There is no hard evidence indicating that Bin Laden was involved with the 9/11 attacks. The FBI lists him as wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.

"On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing statement, I asked, “How this was possible?” Tomb continued, “Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.” I asked, “How does that work?” Tomb continued, “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

It shouldn’t take long before the full meaning of these FBI statements start to prick your brain and raise your blood pressure. If you think the way I think, in quick order you will be wrestling with a barrage of very powerful questions that must be answered. First and foremost, if the U.S. government does not have enough hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11, how is it possible that it had enough evidence to invade Afghanistan to “smoke him out of his cave?” The federal government claims to have invaded Afghanistan to “root out” Bin Laden and the Taliban. Through the talking heads in the mainstream media, the Bush Administration told the American people that Usama Bin Laden was Public Enemy Number One and responsible for the deaths of nearly 3000 people on September 11, 2001. Yet nearly five years later, the FBI says that it has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11."

http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

It is certainly a quagmire. The Russians couldn't manage it. Who knows how or if the Taliban did? (At least partially by suppression and isolation from the rest of the world, except as training ground.)

Of much more concern is the state of civil unrest in Pakistan (a nuclear power), as well as the incremental power building (and expressed incrementally aggressively) in Iran.

And we STILL do not yet seriously address the volume of fossil fuels that we consume in the US and west, that compel us to be primarily involved.

There is no way that the US can survive currently with a disruption to the supply chain of oil. Even the supply chain for capital has multiple paths. Oil comes from very limited sources.

that we had someone of such radical ideological "realist" persuasion as produces the kind of craven justifications of power for its own sake that we see here -- over the eternal moral verities of the "foreign policy idealism" school of international relations studies -- so close to a position of influence in government is a truly chilling thought. Advisors with ideas such as those found here must be kept as far from the president's ear as possible -- at all costs!

You might be correct; rather, you are most likely correct that our national interests are minimal.

The problem is that some of the President’s advisors think that Central Asia and South Asia’s location and natural resources are important. Plus, they raise the issue of Pakistan’s nukes.

Plus, I just saw a piece on Russia Today about how the U.S. is trying to encircle Russia---interesting wiewpoint. They didn’t suggest a reason.

Regardless of whether or not we have a good reason to be in South Asia, we are escalating the military adventure because we are losing the political competition. Then, whoever escalates the military involvement will probably lose because the politics determine the eventual outcome.

I would not be surprised if we continue to not understand the politics and continue to escalate the military aspects. We will continue to follow that pattern until we eventually lose the war.

Our foreign aid does not achieve political ends either. Neither the military nor foreign aid recruits and organizes Afghans to build a viable political system. For example, the Taliban can use a new road and irrigation just as well as anyone else. Any involvement in planning an irrigation project needs to be part of an on-going organizing effort.

Anyway, we fail, so we increase the military numbers and fail some more.

Bob Spencer

The danish PM, Anders Fogh Rasmussen have according to rumours support from Germany, France and Great Britain support to become the next Secretary General of NATO. And it would have been anounced by now, if the US did not have reservations. The US have said they prefer a former Canadian Foreign Minister, and I hope very much the Canadian gets the job.

Fogh of War - a nickname that would be disastrous for a Secretary General of NATO

'Fogh of War' or 'Go Fogh yourself' would be a disaster for the alliance. Spains Javier Solana and Hollands Jaap de Hoop Scheffer are both a bit vague, and this is fine and very fitting for this organisation. If 'Fogh of War' -- who supported the disastrous Iraq War - and was the only one apart from Bush, Blair and the Australian PM to participate in the invasion -- gets the post he would try to invigourate a war effort, that nobody have any interest in.

He also is reknowned for the infamous 'Mohammad caricature'-scandal, where he refused even to meet with representatives for the eleven Muslim nations, that have embasies in Copenhagen. The US was very annoyed with his inflexible and uncompromising stance on that occasion, and this could very well be the reason they have strong reservations on him being Secretary for NATO. A Secretary of NATO obviously needs to have good relation to the muslim world, particularly today when NATO for the first time in its history are engaged outside Europe, - in a Muslim country.

