This sucks:
Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials. Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall…
A week after the Cole bombing, President Bill Clinton vowed to hunt down the plotters and promised, “Justice will prevail…”
Since then, Yemen has refused to extradite Badawi and an accomplice to the United States, where they have been indicted on murder charges. Other Cole conspirators have been freed after short prison terms. At least two went on to commit suicide attacks in Iraq.
All of that “with us or against us” language has been shelved, it seems.
Actions speak louder than words anyway.
Catch you later.
After the war in Europe ended, Churchill sent out squads to eliminate certain Nazis who had carried out Hitler’s orders to kill captured allied military personnel.
These should be hunted the same way.
Well diplomacy did not work, so we might as well talk their language and utilize violence of action to make our point.
What this country badly needs is someone who can command national meida attention on this kind of U.S. governmental inaction, stupidity, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, and communicate about it in a manner such as Reagan could and did, and such as Newt Gingrich can and does, to get the populace up in arms. That would equal a ‘mandate to act’ for the poll-iticians and we just , maybe, might get some action out of those jerks.
Not that I’m counting on that, but at least it would be refreshing to have someone call it what it is. I might be less inclined to jump off high places when thinking about how wishy washy our government is on this stuff and how awful people such as Hillary and Obama are on this topic. Color me depressed.
Lex, you’re a master of understatement on this one.
OK, let’s just say we’re going to be doing business in Yemen. We’ll be leaving a business card, what will it say? What is our product? How will we deliver it?
STEVEC, The problem is very complex, but the successful “radical attitude adjustment” requires many things. The first thing is absolute attention to detail. This is in reference to the letter and the spirit of the law. Failure to do so, results in a loss of trust. Real leaders know how to obey the law on both levels, this is the reason people will trust and follow. The alternative is a loss of trust, once this truly occurs, it can never be truly repaired. It always seems like at times like these, somebody from somewhere, steps up to ’stand in the gap’.
Grumpy
It’s a wonder any of the bombers of the Cole were caught at all. If you want to see what Clinton’s real response to the bombing was, read Louis Freeh’s book “My FBI”. I can summarize it real quick… Bill Clinton lied to us and the world. He said exactly what we, as U.S. citizens, wanted to hear, faked the outrage, and did nothing, despite protests from Freeh and a bunch of others. He wouldn’t even allow our investigators to do their jobs. And I would bet Hillary was right next to her husband, and right with his decision making. And that my friends, makes this election pretty damn important.
The USS Cole was a tragedy indeed-and had Bill Clinton retaliated then against Yemen-the bombers may not have been caught, but at least Yemen would have been made to suffer. Bush could have initatied action against Yemen as soon as he took office if he wanted to, so I would submit there is more than Clinton to blame.
I would point out though that since March 20 2003, the dyamics have changed and the administration has a lot of balls to juggle including Yemen. The US does have a troop presence in the region AND never forget who is Yemen’s neighbor to the north.
Seems to me if anyone needs to get involved its the Saudis. They owe the Bush administration big time. However there is a unique relationship between the Bush family and the house of Saud. The Saudis should be able to influence Yemen to come clean though.
I say it’s time to do it the way the Romans did. We gots lots of salt. We’ll even bring over a RoRo of John Deeres.
Action, indeed, speaks louder than words. Our actions, starting, let’s say with the Carter Administration, have spoken volumes about our willingness to absorb any attack and respond with empty rhetoric.
If Iran engineered an attack on Miami or Baltimore tomorrow, do you think there would be the votes in Congress to issue a declaration of war? I do not.
The Iranian Embassy, the Beirut barracks, the USS Cole, Kobar Towers, …the list is endless, and our responses are predictable and ineffective.
This is one thing about our prosecution of the GWOT that has frustrated me to no end. I cheered when President Bush said the for us or against us line, and I expected him to follow through. He hasn’t… at least not on the level I and many others expected. I can think of a whole laundry list of people and countries that should have been dealt with and haven’t been. Before anyone gets after me for wanting to go to war with everyone, let me just say that there are other ways of dealing with some of these bad actors other than invasion… like no financial or military aid or instituting a sanction regime. I know, it worked so well with Saddam… but, it would be a place to start. With Saddam and Iraq we had several years of it “not working” before we went to war.
