History News Network

http://chnm.gmu.edu/hnn/

6-3-02

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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The Downside to the Bush Doctrine (On View in South Asia Now)



By Juan Cole



Mr. Cole is professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan



Does the current conflict between India and Pakistan show that President George W. Bush made an error in issuing his Bush Doctrine in the wake of September 11? The U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan was, in fact, authorized by NATO and by the Security Council of the United Nations. Instead of stressing the resulting legitimacy of his military campaign, however, Bush preferred unilateral pronouncements. He wanted the terrorists “Dead or Alive,” invoking the cowboy ethos of the old American West.



The Bush doctrine holds that harboring international terrorists makes a country a pariah and authorizes unilateral military action against it. The doctrine allows for none of the ambiguities that plague interpretations of terrorism in the real world. All world leaders facing any sort of insurgency have invoked the Bush doctrine in recent months, from Israel’s Ariel Sharon to India’s Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.



Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in London last fall, "We have to go beyond al-Qaida in our war against terrorism and target all sponsors who finance, train, equip and harbor terrorists." His reference was to the help that India believes is given by Pakistan to guerilla groups fighting to detach Kashmir from India.



This most current of crises is deeply rooted in history. In 1947, the British colonial possessions in South Asia were partitioned into a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. The major issue that partition left unresolved was the fate of the northern province of Kashmir. Its Hindu raja, Hari Singh, acceded to India even though most of his subjects were Muslims. His autocratic decision provoked popular uprisings.



As Sikh and Hindu volunteers flocked to the aid of the raja, and Muslim fighters came over from Pakistan, India flew troops to Kashmir and fought the Pakistani army to a standstill. The British negotiator of partition, Lord Mountbatten, stipulated that Kashmir’s accession to India was provisional and subject to a popular plebiscite. Later United Nations Council Resolutions concurred. The Indian government rejected the idea of a referendum and the notion of any outside interference, simply claiming Kashmir as its own.



India and Pakistan have fought three major wars, two of them largely over the Kashmir issue.



From the early 1990s, a local popular insurgency in Kashmir, which seeks independence rather than union with Pakistan, has roiled Indian politics. India responded with harsh military reprisals. In the past 11 years some 34,000 Kashmiris have died in the resulting violence, many of them innocent civilians.



Pakistani irregulars called jihadis have supported annexation of Kashmir by going over the border to hit Indian targets. They were given clandestine logistical aid, training and weaponry by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In the 1990s, the ISI helped create the Taliban and supported terrorist training camps in Afghanistan largely in order to gain “strategic depth” in the struggle with India. Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a coup in 1999, is known as a hawk on the Kashmir issue. As head of the military, he had brought Pakistan and India to the brink of war earlier that year over the Kargil section of Kashmir.



Musharraf was forced to turn on the Taliban in the aftermath of September 11, and he cracked down on the Afghan-linked guerilla groups in Pakistan. He has played a key role as an ally of the U.S. in its war on terror. His ardor over Kashmir has, however, not cooled. Jihadis still make their way from Pakistan to Kashmir, hitting Indian targets, with or without government backing. Pakistani groups even attacked the Indian Parliament on December 13 of last year. It is unclear whether Musharraf simply cannot stop the terrorists, or whether his military government is still lukewarm about trying to do so.



India has massed 700,000 troops in Kashmir, and Pakistan has virtually its entire army of 400,000 at the front, as well. Both countries have nuclear weapons capabilities, and both Vajpayee and Musharraf seem naïve about the way in which conventional war could turn nuclear if either state felt sufficiently threatened.



If George W. Bush had appealed to the NATO and Security Council decisions on collective security in justifying his war in Afghanistan, he would have deprived others of a pretext for go-it-alone attacks. The invocation of the Bush Doctrine by the Vajpayee government is chilling in its threat of unilateral military action against a foe perceived to harbor terrorists. A world of nuclear powers cannot afford to have its leaders playing Wyatt Earp.

Deterrence and the Bush Doctrine



Juan Cole



Whatever Ikle's (and Lowry's) point of view represents, it is some fringe

in the Republican Party but certainly not the stance of George W. Bush.