I note with satisfaction that Turkey also are strongly against that this individual gets the post.

----

It is odd and unprecedented that a current PM wants to have a seccretarial post, when he thus instead of being boss will get 26 bosses. But he is a born opportunist and hopes he by revigourating the Aghan War and by being in the media often, can secure for himself a job as either'Foreign Secretary' og 'President' for EU, once the Lissabon Treaty gets ratified in all member countries. Javier Solana is an example of a man who was a success at NATO and went on to EU - as 'Coordinator for Foreign Policy'. But Solana is a varm and mild personality liked by the Arabs, who in this Spaniard recognizes themselves.

I hope for the US to deny this individual his right to any further employment internationally, as it would be a disaster for all fredom-loving individuals. He is also just the type to initiate antagonism towards Russia, and lobby for Ukraine and Gergias accession to NATO- in contrast to US current policies.

Mind you, I'm no expert on the politics of southwest Asia, and I don't consider myself an authority on U.S. policy there.

Why don't you ask the elders of the IL, Professor?
Maybe you are begging, we'll see how they will start singing like a rossignol;->>

Americans have scant understanding of Pakistan's internal dynamics,

You reckon they have clear (not scant) understanding about their own internal dynamics?

Grand Sen~or.

How did we get into this mess? Answer: one step at a time. Revisiting the origins of this sorry situation reminds us that great powers usually walk into debacles with their eyes wide open. Wide open, but still blind.

I think the fundamental roots lay in the fact that when faced with the 9/11 attacks, and the fact that their perpetrators were located in Afghanistan (later Pakistan), we chose to not only respond (which was inevitable), but to escalate the conflict. We took an assault on a particular jihadist faction, and escalated it into a greater war on violent Islamic fundamentalism. Some of this was good (we've done pretty well in helping the Phillipines deal with the groups on Mindao, for example), but it has also led us into a "Long War", as US officials even admit.

Saudi Arabia backed the American effort with money and people (with our encouragement), and used this opportunity to fund religious schools and spread Wahhabi doctrines. As a result, the Afghan war became the crucible in which al Qaeda and other forms of jihadi terrorism were forged.

The Saudi role should definitely not be discounted; as I've pointed out on Rothkopf's blog, whenever you see violent Sunni jihadism in another country outside of the "core" Arab states, you can guarantee that a wealthy Saudi with jihadist sympathies has been there. Helped, of course, by the fact that the Saudi government has been letting this stuff slide outside of the kingdom for decades as a way of keeping the internal Wahhabists in-line (plus as a form of soft power).

Then, of course, there is Pakistan. You've got to love how much of this shit comes back to decisions on their part, particularly those in the 1980s and 1990s. Like the decision to train a bunch of these fanatics for the sake of "strategic depth" (by the way, that's the real source of the Taliban, not the mujahideen; in most cases, the mujahideen actually opposed the Taliban), and as a tool of war against the Indians in Kashmir. Let's not forget, either, how Musharraf more or less compromised with the Islamists in the FATA for the entire decade and most of the rest of his reign, launching military initiatives that then faded into nothing after a short time and agreements with the local Waziris.

the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia became one of Osama bin Laden's main grievances and helped inspire his decision to go after American forces in the region and to attack the U.S. homeland on September 11, 2001.

Keep in mind that this was a two-way street; the Saudi government actually invited us in to protect them from Iraq. Sucks, doesn't it?

The Bush administration also committed the United States to the construction of a new Afghani political order, a challenging task which it clearly was not up to, and which maybe no U.S. administration could have accomplished.

