguishable" from Al Qaeda. He said investigators believe the suspect was trained by the militant network.

"It looks as though he was operating on behalf of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan," he said. "This is a group that is closely aligned with Al Qaeda. It has a murderous agenda similar to Al Qaeda, they train together, they plan together, they plot together. They're almost indistinguishable."

New York law enforcement officials initially said they did not have evidence to support claims made by the Pakistani Taliban that they were responsible for the attempted attack. The Taliban later reversed their claim.

Gen. David Petraeus also previously described Shahzad as a "lone wolf" merely inspired by Pakistani militants in a statement to The Associated Press.

But Holder said Sunday that investigators have found solid links back to Pakistan. He said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the Taliban were "intimately involved" in the plot.

"We've now developed evidence which shows that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack," he said on ABC's "This Week." "We know that they helped facilitate it. We know that they probably helped finance it, and that he was working at their direction."

Shahzad, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, was arrested Monday in connection with the plot.
Holder said investigators have found no evidence to suggest that the Pakistani government, which he described as cooperative in the investigation, had any prior knowledge of Shahzad's plans.

More Wisdom From Bloomberg The Royal Douche

We have already seen in my LAST POST how big of an idiot Mayor Bloomberg of NYC was trying to tie the Times Square car bombing attempt with right winged extremists. Of course, time revealed that he was dead wrong. The terrorist turned out to be an Islamofacist. America invited him, and the rest of his Libtard friends to eat those words of hate towards fellow Americans. But now, instead of admitting his libtardism, Bloomberg calls out for more GUN CONTROL. By the way Mr. Bloomberg, it is already illegal to sell firearms to criminals, and terrorists just happen to fit that bill. Also by the way, your persistent stupidity has earned you the Royal Douche Award. Congrats!

Never Forgotten

We Were at War- The Legal Consequences of 9/11

by William J. Haynes II

Editor's Note: Even as Uighur detainees, once trained in al Qaeda camps, frolic in the Bermuda surf, enjoying their release from the U.S. detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, newly captured detainees in Afghanistan are being read their Miranda rights, as if they were common criminals. The legal framework under which the U.S. government prosecutes the war on terror remains as unstable and controversial as ever. The speech below, delivered in March 2008 by William J. Haynes II, who was just then stepping down from his position as general counsel at the Pentagon, thus remains highly topical. Rare in this debate, it is also eloquent and highly accessible to the non-specialist. We thus reprint it in full and commend it to our readers' attention.

In September 2005, I was sitting in a window seat on a commercial flight from Madrid to Philadelphia. It was mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. The plane was above the clouds in the sunshine, halfway across the Atlantic.

I was returning from a long trip in Europe. It was typically frenetic--six countries in five days, visit after visit with politicians and businessmen, diplomats and soldiers. I was tired, but marveling at what a great job I had. It's like being the chief legal officer of a medium size country. Any conceivable legal issue conjured up by the Department's more than ten thousand military and civilian lawyers could end up in my lap. I remember my head buzzing with those possibilities as I began to doze.

And then it hit me with
a jolt. I knew this flight. It was the same flight that we had tracked four years earlier on September 11, 2001.

You know the story: Nineteen hijackers on four planes murdered almost three thousand innocent people in an atrocity unlike any in American history. What you may not remember as well is that on that day the Department of Defense tracked two suspicious international flights--one over the Pacific, and this one over the Atlantic--suspecting they, too, were hijacked and heading towards an American skyline. And we steeled and readied ourselves to shoot them down.

All of us remember where we were that day. I was in my office on the phone with my wife, telling her to turn on the TV, when I saw the plane hit the second tower. I raced down to one of the Pentagon command centers with some others, to set up a crisis action cell. As the American Airlines plane hit the other side of our building, I felt only a shudder pulse the monstrous concrete structure. And then it was like I was in a movie playing fast forward. Smoke and confusion, multiple conversations between the President and the Secretary, sending my own deputy off with the Deputy Secretary to a survival site in the event that another plane came at our side of the Pentagon, hearing situation reports about dead and wounded being treated in the Pentagon courtyard.

I spent nineteen hours in the Pentagon that day, mostly at the elbow of then-Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dick Myers. Most of the time I was in two Pentagon command centers, reacting and contemplating possibilities I had never expected to face. These scenarios had nothing to do with corporate transactions, environmental cleanups, government contracts, class action litigation, or any of the other issues that had been on my mind when I first took the job, barely four months earlier.

That day, we considered whether to shoot civilian airliners from the sky, and we wondered what would come next. Were there more terrorists on the ground in America's cities? Did they have suitcase nukes? After New York and D.C., were Chicago, Atlanta, or Los Angeles next?

The legal questions were legion. What were the rules of engagement? How do the Fourth and Fifth Amendments apply to a decision to shoot down an American airliner en route to a U.S. city? Should any captured enemies be treated as criminal suspects or enemy combatants?

Smoke lingered in the Pentagon for days. We could not totally extinguish fires because the water itself threatened to shut down the electrical and information systems of the building. But as the smoke dissipated, some things soon became clearer. We were attacked by a non-state organization known as al Qaeda. The President decided that we would fight this enemy with all our national power, including the armed forces. We were at war.

At the time, this was widely accepted. In those weeks following 9/11, both the United Nations and NATO concluded we had suffered an "armed attack," thereby invoking the U.N. Charter and the NATO charter provisions for collective military action. The Congress on September 18, 2001, passed a breathtakingly broad Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The decision to go to war also followed recent precedent; President Clinton had ordered cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda in response to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Going to
war had many legal consequences.

It meant we could attack al Qaeda with deadly force. It meant we could detain captured fighters for the duration of hostilities. It meant we could ask questions without reading Miranda warnings. It meant we could seek to intercept their communications to learn their intentions and foil their future plots. It meant we could use military commissions to try them for war crimes.

I was tempted to give a detailed defense for these matters here today. Bob Fiske told me that you all have heard many speakers criticize the government's legal policies and that you'd give me a fair hearing for rebuttal.

But I decided against that. On Monday, I'm leaving this job, after almost seven years. Rather than justify the answers the President and Congress have come up with, I want to look to the future. As the national and global dialogue continues, as you all participate, and as our democracy considers new legal policies, I ask you to consider three questions important to all Americans and maybe particularly important to those of us in the legal profession.

First, how does the law affect the government's ability to fight and win wars?

The obvious approach to this question is to think about the rules we place on the government.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we've seen reforms in this mold. Removing the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence. Creating the Department of Homeland Security. Creating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. These legal reforms have been aimed at restructuring the government to be more effective.

I encourage you, however, to consider the law's impact on national security, from other perspectives, beyond just the rules we place on government.

Think about how the law sets incentives and disincentives for others besides the government.