Jim C
ASM826: I must confess to an initial “knee-jerk” reaction to your post re: Congress not declaring war if Iran engineered attack on Miami / Baltimore. After a few seconds more to consider, though, I believe you may be at least somewhat correct, if not spot on. I am amazed when I see the, “United We Stand” bumper stickers, as we are anything but.
My Chief on AD once told me that he fears our country has lost it’s resolve to endure a lasting conflict. I scoffed. He was right… and that was 20 years ago.
Byron Audler,
Would you, perhaps, be making reference to the concept of “sewing their fields with salt”? This would sterilize their fields and kill any food crops.
Grumpy
Hellfire–in their ears when you find them.
Give a call to some MOSSAD friends and ask about their MUNICH-HOW TO handbook.
Look!
Up in the sky!
It’s a bird!
It’s a plane!
BOOOM
Well, we don’t want no stinkin’ blue rounds…gimme some nice olive drab and yellow, please!
On the other hand, the kinetics of the dummy rounds would make a statement, too, just now as “explosive.”
With our luck, and some convenient help from the media, even the blue rounds would destroy an orphange or mosque and kill any number of women and chillren.
One thing about the Romans, they played for keeps. They did not become the greatest empire the world has seen by holding press conferences. They did it by killing all those opposed to them, taking their lands, supplanting their government and offering their kids land in trade for service.
Which, of course, Rome fell eventually but I’m thinking there’s a real life lesson, or at least a business less, to be found in their tactics.
One might even write a thesis about it, if one were so inclined and, you know, needed a thesis.
Thing about doing things the Roman way, hard to hide among a civilian populace because all were put to the sword. You had no protection mixing in with civilians. The civilians feared the Romans more than they did their own overlords.
Which, in these modern times, might not be the exact effect we’re looking for. Not to mention the whole responsibility angle. Yemen can be expected to prosecute bombers, but it can’t be expected to prevent them any more than we could have been expected to prevent McVey or the Son Of Sam. Letting them go afterwords? Deserves a little payback, and not just economic.
— Max
Our courts have no say outside the United States jurisdiction, any more than anyone else’s has a say inside our country. The idea of extraditing Yemenis and prosecuting them for murder is ridiculous.
Now, declaring them an enemy to be killed by our military whenever and wherever they are found- I’m behind that 100%. If they’re found within our borders, not only should any police or civilian, or military personnel who kill them be safe from prosecution, but it should be their duty to kill these bastards.
Grumpy: yes, that kind of salt. The Empire of Rome made sure that it’s citizens were safe, and they made sure everyone else knew how.
Not all of them got away. Predator drone killed six of them in Yemen in 2002. Wish partially granted.
That place is a toilet. The average woman has seven children (not counting the many that died in infancy). It’s dirt poor and filled with warlords. Let’s not park a boat there again. It was a bad idea to do so the first time. French tanker also bought it there in 2002, US missionaries were murdered there in 2003.
Djibouti is just across the pond, and we have plenty of forces there.
I wonder…let’s say that HRH or Obama are elected (god forbid!). So they follow thru on their threats and withdraw our troops from Iraq. And the region destablizes, making the horrors we’ve seen already seem like sandbox play.
Who will be blamed? Since you want to blame Bush in part for the failures to secure the prosecution of the USS Cole bombers…would HRH or Obama be to blame for the chaos that would ensue from a withdrawal?
Kris,
You are going to have to clarify the relationship between a civil war in Iraq and government protection of criminals in Yemen.
The region will not destabilize if we withdraw from Iraq. Iraq will-or maybe it will not- as the Iraqis may actually pull themselves together with out the crutch of US support. ( Besides no one has proposed we not provide air and logistics support-so like the ARVN they will still have a decisive advantage over the insurgents).