Bush has been meticulous since September 11 in addressing and wooing

Muslim audiences and emphasizing that Muslims are not the enemy, terrorism

is. All the major spokesmen of the Bush administration have pronounced

themselves very pleased with Saudi Arabia's help since September 11, and

there is no hint that Bush himself would ever think of the frankly insane

idea of menacing the holy cities.





Right from September 20, Bush told Congress, "The terrorists practice a

fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars

and the vast majority of Muslim clerics -- a fringe movement that perverts

the peaceful teachings of Islam." He has repeated this formula over and

over again, to the point where he has been criticized by anti-Muslim

zealots for engaging in Muslim theology.





The culprit seeking nuclear weaponry is Iraq and possibly al-Qaida itself,

not Saudia. Bush gets along with CP Abdullah just fine from all accounts,

with help from George H.W. Bush (senior).





It is not true that Bush no longer needs the Muslims since the Taliban

fell so easily. The war on terror is a global effort of

counter-insurgency, and it can no more be won without Muslim help than the

British could have defeated the Communists in Malaysia without the help of

Muslim villagers. Bush knows this very well.





Nor is it true that nothing positive links the US with Saudia in the wake

of oil nationalization. Refining operations are often still cooperative

in some ways; owning the oil isn't everything. And, the Saudis clearly

often employ their ability to virtually set the price of oil in ways that

benefit the U.S., as they did after September 11 when they refused to seek

new OPEC quotas in the face of falling oil prices. None of this is lost

on any American administration, regardless of what the spear bearers write

in op ed pieces.





What al-Qaida is hoping for is precisely that attacks like that of

September 11 will goad the United States into doing something extremely

foolish that will decisively alienate the entire Muslim world.

Al-Qaida's constituent parts have been trying assiduously for a decade or

two decades to overthrow the Algerian and Egyptian governments and to push

Israel back. They dream of uniting the entire Middle East, adding the

talents and population of Egypt to the oil money of the Gulf, creating a

new superpower under a revived caliphate. They got nowhere, and blame this

failure in large part on the United States' strong backing for these

states. September 11 was aimed at making it more costly for the U.S. to

support the status quo in the region, at pushing it out, and if that

failed, at making it lash out at Islam in a way that would, as the

marxists used to say, clarify the contradictions. This would create a

vast anti-American backlash throughout the Muslim world, crippling the

pro-American states and making them ripe for overthrow by the jihadis.





Ikle and Lowry in talking the way they did about nuking Mecca might as

well have just enlisted in al-Qaida and had done with it.





Sincerely,







Juan Cole

U of Michigan

More on Ikle and Nuking Mecca



To: gulf2000 list

Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2002 09:39:53 -0400

From: Juan Cole





There is a difference between believing in freedom of speech and believing

in giving prominent press platforms to hate speech. I believe Mr. Ikle

should be free to believe and to say anything he likes. I don't believe

the editors of the Wall Street Journal have a responsibility to print

anything he says. Indeed, I believe they have a responsibility not to

print hate speech.





It is quite ironic that universities are derided by the Right as lacking

in free speech rights. In fact, almost any opinion can be heard on U.S.

campuses. Rightwing populist Bill O'Reilly addressed an overflow crowd at

Harvard recently. It is true that some opinions get heckled, but that is

free speech too. In contrast to university settings, in the private

sector--from whence this critique comes--there is no freedom of speech

whatsoever. Employees of private companies can be summarily fired for

their political views, for trying to organize unions, etc. A friend of

mine lost her job at a bank because she attended a non-violent

demonstration. (The first amendment only protects you from reprisals by

the Federal government.) Persons are not expelled from universities for

attending non-violent demonstrations.





I think we should loudly condemn bigotry no matter from where it issues.

More especially when that bigotry is expressed by a prominent former

official of the U.S. government in among the leading newspapers in the

United States. The issue as to whether the expression of bigotry should

be allowed is quite a different one. In my view it should--as long as it

does not constitute an immediate incitement to violence or

law-breaking--but those espousing it should be obliged to buy an orange

crate to stand on in the park, not given an internationally respected

press platform for their views.