What incentives does the law set for our enemies?

In a way, the threat of al Qaeda makes some applications of the law of war to this conflict unprecedented. On the other hand, the bedrock documents underlying the law of war had this conflict squarely in mind. The Geneva Conventions were consciously written with the purpose of encouraging combatants to follow certain basic rules, to place bounds on an inherently violent and barbaric enterprise--war.

The heart of this effort is to separate fighters from civilians. If the two are separated, civilian populations will be spared killing and destruction. So the law of war requires combatants to distinguish themselves from civilians--usually by wearing a uniform and carrying their weapons openly. In turn, fighters must also refrain from targeting civilians and may not use civilians as human shields.

The law of war attempts to encourage everyone to follow these rules through incentives. People who follow the rules receive a privileged status. Lawful fighters get combat immunity. Although they may kill and be killed on the battlefield, once removed from the fight, they may not be prosecuted for lawfully fighting. Lawful fighters, if captured, also get a special status called prisoner of war. This status comes with many privileges--access to athletic uniforms, musical instruments, access to a canteen where one can purchase tobacco and sundries, the right to whatever military justice system the enemy uses to try its own troops.

Al Qaeda's reason for being, its method of operation, strikes at the core of the law of war. Al Qaeda does not want to be distinguished from the civilians that surround them. The September 11 hijackers did not wear uniforms or carry weapons openly. They posed as businessmen and students. They did not distinguish between combatants and civilians. They attacked civilian aircraft and used those aircraft to attack civilian targets.

Should we afford prisoner of war status to al Qaeda fighters, notwithstanding their conduct? Amplifying that, should they get more than what POWs get? Here, you have to think about the incentives going forward. If you give more protections and privileges to al Qaeda fighters than to lawful fighters, then you will strip away any legal incentives for people to fight according to the rules. Countries and groups will have strategic incentives to enjoy the benefits for clandestine warfare without bearing any of the consequences of doing so. Ultimately, you increase the savagery of future conflicts.

This new series of rights affects the incentives of those on the front line combating terrorist organizations. In fighting, our military personnel may be buying a long series of civilian judicial proceedings, trials, accusations, and the prospect that our opponents will be released before the war is over. These were never prospects that military personnel faced in prior conflicts against conventional enemies. One must ask, what effect will this new web of legal requirements have on battlefield decisionmaking?

And consider this: We have hundreds of habeas cases from persons the United States holds at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and I'm concerned about the impact these cases might have on the incentives provided by the law of war.

During World War II, the United States detained more than 400,000 German and Italian prisoners of war in camps sprinkled around the United States, and had zero successful habeas petitions.

Today, we have less than 300 unlawful enemy combatants detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and 246 ongoing habeas cases in the federal courts to go with them. These cases are in addition to the administrative processes the Executive Branch has developed on its own to review the detention of enemy combatants. And those administrative processes have been endorsed by Congress.

The legal process afforded these detainees far exceeds anything that German or Italian soldiers enjoyed at any time during their captivity within our borders.

Think beyond our naval base in Cuba.

Coalition forces hold tens of thousands of detainees in Iraq and over a thousand Afghanistan. If the detainees in Cuba receive habeas, should those detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan receive it as well? Instead of hundreds, why not tens of thousands of military detainee habeas cases in federal courts?

This is an incentive to violate the law of war. As some have said, what's in it for any foe of the United States to abide by those rules if one gets better treatment upon capture by violating them?

Another example of an area where it's important to consider the incentives the law creates for national security is FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The FISA statute, written in 1978, must be updated to account for remarkable advances in communications technology since then. That is one challenge before Congress now.

But another issue in FISA reform is whether private companies can be sued for cooperating with a Government request for information--for information on suspected al Qaeda operatives. When it comes to private corporations, even the prospect of liability--the very existence of litigation--is enough to cause them to turn the Government down. Allowing private lawsuits to go forward is a consequence of the political branches not making tough policy decisions. They deprive our political process of a real chance to consider what surveillance against our enemies should be permitted. Faced with the prospect of lawsuits, private entities will say "no" in the first instance, and there will be no decision for Congress and the President to make.

The prospect of litigation against individuals--our troops and government officials--also affects the decisions we make. When it comes to foreign lawsuits, the prospect of an adverse reaction--not by our Executive Branch, by our Congress, or by our courts, but by a foreign tribunal or prosecutor, is affecting the decisions military personnel and civilian leaders make.

We've had cases against individual servicemembers in foreign courts.

For example, in April 2003, in Baghdad, a U.S. tank under enemy fire returned fire and killed a Spanish cameraman. More than four years later thousands of miles away, a Spanish judge indicted three U.S. soldiers for violating a Spanish law.

Another case. In March 2005, soldiers at a U.S. checkpoint in Iraq killed an Italian intelligence agent after his speeding vehicle ignored multiple warnings and failed to stop. Almost two years later, an Italian judge indicted a U.S. soldier on homicide charges.

In Great Britain, U.S. Air Force pilots involved in tragic "friendly fire" incidents in Iraq--pilots whose conduct was investigated and cleared by U.S. and UK military investigators--are the subject of multiple county coroner inquests that have accused our pilots of negligent homicide.

Each of these cases proceeds notwithstanding that the U.S. government thoroughly investigated and determined that no administrative or judicial action was warranted.

But litigation isn't just a problem for troops at checkpoints, policy-makers have also been targets.

Lawsuits have been filed against senior military and civilian officials alleging human rights violations. One advocacy group has repeatedly filed complaints with German, Belgian, and French prosecutors requesting that senior civilian and military officials be prosecuted for conduct associated with the defense of our country.

The relationship between law and national security is complicated. It isn't just the rules we place on the government. It's the incentives we set for our enemies and for our own citizens. It's the rules others might try to place on us.

The second question, I'd pose is, 'Can we preserve the American legal system?'

We have a remarkable criminal justice system.

It's an adversarial system. It seeks to restrain government power and to preserve space for individual freedoms, and it's the most solicitous of individual rights of any in the world.

Our criminal law system is remarkable because of how much it is not focused on putting criminals behind bars.

It's a system where it's more important that innocents be found innocent than that the guilty be punished. Therefore, the standard of proof is very high--beyond a reasonable doubt. As Blackstone formulated--"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

It's a system where it's more important to keep the government playing by the rules, than to punish the guilty. We have the exclusionary rule, where, as Judge Cardozo put it, "The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered."

How would we adapt this gold standard of criminal law to deal with al Qaeda?

Is it better that ten al Qaeda operatives escape, than that one innocent be wrongly detained? Should al Qaeda members go free if the government blunders?

