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Interesting post. I came across this blog by accident, but it was a good accident. I have now bookmarked your blog for future use. Best wishes. Kristal Marshall….

John, you’re having trouble seeing America’s erstwhile “Vietnam Syndrome” (or a certain expression of it in the Powell Doctrine) as having been an actual political obstacle to bin Laden’s plans. The usefulness for his plans of ground engagements by Jihadis with American troops should be obvious by now. If there seems to an “unintended consequences” problem, it’s that Zarqawi could be hurting Al Qaeda by focusing attacks on Shi’ites — not just for being “collaborators” but also for being Shi’ites! On the other hand, maybe those attacks help the Al Qaeda cause in one way, while having spokesmen of Al Qaeda decrying the practice helps them in another way. They are under no compulsion to avoid hypocrisy, whenever hypocrisy works for them.

Whatever bin Laden’s reduced circumstances might be right now (it seems he has little or no control over what’s going on in Iraq), just because events are out of his hands at the moment does not mean they aren’t headed in directions that he approves of, and hoped for, with so much help from America.

“They want to strike at the US homeland and cause very serious economic damage – which intercepts have made clear is what the believe will cause us to pull out of the middle east and let them get on with building their caliphate.”

I wonder if you could cite chapter and verse from these intercepts, unambiguously pointing to this conclusion? Which is to say, can you tell me for certain that, IF such a statement is there, that it was not mere radicalizing propaganda, but a sincerely held belief on the part of the leadership? There is never a guarantee that any rally-the-troops message will be devoid of calculated fictions. I can’t imagine a nuclear terror attack on the U.S. having any other effect than to radicalize the American people into foreign adventures on an even grander scale — thus creating more Jihad battlefields, and further radicalizing the populations from which bin Laden hopes to gain more support. I also can’t imagine that Al Qaeda leadership is so stupid as to think otherwise. Economic damage? America was already very economically damaged by the Great Depression the day before Pearl Harbor. But (as Adm. Yamamoto, the planner of Pearl Harbor, predicted) it had more than enough industrial resources to prevail against Japan — a symmetric threat. One nuke, no matter how strategically placed, can’t destroy more than a tiny fraction of the U.S. war machine, and bin Laden — who grew up smack in the middle of evidence of how rich and powerful America is — can hardly be so stupid as to be unacquainted with this fact.

John, you’e always criticizing me for not assuming the worst of the enemy. Yet, when it’s convenient for your argument, you rationalize away such assumptions yourself. You say we’re at war, but always view the enemy as only being concerned with specific battles in specific theaters. It’s a very selective view of the situation, either way.

As for the confusion surrounding bin Laden’s supposed kidney problems, I don’t think the CIA is that sloppy. Perhaps Pakistan’s intelligence community more to do with it?

http://www.namibian.com.na/2002/January/world/023DF0F0B0.html

“Osama bin Laden underwent clandestine kidney dialysis in a Pakistani military hospital the day before members of his al Qaeda network launched attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Pakistani intelligence sources told CBS News in a report aired on Monday.”

This is quite consistent with the theory that bin Laden was overtly faking a need for dialysis (not just leaving things up for speculation), considering that Pakistani intelligence was notorious for their sympathy with the Taliban. On the other hand, maybe even the Pakistanis were being duped — they, too, may have preferred a feeling that bin Laden, if he became a problem for them, was at least a relatively tractable problem — just cut off medical support to areas where he’s taken refuge, and he’s gone, right? You don’t even have to find him to write the death certificate.

You say bin Laden has Marfan Syndrome. I’m sick of doing your homework for you, John. Have you heard of this amazing website, http://www.google.com? It’s all just speculation based largely on physiognomy. The chance that an Arab who has Marfan will look like somewhat like bin Laden may approach 100%, but the chance that an Arab who looks like him has Marfan’s might be less than 2%.

Zawahiri recently put out another video, in which he claimed bin Laden was still alive. He did not, however, produce bin Laden to prove it. Is he dead, possibly of aortic rupture stemming from Marfan Syndrome and the physical stresses of being on the run? Is he alive? Who knows? Either way, however, ambiguity works for them. They certainly know that most people hate ambiguity when it concerns threats, and will tend to assume what they would like to believe. So the only question is whether the choice of belief on the part of various people works for them. Those who sympathize with Al Qaeda will prefer to believe that bin Laden is still alive — a man of Zawahiri’s compassion and integrity wouldn’t lie to them, would he? And that works for Al Qaeda. You, on the other hand, choose to believe that bin Laden has Marfan Syndrome — even though the evidence amounts little more than photographs. Al Qaeda leadership must love that, if he doesn’t have Marfan, because the value of a general underestimate of bin Laden among his enemies is high, for them.

War is politics by violent means. These people are at war, but they are also, practically by that Clausewitzian definition, politicians. And politicians lie and deceive when that’s more useful than the truth, whenever they can get away with it. Furthermore, the second ranking politician in Al Qaeda is a pediatrician, who must have been summoned more than once to the bedside of a child faking an illness. Perhaps summoned even to the home of a beleaguered community leader in Cairo under scrutiny in some scandal, to hear a plea for a physician’s endorsement of some claim that he can’t face the public at the moment because his child is very ill. Zawahiri can hardly be unaware that falsely claiming infirmity has self-serving uses. For him, it may now merely be a matter of employing deception in a Holy Cause. And second nature, after decades of doing it.

You have no knowledge of Marfans. Lincoln had it though. As long as the borderlands are off limits we’ll never find these guys. That’s the first place I would send the army. Why aren’t they?