Before the rise of the neocons in the 1970s, it was well understood by

minority communities in the United States that they had to work against

bigotry in general. Because if an atmosphere was created or allowed to

persist that allowed one minority group to be targeted, it had the

potential to boomerang on the others, as well. Racialist hatred is no

respecter of persons. Now I perceive a cockiness among some minorities in

the U.S., such that they--former victims of discrimination--advocate

racial profiling and discrimination, even demonization, for some. I

solemnly predict that if they continue on this path, they will eventually

come deeply to regret it, as shall we all.





Sincerely,





Juan Cole

U of Michigan



www.juancole.com

Ikle on Nuking Mecca: Or, Racism Lives



Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2002 14:17:39 -0400

From: Juan Cole





Re: Fred Ikle, Stopping the Next Sept. 11

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110001790



Where Ikle writes: "Those who out of cowardice use their wealth to pay danegeld to the

preachers of hate and destruction must be taught that this aggression will

boomerang. A nuclear war stirred up against the "infidels" might end up

displacing Mecca and Medina with two large radioactive craters."



Cole replies:



My problem with the racist invocation of nuking Mecca and Medina on the

Right (first Lowry [see below] and now Ikle) is that it is ignorant,

counterproductive, and monstrous.



It is ignorant because if the point is to menace the Saudis into ceasing

their export of Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world, the center of

Wahhabism is Riyadh and Najd, not the Hijaz where Mecca and Medina are

located. Indeed, the Hijaz has been, along with Shi`ite al-Hasa, a major

center of Muslim opposition to Wahhabism ever since the Saudi conquest of

1924-26, and a hotbed of Sufism, non-Hanbali law, and Muslim

cosmopolitanism (because of the pilgrimage and the desire of Muslims from

all over the world to study and live near these sacred centers). So, it

seems a hard thing that Mecca and Medina should be obliterated for the

(alleged) sins of the Wahhabis.



It is counterproductive because Mecca and Medina are very dear to the

hearts of all Muslims, even secular ones. The very mention of "nuking

Mecca" stings their eyes to tears and enrages them. There are over a

billion Muslims in the world and there are going to be 2 billion before

very long. The task of the United States is to get them on its side, not

to alienate or enrage them. This is something George W. Bush, himself a

man of faith, understood instinctively, and got perfectly correct after

September 11. The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of itself for

printing this kind of drivel, and Mr. Ikle should be ashamed of himself

for writing it.



It is monstrous because it is morally bankrupt to threaten nuclear

holocaust against millions of innocent persons and against the center of a

world religion. Lowry and Ikle no doubt deeply disliked the Latin

American liberation theologians who melded Catholic theology with leftist

ideas. Did they therefore advocate nuking the Vatican? What is the

difference between talking about nuking Mecca for political purposes and

Mulla Omar's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, which was rightly

denounced as barbaric? (The difference is that no human beings were

vaporized at Bamiyan).



I have asked it before, and ask it now again. What would happen to the

editor of an op-ed page who allowed a columnist to call for nuking the

Vatican or the Wailing Wall? Would we consider such an organ part of the

civilized world? Isn't the real reason this sort of thing is allowed is

that anti-Arab racism is still considered acceptable at the cocktail

parties of the American wealthy? Why aren't Paul Gigot and James Taranto

forced to resign over this monstrosity?





Sincerely,





Juan Cole

U of Michigan

Iraq and September 11



Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 22:37:27 -0400 (EDT)

To: gulf2000 list

Subject: Re: Laurie Mylroie: Iraq, the Strategic Blunder, NRO



The media industry around sabre rattling toward Iraq continues to

flourish. But I just spent a week in Turkey talking to ordinary people,

and I want to report that Turks are terrified of an Iraq war. Their

economy has been badly battered by September 11 and its aftermath, which

has devastated tourism and by the extended US recession, which has hurt

Turkish exports. This is on top of an economic crisis that cut the value

of the lira in half against the dollar. Virtually everyone I asked told

me that an Iraq campaign next year had the potential for casting them all

into penury. They also, of course, worry that if the Kurds are stirred up

in Iraq, it will eventually spill over into eastern Turkey. Since the

Wolfowitz doctrine of eternal war does require the U.K. and Turkey as

permanent allies, pursuing a policy that has the potential to hurt Turkey

so badly is possibly self-contradictory.





