The Islamic "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Policy: Half-Heartedly Hunting Terrorists in Pakistan

In presenting his annual assessment of threats facing the United States, outgoing National Intelligence Director John Negroponte warned of the resurgence and rebuilding of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Speculation on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leadership has always focused on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, but Negroponte’s statements, as did Secretary Rice’s yesterday on Iran, indicate an increasing willingness in the Bush administration to confront declared enemies directly, and in Pakistan’s case, alleged allies. In a previous post, I selected Pakistan as one of the top 5 threats to America’s safety in 2007, for reasons including those cited by Negroponte. Director Negroponte, in refreshingly blunt terms, warned Pakistan that while that country has provided valuable assistance in the War on Terror, it continues to be a “secure hide-out” for Al Qaeda leadership, which is rebuilding its organizational infrastructure initially decimated in Afghanistan.

While praising the Pakistani government for its role in capturing several members of Al Qaeda’s leadership, Negroponte made the critical point that Pakistan continues to be “a major source of Islamic extremism.” That extremism is being exported throughout the world, and as it springs forth from a nation possessing nuclear weapons, there should be grave global concern over what else is potentially being exported with those extremists.

Pakistan is a fascinating test case for the premise that Islam, as many claim, is a religion of peace that has merely been hijacked by a small number of radical extremists. With a population of 166 million, 97% of which is Muslim, it is ominous that Pakistan has not succeeded in forcibly removing Al Qaeda from within its borders. The so-called minority of extremists is casting doubt on Pakistan’s true allegiances and intentions in the War on Terror, and is potentially placing the lives of peaceful Pakistani Muslims in danger. Certainly the Pakistani military has the necessary actionable intelligence and weaponry to eliminate Al Qaeda from the mountainous area bordering Afghanistan. What is preventing Pakistan from taking back its “hijacked” national religion from those pesky minority extremists? Pakistan is the nation best positioned in the world for demonstrating that Islam is a religion of peace by cleaning its own house of extremists, yet it chooses not to do so. Pakistan makes this choice because the “extremists” are not a small minority, and their views are not considered extreme.

What is Pakistan’s internal policy toward the extremists “hijacking” Islam from within Pakistan’s borders? Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao, responding to Negroponte’s comments, stated that Pakistan has acted when specific information about a terrorist has been provided. While that sounds appeasing on the surface, the result of such a policy as it applies to finding terrorists in Pakistan is the Islamic version of “don’t ask don’t tell.” Minister Sherpao, perhaps unwittingly, verbalized what most American’s suspect: Pakistan is not conducting self-initiated internal investigations to identify and neutralize Islamic extremists in Pakistan. Pakistan, only when given a specific name and location of a known terrorist, and under sufficient American political pressure (usually including US overtures to India), will reluctantly capture the wanted terrorist and earn praise from President Bush for its role as an ally in the War on Terror.

This is very similar to how Mexico approaches requests from the US to extradite Mexican citizens who commit crimes in America and then return to Mexico for safe haven. Only with sufficient political pressure, public outcry, and talk of closed borders does the Mexican government act. The Mexican government does not aggressively capture its citizens suspected of crimes because it is fraught with corruption and lacks the moral turpitude to do so. Pakistan, however, does not aggressively seek to identify and remove its own Islamic extremists because those extremists wield far more influence and are considered less extreme in that country than the Pakistani government cares (or dares) to admit.

Islamic extremists have infiltrated the Pakistani military in sufficient numbers and at high enough levels that President Musharraf has been the target of an incredible number of assassination attempts, nearly all of them coming from within the Pakistani military. This should frighten even the most optimistic supporter of the War on Terror. Musharraf walks a perilous tightrope between the expectations of Pakistanis and the demands for cooperation in the War on Terror from America, and lives in constant fear for his personal safety. Musharraf is alive today, in no small measure, due to American assistance with his personal security and the Islamic extremists’ preference to be occasionally harassed by Pakistani forces half-heartedly investigating them rather than being lethally pursued by American Special Forces sent by President Bush to aid his declared ally.

The photo at right depicts Negroponte making a point during his threat assessment, but it also can represent the measurement of how close Pakistan is to falling under the control of its Islamic extremists. With alarming infiltration of the Pakistani military and emboldened by America’s self-proclaimed failures in Iraq, Pakistani’s Islamic extremists are poised to seize the government if Musharraf acts too forcefully against them. Yet that is precisely what the Bush administration, through Negroponte, bluntly, and rightly, requested. By vowing to take action against Iranians interfering in Iraq and warning Pakistan that Al Qaeda’s leaders are living among them, the Bush administration is effectively preparing plausible justifications for intelligence and military operations within the borders of both nations.