To be honest, I'm not sure what they could have done. Part of the problem is that in order to overthrow the Taliban, we funded and supported the various warlords that the Taliban had replaced, then backed them up with airpower until the Taliban themselves were gone (at which point, we moved in with mass).

Holding back from deploying troops at that point would basically mean that we'd be propping up whatever government emerges out of the warlords, assuming one even does. That might save American lives, but presumably we'd still be giving the Afghanis lots of guns and material, and it could always devolve into a situation like the Soviets, where we have to go in anyways to save our client.

On top of that, we'd be under pressure to go after Al-Qaeda (who would be in Pakistan at the time), and developing good intelligence assets would be much harder without a serious presence in the border areas, at least.

You know what sickens me about the whole situation? At least according to Richard Clarke in his latest book, we actually got Bin Laden and his flunkies trapped on Tora Bora in Afghanistan in 2001. Had the decision been to send in some US troops to take the mountain, Bin Laden might be dead now (according to Clarke, Bin Laden had already prepared to fight to the death, and had thanked his men for working with him), and this whole thing would be much less prominent. But a US officer made the decision to not fly in US troops, and instead we sent Afghani men, who got convinced to let Bin Laden escape.

Step 4 was the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, which reduced the resources and attention devoted to Afghanistan, allowed Bin Laden to remain at large, and enabled the Taliban to reemerge as a major actor.

Indyk makes a pretty good case in his book about why this whole thing happened - sanctions were unraveling, Saddam had been hinting that he had such weapons for years, he had a pattern of building up a threat right to the point where the US intervened, then backing down at the last second to make us look like idiots, bad intelligence, etc. That said, it was seriously bad PR damage in the Arab World.

I'd argue it wasn't so much the decision to invade Iraq that caused the major problem as the decision to actively play a role in governing and re-building it. That may have been the responsible, "good" thing to do, but it would have been less of a burden had the US simply decapitated the Saddam government and left the various factions in Saddam's government to fight it out (or wiped out the top people above the rank of colonel from the Iraqi army, then handed over control to whomever could guarantee their loyalty).

even though the surge has failed to produce the all-important political reconciliation essential to genuine success in Iraq,

I'd question this. The Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, although unhappy, are more or less on-board with the idea of a government encompassing all of them. Maliki's government, which won over the more-pro-regional SCIRI party among the shiites, has reached out to the Sunnis.

In any case, the situation probably would have been much worse had the Surge not happened, and had we pulled out.

What we need to do at this critical juncture is to stop, take a deep breath, and ask the bedrock question that underpins any grand strategy: what are our vital interests in this part of the world?

Basically, we want to prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland, and on our interests worldwide. We could probably do that without what we have right now (hell, we could have done it pre-9-11; the reason why we even had the attacks was because Bush ignored multiple warnings and just didn't put two-and-two togeher with the threat of an attack from Al-Qaeda with their earlier attacks on the US).

A chronology that describes how the United States found itself so intimately involved in Southwest Asia is a useful idea. This one, though, is incomplete.

Step 1, really, was Vietnam, the opportunity costs of which to the United States have never really been properly reckoned with. The geopolitical impact of the American debacle in Southeast Asia, and of the long preoccupation of the American government and military there, was felt most in two other regions of the world. One was Africa, an area of secondary strategic importance. The other was Southwest Asia, where a regrettable but ultimately manageable quarrel between Israel and its immediate neighbors was made an arena for superpower rivalry by the Soviets. The other elements of today's regional quagmire -- the establishment of vicious totalitarian regimes in Iraq and Libya, the decay of the Iranian and Afghan monarchies, the rise of OPEC as a force able to produce artificial spikes in world oil prices, the flooding of the area with personal weaponry and the growth of terrorism as an accepted means of political expression -- all fell into place while the United States had its attention fixed on Vietnam and immediately thereafter, when its gaze turned briefly inward.