Many might answer, 'Yes!' But remember what only nineteen people were able to do nearly seven years ago. Some believe such doctrinaire logic applied without reflection is unwise. It could, as Justice Robert Jackson once warned, "convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact." Indeed, nearly all who seriously consider the question view criminal prosecution in the federal courts, under rules currently in place as a viable option for only a handful of al Qaeda members.

Adapting our domestic criminal justice system to 9/11-type terrorists could entail a compromise between our long tradition of individual rights and the new public need to thwart mass murder and destruction.

Academics and pundits have proposed such compromises--special terrorism courts. These courts might detain individuals for long periods of time, in spite of reasonable doubts. They might overlook blunders by constables, if those blunders found credible evidence. They might consider secret evidence, ex parte.

Do we want to inject those practices into our domestic legal system?

Consider Justice Jackson's dissent in the World War II case of Korematsu v. United States. There, he argued that the courts should abstain from judging the military's claim that it was necessary to exclude Fred Korematsu from the West Coast on the basis of his race. Justice Jackson thought that judges should not review claims of military necessity, because doing so would import unwanted doctrines into our jurisprudence. Once a practice like racial discrimination is imported and validated by a judge, then it:

lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of urgent need. Every repetition embeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes.

Justice Jackson went on to contrast the ephemeral nature of military orders with the enduring work of the court.

A military commander may overstep the bounds of constitutionality, and it is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution. There it has a generative power of its own, and all that it creates will be in its own image.

Adapting our civilian legal system to cover al Qaeda has its perils. If we choose this path, we must take care that we do not endanger our long-held principles and values.

Once we add special, relaxed procedures in the criminal justice system for al Qaeda, can we keep those procedures confined to the hardest cases? How will we prevent those who follow from using them as convenient ways to bypass the rigors of the criminal justice system?

We must be mindful of these matters as we begin to change the law.

My third question is, 'Can we preserve our adherence to the rule of law?'

Today, the threat of terrorism seems distant to many Americans. Polls show that people are more concerned with the economy and health care than terrorism. And, for many of the military and civilian personnel in government, this is our proudest achievement. By preventing attacks, the government has returned to the people a sense of safety.

But, as we continue to refine the laws, we should not just assume today's sense of security and safety. We should also ask ourselves how people will think, feel, and act when the next attack comes?

And it will come!

We can be sure that when the next attack comes, the American people will rally to the government and demand that it take action to protect the nation.

Writing the laws today, how do we write them so the government has enough flexibility to deal with tomorrow's crises? But what if we err? What if a future President is put in the position where he must choose between following the law and doing what he or she believes is necessary to protect the nation?

This is an awful choice.

The founding fathers recognized this when drafting our constitution. I quote from Madison in Federalist 41.

It is in vain to oppose Constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.

We must be careful that the country can act lawfully in self-defense.

I've shared with you some of my perspective on law and national security. In a word, my perspective is conservative. I mean that literally. There is so much in our country worth conserving, worth preserving, worth protecting. The lives of our citizens, the liberties we enjoy, our legal traditions, our belief in government under law.

As enemies threaten us, as the world changes, how do we best preserve all of that?

My first job out of law school was as a clerk to Judge James B. McMillan, in the Western District of North Carolina. I learned a lot from the judge, including: "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity"; and "your job as my clerk is to keep me from making unintended errors"; and, "the government has no rights, only responsibilities." While I didn't always agree with the judge, I have always carried his lesson that the awesome powers of the government exist only to fulfill its responsibilities to the people.

Throughout my time as General Counsel of the Department, I've seen the Department's actions not so much as an exercise of lawful executive power or government rights, but as an appropriate discharge of a difficult executive responsibility. The Constitution confers upon the President the ultimate responsibility of ensuring that the American people are safe and secure, especially in wartime, and the Constitution gives the President the power to fulfill that responsibility. Exercising this power is discharging the most basic of all presidential duties.

Of course, the other branches have Constitutional duties as well. And we've seen the dialogue between the Congress, the Courts, and the President on these national security issues. This dialogue is how our constitution is supposed to work.

Without presuming to speak for anyone other than myself, allow me to speculate a bit in closing.

I think history will be kinder to the decisions this administration has made than current accounts might indicate. This country has not--and I knock on wood as I say this--suffered another devastating domestic attack from al Qaeda since 9/11. And most of the stories told thus far have been by outside critics, people who do not know the whole story.

I'm reminded of the late '40s and early '50s. It took those years and new leadership from another party before the country as a whole adopted the containment strategy that ultimately--40 years later--toppled the Soviet Union.

I believe our challenge as citizens now is to find ways to deal with this deadly and likely enduring threat that we can agree to sustain over time and across party lines. Ways that protect the ability of our country to win wars, to protect our systems, and to abide by the law.

How do we manage to live in a long period under threat, when we're fighting people somewhere in between criminals and combatants? When we're in a state somewhere in between war and peace, what will be the balance between security and liberty?

Justice Jackson, speaking in 1951 at the beginning of the Cold War, offered his thoughts on "wartime security and liberty under law." After discussing our Constitutional history, including the arguments between President Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney, Justice Jackson concluded with the following:

The problem of liberty and authority ahead are slight in comparison with those of the 1770s or 1860s. We shall blunder and dispute, and decide and overrule decisions. And the common sense of the American people will preserve us from all extremes which would destroy our heritage.

At first, this seems almost clichéd. "Common sense"? Surely the great expositor of the Steel Seizure case had something more satisfying? But I think what Justice Jackson meant was this. The logic of liberty and the logic of security, if blindly followed, each leads to impractical regimes. Carried to its extreme, the logic of liberty is a suicide pact. Patrick Henry's famous cry. Carried to its extreme, the logic of security is a government which can bend every law with a claim of urgent necessity. A government by fiat, not law.

Between these two extremes, we must chart a middle course. Since ideology and dogmatic logic lead us to crash at either end, then I suppose we must rely on common sense to point the way. As I leave government, as you all take up these challenges, may it guide you as well.

The Honorable William J. Haynes II served as General Counsel of the Department of Defense from May 2001 until February 2008. This speech was delivered as the Lewis Powell Lecture to the American College of Trial Lawyers in Tucson, Arizona, on March 8, 2008.

From Enemy Combatant to American Immigrant

The Weekly Standard

Yesterday, Attorney General Holder said that some of the current Guantanamo detainees may be released in the United States. Press reports indicate that Holder and the Obama administration are considering releasing some or all of the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo onto U.S. soil. That would be a mistake.

There are currently 17 Uighurs held at Guantanamo. Five others were previously sent to Albania. All 22 of the Uighurs are openly opposed to the Chinese government, but claim that they have no animosity for America. Before the Obama administration dropped the “enemy combatant” label altogether, the government decided that the Uighurs did not satisfy the definition of an “enemy combatant.”