Ssince he saw the defeat of the USSR in Afganistand, and believed the US to be even less determined, it is highly likely he had no idea of how powerful the combination of high precision weapons (many never before used, such as JDAMs) and special forces could be in driving him out of his terrorist sanctuary. It is likely that he barely escaped Tora Bora due to a mistake in US tactics (using Afghan troops for an important part of the envelopment without appreciating the complexities involved).

Bin Laden is hardly in a better position for having lost Afghanist. He used to have almost an entire country in which to have terrorist camps, plan operations, and house his favorites (and the Arabs lived well by Afghani standards – one reason they were so hated). He had the protection of the Taliban (infiltrated by Al Qaeda enforcers). He was pretty safe (bombing or cruise missile attacks were unlikely to hit him, since his location was almost impossible to determine in that sanctuary).

At the same time, I think it unlikely that the flypaper strategy was planned ahead of time by the US.

War is non-linear as is history, and predicting the outcome is best done with Oija boards (well, all right, that didn’t work so well for the Nazis).

So better to look at the current situation… Bin Laden is hiding somewhere – probably in Waziristan. His couriers are constantly being compromised and his communications intercepted. He cannot use real time communications because of NSA capabilities. He has a huge price on his head, enough for serious private forces to hunt him.

ALso, he is forced to fight in Iraq because Zarqawi has made it into a showcase – Al Qaeda’s loss there would be a major psychological defeat for them (and would deny them even more operational ground).

The primary danger of Al Qaeda is if they acquire serious WMD’s – nuclear explosives, highly contagious bological agents, or perhaps some good dirty bombs. They have publicly claimed religious authority to kill 4,000,000 innocents, and you can bet those will be Americans if they can achieve it.

They want to strike at the US homeland and cause very serious economic damage – which intercepts have made clear is what the believe will cause us to pull out of the middle east and let them get on with building their caliphate. WMD’s as described above are perfect for that goal (although I think if they were used, the US response would be overwhelming and brutal – World War II style). That is the real danger we face, and removing one likely WMD proliferator (Iraq) reduced that probability (plus the side effect of rolling over another proliferator – Libya – along with the resulting vast intelligenge provided by them).

Meanwhile, Iran lurks. Iran has its own agenda, and may use Al Qaeda to carry it out (Hezbollah has a “return address” – Al Qaeda does not).. Iran also wants to control the middle east, and it needs conflict in order to distract its internal dissenters, who are especially troublesome after the examples of democracy in Iraq and now Lebanon.

So Iran, whose leaders are probably not looney Islamofascists, but rather fascists who use the loons, represents a less spectacular but equally dangerous force. Iran is developing IRBM’s that can hit European capitals and has revealed (”oops” – yeah, right) plans for nuclear warheads that can be carried on those missiles. It is continuing its undeniable WMD program, rejecting all attempts to stop it from enriching uranium.

Iran pretty clearly plans to blackmail the feckless Europeans into submission, given its external nuclear threat and Europe’s internal threat from its own Islamofascist citizens (whom I feel compelled to point out are a small minority of the large Muslim population in many European countries).

…

As to the dialysis fantasy … well… come on now… that one is just a bit much. More likely some CIA analyst got the information about the kidney stones (translated it into “kidney problems”), put it together with the purchases of dialysis machines, and made a wrong guess.

As to Osama’s health… they guy has Marfan’s syndrome. His life expectancy isn’t great, dialysis or not.

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While it is a mistake to underestimate our opponents’ intelligence, they also made the mistake of underestimating our resolve and actual military power. But the left may yet correct that mistake by forcing us to wave the white flag.

I, of course, felt no need to read any further past the statement that a contest is offered. Assuming the other guy is conservative, how about “Left Hook and Right Jab” (or, the positions reversed). I’m sure that I can do better with time, but this just came to mind on the spur of the moment and is offered for consideration.

To give you an idea of how clever bin Laden is … he’s got kidney disease and requires dialysis frequently, right? Oops, we blew that one.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6765861/

So why did he pretend all these years to need treatment? (He brought two dialysis machines to Afghanistan, one to give to the government, the other supposedly for his personal use. And one of the chances to nab him involved a hospital visit to a country supposedly allied with us.)

Well, pretending to be in total renal failure worked for him any number of ways. He has sympathizers, and those sympathizers might target any government in the region that denied him treatment that could save his life. Furthermore, a ball and chain like dialysis can make his enemies believe that he must be somewhere near his life-support system — when in fact he might be hundreds, even thousands of miles away. Keep him bottled up in Tora Bora long enough, and problem solved, right? The plume from a gas powered generator to run his dialysis machine would show up against the cold mountain air on any infrared scan. Yes, it would — especially if it were placed so as to be a decoy.

The cost of a dialysis machine to a man of his means? Small. What would be the long-term value of a *perception* that he depended on it, given that life as a terrorist organizer is going to involve a number of tight spots? Huge. Was it his idea? Not necessarily. But he apparently knows a good idea when he sees one. Most likely, his second in command, Zawahiri, a trained MD, came up with this one.

A Fireside Spat with Marc Cooper and Michael Ledeen

or

Un-American bastard v. Facist pig-dog

The winners of political campaigns are always seen as genuises who executed a brilliant plan that confused the opponents and wowed the voters. The reality is nothing like this. Campaigns are a big chaotic mess. You use tactics that have worked before. You float some themes, put out some ads, take a few polls, knock on some doors, give some speeches, hope something sticks. I can tell you, there are never genuises who followed a master plan. There is some skill and a barge full of luck.

It’s the same with these guys (bin laden et. al.) Let’s not go down the nefarious master-global-plan trail. It’s false AND it serves the Orwellian needs of those who benefit from permanent war. The shadowy mastermind that can be found under every bed is a trope we shoudn’t be signing up for.

http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=w051205&s=judis120805

Sleepover with Mike and Marc (bring your jammies!)