Either way it has little do with Yemen. The rest of the region will business as usual so long as Saudi Arabia remains as it is now and the trucial states continue to grow economically.
And if we stay in Iraq? Plenty of other places for people who like bombs to go. Which is kind of the point……….the US still has just as much threat as it had prior to 2003.
Read the essay here for more detail.
Kris / Skippy,
I’m not going to take exception to everything that was said here, just want to add that the region already is unstable.
Skippy: Iraq is already in a state of civil war. The current state of conflict between the reconstituted al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Sons of Iraq (Now With 50% More U.S. Payroll!), the Sunni, the Shi’ite, Kurds, the remnants of the Ba’ath party, and a rabble of smaller clans / gangs having it large in the major cities there isn’t a whole lot of stability to go around. Granted, most of the non-urbanized areas are relatively stable (either that or we don’t have numbers for violence there).
Bear with me here, as it may take me a bit to link this to the above post.
The civilian administrators (by their own private admission, don’t ask who,) in are woefully out of touch with the conditions outside the Green Zone. The problem there is that State is reporting one set of numbers and information and the military is reporting things that apparently run afoul of that data.
As much as it pains me to say this, Iraq is (now) something of a lynchpin to overall “stability” in the region. The reason I put that word in quotes here is that what we (American government) and the Iranians / Syrians define as stable are two divergent and mutually exclusive conditions.
Around late 2003, early 2004, I had a conversation with someone concerning the doctrine of pre-emption with regard to the invasion of Iraq. Some set up here, first.
Given:
1 – The end objective is the establishment of a (stable) democratic regime in the country.
2 – First (and preferred) potential outcome is a stable democratic regime with foriegn policy friendly to the United States.
3 – Second (not preferred) potential outcome is a fundamentalist or Wahabist theocracy with foriegn policy in line with Iran and hostile to the United States.
4 – Third (again, not preferred) potential outcome is a fundamentalist or Wahabist theocracy with independent foreign policy either neutral or slightly hostile to the United States.
The question is then, is a doctrine of preemption (meaning regime change through force of arms) justified given the likely outcome is what we’re trying to avoid in the first place?
This is something of a simplification, but I think you understand what I am getting at here.
The interrelation (tie-in, take-away, what-have-you) here is that the theocratic state will eventually be in a position to provide some organized support for state-sponsored terrorist entities operating in and out of the region. File this away for later, as I’ll pick up on it again in a minute.
Now insofar as releasing Yemeni prisoners go, I am somewhat shocked that no one has brought up the idea that this may have been a good idea.
(Please note that I am hiding under my desk from the people kicking down the door and armed with flamethrowers. Again, bear with me here.)
Simple question: How does the DEA catch drug suppliers when all they have is a dealer? Simple, catch and release. You then track the guy and find out where they went, who they talk to, and now you have a social network you can pick apart for more intelligence.
Publicly, the U.S. government has to call for extradition and then wring hands, moan loudly, get Fox and CNN all in a tizzy over the release of these prisoners. Meanwhile, we probably know what their last bowel movement smelled like, how often they change television channels, and whether they under or over-pronate when walking. Privately, we probably pushed the Yemeni government to let this go on.
Given that the stated objective of AQI is the establishment of a fundamentalist theocracy, they are already working on laying the foundation for a robust and durable program of state-sponsored terrorism (substantially similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan pre-2001).
How do we then map out the relationships and plot out how far we are toward cases three and four from above? See who is going where and what they are doing. The Army intelligence people have been doing a pile of Social Networking Analysis (SNA) on the AQI and al-Qaeda (AQ) personnel operating in the region already. Allowing them to escape, escape again and go to ground, and then surface later allows us to plot who it is they’re talking to, who’s funding logistics, and a whole pile of other information. It sucks that we lose Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen, in the process, I am not going to deny that.
Ultimately, what we’re talking about here is the greatest good for the greatest number. We either map out and then shut down the larger network (and lose some U.S. and coalition troops along the way) or we wind up with more airplanes flown into more buildings, or someone setting off a low-yield nuclear weapon or some other such calamity.
