Will > Books: the-bush-administration‎ (62)

In 2020, after trillions of dollars in military expenditures and multiple wars, a virus originating in a Chinese “wet market” would inflict even mo

In 2020, after trillions of dollars in military expenditures and multiple wars, a virus originating in a Chinese “wet market” would inflict even more economic and human damage. Overcoming the most lethal threats of the twenty-first century—at least those threats that pose the greatest risk to the health and well-being of the average citizen—will require staying the itchy trigger finger of militarized statecraft. Ultimately, achieving true security will require embracing a broader “whole of government” and “whole of nation” set of tools that reflect the full strength of America.

My work in the defense and intelligence space spans more than three decades, and I am vexed by the fact that policies designed to protect America are actually making us less safe. I call this “insanity defense”: doing the same thing again and again and expecting it to enhance our security.

As far as Addington was concerned, when Article II said that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President,” well, that was the end of it—all power, not some power or whatever power Congress provided or allowed. The concept of the “unitary executive,” once an obscure theory at the right fringe of legal thinking, would become the operating manual for the Bush presidency when it came to security policy. I called this a “bloodless coup”—a dramatic power shift in government that occurred almost entirely out of view at the time. Addington was always courtly and polite with me personally. But when it came to any role for Congress, his answer was always a very firm no.

The greater Obama’s frustration with recalcitrant Republican majorities—first the Tea Party–dominated House, then the Mitch McConnell–led Senate—the more he would exercise executive action on a range of issues.

I look at what went wrong—and could go right again—through the lens of my own experience: how political moderates became first hunted and then an endangered species, caught in the crossfire between the far left and the far right. The punishment for bipartisanship became harsh and immediate. The business model shifted from working together to solve urgent problems facing the country to blaming the other side for not solving the urgent problems.

One of many mysteries about Cheney is how someone who had risen to House minority whip while a congressman from Wyoming could become so contemptuous of the institution he once helped lead.

One of the least known yet most consequential documents filed immediately after 9/11 was a memorandum of notification to Congress, commonly referred to as a “finding,” which announced that the CIA would be conducting operations that would not be acknowledged. At the time, this notification, submitted on September 17, 2001, seemed pro forma; we all took it as a given that aggressive covert activity would—indeed, must—be part of our response to the horrific attacks. Yet this same finding would cover the CIA black sites, enhanced interrogations, and targeted killings abroad for nearly two decades.

…violent apocalyptic groups are not inhibited by the possibility of offending their political constituents because they see themselves as participa

…violent apocalyptic groups are not inhibited by the possibility of offending their political constituents because they see themselves as participating in the ultimate battle. Apocalyptic groups are the most likely terrorist groups to engage in acts of barbarism, and to attempt to use rudimentary weapons of mass destruction. Their actions are also significantly harder to predict than the actions of politically motivated groups.

Not only did [ISIS] implement a draconian regime of crime and punishment, which its members believed to be divinely ordained, but it celebrated and painstakingly documented the process in its propaganda, publicizing everything from the destruction of cigarettes and drug stashes to the amputation of thieves hands “under the supervision of trained doctors” to the genocidal extermination and enslavement of Iraqi minorities.

In many ways, the combination of elements was unprecedented. Nazi Germany, whose parallels in propaganda and brutality often invited comparisons to ISIS, had produced masterful propaganda while carrying out a painstakingly documented program of genocide, but these were separate efforts. Its propaganda did not celebrate the genocide; rather it served to justify an imperative to act in the name of national and racial purity without sharing the gruesome reality. The Nazis did not broadcast their atrocities to the world.

In stark contrast, ISIS presented its vision of a demented utopia in which children played with severed heads and ran laughing down streets lined with mangled bodies instead of trees. A seemingly endless procession of atrocities was captured in photographs and videos, and distributed through both official and unofficial channels on social media.

“If the central government doesn’t stay together,” he said, “I’ll have to find a way to protect my people.”
What he said was a bad sign. “My people

“If the central government doesn’t stay together,” he said, “I’ll have to find a way to protect my people.”
What he said was a bad sign. “My people” in Afghanistan means one’s tribe. Very few outside of Kabul thought of themselves as citizens of the country—as Afghans.

