Pubdate: Thu, 20 Sep 2001
Source: Metro (CA)
Copyright: Metro Publishing Inc.
Contact:  http://www.metroactive.com/metro/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/261
Author: Dan Pulcrano
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

BIN LADEN, THE TALIBAN AND THE CIA

They don't soundbite as well as "wanted, dead or alive," but many ways 
exist to improve the safety of air travel besides invading Afghanistan. 
Among them are the placement air marshalls on flights, armored cockpit 
doors, better trained and paid airport scanner operators, passenger 
screening, luggage searches, less combustible jet fuel, an alert citizenry 
and perhaps developing communications and guidance systems that would 
coexist with passenger cellular telephone use.

The combination of lax airport security, foreign policy arrogance and the 
failure to come to grips with known threats proved a deadly cocktail. This 
is not to transfer culpability from the perpetrators to the victims--only 
to say that we must take responsiblility for our own security in a poor and 
dangerous world, one that will always contain safety risks for traveling 
U.S. citizens.

It is, of course, unfashionable amidst the present hysteria to advocate 
sensible approaches to international security problems that should have 
been addressed ten or more years ago by implementing solutions which have 
been commonplace overseas for many years. The national imperative for 
cathartic retribution, nurtured by a spontaneous explosion of patriotism 
and "Attack on America" broadcasts, answers a deep need inside us to the 
powerlessness we feel in an age of technologies we no longer control.

While some type of tightly focused military action is no doubt needed to 
destroy the capablilities and psychological resolve of global terrorists 
and their suppporters, any imprudent actions will have to bow to the law of 
unintended consequences.

We must remember that, like Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden is a rogue 
product of America's international security machine. Around 1980, the 
hard-drinking nascent polygamist hooked up with the Afghan resistance, 
which at the time was America's best answer to Soviet expansionism. Several 
billion of our tax dollars, funneled through the CIA and the Pakistani 
Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), was spent to fund, import and arm 
radical Islamic warriors, some of whom organized under the flag of bin 
Laden's Maktab al-Khidima and, later, the Taliban. After driving the 
Soviets from Afghanistan, a sophisticated network of paid, professional 
terrorists emerged. "The CIA made the historic mistake of encouraging 
Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan," recalled 
Selig Harrison, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International 
Center, according to news reports. "I warned them that we were creating a 
monster."

The Taliban has remained on the U.S. payroll to this day. Just May 17, 
Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a gift of $43 million to support 
the Taliban's edict to halt opium cultivation-- despite reports that the 
Afghani regime was restricting production during a period of oversupply to 
drive up the prices of the opium they had stockpiled. Afghanistan is the 
source of about 70 percent of the world's heroin. The Taliban has also 
distinguished itself by its medieval treatment of girls and women through 
such Catch-22 legislation as forbidding females from seeing male doctors 
while preventing women from practicing medicine.

Having demonstrated its good judgment by creating, arming and funding the 
Taliban--and, according to Middle Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian, 
providing Mr. Bin Laden with security training--the CIA is now lobbying for 
more funding and fewer restrictions on its activities. President Bush will 
likely lift bans on payments to unsavory characters, and on overseas 
assassinations.

The irony of this will not be overlooked in Jerusalem, which weathered a 
summer of criticism from the Bush-Powell team for its counterterrorism 
activities. Israel has sought to eliminate the Palestinian military leaders 
they believe are responsible for this year's bloody round of mortar attacks 
and suicide bombings at pizzerias, discos and shopping malls. In 
statements, the Secretary of State variously called the Israeli response 
"excessive and disproportionate" and "too aggressive." After an Israeli 
missile attack killed eight people, including three wanted Hamas terrorists 
and two children, Powell said, "We felt that this was a targeted killing of 
the kind that we have spoken out [about] and condemned in the past." In 
August, the State Department's Richard Boucher declared that the US 
believes "the policy of targeted killings is wrong. We don't believe it 
should exist at all."

Suicide attacks somehow warrant a different response when it's your own 
countrymen's blood being spilled. The president's declaration that "We will 
make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and 
those who harbor them" clearly extends the boundaries of acceptable casualties.

With $40 billion approved, the Bush administration can now rewrite the 
rules of US conduct in the world. Tough talk and bold military moves are no 
substitute for an engaged and responsible US foreign policy, including a 
serious effort to broker a Middle East settlement. Smart counterterrorism, 
while sometimes necessitating retaliatory or pre-emptive strikes, should 
focus on prevention and security. The intelligence community should improve 
its information gathering and analysis capablilities, so it doesn't miss 
the next Soviet collapse, Kuwaiti invasion or Pentagon attack. The 
post-Sept. 11 realities should not greenlight an open season for 
assassinations, coups, spy intrigue or funding of irresponsible political 
movements.

As we have seen, the alumni of past CIA adventures can sometimes be a 
bigger problem than if the US hadn't gotten involved in the first place.
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MAP posted-by: Lou King