Ex-Congressman charged with supporting Al Qaeda

Didn't see this one coming.

A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

Mark Deli Siljander, a Michigan Republican when he was in the House, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

Without trying to assess the strength of the charges -- there's not enough information to do that -- let me just point out a couple of thoughts:

Thank goodness it was a Republican. Can you imagine all the apoplectic aneurysms among right-wing bloggers if it had been a Democrat? With Siljander, they'll of course explain that he's just one guy, doesn't represent all Republicans and was probably a RINO anyway. Had it been a Democrat, on the other hand, he would have been a representative poster child for the Democratic Party, damning evidence of the corruption and disloyalty inherent in the Democratic character, and something that all current Democratic officeholders must answer for. Ain't blind partisanship fun?

The charges aren't all that explosive. He's essentially accused of lobbying on behalf of a charity, a charity that we declared a terrorist supporter because some of its money ended up in the hands of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Hekmatyar's a bad guy now -- a declared supporter of Osama bin Laden -- but his is a common story in the region: we were a big supporter of his when he was fighting the Soviets, walked away when the Soviets left, and then found ourselves fighting against him when we invaded Afghanistan. Sending him cash may well constitute "terrorist support", but it's not a simple thing. And Siljander's guilt will rest largely on how much he knew about the charity's activities.

The most damning charges address how his lobbying was funded: it claims he conspired with the charity to illegally use money donated by USAID. He also denied doing any lobbying for the group. If true, that's enough to sink him for corruption, and cast doubt on on his truthfulness, which in turn would suggest greater involvement and culpability for money reaching Hekmatyar.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post notes that the problem might be Siljander's district, inasmuch as his predecessor was also a Republican, and is also in hot water:

It was a shocker when David A. Stockman, the one-time congressman from the Sixth (actually the 4th back then, before redistricting) who went on to become President Reagan's White House budget director in the early 1980s, was indicted last year on charges of conspiracy and securities fraud involving a Michigan auto parts company.

Now we learn that Stockman's successor in Congress, Mark Deli Siljander, was indicted today for his role in an alleged terrorist fundraising ring.

Such an observation requires taking two data points and calling it a trend, while ignoring that the current officeholder, Fred Upton, is also a Republican and has served since 1986. But it's still interesting.

All in all, more evidence that claiming one party is inherently more patriotic, loyal or honest than the other is dumb.

Hall of Shame updated.

Siljander, politics, midtopia

The rhetorical war in Iraq

Last week, the administration released an intelligence summary that warns Al-Qaeda is getting stronger.

The president pointed to this as proof that Iraq is central to fighting AQ. Asked if the report actually demonstrates that Bush's efforts to defeat AQ aren't working, he replied that things would be far worse if he hadn't invaded Iraq.

Mull that over for a second. It's a rhetorical get-out-of-jail-free card. You're Bush, and six years later things are getting worse, not better. No problem! Just claim that things would really be dire if not for your brilliant leadership. It's a completely unrefutable claim, because you can't rewind history and try again.

Unfortunately for Bush, such a bald assertion relies heavily on his credibility on security matters. And he has (charitably) almost none left. He's made so many blithe assertions that have turned out to be flat wrong that nobody believes him anymore.

This ties in with Bush's continuing efforts to tie our opponents in Iraq to 9/11. During a speech at the end of June, he noted that the people we're fighting in Iraq "are the people that attacked us on September the 11th."

Except that for the most part, they aren't. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a mostly local group that arose in 2003 in response to our invasion of Iraq. It has established some contacts with AQ Central and pledged it's loyalty to AQ. But they are at best a local franchisee using the AQ brand name. They are not the people, or even the same group, that attacked us in 2001. Further, they represent only a small portion of the combatants in Iraq.

No matter how you slice it, painting Iraq as a war on Al-Qaeda is a flat lie. "War on Islamic extremism" might be closer to the truth, and even that doesn't encompass the growing, unrelated sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni.

As far as AQ goes, invading Iraq did nothing but help them. Sure, we're killing a few insurgents and jihadists, and some of them are truly bad people. But we haven't hurt AQ at all. Instead, we've given them a major recruiting tool and a place for jihadists of all stripes to hone their tactics -- tactics that are starting to show up in Afghanistan. AQ itself sits fat, happy and generally safe in the tribal regions of Pakistan.

Speaking of which, it was a hopeful sign when Pakistani troops stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad. Any government that wants to be taken seriously simply cannot allow armed groups to challenge them, and the extremists in Pakistan have simply gotten bolder and louder in the absence of government pressure. Gen. Pervez Musharraf's born-of-necessity truce with extremists bought temporary stability in Pakistan, but it gave extremists a safe haven that has helped destabilize Afghanistan.

