Do You Recall?

Memory is a curious thing. People tend to forget those things of which they are not reminded. Now that the US is embroiled in wars on two fronts, examining a timeline of US involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq serves to refresh our memory of how we got to where we are. Here is a walk down memory lane.

In December 1997 members of the Taliban paid a visit to Texas to discuss with oil barons the possibility of building a pipeline through Afghanistan. Shortly thereafter, VP Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, said "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant.... It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." Coincidentally, Mr. Cheney was equally as interested in Iraq as Afghanistan, but for a different reason. The month after negotiating with the Taliban, in January 1998 Mr. Cheney signed his name to a document sponsored by The People for a New American Century. It read in part, "Saddam Hussein must go... [I]f the United States is committed... to insuring that the Iraqi leader never again uses weapons of mass destruction, the only way to achieve that goal is to remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power. Any policy short of that will fail." The Taliban was worthy of being a business partner, but Saddam had to go.

This attitude carried over into the Bush administration in 2001. One of the first things President Bush did was fill his administration with members from that very same People for a New American Century who disliked Saddam but tolerated the Taliban. Those names include: Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Frank Gaffney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. By February 2001, the newly inaugurated President Bush himself started saber-rattling against Saddam. "Our intention is to make sure that the world is as peaceful as possible and we're going to watch very carefully as to whether he (Saddam) develops weapons of mass destruction," Bush said. "If we catch him doing so, we're going to take appropriate action."

While all this attention was being focused on Saddam in early 2001, there was a man, an ally of the United States, who was trying with all his might to get the attention of Washington. His name was Ahmed Shah Massoud. On April 6, 2001, Massoud, the Defense Minister of the deposed but legitimate Afghan government and the man who lead the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda, addressed the European Union. He was asked if he had a message for President Bush. He replied, "My message to President Bush is the following: If he isn't interested in peace in Afghanistan, if he doesn't help the Afghan people to arrive at their objective of peace, the Americans and the rest of the world will have to face the problems.... If President Bush doesn't help us, these terrorists will damage the US and Europe very soon.."

Rather than heed Massoud's advice, the current administration decided a month later to give the Taliban a gift of $43 million. The gift, announced by then Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, made the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewarded that regime for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. The war on drugs trumped the battle for democracy in Afghanistan.

About four months later, in August 2001, Massoud told an Indian film crew his fear that the US would face "a terrorism beyond comprehension." In that same month, Pakistan told the US that it wanted to stay out of bin Laden "issues." Massoud had long linked the Taliban with Pakistan, something that should be remembered today since they are once again moving with impunity back and forth across the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Massoud's dire predictions came true. The next month brought the assassination of Massoud and, two days later, the 9-11 attack on the US. It was later written in a piece by journalist Mike Boettcher that a declassified cable from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency read: "Through Northern Alliance Northern intelligence efforts, the late commander Massoud gained limited knowledge regarding the intentions of the Saudi millionaire, Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization, al-Qaida, to perform a terrorist act against the U.S., on a scale larger than the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." Massoud is remembered now as an Afghan hero and a friend to the US. He should also be remembered as the voice in the wilderness whose warnings went unheeded.

After the 9-11 attack, President Bush was apparently still willing to allow the Taliban to remain in power. He sent them several messages stating that "time is running out" to surrender bin Laden and close al Qaeda's operations. The implication was that, had the Taliban handed over bin Laden and agreed to shut the terrorist training camps, they would have been allowed to remain in power. The Taliban resisted, demanding evidence that bin Laden was behind 9-11, and the US turned to Massoud's men in the Northern Alliance and began the proxy war which drove the Taliban underground and al Qaeda into Pakistan. Concurrently, and before the war in Afghanistan could succeed in its goals, a new war was begun.

After 9-11, the PNAC group who so urgently wanted the overthrow of Saddam back in 1998 saw their chance to voice their opinion once again. On September 20, 2001 they issued a statement which read in part, "...even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." The rest, as they say, is history. The US found itself at war on two fronts, and the outcome of either is anybody's guess.

Memory is a curious thing. If memory served us better, perhaps we could avoid in the future the same mistakes made in the past. Massoud warned that the Taliban and al Qaeda were inextricably linked. Both are active once again in Afghanistan. The snake has two heads, and both heads must be crushed.
Massoud knew that in 2001. He would tell us to remember his warnings now.

The top Marine, General Conway, thinks it's time to send the Marines from Iraq to Afghanistan. It is obvious that NATO alone cannot secure the country and that the 25,000 US troops there are not enough. There is resistance to this suggestion within the ranks of the Bush administration who prefers to remain fixated on Iraq. What will it take to remind them that the real enemy lurks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that they always have? How can their memories be jogged back to the summer of 2001 so that the warnings of Massoud are heard anew? The clock cannot be reset, but a now silenced voice from the past can still recall the future.