It has been eight years since al-Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: eight long years in which the "war on terrorism" – begun by George W. Bush in a blaze of righteousness, and since carried on by his successor, in Afghanistan and Pakistan – has been waged on several fronts. So, how are we doing?[...]
The "flypaper" strategy, once hailed by Andrew Sullivan and other "war-bloggers" boomeranged badly: instead, we are the ones stuck to the flypaper, and stuck with costly and counterproductive military campaigns that show no signs of ever coming to an end.
Al-Qaeda said the suicide bombing at a US base in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA agents was "revenge" for the deaths of militants in US drone strikes in Pakistan, the US monitoring group SITE said on Thursday.
We can now officially rechristen this a Butter Battle.
I am going to assume that this event was a huge coup for al-Qaeda. It certainly was a huge loss for the CIA.
I heard a discussion on the radio the other day wherein a former CIA agent was explaining the difference in counter-intelligence now and that of the “Cold War”. He pointed out the obvious problems in recruiting a CIA agent or source in the current situation because the fact is, most Muslims are not attracted to our culture and not dissatisfied with their own, unlike, say, the Russians during the “Cold War”. He said that in Afghanistan we have to find people who are strictly looking for monetary compensation or have some particular beef with their country. More likely, we are investing ourselves in the kind of person who just killed seven top CIA people – a man who is ardently passionate about his religion and his country. (In this case, a successful young physician.) This is the same problem we have with building up an army there. We recruit them, train them, pay them, and watch them take what they’ve gotten from us and use it against us.
I don’t know. It only sounds reasonable to me. They don’t like us. They don’t want us there. And it’s not because they’re jealous of us. I also heard a retired military officer saying pretty much just that, and adding that this is what our government is not telling us.
No. What our government is telling us is: trust us; we’re doing good things. And so we do trust them.
"All of the agents are national heroes because they were there to do a job, a very large job. What it was I do not know exactly, but they were heroes fighting the war against terror," [the wife of one of the slain] said.
I don’t know what they were doing, but it was something good.
Also, two of those killed were Blackwater agents. Hmmmm…weren’t we supposedly cutting that organization loose? Right.
"All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.” – Osama bin Laden, 2004
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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