Now tribal leaders have renounced the truce, with accompanying violence, and Musharraf is moving thousands of troops into the region to try to keep order. Sucky as it is for him, it's good for us. Fighting with Pakistani troops diverts resources the Taliban would otherwise focus on Afghanistan; the military incursion disrupts their rest and training operations; and Musharraf's survival is increasingly tied to defeating the insurgents. All these things should help -- assuming Musharraf both survives and doesn't cut another deal.

On the downside, the fighting could spur more tribal members to join the fight against either us or Musharraf. But at least we're attacking a known insurgent stronghold, not galavanting off on a distracting adventure in, say, Iraq.

A fight like this -- against known extremists in known extremist areas -- is the kind of fight I and many others can support. It may be hard, it may be bloody, but there's no doubt about who the enemy is or why we're fighting them.

Which puts the lie to one final Bush rationalization. On Thursday he referred to the American people's "war fatigue", as if we're all wrung out by four years of fighting.

Maybe he just means people are tired of the war. But the "war fatigue" locution rings strongly of a paternalistic displacement of blame. The war's fine; people are just (understandably, but wrongly) getting "fatigued" by it.

Framed as such, the idea of "war fatigue" is nonsense. The term calls to mind a society stretched by privation, the way the French were wrung out by the end of World War I -- economy in shambles, bled white by the carnage at the front. But as far as Iraq goes, what's there to be fatigued about? The war simply doesn't impact your average citizen except as headlines and images on TV. Bush has borrowed the money to fight it; the war has been accompanied by tax cuts, not tax hikes. It's being fought with a volunteer military, and most Americans don't actually know anybody who has served, much less anyone who was killed or wounded. The military death toll, while the highest since Vietnam, is still pretty small measured by population or even a percentage of soldiers in theater.

People aren't tired of the war on terror; they are tired of the war in Iraq. But it's not because of the strain it has put on society. It's because the war has been shown to be a misbegotten idea badly executed, a mind-bogglingly expensive waste of resources, lives and national prestige.

While Al-Qaeda recovered and grew stronger. Nice work, Mr. President.

Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Is Bush soft on terrorism?

Anyone remember "The Path to 9/11", the ABC miniseries about events leading up to the terror attacks that day?

The film was scripted by Cyrus Nowrasteh, a screenwriter with conservative political connections, leading to charges of political bias.

(Tangent: Nowrasteh has an interesting background for a conservative, having been born in Boulder, Colo., and grown up in Madison, Wis., both notable liberal outposts. And it turns out we both graduated from the same high school, though he donned the mortarboard a good 11 years before I did).

A key scene involved the Clinton administration pulling the plug on a mission to kill Osama bin Laden out of fear that kids might get hurt, a scene portrayed in the right-wing media as evidence that the Clintonites -- in this case, Sandy Berger -- didn't have the guts to properly fight terrorism.

Surprise, surprise: it turns out Bush had has own "Path to 9/11" moment in 2005.

A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

So does this show Bush was soft on terror? Of course not. And neither did Clinton's decision to call off a similar strike.

In Clnton's case, the problem was that shaky intelligence made a risky endeavor riskier.

In his recently published memoir, George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, said the intelligence about Mr. bin Laden’s whereabouts during the Clinton years was similarly sparse. The information was usually only at the “50-60% confidence level,” he wrote, not sufficient to justify American military action.

“As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower requires information, discipline, and time,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “We rarely had the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on it.”

The 2005 mission was canceled for different reasons, though the principle remains the same. It's hard to argue with Rumsfeld's logic here:

Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.

Not wanting to cheese of Pakistan has less weight, in my mind, than the complexity of the operation itself. One need only look at what happened to Jimmy Carter's effort to rescue hostages in Iran to understand why special ops missions, while meticulously planned, need to be kept as small and simple as possible.

But the key point here is that military operations always take into account two sets of conditions: political and military. The whole purpose of military action, after all, is to achieve national political goals, and the political situation determines what military actions are acceptable. I'm not talking about partisan political goals, a separate and disreputable beast entirely. But political considerations always and properly set the context within which military action is contemplated.

The story goes on to describe the frustration of some special-ops commanders at the cancellation, just as some were frustrated by the cancellation of the Clinton-era strike. Contrary to what you might expect, though, that's a good thing.