As for the Mylroie piece in National Review Online, it is frankly full of

illogic, innuendo and drum-beating and completely lacking in any evidence

for sweeping assertions. We professors can't help grading papers. This

one flunks.





The piece begins with September 11 and then says that al-Qaida could not

have pulled it off on its own. This is simply not true. The September 11

operation was not in fact terribly complex. It simply required 4 nearly

simultaneous airplane hijackings. It required that some of the hijackers

have attended flight school and know how to operate at a very basic level

the largely computerized flight equipment. It required that they be able

to follow the Hudson river valley and be able to bank. It required that

they hijack planes headed for the West Coast from the East, to ensure they

were loaded with fuel, to act as a bomb. The whole operation probably

cost less than $500,000. You did not need a government to plan this

operation or execute it, which is why it is so frightening. It is a

perfect example of asymmetry. The operation exploited a few basic holes

in U.S. air security, including an assumption that the hijackers would not

blow themselves up along with their planes.





Ms. Mylroie goes on to say that documentation on September 11 in

Afghanistan is slim. Duh. A top secret operation should not have a big

paper trail. If possible everything should be kept oral. *However*, there

are some very significant pieces of evidence locating the planning for the

operation in Afghanistan. The money trail goes back to the UAE and thence

to Pakistan. (Not to Baghdad). Atta and others went to Afghanistan for

training. Al-Qaida informants report seeing some of the hijackers in

al-Qaida camps. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar met with the al-Qaida

station chief in Malaysia before going on to San Diego. Many of the

hijackers were Saudi, which is what one would expect if they were linked

to Bin Ladin. No Iraqis were involved. And, Bin Ladin has been caught on

tape talking about the planning of the operation! Although Ahmed Ressam

(now in federal penitentiary), Djemal Baghal of Algeria (now in prison in

France) and Ra'id Hijazi (now in prison in Jordan) have given extensive

information on al-Qaida activities that has been proven accurate, *none*

has ever so much as mentioned any Iraqi role. Abu Zubayda, Bin Ladin's

Palestinian right hand man now in custody, seems also to be voluble, and

if he were fingering Iraq I think we may be assured we would have heard

about it.





There is no credible evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11.

Nor is there any evidence that I can accept as a professional historian

linking Iraq to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Indeed, the

evidence that al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah planned and executed 1993 is

overwhelming, and the amateurish way it was carried out is evidence in

itself that it was not a sophisticated state operation. Allegations,

assertions, suspicions, and overly complex conspiracy theories abound in

history. Professional historians are trained to weight the evidence and

sort it as to likelihood. Historians of the Middle East have perhaps been

insufficiently responsible in intervening in contemporary history, where

their professional skills are increasingly important. In fact, I would

argue that September 11 would only have been launched by an asymmetric

organization like al-Qaida, not by a state. If a state launched it, it

would be an obvious casus belli and the state officers could expect to

meet the world's most powerful nation in all-out war. Saddam Hussein is a

brutal, crafty dictator, but he is not that stupid and rather likes being

in power.





Atta may or may not have met with the Iraqi intelligence chief, al-Ani, in

Prague. There are conflicting reports and the most recent public

assessments by Western intelligence agencies deny the meeting. If it did

occur, it almost certainly centered on the possibility of blowing up the

Radio Free Europe offices--not on September 11. Atta by this time had

shaved his beard and adopted a secular lifestyle, and if al-Ani did meet

him, al-Ani would have had no way to know he was al-Qaida. That al-Qaida

was capable of practicing false flag tradecraft toward the Baath Party is

far more plausible than than the Baath Party would get into bed with

radical fundamentalists who want to overthrow secular Arab governments and

resurrect the caliphate.





I continue to be skeptical that Saudi Arabia will lend its air space and

military facilities to a US war on Iraq. And, for technical reasons, I

believe that it would be difficult for the US to prosecute the war without

access to Saudi airspace. In the meantime, unsubstantiated allegations

and blatant illogicalities are not going to be of any help to us as a

nation in determining our security future. In fact, they could lead us in

counter-productive directions. Iraq has never been able to strike at the

US in any significant manner. Al-Qaida has. Al-Qaida is not dead, and,

indeed, may as we speak be attempting to foment nuclear war in South Asia

by terrorist attacks on Indian positions in Kashmir. The Bush

Administration would be well advised to keep its eye on that ball.