It is not entirely clear why. The Uighur detainees were initially classified as enemy combatants during hearings at Guantanamo and then, only later, the classification was dropped. It may be that the politics of Guantanamo (including pressure from various anti-Gitmo groups, and pro-Chinese opposition sentiment) played a role in that decision. It is also likely that the government thought it was not worth fighting in the courts after judges decided the Uighurs did not meet the enemy combatant standard. (In my view, the opinions that have been issued thus far ignore a wealth of publicly-available information.)

Let’s be clear on the Uighur detainees: None of them are first-order threats. None of them should be counted among the “worst of the worst” detained by American forces, either at Guantanamo or abroad. We are not talking about terrorists of the same caliber as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It is also clear that some detainees who posed a more serious threat to national security have already been released or transferred. The only reason the Uighurs are still at Guantanamo is because the Bush administration could not safely transfer them back to China. There were and are human rights concerns. The Uighur detainees probably would have received rough treatment, or possibly even been executed.

Given all that, however, it is mistake to say the Uighur detainees pose no threat whatsoever. In brief, here are four reasons why. (You can also read my previous reporting on this topic here and here.)

First, the Uighur detainees are alleged, for good reasons, to be members or associates of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). The ETIM is a designated terrorist organization affiliated with al Qaeda.

There is sound evidence that the Uighur detainees are affiliated with the ETIM. For example, most of the detainees have made admissions during their tribunals and hearings at Guantanamo that tie them to the group. The ETIM is a jihadist organization and not part of some noble anti-China resistance. So, even if you have sympathy for the Chinese government’s opposition (as I do), including other Uighur organizations, the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo are not part of any legitimate, anti-Chinese government organization that deserves our support. The ETIM is an ideological cousin of al Qaeda that seeks to establish a radical Islamist state throughout South and Central Asia.

Second, many of the Uighur detainees have freely admitted during their tribunals and hearings at Guantanamo that they were trained by two known terrorists: Hasan Mahsum and Abdul Haq.

Mahsum was killed in Waziristan in 2003. Haq is still active. Neither Mahsum nor Haq can be considered legitimate freedom fighters. Open source accounts, as well as the testimony of knowledgeable experts, indicate that both Haq and Mahsum had ties to senior al Qaeda terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and Abu Zubaydah. Mahsum operated in the Mullah Omar’s Kabul for years and received the Taliban’s support repeatedly.

Third, the Uighur detainees’ training took place at a camp in Tora Bora, Afghanistan -– a known stronghold for al Qaeda and the Taliban.

There is no dispute over the fact that the Uighur detainees were at Tora Bora both before and after 9/11. You will recall that Tora Bora became the fallback zone for retreating jihadist forces after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Most, if not all, of the Uighur detainees fled Tora Bora for Pakistan, where they were picked up. Some have tried to argue that there is no proof that the Taliban and/or al Qaeda sponsored the Tora Bora camp. But this is sheer nonsense. It is difficult to believe that the ETIM could have operated inside the heart of Taliban country without at least the acquiescence of senior Taliban and al Qaeda members. And there is evidence that the Tora Bora camp was sponsored by them.

Fourth, the Uighur detainees’ training makes them a potential threat not just to the Chinese government/military forces.

The ETIM has openly targeted and threatened civilians, as it did last year during the Chinese Olympics. In a publicly-released video, an ETIM member stood in front of al Qaeda’s black flag as he threatened anyone who attended the Olympics. The ETIM has also executed terrorist bombings against civilian targets inside China. ETIM trainees have fought alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan on a number of occasions. They have also been used to buttress other al Qaeda-allied jihadist forces throughout Central Asia, including in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

There have been some attempts to dismiss the training the Uighur detainees received as harmless. But, as pointed out above, it was conducted by known terrorists. Moreover, it is likely that the training included not only rudimentary military training, but also ideological indoctrination as well. By and large, the Uighur detainees appear to have been fresh recruits who arrived in Afghanistan during the spring and summer of 2001. Many of them were at the camp for at least a few months as of 9/11. There is no telling where they would have ended up.

It is understandable that the Obama administration would want to resolve the Uighur detainees’ cases. It is also understandable that people do not want to just lock them up and throw away the key.

But releasing them onto U.S. soil is not the answer.

Obama secretly ends program that let pilots carry guns

Washington Times

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots.

This looks like completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots. The 12,000 Federal Flight Deck Officers, the pilots who have been approved to carry guns, are reported to have the best behavior of any federal law enforcement agency. There are no cases where any of them has improperly brandished or used a gun. There are just a few cases where officers have improperly used their IDs.

Fewer than one percent of the officers have any administrative actions brought against them and, we are told, virtually all of those cases “are trumped up.”

Take a case against one flight officer who had visited the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles within the last few weeks. While there, the pilot noticed that federal law enforcement officers can, with the approval of a superior, obtain a license plate that cannot be traced, a key safety feature for law enforcement personnel. So the pilot asked if, as a member of the federal program, he was eligible. The DMV staffer checked and said “no.” The next day administrative actions were brought against the pilot for “misrepresenting himself.” These are the kinds of cases that President Obama wants to investigate.

Since Mr. Obama's election, pilots have told us that the approval process for letting pilots carry guns on planes slowed significantly. Last week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal Flight Deck Officers - the pilots who have been approved to carry guns - indicate that the approval process has stalled out.

Pilots cannot openly speak about the changing policies for fear of retaliation from the Transportation Security Administration. Pilots who act in any way that causes a “loss of confidence” in the armed pilot program risk criminal prosecution as well as their removal from the program. Despite these threats, pilots in the Federal Flight Deck Officers program have raised real concerns in multiple interviews.

Arming pilots after Sept. 11 was nothing new. Until the early 1960s, American commercial passenger pilots on any flight carrying U.S. mail were required to carry handguns. Indeed, U.S. pilots were still allowed to carry guns until as recently as 1987. There are no records that any of these pilots (either military or commercial) ever causing any significant problems.

Screening of airplane passengers is hardly perfect. While armed marshals are helpful, the program covers less than 3 percent of the flights out of Washington D.C.'s three airports and even fewer across the country. Sky marshals are costly and quit more often than other law-enforcement officers.

Armed pilots are a cost-effective backup layer of security. Terrorists can only enter the cockpit through one narrow entrance, and armed pilots have some time to prepare themselves as hijackers penetrate the strengthened cockpit doors. With pilots, we have people who are willing to take on the burden of protecting the planes for free. About 70 percent of the pilots at major American carriers have military backgrounds.

Frankly, as a matter of pure politics, we cannot understand what the administration is thinking. Nearly 40 House Democrats are in districts were the NRA is more popular than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We can't find any independent poll in which the public is demanding that pilots disarm. Why does this move make sense?