Military commanders are tasked with carrying out whatever missions are required of them, and you don't get to be a special-ops leader without being very motivated and gung-ho to do your job. The best are clear-eyed realists, of course, but their realism tends to be restricted to addressing the military problem at hand.

That is what makes them such superb military tools. But that is also precisely why the final say rests with the civilian leadership. The leadership's job is to bring careful, deliberate consideration to a decision to use force, weighing the political and diplomatic factors that the ground commanders don't. It does not make the civilians weak or wrong if they decide that the mission isn't worth it.

Nor does it automatically make them right. Politicians can be quite risk-averse, especially when the problem is something as amorphous as terrorism, something that doesn't actually threaten our existence. We have a well-developed special operations capacity that is well-suited to fighting terrorists. We should be willing to both develop it further and to use it when necessary.

But now that Bush has his own example of freezing with his hand on the trigger, perhaps we can get past simplistic arguments over who is softer on terror, and acknowledge the complex realities of bringing effective fire to bear on elusive targets in remote areas of the world. And seek to find a workable balance between excessive risk and excessive timidity.

terrorism, politics, midtopia

Good reads

A roundup of links worth clicking on:

1. A New York Times story on an Army platoon dealing with a Baquba neighborhood that is one big booby trap. They get through without a scratch.

2. The former chief judge of the FISA court, Royce C. Lambeth, reveals some details of the court's workings. His anecdotes are interesting, and provide yet another rebuke to the White House's contention that the court functions too slowly to combat modern terrorists.

3. The CIA continues to release once-secret documents detailing their most controversial activities from 1959 to the mid-1970s, including assassination plots and domestic surveillance. They serve as a reminder of why civil liberties and governmental openness are such crucial foundations of democracy. You can dig through the documents themselves at the CIA's Freedom of Information page.

4. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes a somewhat sardonic column about everything Cheney.

5. A few Democrats, going a bridge too far, aren't satisfied with leaving Iraq; they want us out of Afghanistan, too. They're wrong. Afghanistan has its problems, and the conflict is fueled by the Taliban safe haven in Pakistan. But our invasion was justified, the government legitimate, the enemy beatable, and we're not stuck in the middle of an ethnic and regional cauldron. As well, the troop demands and casualty rates are much lower, so our presence there is far more sustainable. And most importantly, Afghanistan is far more likely than Iraq to return to being a terror haven if we withdraw.


FISA, Cheney, CIA, Iraq, Afghanistan, politics, midtopia

How's it going in Afghanistan?

For an interesting and balanced take on the war in Afghanistan, check out NBC News correspondent Jim Maceda:

So, how IS it going in Afghanistan? Are we winning or losing the war? Or the peace? I see no pat answer. No 10-second sound bite. We are winning some hearts, but losing other minds. We are bringing a sense of peace to parts of the country where we have soldiers at least, but the Taliban is still intimidating whole towns, elsewhere, with death threats posted on residential doors at night, with school burnings, ambushes and roadside bombs. We have defeated Taliban and al-Qaida militants in dozens upon dozens of battles this year, but their suicide bombers keep on coming – and exploding – from inside the Pakistan border, where they are trained and equipped.

Some have called this ‘reaching a tipping point’. Perhaps that’s the best answer: Afghanistan IS balanced between good and bad, war and peace, winning and losing. Some days, in some ways, look very positive indeed. But winning in Afghanistan still appears no better than a 50-50 bet. It could go either way. There are still too many reasons why Afghans could see a low-burn guerilla war that kills thousands of civilians – as well as several hundred American and allied soldiers - every year for years to come.

Sobering stuff, but unsurprising. As long as the tribal regions of Pakistan provide a safe haven for Taliban forces, the war will never actually end no matter how much military success we have. The best we can probably hope for is a low-level conflict that will increasingly be fought by Afghan security forces rather than NATO troops.

Many of the same descriptions could be applied to Iraq. But there is at least one key difference between Afghanistan and Iraq: There is far more political resolve to fight a long war in Afghanistan because the government -- weak and corrupt though it may be -- supports us, and we didn't invade the country under false pretenses.

We also don't have sectarian violence to deal with because there are no sects: nearly the entire country is Sunni (84%) Muslim (99%). The worst split is ethnic: majority Pashtuns and minority Tajiks, Uzbeks and others. But those splits aren't as deep or as pathological as the bloody scrimmage going on in Iraq.

It also shows how much more politically sustainable a war is when we're not doing nearly all the fighting ourselves. A justifiable war attracts meaningful international help, which spreads the burden of combat and builds reinforcing political supports.