Technorati Tags: War On Terror Al Qaeda Islamic Extremist Religion of Peace John Negroponte Director of National Intelligence Pakistani military Musharraf terrorism Bush Administration Condoleeza Rice Iraq War

Toe to Toe with Ahmadinejad: The Gloves are Coming Off

Today Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice bluntly warned Iran not to interfere with the renewed American efforts to stabilize Iraq. Using significant terms such as "regional aggression" to describe Iran's activities in Iraq, Rice made the salient point that the Iranian government will be held accountable for terrorist activity in Iraq, and that the orders for IEDs, snipers, or "insurgent" attacks are coming from Tehran. She could not have stated more clearly the administration’s plans for the troop increase, yet she never spelled out the true purpose for the troop buildup: confronting Iran.

Approximately 6 hours prior to Rice's official statement this morning, multinational forces in Iraq reportedly raided the Iranian diplomatic mission in Arbil, capturing 6 Iranians and securing computers and documents believed to link Iran with ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq. The significance of such an action, coming the day following President Bush’s assurance that new tactics would be implemented to stabilize Iraq, should not be underestimated.

A military raid on a diplomatic mission is considered an aggressive act against the nation operating the mission, and is not conducted at the discretion of rank-and-file military officers. A foreign mission, like an embassy, is generally considered to be virtually sovereign soil of the nation quartered in the mission. An assault on a diplomatic mission, even if it clearly is being used to coordinate terrorist activity, is still the equivalent of a raid on the nation itself. Such a potentially provocative action was certainly was not taken without approval at the highest levels of the Bush Administration. The gloves are apparently coming off, and it appears the focus of American efforts to stabilize Iraq will be to confront Iran directly, engaging Iranian terrorists found stirring up the “insurgency” in Iraq and obtaining incontrovertible evidence of Iranian participation in attacks on American and multinational forces in Iraq.

Iraq will never be stable and secure until Iran’s interference there is eliminated. Iran’s interference there will continue until Ahmadinejad is confronted directly on his nation’s role as perhaps the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and he is forced to terminate Iran’s nuclear weapons development programs. Ahmadinejad has made his intentions all too clear: acquire nuclear weapons and use them to wipe Israel off the map and then destroy America. The world failed to take Hitler at his word for too long, and a Holocaust occurred (though Ahmadinejad believes it was a hoax). American and its allies should take Ahmadinejad at his word.

The troop buildup and more aggressive tactics such as the raid on the Iranian mission in Arbil, are steps in the right direction for securing and stabilizing Iraq. Once Iranian interference and terrorist funding/training are effectively cut off, the world will get a much more accurate view of the real situation in Iraq and who has been fomenting the so-called religious “civil war.” Secretary Rice and this administration surely know that Iranian operatives will be found frequently and in large numbers in Iraq, and those operatives, acting as agents of Tehran, will provide a legitimate justification to for America to engage Iran directly as the primary enemy in the War on Terror.

Technorati Tags: Iraq War War On Terror Iraq Ahmadinejad Bush Administration Condoleeza Rice Iranian Nuclear Program Arbil

America's Quiet Cold War with Iran

President Bush has long declared that winning the war in Iraq is critical to keeping America and its allies safe from terrorism and Islamic extremists. The President’s critics have long rebutted this statement by arguing that there was no connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists, or any other terrorists for that matter. Those who find themselves in the latter camp call for “redeploying” our troops from Iraq as Speaker Nancy Pelosi constantly demands. Regardless of the motivations cited or intelligence used to make the decision to invade Iraq, now that we are committed there is an important reason for staying in Iraq until the nation is sufficiently stable and capable of self defense: Containment of a much graver threat to the world, Iran.

Containment of Iran’s aggressions and drying up its terrorist funding are two features of what is clearly a multi-faceted non-military war being waged by the U.S. against Iran. Critics of the President miss the mark when they focus solely on whether we have succeeded in ridding Iraq of terrorists. No nation is ever completely free of existing or potential terrorists. That is not the point of the war in Iraq. As the President frequently states, we are fighting terrorists in Iraq so we will not be forced to fight at home. That may sound like a mere campaign style platitude, but it is not. The number of actual terrorists in Iraq is undoubtedly smaller than the number would be if we were militarily engaged in Iran, or even Pakistan. That is precisely the point. By conducting this war in and eventually securing a stable non-terrorist Iraq, we are quietly squeezing Iran’s oil-dependent economy through investment pressure while simultaneously denying Ahmadinejad of something he covets and will need desperately in the future: Iraq’s oil fields.

