Spencer Ackernam reports:
Avoiding a repeat of 9/11, they say, requires a realignment in Pakistan policy that the Bush administration appears to have no appetite for pursuing. Taken together, that means that the measures necessary to prevent an attack are politically unpalatable; while the politically palatable measures are strategically perilous -- much like the choices confronting policy-makers worried about Al Qaeda before 9/11.
"It's a situation that sounds quite similar to the strategic warning the intelligence community issued during the summer of 2001," said Rand Beers, president of the progressive National Security Network. Beers should know: he was a counterterrorism official on the National Security Council for Presidents Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush. In 2003, he resigned in protest over the invasion of Iraq and became chief national security aide to Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee for president.
To be perfectly clear: Even knowing this, I would not change a word of what was written here. We cannot save ourselves by abandoning everything we stand for.
Perhaps the most succinct assessment of the Bush administration's priorities was offered earlier this month by Amb. Ryan Crocker during testimony to a House panel. Crocker is U.S. ambassador to Iraq, an assignment he accepted after several years' service as ambassador to Pakistan. Asked whether the greatest threat to the U.S. from Al Qaeda came from Iraq or from the Afghan-Pakistan border, Crocker conceded, "I would... pick Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."
And yet, this meaningless war in Iraq goes on. Al Qaeda is the threat, and they are based along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Iran, like the United States, seeks to crush al Qaeda, yet we refuse to even talk to them. We are wasting so much time, so much treasure, so many lives... And we have none of them to waste. When will this madness end?
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