This is why I asked specifically what you think we should have done. I wasn’t aware that we the U.S. had law enforcement agencies with the authority to act internationally; but maybe I’m missing something. And at least in theory, outside the movies, “spy agencies” aren’t openly charged with the task of applying shithammers; they spy on things. That’s why we call them that.

As it happens, we do have U.S. agencies tasked with applying shithammers on foreign ground. They’re called the armed forces. We call them that because they act with force, in small groups or large groups, and they are armed. Which is what “million-pound shithammer” sounds like to me. However, you also seem to be disputing the fact that sending in the armed forces was the correct idea.

Which is why I asked: what should we have done? You didn’t answer that. You hedged around it, you put forth some things we did badly and said, “All I can say is I’m not comfortable that we explored our options.” Sounds fair. What options? What actions should we have performed instead?

Let’s make this clear. You’re the President. Terrorists have just destroyed the financial nerve center of New York, they’ve nicked the Pentagon, and they’ve tried to blow up your house and missed. You have all the federal resources of the United States and the combined cooperation of the entire world except Afghanistan.

Your mission is to solve this as a law enforcement problem, not a political problem.

Go.

A co-worker and I were talking about politics. Yes, against “policy”, but my co-worker said, “Bush should be killed”. Is that how bad it is? I once said things like that, but I was shocked that she was acutally serious about it. I think I acutally like her less because of what she said. It certainly told me what I needed to know about her character.

I realize that I may have offended your literary sensibilities. I am certainly a Babbit compared to Swift. As I said, my skin is thick, so I think i’ll get over it. But I am somewhat of a masochist so a beating behind a chemical shed sounds appealing.

On a side note, has anyone read the V for Vendetta comic books? I am a bit disturbed about the timing of the film production. I have a feeling that people are actually going to ruin it for me by politicizing it. I’m warning you, people. I’ll ruin the ending of Harry Potter 6 if you don’t watch it.

Now, back to Jeff:

It would be nice if you were correct about the KKK and the militias, but I don’t think you are. Not everyone thinks they’re nutcases. It only takes a small percentage of a population to support such groups, and I think that’s the same dynamic we see occurring with al-Qaeda.

Agreed, not everyone thinks they’re nutcases. But most people think that the people who don’t think they’re nutcases are themselves, nutcases. And before you ask, yes – the previous sentence does make sense. Read it again.

I have no idea what the numbers are. I do know, though, that Al Qaeda’s philosophy was preached on state sponsored television and taught in the schools and religious institutions throughout Afghanistan, and we were starting to hear it in those same institutions in other countries (most notably Saudi Arabia). The closest we’ve got to that in this country is the religious right spreading policy and/or moral judgements which, I’m sorry, isn’t even close to the same thing.

And if you’re implying we did nothing in response to Africa and the Cole, then you’ve got yourself some reports you need to read. Granted, it wasn’t as spectacular as overthrowing Kenya and Yemen; perhaps you’d be happier if we had taken that route?

Don’t confuse motion with progress. I agree that we didn’t do nothing, but what we did was not only unspectacular, it was also ineffective. The 9/11 report quotes Kahlid Sheik Mohammad (mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and the USS Cole bombing) saying that Bin Laden himself was disappointed at the lack of response from the United States to the Cole bombing. He scattered his direct reports all over Afghanistan, made them move locations on a weekly basis, separated them from their families, etc. – all in anticipation of our retaliatory strike. The fact that it didn’t come was a factor in expediting the 9/11 attacks.

Whom did we overthrow in Iraq? Sheik Saddam? King Saddam? No, we overthrew President Saddam Hussein, a tyrant who still somehow felt the need to style himself in democratic terms and hold sham elections.

You must be kidding here. I’m sure Hussein had reasons for declaring himself President as opposed to King, and that those reasons were probably related to appeasing a western country or two. But are you seriously suggesting that this indicates a respect for our legal system? That he’d have stopped doing anything simply because we (or the parliamentary UN, for that matter) said it was illegal?

I agree with you that the law is slow and not nearly as satisfying as putting a bullet into the brain of Uday Hussein. But it still serves us well and, in my view, makes us safer than our present course of action.

I agree that pursuing a legal solution is always preferrable, but don’t we have to stop at some point and realize that the people we’re dealing with have absolutely no regard for our laws, rendering them completely outside of our jurisdiction? That, coupled with them having no regard for the laws of their own country is what makes them so dangerous.

Tell me again why we should care about what anyone else thinks when it comes to our fundamental values? This is what I mean by cowardice—if these are our beliefs that our countrymen died to uphold, then we should show the same resolve. And please note: radical mullahs can say whatever they want. That’s one of our values, too. It’s when they act against us that we treat them like the criminals they are.