The Bush Administration should be given credit for recognizing long ago that forcible regime change, while clearly feasible in Iraq, was not a viable option for halting Iran’s rapid march toward nuclear weapons and its penchant for financing terrorist training and operations worldwide. Rather than bragging about America’s might and capability to remove Ahmadinejad, President Bush has followed the Reagan Cold War approach by working to force an enemy to use all of its natural resources to sustain its own needs and the likely result of this tactic may be that Ahmadinejad’s Iran will spend itself into regime change. How is this quiet war being waged? The major fronts are economic pressure and securing Iraq and its resources for the Iraqis, not for Ahmadinejad, and are detailed below:

1. Discourage foreign investment in Iran - In a nation-state version of the Terror-Free Investing strategy championed by Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman as detailed in a previous post, the Bush administration has relied on strong personal trust and good relations between the President and his fellow heads of state in key nations, such as Japan, to wield significant financial power in Iran and withdraw from contracts for Iranian oil. L.A. Times writer Kim Murphy, in an article titled "Health of Iran's Oil Fields in Question, Analysts Say," published in today’s NY Sun, cites oil industry analysts who agree that America’s quiet efforts to dry up foreign investments in Iranian oil and natural gas development projects are creating a significant burden on the Iranian economy. This is evidenced by Iran’s increasing embrace of Russian and Chinese investments in Iranian oil field development, although the Bush Administration is pressing both nations to reduce or abandon such investments until Ahmadinejad complies with UN sanctions related to the Iranian nuclear program.

These analysts further observe that the cancellation of foreign contracts for oil and gas development is forcing Tehran to divert increasing amounts of the oil it produces for use in its own oil consuming infrastructures. Thus, Iran, through America’s quiet war to keep money out Ahmadinejad’s hands, is keeping him from funding terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States. Of equal if not greater importance, the decreasing flow of oil revenue into Tehran’s coffers also hampers Iran’s suicidal quest for nuclear weapons. As Iran’s oil consumption eventually overtakes its production, Iranians themselves, as the former Soviet states did, will demand fundamental changes in leadership and economic priorities.

2. Remain in Iraq - By remaining in Iraq until the Iraqi government expresses confidence that it is prepared for our withdrawal. The similarities between Iraq’s establishment of democracy and that of America itself are striking. In the founding of both democracies, geographic and religious groups united in the overthrow of tyrannical government, then squabbled for years over representation in the new government. It took America more than a decade to agree on a constitution. Iraq has one already and is working to hold the diverse elements of the government together, and like our own Civil War, there will be failures and setbacks. The difference for America was that after defeating the British, America was capable of defending itself from foreign aggressors until the governmental creation phase was completed. Iraq has not reached that stage or military independence and may not for several years. America started Iraq on this path which Iraqis have now embraced, and America must not withdraw at this point and leave Iraq’s fate in the eager hands of its neighbors.

Remaining in Iraq until the Iraqis no longer need us will prevent Ahmadinejad from taking aggressive actions to acquire the prized Iraqi oil fields. As America’s financial pressure on Iran continues through diverted investments and Iran’s own rising domestic consumption of oil creates more strain, Ahmadinejad will need additional sources of revenue to fund the projects most pressing to him, i.e. the Iranian nuclear program and funding of global Jihad. Should we leave Iraq ill-equipped to defend itself or unstable in its government foundations, Ahmadinejad would seize the Iraqi oil fields and exponentially increase revenues for his nuclear and terrorist ambitions. In that sense, the mantra that the war in Iraq is a war for oil is true, but only as one aspect of a complex multi-front war to contain a much more dangerous and powerful enemy, Iran.

Instead of militarily engaging and attempting to disarm a heavily armed Iran on its turf as it grows stronger, we are engaging small pockets of terrorists in Iraq, building an Iraqi government capable of sustaining itself against Iran, and preserving the Iraqi oil fields as the key revenue producer for the fledgling Iraqi democracy. The cost of 3,000 American casualties seems too steep to the war-weary Democrats, like Pelosi, but the cost in American casualties had this war been militarily waged in Iran would have been much greater.

The withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the abandonment of American goals there would render impotent any American-led financial pressures on nations who continue to enter oil contracts with Iran. In Murphy’s article, the following paragraph should receive close scrutiny from those who oppose the war in Iraq and want to see it ended:

If Iran were suddenly to stop exporting its 2.4 million barrels of oil a day, such as in the event of a military strike, world oil prices probably would skyrocket. But a gradual decline probably could be offset by other OPEC members, analysts say, particularly as Iraq increases its oil production [emphasis added] and Saudi Arabia carries out plans for significant increases in its production capacity.

By establishing a stable Iraq exporting oil more efficiently and profitably than under Sadaam, we lessen the world’s dependence on, and thus also its investments in, Iran’s nuclear weapon-seeking Mullahs. Battling Tehran on these fronts, rather than in its streets, is a strategy clearly calculated to achieve containment and eventual disarmament at minimal loss of life and should be applauded for its similarities to Reagan’s Cold War economic tactics that strained the Soviet economy until it reached critical mass. Iran’s once robust economy, though strained now, will not crumble overnight, and America should not expect immediate gratification from this strategy any more than it did with similar efforts to curb the Soviet Union. Yet the approach is tactically sound, minimally costly in casualties, and has proven in the past to be most effective.

Technorati Tags: Ahmadinejad Sarah Steelman Reagan Iranian Oil Iraqi oil fields Cold War Nancy Pelosi Bush Administration Civil War Iranian nuclear program investing in Iran Iraq War War On Terror