Has the Bush Administration learned nothing from 9/11? A pre-occupation with Iraq before 9/11 distracted the Administration from focusing on the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Now, as the Administration seems pre-occupied with Iran, the New York Times reports on how Washington infighting is allowing al-Qaeda to reconstitute and regenerate in Pakistan.
It is a good read and it highlights the deep divisions within the government concerning how and where to use manpower and resources. But deep in the story is a quote from US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker that I hope we never come to regret:
“I do wonder if it’s in fact the case that Al Qaeda has really reconstituted itself to a pre-9/11 capability, and in fact I would say I seriously doubt that,” said Mr. Crocker, the American ambassador to Pakistan between 2004 and 2006 and currently the ambassador to Iraq.
“Their top-level leadership is still out there, but they’re not communicating and they’re not moving around. I think they’re symbolic more than operationally effective,” Mr. Crocker said.
However, the boots on the ground beg to differ.
The New York Times reports that the feelings on the ground in Afghanistan are different.
By the fall of 2006, the top American commander in Afghanistan had had enough.
Intelligence reports were painting an increasingly dark picture of the terrorism threat in the tribal areas. But with senior Bush administration officials consumed for much of that year with the spiraling violence in Iraq, the Qaeda threat in Pakistan was not at the top of the White House agenda.
Mr. Bush had declared in a White House news conference that fall that Al Qaeda was “on the run.”
To get Washington’s attention, the commander, Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, ordered military officers, Special Operations forces and C.I.A. operatives to assemble a dossier showing Pakistan’s role in allowing militants to establish a haven.
Behind the general’s order was a broader feeling of outrage within the military — at a terrorist war that had been outsourced to an unreliable ally, and at the grim fact that America’s most deadly enemy had become stronger.
The Times summarizes:
But while Mr. Bush vowed early on that Mr. bin Laden would be captured “dead or alive,” the moment in late 2001 when Mr. bin Laden and his followers escaped at Tora Bora was almost certainly the last time the Qaeda leader was in American sights, current and former intelligence officials say. Leading terrorism experts have warned that it is only a matter of time before a major terrorist attack planned in the mountains of Pakistan is carried out on American soil.
“The United States faces a threat from Al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” said Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.
Bush pays a lot of lip services to listening to his commanders on the ground. But this is nothing but false rhetoric. This Administration proves time and again that it operates in a different plane of reality. Whenever those closest to the situation say that things aren't right, it's as if the Bush Administration responds by sticking its fingers in its ears and saying "LALALALALALALALALA" to drown out reality.
They ignored the warnings of the intelligence community before 9/11 and ignored those who said that Iraq was not involved with 9/11.
They ignored the obvious images on the news as New Orleans drowned.
And now they tell us that the group that kicked off the global war on terror is just a "symbolic" threat. May God have mercy on their souls if they are wrong.
"Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."