Sincerely,





Juan Cole

U of Michigan

Bin Laden's Plan



When I said that "He (OBL) knew what the likely US response would be, and

had thought several steps ahead, as in chess" I was referring to September

and October, when the al-Qaida propaganda machine clearly was way ahead of

the United States. I personally also believe that al-Qaida assassinated

Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, on September 9

quite deliberately because Bin Ladin knew that the US would likely use the

Northern Alliance against him and his Taliban colleagues. He probably

figured that without its most experienced, popular and charismatic leader,

the alliance might fall apart and would be harder to mobilize by the U.S.





I did not mean to imply that Bin Ladin expected the US rather easily to

dislodge the Taliban, as they did Nov.-Dec. Even there, however, it seems

obvious that Bin Ladin had carefully planned what he might do if the US

*was* able to reach into Afghanistan, and that he has successfully eluded

them, along with most of his major lieutenants. I mean, it is really

quite extraordinary that he has eluded capture, and it suggests careful

forethought on his part. I do not believe he is dead. I think he has a

very nicely furnished cave somewhere not far from Khost, maybe on the

Pakistani side of the border. And I do not think we have heard the last

of him. It would be foolish of him to come out in the open after Tora

Bora and frontally challenge the US at this point. Bin Ladin does not

work though frontal challenges, anyway. He strikes sideways.





Sincerely,





Juan Cole

U of Michigan

Bin Laden's Intentions



In his taped interview with Sheikh al-Harbi (or whoever it was), which was probably secretly taped without Usama's knowledge by one of al-Harbi's associates, Bin Ladin says that he was the most optimistic of the al-Qaida high command about the impact of the planes. However, he only thought that the floors above the impact would collapse. There is evidence that the hijackers had engaged in some sophisticated engineering calculations about the amount of fuel on the planes and their likely kinetic impact. The hijackers deliberately took planes heading from the East Coast to California so as to maximize the amount of fuel, which acts as a bomb.



Sheikh Omar `Abdel Rahman, the blind leader of al-Gamaa al-Islamiyah who was implicated in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Towers has admitted in interviews that the truck bomb used then was a poor substitute. What they had wanted to do was put explosives on an airplane, but they could not figure out a way to get the explosives on without tipping security. With an engineer at the head of al-Qaida and with several engineers recruited for the job in Europe, they figured out that the jet fuel itself would act as an explosive.



Ramzi Yousef, who was among the bombers at the World Trade Center in 1993, fled to the Philippines thereafter. He continued to plot there, and worked on a plan to fly an hijacked jet liner into the CIA headquarters. His kitchen accidentally caught on fire in Manila and he fled downstairs. The Philippine police found the plans in his personal effects in the apartment and handed them over to the CIA, which appears to have misplaced them. The Filipino intelligence, afraid it would be blamed for the fiasco, then leaked them to the press.



Ramzi Yousef then went to meet up with his al-Qaida handlers in Pakistan, but was captured by the Pakistani ISI in 1996 and handed over to the Americans.



There is not any doubt that Bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri, Abu Zubaydah and others sat down in a room and planned out the attack on the WTC, down to the details, and speculated as to how much damage it would do. They may have been inspired by Ramzi Yousef's plans. Having been disappointed in 1993, most of them did not expect any sort of collapse. Only Bin Ladin, a trained engineer, believed some floors would collapse, at least above the impact.



The response at al-Jazeera through videotapes by Bin Ladin to the US was thoroughly orchestrated beforehand. He knew what the likely US response would be, and had thought several steps ahead, as in chess. I don't know how to prove this to anyone if they can't see what I think is fairly obvious in the pattern of quick and pertinent response, which dominated the news cycles rather as the Clinton team did via email in the 1992 presidential campaign.



I am a little surprised that the question of Bin Ladin's intentionality, and that of his associates, is any longer being broached.



Sincerely,





Juan Cole

U of Michigan