The fighting in Afghanistan demonstrates that we have the political and military will to fight a long war when the need and justification are made apparent. And Iraq demonstrates what happens when the government fails to make such a case.

Iraq, afghanistan, politics, midtopia

Administration departures continue, with no czar in sight

Back in April, the White House announced it was looking for a war czar -- someone to coordinate the government's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The main goal was to find someone to replace deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan, who was stepping down.

They still haven't found anyone. And meanwhile the exodus of national security officials is increasing.

The most recent departure? Another deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch. He joins O'Sullivan and the administration's top policy people for Russia and Asia, among 20 top officials who have left in recent months.

Things like this are signs of an administration in neutral. However capable their replacements -- and highly capable people rarely sign on to join an administration in its last two years -- it's going to be hard to put any kind of energy or creativity into foreign policy. Beyond the normal "get up to speed" delays, other countries increasingly have an incentive to simply do nothing, and instead hope that Bush's successor will be more amenable to their specific concerns.

For all those reasons, it's normal for a president's foreign policy influence to decline near the end of his term -- and for ambitious people to start looking for new work as a result. But it's unusual for the process to start happening this soon.

Turnover is normal as an administration nears its end, but "this is a high number," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and an expert on government.

"You would expect to see vacancies arise as things wind down, but it's about six months early for this kind of a mass exodus," he said.

All of which is one more reason Bush remains invested in Iraq: It's one of the few places in foreign policy where he still exerts sizable influence. Pulling out would leave him pretty much done as far as large-bore foreign policy initiatives, without the time, popularity or political capital to launch anything new. Iraq is more than a mission for him: It's a way to remain relevant.

The cost, of course, is measured in forgone opportunities, blood and Republican 2008 hopes.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Will nobody blink?

I realize that escalating rhetoric often has little to do with what will finally happen, but the bellicosity displayed in the Bush/Congress set-to over Iraq funding is pretty remarkable.

Defying a fresh veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass legislation within days requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq beginning Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the pullout six months later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday.

Reid said the legislation "immediately transitions the U.S. military away from policing a civil war." He said that troops that remain in Iraq after next April 1 could only train Iraqi security units, protect U.S forces and conduct "targeted counter-terror operations."

The Nevada Democrat outlined the elements of the legislation in a speech a few hours after Bush said he will reject any legislation along the lines of what Democrats intend to pass. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," the president said.

So what's emerging from the conference committee is, remarkably, harder-line than either the House or Senate versions. The House version had hard deadlines but an 18-month timeframe; the Senate version had a shorter timeframe but no deadlines, only "goals." This hybrid version appears to combine the Senate's timetable with at least some of the House deadlines.

As such I think it's a bad idea. I didn't mind either individual version, because they were either very soft limits or the timeline was sufficiently long not to have an immediate effect. But the new version simply moves too fast.

If you truly believe that what's going on in Iraq is an intractable civil war, the bill makes sense: we have no business being there in that case. But if you believe, as I do, that Bush deserves one last chance to show he can win this thing, then an Oct. 1 deadline is simply too soon at this point.

All this may simply be attempts at blame-placing for the veto everyone knows will be coming by the end of this week. What happens after that will depend, in part, on who is more successful in the framing effort. Most likely result, I think, will be a "clean" spending bill that only runs through, say, Sept. 30. That means Bush will have to make another funding request in late summer -- right about when we should be starting to get a verdict on the surge.

But what if they're both serious? What if neither backs down? If no bill is passed, no more money is appropriated, and the war ends unless Bush can find ways to fund it out of discretionary monies -- which just isn't going to happen.

One would think that Bush would rather sign a bill with timetables than accept that. But there are other factors at work here. Neither side really wants an immediate, precipitous pullout, so each is hoping the other will blink first. Beyond that, Bush might see such a pullout as politically advantageous, because the effects would be more calamitous than a gradual pullout over the next year. He could then blame Congress for all the attendant trouble, instead of accepting that blame himself.

But much as I dislike Bush, I'm not cynical enough to believe he would do that to the Iraqis. I think he truly believes we need to stay in Iraq and can win in Iraq. So he's not going to abandon the war just to make political points at home.

So if it comes to pure stubborn, expect Congress to blink first. And then expect a short-term funding bill that will see this debate renewed -- with firmer Congressional resolve if the surge is going badly -- in the fall.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Iran supporting the Taliban?

Take this one with a grain of salt at least as large as that used when the U.S. made similar accusations about Iranian involvement in Iraq.

