In 2001, speaking to Congress not long after the September 11th attacks, President George W. Bush said that the United States would bring the terrorists to justice or bring justice to the terrorists but that one way or the other justice would be done. \u00a0As President Obama reported last night, yesterday it was.<\/p>\n
The Obama administration appears to have pushed at least as hard as the Bush administration \u2013 and perhaps with its Predator attacks inside Pakistan even harder \u2013 on a decapitation strategy against al Qaeda and the Taliban. \u00a0\u00a0Yesterday\u2019s action would have been part of that strategy, which appears to be succeeding brilliantly.<\/p>\n
Early morning reports indicate that a number of US government agencies worked together to make the raid on the bin Laden compound possible. \u00a0The first clues that led to it appear to have come from the questioning of captured al Qaeda operatives. \u00a0The CIA pursued the lead over the months that followed. Perhaps the CIA man taken in custody in Pakistan after a gun battle several months ago was involved. \u00a0Reports say it was Navy SEALS who staged the raid. \u00a0So these early accounts suggest that the coordination within the US government agencies that was so lacking before 9\/11 is much better today.<\/p>\n
They also suggest \u2013 as have a number of other incidents over the past five years or so \u2013 that the CIA\u2019s own house is in better order than it was in 2001. \u00a0The intelligence failures of both not spotting and stopping the 9\/11 attacks and of certifying the presence of actually non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq shook Washington. \u00a0They called into question the basic competence of the CIA and by extension of the entire US intelligence community. \u00a0Particularly in the Islamic world, the agency\u2019s capacities had begun to deteriorate during the Carter presidency and never really recovered. \u00a0The big mistake came when Carter\u2019s director of central intelligence Stanfield Turner fired all our operatives in the region. \u00a0The idea was, in part, that we didn\u2019t need agents on the ground. Satellites and other technology would do the job for us, with less political exposure at home. \u00a0We have been paying the price of that mistake regularly since then. \u00a0After yesterday\u2019s success, it appears that the CIA may have rebuilt its on-ground capacities.<\/p>\n
Last September, I talked for nearly an hour to a top Pakistani diplomat. \u00a0In his career he had been a trusted advisor at the most senior levels in the country. \u00a0He discussed how Pakistan had become involved with the Taliban. \u00a0It was following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, as we all know. \u00a0The diplomat explained that Russia and India were allied at the time. India was, of course, the country Pakistan considered its greatest threat. \u00a0The Pakistani government couldn\u2019t afford to have the two adversaries on either side of it. \u00a0So, together with the US, it backed the Afghan resistance to the Soviets.<\/p>\n
After the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan, he continued, the US withdrew as well. \u00a0But other elements in the country, in particular the Northern Alliance forces that we allied with after 9\/11, were in league with other countries that were problems to the Paks, particularly Iran. \u00a0In any event, support for the Taliban continued. \u00a0\u00a0So in a region of bewildering factions and alliances, where everyone supports and betrays everyone else, the Pakistani government supported the Taliban, even as it supported the United States, even after 9\/11.<\/p>\n
It is no blinding revelation to say that in that part of the world more than ideology, more than principle, more than vision, more than law, raw power matters. \u00a0Having bin Laden on the loose has suggested to the region that the United States lacked strength and will. \u00a0Yesterday\u2019s achievement suggests our forces may at times move slowly. \u00a0But we never give up until we do what we say we will do \u2013 and we have the power to do whatever we set our minds to doing. \u00a0The airwaves this morning have been filled with talk of whether killing bin Laden really matters. \u00a0In a region where perceptions of will and power really matter, you bet it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2001, speaking to Congress not long after the September 11th attacks, President George W. Bush said that the United States would bring the terrorists to justice or bring justice to the terrorists but that one way or the other justice would be done. \u00a0As President Obama reported last night, yesterday it was. The Obama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-issues","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}