Values are a noble and well… valuable thing when all the players agree. When the enemy views us as “The Great Satan,” and recognizes no legal or value system that defies that view, then we have no legal recourse. We need to weaken or destroy them or they will continue to wreak havoc.

Their foot soldiers are criminals, and we treat them as such today (hence the TSA checks at the airport, the security cameras in the London Underground, etc.). If that’s all we do, though, then their leaders will keep recruiting and training these criminals until, as you say, the number of trials outweighs the low success percentages.

You’re suggesting that the indirect threat posed by Russian involvement in Asian countries was more “threatening to our existence as a nation”?

My thinking is that if I had been of age for either the Korean or Vietnam Wars, I would have been out there in the antiwar protests. My statement was just reflecting that those who pursued those wars did so because they thought it was vital to the country’s survival.

It was a very peculiar and perverse military attack, in that our own planes and civilians became the enemy’s weapon. But it was an attack intended to disable our ability to retaliate or to field resources in other territories.

I don’t mean to discount your assessment, but I don’t know if you’re accurate when it comes to intent. Any halfway decent student of America would know that such an attack would not be paralyzing. Bin Laden’s statements through the 90s indicate that he wants to bring about the war between Islam and the West. On that score, it’s premature to say that Bin Laden failed in that mission.

As for calling it an “act of war”, I think we’ll get into tedious legal debates over that. States commit acts of war. Individuals and groups commit crimes. When we declared war on individuals, it was implicitly saying that we were going to stop acting within the rule of law, because war operates outside of most laws. I still think this was a tactical mistake.

What I want to know is, in your opinion, what should we have done with Al Qaeda [in Afghanistan]? Tell us in terms of actions, not philosophies.

I’ll preface with the admission: Afghanistan is nowhere as morally clear as Iraq is. Like the first Gulf War, there were state-level actions which even I would say justify war.

That having been said, I don’t think we went about it properly. My perceptions at the time were that we went to war primarily because we were in a mood to kill people. We overthrew the Taliban because the administration wanted to chalk up a “win” when they realized they wouldn’t be able to parade bin Laden’s carcass on CNN. There might have been a course of action short of war which would have better protected us from terrorism. And there might not have been. All I can say is I’m not comfortable that we explored our options. I’ll refer you here to Brian Greenberg’s essay “September 11, 2002“, and my response “Menschenhawks“.

Justin:

Nice V for Vendetta reference, but you’re breaking John’s rules against ad hominem attacks.

Brian:

One of the more disturbing occurrences of the last ten years is a blurring of the lines between charitable work and terrorism. Hamas builds schools. People working with al-Qaeda-linked groups do medical work. This is not to say that the Commission Report was wrong about the diversion of funds to al-Qaeda, just pointing out that it’s not always as simple as “follow the money”.

It would be nice if you were correct about the KKK and the militias, but I don’t think you are. Not everyone thinks they’re nutcases. It only takes a small percentage of a population to support such groups, and I think that’s the same dynamic we see occurring with al-Qaeda. In fact, you remind me of an excellent metaphor, since it was the destruction of the Civil War and the punishing structure of Reconstruction that drove so many in the South to ideological support of the KKK in the first place. This is exactly what concerns me about Iraq.

These 3,000 lives weren’t lost to preserve democracy. They were lost for no good reason whatsoever.

They were lost because the social structure that could have guaranteed their safety against all possible harm is not one that we would recognize as free. At least, that’s one reason, if we’re phrasing it in terms of political philosophies. You could also say it was due to insufficient political will after the publication of the Hart report, or to disregard of Clinton briefings by the incoming Bush administration, or to criminal neglect of the August 6th PDB.

To my mind, part of living in a free country is having open borders. Open borders will allow in some malefactors, no matter how much effort we put into trying to stop it. A free country also requires free movement of Americans, and we’ve already seen that some Americans believe in the same tactics. This is why I say that the victims of 9/11 are martyrs to that ideal, and that we disrespect them by attacking our own liberties.

And to not respond at all (like we did when they bombed our embassies in Northern Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen) would have done nothing to preserve democracy

Look, you and Steve have got to stop saying that I’m advocating doing nothing. Last time I checked, we have several law enforcement and spy agencies who have a great deal of ability to apply the million-pound shithammer to the nation’s enemies. After 9/11, the world would have lined up to support us in such efforts.

And if you’re implying we did nothing in response to Africa and the Cole, then you’ve got yourself some reports you need to read. Granted, it wasn’t as spectacular as overthrowing Kenya and Yemen; perhaps you’d be happier if we had taken that route?

We’re the United States of America. You’d think we’d have more tools at our disposal than overthrow and occupation.

Under who’s law? Under our law, you’re right.

Alright, this is a really key point. The fact that you even have to ask this question reminds me how much you’re taking for granted.

