Blinders

I had a glass in my hand grabbing ice cubes from the ice bin of the refrigerator. One of the cubes slipped, and in my effort to catch it I dropped my glass on the floor, where it shattered into many tiny fragments. This is what happened to the Bush Administration in the Middle East. All they could see was the Saddam ice cube, while the glass (Afghanistan/Pakistan, Iraq instability, Iran resurgence) shattered on the floor.

Iraq was presented as a false choice: invade or not. Leave Saddam in power or topple him. The media's apparent capacity to carry only one story in any particular news cycle played into this. This environment allowed any tenuous, dubious contact between Iraq and Al Qaeda to be elevated to monumental status. When all that is being discussed is Iraq’s contacts with Al Qaeda, instead of, say, the connections between Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and both Al Qaeda and the Taliban, all sense of scale is lost. Minor contacts were raised to the level of dangerous collusion.

The correct procedure would have been to prioritize the threats. The US and it’s allies certainly began on the right course with the invasion of Afghanistan. But after the great debacle of Tora Bora, where, ironically, Rumsfeld’s ideal of a light flexible force and dynamic tactics yielded to the inertia of using Afghani mercenaries, the most important target was clearly the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Most of the world supported the US after 9/11, and that support continued with the war in Afghanistan. The US appeared strong and focused. This would have been the ideal time to get Pakistan’s cooperation to attack both the Taliban and Al Qaeda on both sides of the border. Pakistan’s President Musharraf could have proceeded with our support, even though Islamists in the opposition and his own ISI would have protested.

But now, all such opportunities have been squandered. The great illogic of attacking Iraq, along with the capricious waste of our troops there, have made us look confused and weak. The pragmatic Musharraf has been forced to accept a dubious treaty with Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas (see Pakistan's Tribal Areas map from Frontline). The Taliban and Al Qaeda have secured a region in which they will be able to plot future attacks. (See excellent reporting on this situation by PBS’s Frontline at Frontline: Return of the Taliban.)

One of the reasons given for the invasion of Iraq is that everything was different after 9/11. That is certainly correct, but the resulting change in policy was the exact opposite of what was logical. Before 9/11, we had the luxury of dealing with a resolution to the Hussein question. After 9/11 we needed to prioritize targets, to start with the targets that would provide the greatest benefit to our long-term security. Before September 11, 2001, both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice spoke of Hussein’s weakness, with Powell famously declaring that Hussein was “in a box”. Today, Iraq is not in it’s box, and we don’t even know where Al Qaeda’s box is.