Only anti-gun extremists and terrorist recruits are worried about armed pilots. So why is the Obama administration catering to this tiny lobby at the expense of public safety?

I’ve Got a Great Idea: Let’s Kiss Some Terrorist Butt!

by Doug Giles

I’ve got a great idea: Let’s kiss some terrorist butt! I’m talkin’ a big, slobbery wet one right on their back forty. We might as well, as we are about to muck up the rest of our country with a stimulus package that will stimulate only a liberal government’s lug nuts.

Danka, Obama. Good job, Pelosi. Suffering succotash, Barney Frank.

Barney Frank. What an SNL skit waiting to happen. If I were named Barney, I’d be pissed. (Though given his sexual proclivities, he does have quite the apropos surname, eh?)

In addition to the FUBAR governmental enslavement our nation’s about to be saddled with, we’ve officially begun the mainlining of secularism, the okaying of nation-sinking sins, the Ex-Laxing of our immigration laws, the acceleration and radical funding of abortions aplenty, and the real possibility of the government duct-taping any mouth that does not repeat Obama’s mantras. I’d say we’re pretty much sunk.

Welcome to hell, America. Can I take your coat?

As America begins its swirl around and down the global toilet, I say we expedite our demise and put on some buttsmacker lip balm and kiss some terrorist booty. We’re courting other failed strategies, why not be nice to those who want us on ice?

What’s that? You say we already are smooching Achmed’s arse? Oh wow! I didn’t know. I’ve been watching MSNBC, and since Obama’s been elected all I’ve seen on that unwatched network is that everything is beautiful in its own way.

Check this out.

According Martin Mawyer, President and Founder of the Christian Action Network, we’ve been turning a blind eye and deaf ear to Islamic death camps, not in some sucky Suckistan country around the world but in our own backyard and, and, we’ve been doing this for quite some time.

Mawyer informed me on my talk show last Thursday of something the American public was never supposed to know:

“The 2006 Justice Department document that exposes 35 terrorist training compounds in the U.S. was marked ‘Dissemination Restricted to Law Enforcement.’ All the copies of Sheikh Muburak Gilani’s terrorist training video, ‘Soldiers of Allah,’ had been confiscated and sealed—all of them, that is, except one—that Christian Action Network now reveals in the documentary Homegrown Jihad: The Terrorist Camps Around the U.S.

It seems unfathomable—nearly three-dozen terrorist training compounds in the U.S.—and the FBI, Homeland Security, and State Department are no help at all? But the evidence is irrefutable: as Jamaat ul-Fuqra (known in the U.S. as Muslims of America) leader Sheik Muburak Gilani professes on the Soldiers of Allah video, ‘We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.’ Gilani’s strategy to off us infidels is ‘Act like you are his friend. Then kill him.’

The Soldiers of Allah training video teaches American students how to operate AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers, and machine guns; how to kidnap Americans and then kill them; how to conduct sabotage and subversive operations; and how to use mortars and explosives.

With almost 50 terrorist attacks on American soil linked to Jamaat ul-Fuqra—ranging from bombings to murder to plots to blowing up American landmarks—what will it take for the government to protect its citizens from self-professed enemies of Americans? They hide across 35 American cities as innocuous-sounding as Hancock, NY; Red House, VA; and Seattle, WA.

The allegations are serious, which is why Christian Action Network took more than two years to research Muslims of America—going inside the compounds with their video cameras and questions to confront violence and confirm the truth. Their mission? To make Americans aware of the threats and have Jamaat ul-Fuqra placed on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization Watch List, thereby shutting down the camps in the U.S. run by ul-Fuqra's front group, Muslims of America.

The State Department issued a statement on January 31, 2002, regarding why the group was no longer recognized as a terrorist organization: ‘Jamaat ul-Fuqra has never been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It was included in several recent annual terrorism reports under ‘other terrorist groups,’ i.e., groups that had carried out acts of terrorism but that were not formally designated by the Secretary of State. However, because of the group’s inactivity during 2000, it was not included in the most recent terrorism report covering that calendar year.’

The effect of being removed from terrorist reports? In January 2002 Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and later beheaded while attempting to attend an interview with Jamaat ul-Fuqra leader Sheikh Muburak Gilani.

Was this an isolated incident? Hardly. In March 2003, Fuqra and al Qaeda member Lyman Faris pled guilty in federal court to a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and the list goes on.

Planning Victory in Afghanistan

By Frederick W. Kagan

President Obama has said many times that America must succeed in Afghanistan. He is right, and he deserves our full support in that effort.

Afghanistan is in many respects harder to understand than Iraq was. Even with a good strategy and sufficient resources, success will almost certainly come much more slowly. But as a great man said two years ago, hard is not hopeless.

The keys to finding the right approach lie in nine fundamental principles.

1. UNDERSTAND WHY WE’RE THERE
Afghanistan is not now a sanctuary for al-Qaeda, but it would likely become one again if we abandoned it. Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban government we removed in 2001, is alive and well in Pakistan. He maintains contacts with Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the other key al-Qaeda leaders, who are also based in Pakistan (although in a different area). Mullah Omar supports Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan from his Pakistani havens, while al-Qaeda and its affiliates support insurgents in eastern Afghanistan. Allowing Afghanistan to fail would mean allowing these determined enemies of the United States to regain the freedom they had before 9/11.

Pakistan itself is another reason Afghanistan is vitally important to America. It’s a country with 170 million people, nuclear weapons, and numerous terrorist groups. As long as Afghanistan is unstable, Pakistan will be unable to bring order to its own tribal areas, where many terrorist sanctuaries persist. It will also be distracted from addressing the more fundamental problems of Islamic radicalism that threaten its very survival as a state. Further, Afghan instability makes the U.S. dependent on Pakistan logistically—there is no way to replace completely the land route from Karachi with another route through Central Asia. This dependence in turn reduces our ability to influence Islamabad on other matters of great importance, such as stabilizing civilian rule in Pakistan and stopping support for terrorist groups like the one that attacked Bombay.

2. KNOW WHAT WE HAVE TO ACHIEVE
Success in Afghanistan does not require creating a paradise in one of the poorest countries on earth, but we cannot define victory down. Preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists again, helping Pakistan fight its own terrorist problems, and liberating ourselves from dependence on Pakistan will require building an Afghan state with a representative government.

Afghanistan has a longer tradition of such political organization than Iraq has. It has been independent since 1747, and had a functioning constitutional and parliamentary monarchy in the middle of the 20th century. Centrifugal forces in Afghanistan have always been powerful, making the prospects for a strong centralized government in Kabul poor, but the country is neither ungovernable nor artificial. It cannot be stable at this point in history, however, without a representative system. Its multiethnic makeup and decades of internal war mean that any attempt to impose a strongman or to break the country up into effectively independent, warlord-ruled fiefdoms will lead to perpetual violence.

