Bryen - The Taliban and the PLO

Shoshana Bryen..
American Thinker..
10 January '12..

The story below is not a history lesson; it is a cautionary tale. What happens when the United States ignores the nature and behavior of an adversary and pretends that a) people wedded to a violent ideology and believing deeply in their ultimate victory will accept less and allow their enemy to "win" as well; and b) legitimizes them and providing concessions will get them to do it? (And as a cautionary tale, Israel having experienced the outcome of  this failed conception, should do its best not to repeat it. Y.)

In 2006, a 1973 State Department memo regarding the murder of two American and one Belgian diplomat in Sudan was declassified. It acknowledged, "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and head of Fatah."

That was generally believed to be the case, but still it was a shock to see that the United States government had known (then) for 33 years that Arafat, murderer of Israelis and Jews, was also the murderer of Cleo Noel, George Curtis Moore, and Guy Eid, Western diplomats in service. The three were machine-gunned to death with the "full knowledge and personal approval" of the man with whom the U.S. government opened relations during the Reagan administration with the "full knowledge and personal approval" of Colin Powell, then-NSC adviser to the president and later secretary of State, the person responsible for American diplomats abroad. (Powell told a small group -- of which I was a member -- that "everyone has something to say, and we should offer them the opportunity to say it.")

The world could have been spared a lot of trouble if the U.S. government had told what it knew in 1973. Arafat might not have become an acceptable interlocutor for the United States. He might not have been someone for whom the U.S. government betrayed people who worked and died in its service. He might not have become a "partner" for an unwilling Israel, pressured by the United States.

Instead, the State Department hid its contemporaneous knowledge of Arafat's crime against American diplomats in hopes of enticing/bribing him to make peace with Israel.

"... working to understand ..."

Soccer Dad
02 June '10

Political punch

"The United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy," said deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton in Chicago, where the President Obama and his family have been spending the holiday weekend.

The Washington Post reported the other day, U.S. commander says some Taliban fighters are training in Iran:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal told reporters in Kabul that Iran -- Afghanistan's western neighbor -- has generally assisted the Afghan government in fighting the insurgent group.

Is President Obama working to understand why a putative friend of the United States has aligned itself with a regime that is fighting against the United States? Is he working to understand why Turkey sent terrorists to attack Israel?

And the New York Times reported, Tehran Moves to Thwart Protests on Election Anniversary:

Moving to thwart any protests on the anniversary of a disputed election, the authorities in Iran have ordered at least two million paramilitary members into Tehran, re-arrested dissident activists furloughed from prison and aggressively enforced public bans on mingling of the sexes and un-Islamic women's clothing.

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The Obama Administration And Hezbollah: Looking For Moderates In All The Wrong Places (Again)

Daled Amos
21 May '10

Who can forget the last time the Obama Administration had decided to root out the moderates of an otherwise radical organization? Last year in March we read:

Biden: Taliban negotiations likely

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Tuesday that 70 percent of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan are essentially mercenaries who possibly could be negotiated with instead of fought, and said the United States likely will try this approach.

...President Obama on Friday left open the door to negotiating with elements of the Taliban as part of a counterinsurgency strategy first conceived and carried out in Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus, the former commander of military forces in Iraq who now oversees military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan as commander of CentCom.

In response to a question about how many of the Taliban might be considered "moderate" and therefore open to reconciliation, Mr. Biden ticked off some percentages.

"Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, [of] the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency," Mr. Biden said during a press conference.

"And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being . . . paid," he said.

Now we are hearing about another attempt to find moderates to negotiate with--this time in Hezbollah. After failing to negotiate with the Iranians or to pull Syria away from Iran, now the US is reduced to finding moderates among a terrorist organization.

U.S. wants to build up Hezbollah moderates: adviser

The Obama administration is looking for ways to build up "moderate elements" within the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla movement and to diminish the influence of hard-liners, a top White House official said on Tuesday.

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White House Ignores Iran’s Help to Al-Qaida in its Passion over Jerusalem Apartments

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
20 March '10

The United States is at war with al-Qaida. Al-Qaida carried out the attack on the World Trade Center that killed 3,000 Americans. Al-Qaida is killing Americans in Iraq and elsewhere. So one would think the fact that al-Qaida has found a powerful ally would be a big story in the American media and by a big priority for setting off U.S. government anger.

And this would be especially so if that was explained by one of the most respected men in the country, a man who has access to the highest-level intelligence.

Not at all.

In the same testimony which created lots of discussion regarding remarks on the Israel-Palestinian issue, General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, revealed a bombshell story that has been ignored: Iran is helping al-Qaida attack Americans.

Iran, he said in military-speak, provides "a key facilitation hub, where facilitators connect al Qaida's senior leadership to regional affiliates." Translation: Tehran is letting al-Qaida leaders travel freely back and forth to Pakistan and Afghanistan, using its territory as a safe haven, while permitting them to hold meetings to plan terrorist attacks for attacking U.S. targets and killing Americans. While nominally Iran sometimes takes these people into custody, that seems, Petraeus says, a fiction to fool foreigners.

Oh, and Petraeus added that Iran also helps the Taliban fight America in Afghanistan. Regarding Iraq, the general explains, "The Qods Force [an elite Iranian military group within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] also maintains its lethal support to Shia Iraqi militia groups, providing them with weapons, funding and training,"

(Read full post)
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Hezbollah Isn’t a Model for Afghanistan

Michael J. Totten

Contentions/Commentary

14 October 09

In a new Web exclusive, Michael J. Totten deconstructs the argument that turning the Taliban into a version of Hezbollah should be the focus of our efforts in that war-torn country. Here’s a preview:

According to the Washington Post, some White House foreign-policy hands may be willing to call it a day in Afghanistan if the U.S. military can beat the Taliban down into something that resembles Hezbollah. I suppose I can see why this appeals to those who know just enough about the Taliban to think it’s possible, and just enough about Hezbollah to think it’s desirable.