U.S. military officials raised worries of a wider Iranian role in Afghanistan on Tuesday when Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington that U.S. forces had intercepted Iranian-made mortars and plastic explosives intended for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Counterterrorism officials in Washington have said a handful of senior al Qaeda operatives who fled to Iran after the war in Afghanistan in 2001 may have developed a working relationship with a secretive military unit linked to Iran's religious hard-liners.

U.S. officials caution, however, that any Iranian link to fighting in Afghanistan, notably in providing weapons to Taliban fighters, remains cloudy.

As with suspected Iranian involvement in Iraq, it's a reasonable possibility. But as with Iraq, there are certain uncomfortable facts that need explaining, such as whether any such activity is condoned or controlled by the government, and why Shiite Persian Iran would go out of its way to arm Sunni Arab and Pashtun fundamentalists.

Especially considering how some of the earlier allegations turned out. Remember the Austrian sniper rifles? Supposedly 100 .50-caliber weapons sold to Iran were found in Iraq -- 100 literal smoking guns.

Except that turned out not to be true. The rifles' maker, Steyr-Mannlicher, called attention to an article in an Austrian daily, Wiener Zeitung, specifically debunking the story, then followed that up with a press release Tuesday driving the point home.

So while I can readily believe Iran is stirring the pot in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I require some decent proof before we take drastic action. CIA, get cracking. Or heck, just capture some insurgents or Iranians in the act of bringing weaponry across the border.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Delegating disaster

The White House is looking for someone to take over responsibility for Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

The snark in me is asking "isn't that Bush's job?" But I realize that's unfair. We're talking day-to-day management of the war, which isn't a presidential duty.

No, the real telling thing is that nobody wants the job.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,'" he said.

You don't make general in the military without being able to smell a fiasco from miles away. Not that you really needed a special Spidey sense in this case. Not when the Pentagon is extending the tours of all Army soldiers in Iraq to 15 months, administration supporters like Bob Novak are saying the "surge" isn't working and Bush is preparing to sit down with Democrats to discuss ways to get continued funding for the wars.

What's more interesting is the view expressed by Sheehan, who retired after a 35-year career in the Marines.

"I've never agreed on the basis of the war, and I'm still skeptical," Sheehan said. "Not only did we not plan properly for the war, we grossly underestimated the effect of sanctions and Saddam Hussein on the Iraqi people."

In the course of the discussions, Sheehan said, he called around to get a better feel for the administration landscape.

"There's the residue of the Cheney view -- 'We're going to win, al-Qaeda's there' -- that justifies anything we did," he said. "And then there's the pragmatist view -- how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive? Unfortunately, the people with the former view are still in the positions of most influence."

That, folks, is a Marine saying the war was a mistake, Cheney is a problem and we should be looking to withdraw, not get drawn in further.

Maybe Cheney can take the job.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Senate Iraq timeline survives

Senate Republicans failed to kill a timeline for ending combat operations in Iraq during debate on a war funding bill today. That means it will be included in the final bill, which is expected to pass either tomorrow or Thursday.

After that it will be reconciled with the House version, then sent to the White House for an appointment with Bush's veto pen.

Two interesting tidbits:

1. Three Senators switched their votes to support the bill: Democrat Ben Nelson and Republicans Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith.

2. The Senate also attached its minimum-wage package (and accompanying small-business tax breaks) to the bill -- an odd decision, considering the likelihood of a veto.

So how do the bills stack up? While there are warts -- the $20 billion in pork, for starters, of which the Democrats should be ashamed -- I think this is more than a mere waste of time.

As I noted last week, once Bush vetoes it the real politicking begins. But even if the Dems cave in and give Bush the "clean" funding bill he wants, this wasn't a waste of time.

Whatever else it does, the bill expresses the opinion of Congress (and, incidentally, the voters, if polls are to be believed) in very forceful terms -- especially because much of the opposition to the bill came from Democrats who didn't think it went far enough.

That may not matter to Bush. But you can be certain the message will be received in other places -- like, say, Baghdad. The Iraqi government now knows that support past the 2008 elections is highly uncertain unless it gets its act together. So whether the deadline is March 2008 or September 2008 or January 2009, it's very real and very serious.

The real test of our Iraq policy remains the surge. If it works and is sustainable, we stay. If it doesn't, we leave.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Showdown over Iraq? Not this time

The House is racing toward a vote on a bill that would require U.S. troops to leave Iraq by mid-2008. And while Bush is using his bully pulpit to try to forestall that, passage is nearly certain.

The Senate is a different matter, because Democrats have been unable to muster the 60 votes needed for passage. And until it does, nothing changes.

Even if both houses of Congress passed such a bill, the president would almost certainly veto it. So this particular battle appears destined to end not with a bang but with a whimper.