“The Taliban is really from Pakistan; they came here to destroy our country. That is clear to everyone,” said Jilani [a former Taliban member]. “In the beginning, I thought it was jihad against international troops, but I found out we were fighting for Pakistani interests—we were getting orders from Pakistan. Most of the leaders are not religious; they want to come to Afghanistan and tax the locals during the time of the harvest and take the money back to Pakistan. There is no jihad.” Jilani said.

The conventional view is that Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor and al-Qaeda’s longtime second in command, was bin Laden’s “brain.” But in making the most important strategic shift in al-Qaeda’s history—identifying the United States as its key enemy, rather than Middle-Eastern regimes—bin Laden brushed aside Zawahiri’s obsessive focus on overthrowing the Egyptian government. Bin Laden also kept Zawahiri in the dark for years about al-Qaeda’s most important operation—the planning for the 9/11 attacks—apprising his deputy only during the summer of 2001.

Mullah Omar was a dim-witted fanatic with significant delusions of grandeur who believed he was on a mission from Allah.

This was post facto rationalization of al-Qaeda’s strategic failure. The whole point of the 9/11 attacks had been to get the United States out of the Muslim world, not to provoke it into invading and occupying Afghanistan and overthrowing al-Qaeda’s closest ideological ally, the Taliban. September 11, in fact, resembled Pearl Harbor. Just as the Japanese scored a tremendous tactical victory on December 7, 1941, they also set in motion a chain of events that led to the eventual collapse of imperial Japan. So, too, the 9/11 attacks set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the destruction of much of al-Qaeda and, eventually, the death of its leader.

Once the institution settles on a perspective and a course of action, it interprets other views as proofs of error. Critical thought degenerates into orthodoxy…One risks excommunication to challenge orthodoxy, even if it maintains that the sun revolves around the earth, or that we must sacrifice humans to propitiate the gods, or, well, that men are not quite what we believed.

Condemning individual acts is easy and avoids the explosive—perhaps insoluble—social dilemmas that come from rational analysis and open discourse about any faith. Condemming jihadists avoids passing judgment about beliefs. But tolerance, which is fundamental for a diverse society that prizes inquiry, can have the by-product of intellectual and moral relativism, which dulls thought and creates its own taboos against critical analysis of the implications of any belief.

The very concept of a civil society is incompatible with a totalitarian religion. But if jihadists represented a distilled version of broadly shared beliefs, if men burned blasphemers alive, if bearded bombers were the champions of a prim matron’s faith, then one was confronted with the awkward, the perilous, obligation to acknowledge that some religious or philosophical views were incompatible and irreconcilable with the fundamental liberal values of Western civilization.

…bin Laden’s grand project—to transform the Muslim world into a militant Islamist caliphate—has been, by any measure, a resounding failure. In large part, that’s because bin Laden’s strategy for arriving at this Promised Land is a fantasy. Al-Qaeda’s leader prides himself on being a big-think strategist, but for all his brains, leadership skills, and charisma, he fastened on an overall strategy that is self-defeating. Bin Laden’s main goal is to bring about regime change in the Middle East and to replace the governments in Cairo and Riyadh with Taliban-style rule. He believes that the way to accomplish this is to attack the “far enemy”(the United States), then watch as the supposedly impious, U.S.-backed Muslim regimes he calls the “near enemy” collapse.

…Not only did bin Laden not achieve his war aims, but the attacks on Washington and New York resulted in the direct opposite of his stated goal of forcing a U.S withdrawal from Muslim lands.

Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a Yemeni doctor who was treating the al-Qaeda wounded…said he personally told bin Laden that, if they did not leave Tora Bora soon, “no one would stay alive” under the American bombardment. But the al-Qaeda leader seemed mainly preoccupied with his own escape. “He did not prepare himself for Tora Bora,” Batarfi said, “and to be frank he didn’t seem to care about anyone but himself.”

what was especially cynical about the charge that the media was ignoring the “good news” was that the Iraq War was the most dangerous war the press had covered since World War II. Some 130 journalists were killed in the Iraqi conflict, more than double the number that had died in Vietnam. Indicative of how dangerous it became were the physical changes that took place over the course of the was at the Baghdad bureau of the New York Times, which gradually morphed into a fortress festooned with searchlights and machine gun emplacements on the roof, surrounded by concrete blast walls, a foot thick and twenty feet high, protected by forty armed guards.