3. UNDERSTAND OUR ENEMIES AND FRIENDS
There is no such thing as “the Taliban” today. Many different groups with different leaders and aims call themselves “Taliban,” and many more are called “Taliban” by their enemies. In addition to Mullah Omar’s Taliban based in Pakistan and indigenous Taliban forces in Afghanistan, there is an indigenous Pakistani Taliban controlled by Baitullah Mehsud (this group is thought to have been responsible for assassinating Benazir Bhutto). Both are linked with al-Qaeda, and both are dangerous and determined. In other areas, however, “Taliban” groups are primarily disaffected tribesmen who find it more convenient to get help from the Taliban than from other sources.

In general terms, any group that calls itself “Taliban” is identifying itself as against the government in Kabul, the U.S., and U.S. allies. Our job is to understand which groups are truly dangerous, which are irreconcilable with our goals for Afghanistan—and which can be fractured or persuaded to rejoin the Afghan polity. We can’t fight them all, and we can’t negotiate with them all. Dropping the term “Taliban” and referring to specific groups instead would be a good way to start understanding who is really causing problems.


Recognizing the limitations of the current government is a good next step. That government is ineffective and deeply corrupt. Provincial governors and district leaders were not elected, but appointed by Pres. Hamid Karzai, often with an eye toward marginalizing potential rivals and consolidating his power. Karzai’s popularity is dwindling, and the postponement of Afghanistan’s presidential elections from May to August allows his opponents to paint him as illegitimate. It is possible that even if Karzai wins the August election, many Afghans will continue to view him as illegitimate.

The U.S. cannot, however, turn away from the central government and seek solutions only at the local level. For one thing, important local leaders are Karzai’s appointees. For another, building local solutions that do not connect with the central government is the path toward renewed warlordism and instability. The key, therefore, is to develop local solutions that are connected to the central government but not necessarily completely controlled by it.

Local governments—possibly at the level of individual villages—will have to play a role in selecting individuals to help maintain security once it has been established. Afghan villages often have representative bodies, or at least local elders who can identify needs and priorities while balancing tribal concerns. Local and provincial governments connected to Kabul will have to provide weapons and compensation to local security forces and will therefore acquire a certain limited control over them.

Similar approaches are likely to be required on the economic front—local groups and leaders, in some cases supported initially with funding from the U.S. Commander’s Emergency Response Program, can get economic projects going, but they will have to connect those projects to central-government representatives for long-term funding and integration into regional and national economic systems. The bottom line is that we must work hard to develop local solutions to local problems, but always with the goal of integrating those solutions into a loose but real central support-and-control system.

4. COMMIT TO THE EFFORT
The consistent unwillingness of the U.S. government to commit to the success of its endeavors in Afghanistan (and Iraq) over the long term is a serious obstacle to progress. The Pakistani leadership appears convinced that America will abandon its efforts in South Asia sooner rather than later, and this conviction fuels Pakistan’s determination to retain support for (and therefore control of) Afghan Taliban groups based in its territory. It also contributes to instability within Pakistan, because Pakistani leaders are tentative about committing to the fight against their internal foes as long as they are unsure of our determination to do our part.

At the local level within Afghanistan, people who are not convinced that coalition forces will stay to support them if they oppose the terrorists are unlikely to risk retaliation by committing to us. When U.S. forces moved into insurgent strongholds in Iraq in 2007, the first thing they were asked was: “Are you going to stay this time?” When the answer was yes (and we proved it by really staying and living among them), the floodgates of local opposition to the insurgents opened. The people of Afghanistan need the same reassurance. Until it is widely believe that the U.S. will remain in the fight until the insurgency is defeated, doubt about our commitment will continue to fuel the insurgency. If we are going to fight this war, as our interests require, we must make it clear that we will do what it takes to win.

Our history is very much against us in this effort. Islamists point to our retreat following the Marine-barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, the “Blackhawk Down” incident in 1993, our abandonment of Afghanistan following the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1989, and our abandonment of Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis to Saddam Hussein’s retribution in 1991 and 1992. At the end of 2006, our enemies in Iraq were already declaring victory, convinced that the pattern would repeat itself. The question they are now asking is: Was the surge an aberration in U.S. policy or a new pattern?

Our friends have the same question. We are asking them to put their lives on the line in support of shared goals, and they need to know we will stand by them. More rides on the outcome of our effort in Afghanistan than the particular interests we have there. American security would benefit greatly if we changed the global perception that the U.S. does not have the stomach to finish what it starts.

5. LEARN AND ADAPT THE RIGHT LESSONS
We cannot dismiss our extensive and painful experiences in Iraq, but we must recognize the differences between that country and Afghanistan.


Perhaps the most important lesson of Iraq that is transportable to Afghanistan is this: It is impossible to conduct effective counterterrorism operations (i.e., targeting terrorist networks with precise attacks on key leadership nodes) in a fragile state without conducting effective counterinsurgency operations (i.e., protecting the population and using economic and political programs to build support for the government and resistance to insurgents and terrorists). We will never have a better scenario in which to test the limitations of the counterterrorism model than we had in Iraq in 2006. U.S. Special Forces teams had complete freedom to act against al-Qaeda in Iraq, supported by around 150,000 regular U.S. troops, Iraqi military and police forces of several hundred thousand, and liberal airpower. We killed scores of key terrorist leaders, including the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, in June 2006. But terrorist strength, violence, and control only increased over the course of that year. It was not until units already on the ground applied a new approach—a counterinsurgency approach—and received reinforcements that we were able to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq (even without killing its new leader).

In Afghanistan, we have nothing like the freedom of movement we had in Iraq in 2006, and nothing like the force levels. We have, furthermore, been targeting leadership nodes within terrorist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan for seven years now, yet the groups are not defeated. Absent a counterinsurgency and nation-building strategy that leads the population to reject the terrorists, killing bad guys will not defeat well-organized and determined terrorist networks.

Enthusiasm has been growing for some time over the idea of generating “awakenings” in Afghanistan similar to the Anbar Awakening that helped turn the tide in Iraq in 2007. Conceptually, this enthusiasm is sound. As noted above, success will require developing local solutions that are integrated in some way with the central government—the most abstract rendering of the “awakening” phenomenon in Iraq.

But we must be very careful about trying to apply Iraq “lessons” of greater specificity. For one thing, what happened in Iraq was not a single phenomenon. The Sunni-Arab rejection of al-Qaeda and turn to the coalition consisted of myriad local developments rather than being a coordinated movement. The coalition response to and support of those local developments was coordinated—we coined the term “Sons of Iraq” and treated SOIs as though they were a coherent group for certain funding and bureaucratic purposes—but each group remained independent. The SOIs never developed a corporate identity, and the local movements transformed their local political contexts rather than evolving into a country-wide movement.