Hezbollah is moderate and almost reasonable compared with the Taliban. It participates in democratic politics and even conceded the most recent election to Lebanon’s “March 14″ coalition. Not even its worst fanatics throw acid in the faces of unveiled women as the Taliban does. Its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, doesn’t require women to wear headscarves, let alone body-enveloping burkhas, in territory he controls. While the Taliban destroyed ancient Buddha statues in Bamyan with anti-aircraft guns in 2001, the Roman Empire’s Temple of Bacchus, where Western imperialists used to hold pagan orgies, remains an unmolested tourist attraction bang in the middle of Hezbollah’s Bekaa Valley stronghold. Oh, and Hezbollah hasn’t killed any Americans in Lebanon lately.

So, yes, Afghanistan would be a better place if it suffered the likes of Hezbollah instead of the Taliban. But prosecuting a war for that outcome would be bonkers. Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy militia and a Lebanese guerrilla army that starts wars with the country next door and violently assaults its own capital. It’s also a global terrorist network with cells on five continents. … [read on]

Related: Legitmizing Terrorist Organizations Will Not Make ...

Legitmizing Terrorist Organizations Will Not Make Them Placid Rulers

JINSA Report #930
jinsa.org
09 October 09

[The Nobel Committee gave the Peace Prize to President Obama because he can visualize a world without nuclear weapons -or because he isn't President Bush. Big deal. Since they gave it to Yasser Arafat, it hasn't been worth "a bucket of warm spit," to paraphrase John Nance Garner.]

The more important story in today's paper is the public emergence in the Administration of the idea that "political wings" of terror organizations should be recognized as legitimate. Accordingly, the Taliban wouldn't need to be defeated, just de-fanged. The Washington Post cites a "senior administration official" saying, "The Taliban is a deeply rooted political movement in Afghanistan, so that requires a different approach than al Qaeda." Hezbollah's political ascendance in Lebanon was referred to by "some inside the White House" as a positive transformation from a terrorist organization to a political party. Hamas, no doubt, is not far behind.

Press Secretary Gibbs pointed out, "There is clearly a difference between" the Taliban and "an entity that, through a global, transnational jihadist network, would seek to strike the U.S. homeland...the Taliban are, obviously, exceedingly bad people that have done awful things...Their capability is somewhat different, though, on that continuum of transnational threat."

There are three underlying assumptions: 1) there are separate and identifiable political and military "wings," the former of which can be persuaded to give up the latter; 2) no matter what crimes an organization commits-against its own people or other people-if some portion of its leadership agrees to participate in politics, the United States will accept it as legitimate; and 3) if it doesn't threaten Americans at home, we don't care who else it threatens.

The first is demonstrably untrue. Chickens have "wings," terrorist organizations have a political leadership that uses military force to impose itself on its own people and make war on others. Hezbollah and Hamas emerged as political players precisely when they had the military force to impose themselves on the Lebanese and Palestinian people respectively-and to make war on Israel. Fatah, before Hamas, did the same. It is unclear in the case of the Taliban who the political leaders are and how/why they should give up their arms. The Taliban is enormously unpopular inside Afghanistan; its ability to terrorize the locals is the only reason it is taken seriously by the United States in the first place.

The second speaks ill of the U.S. government. We used to be (sometimes rightly) accused of cozying up to dictators and ignoring the people they abused at home. The Bush administration tried the opposite approach in Iraq-freeing the Iraqi people from a dictator who was killing people in horrifying numbers, to judge from the mass graves uncovered. Critics condemned "nation building" as colonialist and our efforts in Iraq as "occupation." The current administration has returned to American form-declining to meet the Dalai Lama as a nod to China; playing footsie with Venezuela, Nicaragua, Egypt and Cuba; and now suggesting we could live with the Taliban even if the Afghans would be returned to the decade-long nightmare from which the United States rescued them in 2001.

The third is shortsighted in the extreme, for two reasons: First, because they haven't doesn't mean they won't. There was a time before al Qaeda could strike us in our homeland. Hezbollah, until 9-11, had killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization-and never killed one of us here at home. Terrorist organizations are parasites that need organisms upon which to feed as they grow in size and capability. The United States is not just at war with al Qaeda, or the Taliban-or Hezbollah, for that matter. We are at war with terrorists and the states that harbor and support them. To the extent that we help terrorist organizations BECOME the states that harbor and support terrorist organizations, we ensconce permanent sources of nutrition for the parasites. Lebanon cannot escape Hezbollah; the Palestinians will never escape Hamas if the United States and the EU engage it; Afghanistan will never escape the Taliban if we legitimize them in government.

Which is the second reason that considering threats only to the American homeland is shortsighted. The ideologically like-minded come together to attack "the other." Hezbollah, armed and trained by Iran, threatens the Lebanese people, Israel, Egypt and Jordan. Hamas, increasingly allied with Iran, threatens Jordan as well as Israel. Venezuela and Iran support the FARC, which threatens Colombia. The Taliban, with its military and ideological links to al Qaeda, threatens the Afghan people and Pakistan.

If we consider threats to our friends or allies to be irrelevant to us, at some point they will find it worthless-or dangerous-to be our friends or allies.
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