So the battle now shifts to a different front: what restrictions, if any, to place on Bush's latest funding request for Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's a different fight in two respects. With the Iraq war resolutions, Congress needed to muster positive action to oppose Bush. With the funding bills, Bush is the one who needs positive action to get the money he wants. So Congressional Democrats have as much leverage as they could want, and the power of the Republican Senate minority to block action is mostly irrelevant.

But that's only if Democrats dare use that leverage. Because the second difference is that any move to cut or restrict funding, unless handled very carefully, could be painted as cutting the legs out from under our troops in the field. Indeed, that could be an actual unintended consequence, not just partisan Republican spin.

So we will now be treated to the sight of Congress trying to use the rather blunt instrument of its funding power to coerce relatively nuanced changes in our Iraq policy.

They could achieve the nuance pretty easily with narrowly crafted amendments, but those amendments would have to get by the Senate Republicans, and then they might face constitutional challenges.

In fact, consider this scenario: A bill passes and the administration challenges the amendments in court. That ties up the funding request until the challenge is resolved. But nobody wants to be seen as treating the troops' welfare as a political football, so Republicans force the Democrats to strip out the offending amendments and pass a "clean" funding bill while the amendments undergo court review.

I await with great curiosity what the Democrats will come up with.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

War on Terror mess #45,672

On Wednesday, we'll see the report from the Iraq Study Group, which reportedly will propose a gradual withdrawal from the country.

Then we find out that Donald Rumsfeld -- apparently able to see the obvious, if only three years too late -- proposed major changes in the administration's Iraq policy shortly before resigning.

But whether Bush is in denial or not -- and the answer to that would appear to be at least a qualified "yes" -- any solution will have to take into account that some of our most reasonable-sounding plans have, simply, not worked. This time, in Afghanistan.

a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone....

In its most significant finding, the report said that no effective field training program had been established in Afghanistan, at least in part because of a slow, ineffectual start and understaffing.

Now I realize that corruption, incompetence and inefficiency are something of a hallmark for this administration, but even so this is quite an indictment. Afghanistan has its own problems, but until recently a raging insurgency wasn't one of them. This isn't a case of the police not being trained to fight a guerrilla war; it's a case of the police not being trained or equipped to do basic law-enforcement tasks.

And what is being done in response to the report? Why, more inadequacy and corruption, of course:

Afghan and American officials recently announced that they had instituted an “auxiliary police” program at the end of the summer, which aims to hire 11,200 officers in parts of the country beset by Taliban attacks, primarily in the south.

But those officers receive only two of the standard eight weeks of training, and the police training experts say the program could worsen the situation. They say the new hastily created program could place ill-trained and poorly vetted officers in the field and allow militias and criminals to infiltrate the force.

Nothing quite like coming up with a "solution" that might be worse than the problem, though to be fair, at this point the situation is a complex one with no easy answers.

And if you need more evidence that this administration has difficulty learning from its mistakes, I leave you with this:

The training experts say the United States made some of the same mistakes in training police forces in Afghanistan that it made in Iraq, including offering far too little field training, tracking equipment poorly and relying on private contractors for the actual training. At the same time, those experts say, the failure to create viable police forces to keep order and enforce the law on a local level has played a pivotal role in undermining the American efforts to stabilize both countries.

Great.

politics, midtopia

A different kind of security problem

While the U.S. grapples with leaks, debates over use of intelligence and whether we should be eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants, actual secrets are waltzing out into the world through a more mundane method: theft.

Afghan cleaners, garbage collectors, and other workers from the Bagram base arrive each day offering purloined goods, including knives, watches, refrigerators, packets of Viagra, and flash memory drives taken from military laptops. The drives, smaller than a pack of chewing gum, are sold as used equipment.

Aside from the obvious question -- what are packets of Viagra doing lying around a U.S. military base? -- this petty pilferage represents a surprising security hole.

A reporter recently obtained several drives at the bazaar that contained documents marked ''Secret." The contents included documents that were potentially embarrassing to Pakistan, a US ally, presentations that named suspected militants targeted for ''kill or capture," and discussions of US efforts to ''remove" or ''marginalize" Afghan government officials whom the military considered ''problem makers."

The drives also included deployment rosters and other documents that identified nearly 700 US service members and their Social Security numbers.

How is this happening? Human failings.

Workers are supposed to be frisked as they leave the base, but they have various ways of deceiving guards, such as hiding computer drives behind photo IDs that they wear in holders around their necks, shop owners said. Others said that US soldiers sell military property and help move it off the base, saying they need the money to pay bills back home.