The same will be true in Afghanistan. Local groups in Konar will not identify with local groups in Helmand, nor should they. There is no “Sons of Afghanistan” program that can be centrally defined and directed during its formation. As in Iraq, we must allow and encourage local movements to grow organically—in accordance with local conditions and traditions, but moderated by Afghan and coalition forces that understand the local area. It should go without saying that any effort to develop local security forces in areas that have not been cleared of insurgents will fail, either exposing the locals to vicious retribution or helping the insurgents co-opt new fighters.

6. CONSIDER THE HUMAN TERRAIN
Pashtuns are not Arabs. They have different traditions, different tribal structures, different ways of resolving differences. One of the most important (and least remarked-upon) differences is that Iraqis fight in their cities and villages while Pashtuns, on the whole, do not.

Saddam Hussein planned his defenses against U.S. attack with the intention of drawing us into urban fights he thought we would fear. Indigenous Iraqi insurgents dug into villages and cities and blended into the population. So did the external terror groups.

Coalition forces fought their way through Iraqi cities and villages, sometimes doing fearful damage to the cities and local populations. We devastated Fallujah and Ramadi, for example. But local grievances did not focus on the collateral damage. Considering the scale of the destruction, Iraqi complaints about it were very mild. In 2007, victorious coalition troops who had fought their way through insurgent and terrorist sanctuaries in Baghdad were more popular at the end of the fight than at the beginning. Iraqis generally recognize that their wars are fought in their cities, horrible though that is, so they have a fairly high tolerance for collateral damage and even for the presence of foreign forces in their urban areas and villages. They are generally more interested in who is going to win.

Pashtuns don’t work that way. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan at the end of 1979 and quickly occupied all of the major urban areas. The insurgents, for the most part, did not contest that occupation. They focused instead on cutting off communications between the cities, on ambushing Soviet troops moving outside urban areas and villages, and on attacking isolated Soviet outposts. The Soviets did not know how to respond—they had no context for thinking about a rural insurgency. They had fought the Second World War city by city, and had suppressed rebellions in their Eastern European satellites by fighting through their capitals. They tried to subdue the Pashtuns with ferocious and indiscriminate bombing of Afghan villages, generating 5 million refugees and strengthening the resistance rather than breaking it.


Today’s situation is similar. The major urban centers are not insurgent sanctuaries, and most insurgent attacks occur not only beyond the city limits but outside of the villages as well. American troops accustomed to setting up positions within Iraqi cities and towns may find that the same procedures in Afghanistan incense the population rather than reassure it. That does not mean the problem lies with our overall “footprint” in Afghanistan, but rather that we should rethink where to put our feet. We must also remember that Afghan tolerance for attacks within villages and cities is much lower than Iraqi tolerance, which is why complaints about collateral damage in Afghanistan are much louder than Iraqi complaints were, even though the damage is milder.

Understanding this principle is vital, because if we misinterpret the nature of the “footprint” problem we might come to the erroneous conclusion that success requires fewer forces rather than more—or, as some senior leaders are increasingly suggesting, that our presence is the problem. In fact, to solve the problems in Afghanistan we must have a deep understanding of local dynamics in many different areas. In the current security environment, only American and allied military forces can understand those dynamics, and they can do so only by living among the people in a way that is mutually acceptable to our forces and the Afghans. Pulling back to bases may reduce local resentment of us, but it will also deprive us of any ability to interact with Afghans and their leaders at the level necessary for success. As General Petraeus is fond of saying, you can’t kill your way out of an insurgency. Neither can you defeat one long-distance. Success in Iraq required finding the right way to deploy American forces among the Iraqi population. Success in Afghanistan will require finding the right way for Afghanistan, which will almost certainly be different from the right way in Iraq.

7. UNDERSTAND WHAT WE MUST DO, CAN DO, AND CAN’T DO
The Afghan National Army consists of perhaps 70,000 troops (on paper). This number will rise gradually to 134,000—itself an arbitrary sum, based on assumptions about what the fifth-poorest country in the world can afford to pay for an army that is certainly too small to establish and maintain security. The Afghan National Police are ineffective when not actively part of the problem. Afghanistan is significantly larger than Iraq, its terrain is far more daunting, and its population is greater. The Iraqi Security Forces that defeated the insurgency (with our help) in 2007 and 2008 numbered over 500,000 by the end. There is simply no way that Afghan Security Forces can defeat the insurgents on their own, with or without large numbers of coalition advisers.

Breaking the insurgency will have to be a real team effort. Coalition units must partner with Afghan army units to clear critical areas, and then work with local leaders to develop local security solutions that smaller numbers of residual U.S. and Afghan troops can support while other areas are cleared.

It is better, in general, for Afghans to take the lead in moving into or through Afghan towns, but this is not always as desirable as we might think. In many regions, Afghan villagers are highly localized. Iraqis were accustomed to traveling across their country, maintained active links with and made frequent visits to relatives in various regions, and were willing to see the Iraqi army as their army even when its units were drawn from other parts of the country. Many rural Afghans are not nearly as mobile, particularly after decades of fighting in which the insurgents worked studiously to disrupt communications. In some areas, any outside forces—even Afghan forces—are seen simply as outsiders.

We can observe this phenomenon clearly in Pakistan today, as Pakistani soldiers (largely Punjabis) move into Pashtun areas and are attacked as foreigners. It is not remotely in our interest to generate a similar situation in Afghanistan. We must also remember an important lesson from our efforts to transition security responsibilities prematurely in Iraq in 2005 and 2006: It does not matter much if the local population resents us; it does matter if they resent and mistrust their own security forces. Some counterinsurgency operations are better conducted by outside forces simply because the resentment they generate will leave with them rather than stick to the indigenous government.

8. HAVE A GOOD PLAN
Adding more troops to a failing strategy rarely works. Current military and political leaders recognize this, which is why reviews are underway in CENTCOM, the Joint Staff, and the White House to develop a new strategy for Afghanistan. At the end of the day, however, the detailed campaign plan for implementing a new strategy has to come from the commander in the theater. That commander, Gen. David McKiernan, suffers from a number of significant handicaps that Generals Petraeus and Odierno did not face in Iraq in 2007.