Walt's chronology skips Step 1, and jumps right over what ought to be Step 3, the Gulf War and its immediate aftermath. Eager to declare victory after restoring the status quo ante, the first Bush administration locked its successor into dual containment while incidentally laying the foundation for much of the trouble the second Bush administration found when it entered Iraq for good twelve years later. Iraq in 1991 was not the country it became in 2003; its economy had not been ravaged by years of sanctions, nor would its government have disintegrated had its leadership been removed. It was also then only three years removed from a long and bitter war with Iran, which has influence in Iraq now it could not have had then.

Almost everyone applauded the first President Bush's restraint and realism then. Some people still do. But Bush not only sent the message that a ruler like Saddam Hussein could defy the entire world community and remain in power, but insisted that this ruler remained a dangerous threat after an army of half a million men had been moved halfway around the world and then withdrawn. Containment followed naturally: restrained, realistic, prudent, and a policy that allowed the United States no obvious way to reduce its commitment in southwest Asia. The nightmare of a superpower conflict having finally evaporated, the first Bush administration had the opportunity to impose its will on the region, and chose instead to pass the initiative to the dictator who lost the war. We are still paying the price for that mistake today.

Historians won't have to "...probably still be trying to explain how the United States got itself bogged down in southwest Asia" where things went wrong or the proper address for the bad decisions that.

The US is fighting 2 wars as a direct consequence of deliberate policies pursued by President Carter.

Step 1 was withdrawing support for the Shah, a stable US ally in a very unstable region, with no consideration for the consequences to the region. If the US had continued to support the Shah, there would have been no power vacuum for Sadam Hussein to assume he could take advantage of leading to the ruinous Iran/Iraq war and the subsequent Gulf wars that the US was drawn into.

If the US had continued to support the Shah they would not have been so likely to accept Pakistan as the US choice of a regional anchor.

And much more to the point of US involvement in Afghanistan, Step 2 was the July 1979 order by President Jimmy Carter, adopting Zbigniew Brzezinski plan to destabilize Afghanistan supporting the Mujahideen PRIOR to the Soviet Invasion and in fact with the hope that the Soviet Union would invade. This only led to the death of a million or more Afghans. The US decision to support the Mujahideen was contrary to what you write not a US reaction but a deliberate proactive policy in fomenting Soviet invasion. Defence Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html

Step 3 recruiting Saudia Arabia to confront the Soviets having them build Madrassas in Pakistan to educate Central Asians with a radical religious doctrine drawing them into the Middle East and away from the Soviet Empire.

Professor, remember the Clash of Civilisations - the Flat-top-hats against Turban?! that is how;-> Every IL member would remind you this adding "Professor we are there at the front to save the Civilisation from Turban and you are asking funny question like "How did we get there?" are you realist or sleep-walker or have a very short memory?! - you wouldn't like to end up wearing Turban, would you?

That is why you are paying I to keep the Turban away, but to keep your head worm in Winter and cool in Summer we are going to tailor you a Kippe in place of Turban (or Flat-top-hat), that is better for you believe my ..... besides there is national interest for you as a bonus, what would you do without us my Lamb?!" (to himself: hehe if you knew we are quite close to the Alter);->>

Grand Sen~or.

Walt's account is filled with a surprising (for an academic) number of proofs by assertion, which at least require some explanation by him.

not only did we mismanage the peace process

But the Bush administration muffed the job.

In addition, he implies but does not satisfactorily explain some of his conclusions, viz.

The apparent tactical success of the "surge" in Iraq ...snip... the surge has failed to produce the all-important political reconciliation essential to genuine success in Iraq

apparently he thinks the objective of the surge was poolitical reconciliation, justifying his backhanded use of "apparent" success.. Strange.

According to both Kenneth Pollock and Trita Parsi, "dual containment" was mostly intended to reassure Israel about a possible threat from Iran, thereby facilitating Israeli concessions during the Oslo peace process. Unfortunately, not only did we mismanage the peace process, but the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia became one of Osama bin Laden's main grievances and helped inspire his decision to go after American forces in the region and to attack the U.S. homeland on September 11, 2001.