Whom did we overthrow in Iraq? Sheik Saddam? King Saddam? No, we overthrew President Saddam Hussein, a tyrant who still somehow felt the need to style himself in democratic terms and hold sham elections.

When Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan send their ambassadors to the United Nations, what do they do there? They participate in a parliament.

Yes, I’m talking about operating under our law. This is because we have been stunningly successful in the past century in getting the rest of the world to operate under legal principles similar to our own, and within that system we are doing extremely well. It is far cheaper for us to exercise and expand our power through the use of diplomacy and treaties, than by expenditure of military force and American lives. We do not wish to create Pax Americana the way the Romans did.

And the way this system works is by getting people to believe in it. Just as money has no inherent value without trust, neither does law. When law breaks down, you need to get out the guns. And likewise, when we put our faith more in our guns than in our laws, we increase our need for our guns in the future.

I agree with you that the law is slow and not nearly as satisfying as putting a bullet into the brain of Uday Hussein. But it still serves us well and, in my view, makes us safer than our present course of action. I think the people of London (let alone Baghdad) might have something to say about how effectively the Coalition of the Willing has stopped terrorism.

The Taliban, on the other hand, allowed Al Qaeda to operate. They gave them federal funding to operate their training camps, allowed them to openly recruit, made no effort to stop their trafficking in weapons, etc.

I really do not want to get into the business of being an apologist for the Taliban, since the human rights community had issues with them when most Americans thought Kandahar was a Hershey’s product. But Afghanistan was always teetering on the edge of being a failed state. Saying that Kabul allowed terrorist camps is like saying that Yeltsin allowed the creation of a kleptocracy in Russia after the fall of Communism. Not all governments have control of what happens within their borders.

Yes, it happened, and the Taliban profited from it. Part of that was due to their own balancing acts with the regional warlord system. Part of that was due to their own lack of concern. Part of that was due to bribery. But you can say the same thing about the heroin production which made up 60% of their economy.

I’m not going to shed a tear for their fall from power (although it’s unclear how peachy their replacements have been), but I think the passage of time will show that the speed with which we took them down had as much to do with our need to unleash some American testosterone as with their intransigence, willful or otherwise.

Since we took out the Taliban, Pakistan has been an ally of convenience for us. We need them and they need us. As for why we were so polite to them beforehand, well that’s because we didn’t want them to nuke India or vice-versa.

Pakistan is a whole ‘nother can of worms, possibly the most likely country to become an Islamist nuclear state. I think John would have to take another month off for me to answer this fully, so I’ll have to let it pass. But I brought them up to point out the emptiness of the argument that harboring al-Qaeda is sufficient grounds alone for invasion and occupation.

We can declare rights “unalienable” and “endowed by God” all we want, but that doesn’t mean the radical Mullahs are going to automatically back down.

Tell me again why we should care about what anyone else thinks when it comes to our fundamental values? This is what I mean by cowardice—if these are our beliefs that our countrymen died to uphold, then we should show the same resolve. And please note: radical mullahs can say whatever they want. That’s one of our values, too. It’s when they act against us that we treat them like the criminals they are.

you’re arguing against treating Al Qaeda like a nation, but here you’re suggesting that a nuclear attack by them would cost millions of lives and be a threat ot our nation’s survival. You also seem to be saying that the fact that the Soviets could have killed hundreds of millions of us somehow mitigates the terrorists’ version? As for the flimsy form of protection, facts are facts – it worked for 30 years…

In order:

1) A nuclear attack by anyone against us would be a threat to our survival. Therefore, we should do all we can to prevent such an attack by anyone. Unless you believe that the war on terror will someday eradicate all people who might ever want to hurt us, we are suicidal if we continue being so lackadaisical about stopping this means of attack. We’re not protected simply by going after today’s terrorists.

2) I’m saying that America lived under a much greater threat during the Cold War and somehow did not express the same bloodlust that we did after 9/11. (Although, arguably, we succumbed to that several times by proxy.) The threat of al-Qaeda simply comes nowhere near the threat of the Soviets, and yet America is terrified.

3) Yes, it’s true that MAD worked, which is a bit of a tautological argument—if it hadn’t, neither one of us would be here to debate it. And there were at least a dozen occasions where it came close to not working. Personally, I find any risk of the extinction of humanity to be an unacceptable price to pay. But that’s just me.

I doubt that’s true. Here is a press release from August, 2002 about all the steps the DC Metro took in the year after 9/11.

Right, I said four years ago, i.e. before 9/11. I can tell you from personal experience (i.e., anecdotal and imperfect) that there were no assault weapons on the Metro before July 7. Armed police with handguns, yes. No automatic rifles. And while I’m certain that our police are very well trained (I’ve talked to these guys, they impress the hell out of me, by and large), I still wonder about the vulnerability here. There are many forms of attack which would be less lethal than one guy getting his hands on that gun.