Developing a detailed campaign plan requires a large military staff. Coordinating the use of force with political, economic, and social projects also requires a large staff, on both the military side and the civilian side. In Iraq in 2007, General Petraeus had a large staff (Multinational Force–Iraq). He had a terrific civilian partner in Amb. Ryan Crocker, who headed the largest U.S. embassy in the world and had the power to coordinate most of the non-military efforts in Iraq. Petraeus also had the support of Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno and the large and excellent staff of the III Corps. Odierno and his staff did most of the work developing the military plans to defeat the insurgents, working through five division-level (two-star) commands and as many as 22 combat brigades. Every part of that command structure was necessary to understanding the problem and developing plans to respond to it that were truly integrated at every level.

General McKiernan has no such resources. His staff is too small and is a hodgepodge of U.S. and allied officers whose main function, when the staff was formed, was the coordination of an allied reconstruction effort. The much larger number of allies in Afghanistan, and the fact that NATO took control of the operation in 2006, places an enormous burden on McKiernan and his staff that Petraeus did not face. There is no corps headquarters in Afghanistan, moreover—no equivalent to Odierno’s III Corps and the staff that actually developed the war plan in Iraq. There are five subordinate headquarters (regional commands), but some have few troops and only one has the resources that the five division staffs in Iraq provided. Current plans may put as many as six U.S. brigades on the ground by the end of this year. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan has nothing like the authority that Ambassador Crocker had; on the contrary, the proliferation of allies and international aid efforts has frustrated attempts to unite them in a coherent civil-military campaign plan.

The situation in Afghanistan requires a significant augmentation of McKiernan’s staff: the addition of a corps headquarters under him and at least one division headquarters in the south. It also requires a body that can coordinate international efforts and mesh them with military planning, either through the U.S. mission in Afghanistan or through the U.N.’s special envoy. Without such an increase in headquarters and planning capabilities, even the best work by our commanders can mitigate only a portion of the problems. The solutions that emerge will likely be suboptimal.

Before it departed, the Bush administration decided to send reinforcements to Afghanistan, and the new administration has supported that decision. Rightly so—Afghanistan needs more U.S. troops. But until a thorough and detailed joint campaign plan has been developed in the theater—with buy-in from the overall military commander, our allies, and the civilian organizations that will have to help execute it—it will not be possible to know exactly how many troops are needed, what exactly they should be doing, or what resources they will require. Developing such a plan and evaluating the resource requirements should be an urgent priority—more urgent even than getting more troops into the theater.

Developing a coherent plan for the entire country requires the involvement of our many allies. That involvement, in turn, requires coming to a common understanding of the situation, the tasks to be performed, and the challenges we face. When Afghanistan became a NATO mission, the presumption was that it was primarily a nation-building exercise. Many allied countries committed troops without intending to participate in counterinsurgency efforts. Although it is natural to complain about the national caveats that restrict some (but by no means all) allied troops from leaving their bases or fighting, we must recognize that many of our allies never signed up for this kind of war. They have therefore been reluctant to admit that we now face a full-fledged insurgency. The Obama administration and its newly appointed envoy, Amb. Richard Holbrooke, have a real opportunity for constructive diplomatic engagement here. It should be their priority to help our allies accept the reality in Afghanistan, at the same time making it clear that we do not expect them to engage in combat operations they never intended to undertake. As in Iraq, we should accept whatever contributions they are willing and able to make, but avoid allowing tensions over those contributions to distort the overall understanding of the fight.

9. PRIORITIZE EFFORTS
While the situation in Afghanistan is indeed deteriorating, it would be wrong to rush forces out of Iraq this year in response. Most important, as detailed above, we have not yet established the conditions in Afghanistan that would allow a surge to be decisive. Also, the theater cannot absorb too many reinforcements too quickly. The surge in Iraq brought U.S. troop levels up to something over 160,000 soldiers—about the same number we had had there at the end of 2005. By contrast, coalition force levels in Afghanistan are already at their highest levels. The logistical base that supports them is very sparse. In Iraq there was enough reserve logistical and infrastructure capacity to integrate five additional brigades and two battalions in the space of six months. Because similar resources are lacking, it would be much harder to accomplish such a feat in Afghanistan at this point.


It would also be wrong from the standpoint of U.S. global interests and grand strategy. The dramatic improvement in the situation in Iraq has already increased our options and flexibility—forces are moving from Iraq to Afghanistan this year without imposing unacceptable risks on our position in Iraq. General Odierno has identified 2009 as a critical year for Iraq, starting with the successful Iraqi provincial elections that just occurred and ending with the election of a new central government.

Maintaining American presence in Iraq in support of this effort is essential. Every estimate suggests that, if we maintain such a presence this year, the requirement for continued U.S. forces in Iraq after 2009 will drop dramatically. We can surge troops into Afghanistan, in other words, in 2010 without compromising success in Iraq, and after we have developed the command and logistical structures—and, above all, the plan-to support them in Afghanistan. Therefore, sound grand strategy means using 2009 to set the conditions for decisive operations in Afghanistan while ensuring that Iraq remains stable enough to permit dramatic force reductions.

The key problem with this approach is that Afghanistan must elect a new president this year, and many areas of the country are not secure enough for a legitimate election. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do to address this problem through troop redeployments. Two additional combat brigades are already on the way and will arrive in time to make a difference. Redirecting other combat brigades now meant for deployment to Iraq requires a good six months of advanced warning—among other things, the troops have to train for an entirely different climate, culture, and situation. Any additional brigades would therefore be arriving shortly before the elections. Considering that it takes a unit anywhere from 30 to 60 days on the ground to get deployed and gain enough situational awareness to develop reasonable plans and methods, it is already too late to get more troops to Afghanistan (at least in any prepared and orderly fashion) in time to make much of a difference to the elections.

The theater commander might be able to mitigate the problem to some extent by committing the theater reserve to help; our European allies might be able to help a little with a mini-surge of their own. But rushing out of Iraq now is far more likely to ensure that we are distracted by problems in Mesopotamia in 2010 than to turn the tide in South Asia.

PROLEGOMENON TO A PLAN FOR WINNING IN AFGHANISTAN
This essay does not provide a plan or a strategy for success in Afghanistan. It provides, rather, a set of guidelines for thinking about how to develop one, and for evaluating plans articulated by the administration, its generals, and outsiders. Ultimately, a plan for winning in Afghanistan has to be developed in Afghanistan, just as the plan for winning in Iraq was developed in Iraq. It is a truism that any plan must involve not only the U.S. and allied militaries, but all relevant civilian and international agencies, and must deeply involve the Afghans themselves at every level. Our military and civilian leaders understand that truism. We have failed to date in accomplishing the objective not because we haven’t known that we must, but because it is very hard to do.

But hard is not hopeless in Afghanistan any more than it was in Iraq. The stakes are high, as they always are when America puts its brave young men and women in harm’s way. President Obama has an opportunity in the difficult challenge he faces. So far, he appears determined to try to do the right thing. He deserves the active support and encouragement of every American in that attempt.