Come again? "thereby facilitating Israeli concessions during the Oslo peace". What concessions? And have they been carried out? No Oslo is dead, so those 'concessions' were cheap.

I suspect that this was just one of Martin Indyk's arguments, that he used to set the dual containment regime up: "We need this in order for the israelis to make concessions in the Peace Process". It sounds good, but did it hold?

The whole dual containment idea is an over-intellectual piece of policy that complicates a problem that doesn't exist. How could Iran be a threat to Israel? It had just finished 8 years of bloody war and lost more then ½ million men, and hadn't had a chance to build up its islamic state. All revolutions where old structures are teared down, usually are followed by periods where they try to build new structures up. And Iran has trough its history never been a threat to surrounding countries, let alone one that lies several hundred miles away seperated by other states. How exactly should Iran be a threat to Israel?

No the whole argument is bogus, intently made a bit over-intellectual so that only the specialists understood, and modelled on Kennans ideas about containment. But Kennan explicitly stated that for containment to work there need to be a balance of power between the two parts.

PS: Try and 'Google Images' of Martin Indyk, and you will see lots of pictures where members of the jewish community all over the world pay their respects and rever and honour him. As I have previously written, one of the advantages of this closely knit community, is that it is possible for outsiders to quickly gauge its members moods and fears. And they make no attempt to hide their feelings for him; he is considered 'a great son of Israel' for what he has done. He is probably the most succesful 'alligner'* of Israeli and American strategic interests, - something essential for the survival of this the worlds last colony in the middle of Arabia - of all places - with an inhabitable surface-area the size of Delaware and the adjacent Cecil County in Maryland.

*)And this allignment have meant unnessesary suffering for both the Iraqie and Iranian people, harmed the national interests of The United States, costed more than 5,000 American lives and maimed and injured 10 times as many for life, and costed the US economy as much as $3 Trillion.

The quagmire in southwest Asia: How did we get there?

We were sucker punched by our friend and ally, Apartheid Israel.

Are The DOJ And the U.S.D.C. for the Southern District of New York... Hot Beds Of Zionist Treason?

http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2009/03/are-doj-and-usdc-for-southern-district.html

The quagmire in southwest Asia: How did we get there?

If you haven't done so already, read 'Flashman' -

In Hughes' book, Flashman is the notorious bully of Rugby School who persecutes Tom Brown, and who is finally expelled for drunkenness. Twentieth century author George MacDonald Fraser had the idea of writing Flashman's memoirs, in which the school bully would be identified with an "illustrious Victorian soldier": experiencing many 19th century wars and adventures and rising to high rank in the British Army, acclaimed as a great soldier, while remaining by his unapologetic self-description "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady." Fraser's Flashman is an antihero who runs from danger or hides cowering in fear, betrays or abandons acquaintances at the slightest incentive, bullies and beats servants with gusto, beds every available woman, carries off any loot he can grab, gambles and boozes enthusiastically, and yet, through a combination of luck and cunning, ends each volume acclaimed as a hero.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Paget_Flashman

Americans who think to aspire to an empire can always re-live the actions of those who went before them.

There is absolutely no need to get involved in the affairs of a far-away country of which we know zilch.

GWB's initial '9/11 revenge action' against Osama Bin Laden did dismiss the Taliban government, but failed totally to do anything about OBL.

The situation needs some radical thinking:

- Get the shooting squaddies and GIs (and much more importantly, those who target the drones) out, immediately, and leave Afghanistan to mend itself.

- Take a quarter of the budget allowance for the Afghan War, and divide it between the Afghan government and foreign & local NGOs, and see who does best.

- Let Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to argue the Durand Line for years to come, with neither of them able to come to terms with the Pathans.

But first, get the hell out, before something like Flashman's experience happens again.