Yeep. It may be difficult to stop petty theft, but why are computer drives containing sensitive information left lying around to be stolen? Why are they not accounted for? Whatever happened to information security?

Detailed stuff like this is what poses real, operational threats to security, by providing actionable details for enemies to unravel. It seems a bit ludicrous to complain about things like revealing the existence of a CIA prison network or NSA spying program when stuff like this is going on.

leaks, Bagram, Afghanistan, politics, midtopia

NATO expands in Afghanistan -- but will it help?

NATO commander Gen. James Jones said the alliance can expand its peacekeeping operations throughout most of Afghanistan by August.
That's good news, and about time. But there is some doubt about how effective such a move will be, since a lot of it will involve merely absorbing U.S. troops that are already in the country.

Only 98 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan last year but the ratio of casualties to overall troop levels makes Afghanistan as dangerous as Iraq. While Iraq's violent disintegration dominates the headlines, President Bush touts Afghanistan as a success. During his recent visit, the president told Afghans their country was "inspiring others ... to demand their freedom."

But many features of the political landscape are not so inspiring -- one is the deteriorating security situation. Taliban attacks are up; their tactics have become more aggressive and nihilistic. They have detonated at least 23 suicide bombs in the past six months, killing foreign and Afghan troops, a Canadian diplomat, local police and, in some cases, crowds of civilians.

Kidnapping is on the rise. American contractors are being targeted. Some 200 schools have been burned or closed down. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, senior American military officer here, expects the violence to get worse over the spring and summer.

The backdrop to this gathering crisis is Afghanistan's shattered economy. The country's 24 million people are still totally dependent on foreign aid, opium poppy cultivation and remittances sent home by the 5 million Afghans abroad. Afghanistan ranks fifth from the bottom on the U.N. Development Program's Human Development Index. Only a few sub-Saharan semi-failed states are more destitute.

The article goes on to mention that the United States is slashing reconstruction spending and reducing its troop presence, sort of regardless of the actual situation on the ground.

NATO, Afghanistan, politics, midtopia

Abdul Rahman backlash?

In a comment on my last post on this topic, KnightErrant reports that more Christians are being harassed or arrested in Afghanistan.

US-based Christian news source, Compass Direct, reports that more Christians have been arrested for their faith in Afghanistan in the wake of the release of Abdul Rahman. Compass, a news service that tracks persecution of Christians mostly in Islamic countries, says harassment of the Christian community has been stepped up.

Compass says two more Christian converts have been arrested in other parts of the country, but further information is being withheld in the “sensitive situation” caused by the international media furor over Rahman.

Reports of beatings and police raids on the homes of Christians are filtering out of the country through local Christian ministers.

The reports are uncorroborated, and the linked site is anything but unbiased. So take it with a grain of salt. I'd put it in the category of "news to watch for".

Christianity, religion, Afghanistan, Abdul Rahman, midtopia

Abdul Rahman, religious refugee

Abdul Rahman has turned up in Italy, which has granted him asylum.

I suppose we should be glad that he will live, instead of being executed by the Afghan government or lynched by people inspired by the bloodthirsty calls of Afghan judges, mullahs and legislators.

Of course, he now has to start his life over in a strange land. And -- coincidentally, of course -- the family members that turned him in will now get default custody of his children -- which, you may recall, is how this whole case got started.

Religious law leads to all sorts of stupid things, like this case of a man divorcing his wife while he slept. But what separates the Abdul Rahman case is the response. In the divorce case, everyone criticized the move; one Islamic scholar called the elders "totally ignorant." In the Rahman case, authority figures all across the country supported the concept of executing someone for their religious belief.

It's going to be real embarassing when the United States is forced to put Afghanistan and Iraq on its list of human rights violators.

religion, Italy, Afghanistan, Abdul Rahman, politics, midtopia

Humanity triumphs, but justice hedges

Abdul Rahman, the Afghani who faced execution because he converted from Islam to Christianity, has been freed. The court hearing the case dropped the charges, citing lack of evidence.

The relief is tempered by two facts.

The case was referred back to prosecutors, who could refile the charges if they address the court's concern. So this is a reprieve, not a victory.

In addition, the "lack of evidence" claim is a bit odd, considering Rahman confessed to the particulars.

Bottom line, there is nothing to prevent another convert from being charged and executed under the same law.

So this clearly is an effort to avoid the PR debacle of a conviction and execution, while refusing to address the underlying problem: Does the Afghan constitution rule the country, or does a particularly atavistic brand of Islamic law?