Releasing these guys fits into the larger goals at work here, and serves the current objective in Iraq, which is the establishment of an independent and democratic regime with friendly (by U.S. standards) foreign policy.
Skippy – my comment was meant in a broader sense. Didn’t mean to get into a debate about the war vs. individual terrorist attacks.
It’s just that I see it all over the place – the terrorist nightmare that Clinton left behind is largely blamed on Bush, with little blame ever parsed to Clinton – which is where it belongs (or as ASM826 points out in #8 above, technically it belongs with Carter…).
Which does make me wonder how much blame Bush will continue to absorb for the actions of the next President – be it Dem or Repub. That was all I meant.
Relative to what I was talking about before, I forgot to include the link to a white paper I read on the subject of social network analysis.
Pdf here: http://www.hsaj.org/pages/volume2/issue2/pdfs/2.2.8.pdf
Enjoy. Sorry for posting twice and not thinking about editing prior to the timeout.
Drew,
Remarkable bit of gamesmanship/thought in that. I follow and don’t disagree — just that complicated stuff tends to break.
Color me a simpleton.
Salt. Decimation. Pax Romana/Americana. Simple.
Good discussion, situation still SUCKS! When we think about Rome, we should remember a few things. Rome fell from within. Rome used the conquered Greeks to teach their young, big mistake!
But as we think of this present situation, do we know the facts? The problem with Saudi Arabia is the Royal Family owns 52% of everything. Do you remember when Saudi Arabia had the “telethon” to support the homicide bombers’ families? These were the ones who died in the process. This “telethon” could not have happened without the approval/support of the Royal Family.
There was a time, when it was said, “When politicians die, they don’t bury them, they just screw ‘em into the ground.”
Lex, go ahead, color me cynical.
Grumpy
Drew, I’d love to believe we’re really on-the-ball and going to/able to follow the released Yemeni prisoners. But about a third of those released from Gitmo were recaptured or killed in combat zones. We don’t seem to have followed them. Nor have we been game to release the rest (probably for that reason).
If that is true, really, why take any captives at all? Just follow them while they’re fresh and still “in the club”. I’d imagine pursuing a newly captured terrorist would be much more informative than pursuing one who has been out of the loop and in prison for years.
Anyway, hope you’re right, but……
Liz,
I am (by far) not the smartest guy in the room when it comes to the actual levers being pulled by the people behind the Counter Insurgency (COIN) curtain, but I’d like to think that we’re tracking these guys the best we can.
The PDF that I linked to above and some of the other unclassified things I have read seem to point in that general direction. This isn’t a new idea either, as I intimated above with the comment about the DEA using folks they’ve found at a low level to feed them intel on bigger fish still in the pond. I am sure cultivating a public perception that we’re too dumb to follow them (terrorists/insurgents) around once they’re released from custody is important to not compromising the existing ops already in place.
However, I am also certain there is a finite point at which these sorts of tactics will not work as the other side has some people that are hip to our attempts to exploit their lower level people.
Stephen Hawking once responded to Albert Einstein’s assertion that “God does not play dice” with “God not only plays dice but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.” What I’m saying is that there are larger forces at work here that we can theorize about, but cannot quite see. Furthermore, (and to continue with this physics geekery) to directly observe their movements and then pull them into the light of day would skew the results of that observation (thus making Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle work equally well on the macro level).
I sleep well at night because things go ‘bump’ in the night. And I hope I’m right too, I really do.
Interesting reading, Drew. Thanks for the link.
Well…just thought I’d add to the topic that this problem isn’t exclusive to Yemen or even the ME. Our “friends” do this too.
Fateh Kamel, for example, was convicted of terrorism by the French courts and released for “good behavior” after only four years. He moved back to Canada, and now the Canadian judiciary just ruled that he (and, I must assume, other convicted terrorists who have served their sentences, however short) cannot be denied a passport to travel.
Just to pick a nit, Bush didn’t say “with us or against us;” he said “with us, or with the terrorists.”
A subtle difference, but important.