It continue to be a huge embarassment to all White people to have White people living in a colony in the middle of Arabia - of all places - and behaving in this way. It gives all White people a bad name there. Remember Israel was set up by Whites from Eastern Europe, without any blood-relationship to 'The Tvelve Tribes of Israel' at all. These people are at the same time the most virulent.

A Russian Empire problem
7 out of 8 of the following born there

Israel was created due to The Russian Empire's mistreatment of its Jews. It was not Maroccan or Iranian Jews that set Israel up, but people like:

• Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl ('Theodor Herzl') born in Budapest, Hungary.

• Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky ('Ze'ev Jabotinsky') born in Odessa in The Russian Empire.

• Chaim Azriel Weizmann born in The Russian Empire. (now Belarus)

• David Grün ('David Ben Gurion') born in The Russian Empire. (now Poland)

• Szymon Perski ('Shimon Peres') born in The Russian Empire. (now Belarus)

• Mieczys?aw Biegun ('Menachem Begin') born in The Russian Empire (now Belarus).

• Icchak Jeziernicky. ('Yitzhak Shamir') born in The Russian Empire (now Belarus).

• Ariel Scheinermann ('Ariel Sharon') born in Germany to parents from The Russian Empire. (now Belarus)

Prof. Walt,
you mention above that the presence of U.S. forces on Saudi Arabian soil were the main motivation for 9/11.

Here is what the 9/11 commission report says were the motivations of 9/11's mastermind Khaled Sheik Mohammed (KSM):

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/fullreport.pdf

page 154

"........KSM himself was to land the tenth plane at a U.S. airport and, after killing all adult male passengers on board and alerting the media, deliver a speech excoriating U.S. support for Israel, the Philippines, and repressive governments in the Arab world."

======

You will note that, according to the 9/11 commission, the primary motivation behind 9/11 was U.S. support of Israel, not the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

Q.E.D.

I am a great admirer of Stephen Walt’s theoretical work, and perhaps he is right about the desire for democratization clouding our pure pursuit of America’s interests, or not, depending on which side of the debate you fall.

But as a realist, how can he say with certainty that the invasion of Iraq was an “obvious blunder” while the balancing dynamics and (ensuing stability) of the region are still playing out? Is a dominating Iran in the Middle East any worse than a dominating Iraq with a belligerent, militarily aggressive Saddam Hussein would have been? At least Iran has the subtlety to fight its wars with its neighbors through proxy organizations. Saddam would attack his neighbors outrightly given the slightest pretext for action, and if he didn’t have a pretext, he would make one up (see: Iran-Iraq war, Kuwait invasion).

Your analysis of Afghanistan imbroglio is well-balanced and largely correct.But I disagree with certain arguments given in this blog and the earlier one. I agree that the primary US objective in the Afghanistan is the elimination of safe havens for terrorists. And I also agree with the thesis that US should focus on extrication strategy and not build up forces in Afghanistan.However, the observation that this US national interest is attainable without giving much thought to " who rules in Afghanistan" is dangerous as well as foolish.US should be concerred about "who rules in Afghanistan",though, without undertaking massive political as well as social re-engineering in Afghanistan. The key to success in Afghanistan lies in finding political reconciliation by involving different regional players. Most of these regional actors are engaged in zero sum game; however, their interests also converge in certain areas: halting spread of Islamic extremism and proliferation of drugs. US should strive to set up a government in Afghanistan acceptable to different Afghan groups as well regional power players.This government should be butteressed with economic aid as well as better-equipped security apparatus.Without taking into account Afghan power dynamics,neither military build up nor withdrawal of forces can guarantee success of US national interests.

there were some foreign policy decision that had no history preceding it, or that most foreign policy decisions are synoptic rather than incrementalist, when the reverse is true. There are always antecedents, and depending on how one writes the narrative, big outcomes can always appear the accumulations of lots of small decisions. How did we end up in Vietnam? It's hard to find instances like NSC-68.