That fight will need to be fought sooner or later if Afghanistan is to become a truly free society.

Abdul Rahman, Afghanistan, politics, midtopia

How nobly medieval

The judge in the Abdul Rahman case says he will resist international pressure in the case, in which Rahman faces death for the "crime" of converting from Islam to Christianity.

How nobly medieval of him. But rather than direct international pressure at that chucklehead, I'd direct it at Afghan President Hamid Karzai. And this is why:

Prosecutors have described Mr. Rahman as a "microbe" and said conversion is illegal under Islamic law. Conservative Afghan religious leaders dominate the country's courts and prosecutorial offices, but Afghanistan's American-backed constitution guarantees freedom of religion.

This seems as good a time as any to find out if the Afghan government can and will enforce its own constitution.

Karzai has been dodging the issue for quite some time:

In the past, President Karzai has defused clashes with conservative judges by failing to implement their rulings or striking closed-door compromises with them. Mr. Rahman's case has attracted far more attention than others and sparked vocal complaints from American Christian groups.

I realize Karzai is in a difficult position. And he may lack the power to force the judges to obey the real law instead of Islamic law. But real democracies don't cut deals over rights guaranteed in their constitutions.

As I wrote in my previous post, four years after the Taliban fell Karzai is still not much more than the glorified mayor of Kabul. Shouldn't he be extending his influence, both geographically and within the institutions of government? Shouldn't we have more progress to show for our efforts?

Makes you wonder what we might have achieved in Afghanistan if we hadn't bailed out to go invade Iraq.

religion, Karzai, Abdul Rahman, Afghanistan, politics, midtopia

Death penalty for converting to Christianity

An Afghani man faces the death penalty. His crime: converting to Christianity from Islam.

Abdul Rahman, who is in his 40s, says he converted to Christianity 16 years ago while working as an aid worker helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Relatives denounced him as a convert during a custody battle over his children, and he was arrested last month. The prosecutor says Rahman was found with a Bible.

Sometimes you run across something so jaw-droppingly, paralyzingly stupid that commentary seems superfluous.

The State Department, to its credit, is watching this case closely, considering it a test for the Afghani government. One wonders what they will do if Afghan president Hamid Karzai fails the test. Or what happens in the vast majority of Afghanistan that is essentially outside central government control.

More than four years after we (rightly) toppled the Taliban, Karzai is still little more than mayor of Kabul, the Taliban are rebuilding and we apparently haven't even gotten around to reforming the judicial system. What the heck have we been doing there?

Abdul Rahman, Karzai, Afghanistan, religion, Christianity, politics, midtopia

A new Guantanamo in Afghanistan

The New York Times reports that as Guantanamo has come under increased scrutiny, the detention center at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan is quietly turning into another version of the same problem.

Pentagon officials have often described the detention site at Bagram, a cavernous former machine shop on an American air base 40 miles north of Kabul, as a screening center. They said most of the detainees were Afghans who might eventually be released under an amnesty program or transferred to an Afghan prison that is to be built with American aid.

But some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for as long as two or three years. And unlike those at Guantánamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials said.

Privately, some administration officials acknowledge that the situation at Bagram has increasingly come to resemble the legal void that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2004 affirming the right of prisoners at Guantánamo to challenge their detention in United States courts.

While Guantánamo offers carefully scripted tours for members of Congress and journalists, Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the International Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there. The prison may not be photographed, even from a distance.

So Guantanamo has become an international embarassment -- and rightly so. And instead of learning that lesson and changing the way we run our "war on terror" prisons, we simply find another place out of the spotlight to keep doing the same old thing -- guaranteeing that the problem will continue.

To repeat once again:

1. It is sleazy and unethical to deliberately place a prison in a "legal limbo" so we do not have to afford the inmates even rudimentary legal protections.

2. It also violates core American values and actively hampers our fight against terror.

3. If a prisoner was captured on the battlefield, the Geneva Convention should apply. Technically we can ignore it for non-signatories, but it has been American tradition to heed the Conventions even when not legally required -- which is the practical *and* moral thing to do. Such POWs should be released when the fighting in Afghanistan ceases, rather than being held for the duration of a vaguely defined "war" on terror.

4. If a prisoner was captured elsewhere, they are entitled to the rights we afford all criminals, even serial killers: To be charged and tried before an impartial court, in a speedy manner and with legal help.

5. Keeping detainee's identities secret serves no practical purpose, but it can easily mask many unsavory purposes. Our detentions should be able to withstand outside scrutiny.

It's really not that difficult.

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