The Tangled Web We Weave
Criticism of Joe Biden's decision to leave Afghanistan is leaving out some highly pertinent information. Also, Andrew Cuomo finally gets his due.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
So I survived Six Flags … but two amusement parks in three days, with a hosted slumber party in the middle, is a genuinely masochistic exercise that I will never attempt again. I’ve also decided to do my next Zoom chat as a Happy Hour! Thursday night at 7:00, I’ll be jumping on Zoom to talk about the latest in American politics. Please join me with your favorite beverage! This one will be open to all, but I will only send out the recording to subscribers.
Rewriting History
Last week I wrote about the situation in Afghanistan and warned that it was only a matter of time before the armchair foreign policy pundits began to criticize Joe Biden for “abandoning” Afghanistan and demonstrating “American weakness.” Right on cue, Bruce Hoffman of the Council of Foreign Relations proves me prescient.
In a piece co-written by Jacob Ware, Hoffman, one of the foremost commentators on terrorism, argues that leaving Afghanistan will make America less safe. It’s a tired and dubious argument that I usually wouldn’t bother deconstructing. But I bring it to your attention today because it offers a compelling example of how foreign policy and national security pundits manipulate readers and use fear rather than facts to further their arguments. Consider this a primer in reading between the lines of national security opinion writing and separating the facts from the scare tactics.
According to Hoffman and Ware:
Members of the al-Qaeda movement had both trained and fought alongside the Somali militiamen that fateful day in Mogadishu. To bin Laden’s thinking, it had taken the deaths of 241 U.S. marines to get the U.S. out of Lebanon in 1983. A decade later, the loss of less than a tenth of that number had prompted an identical reaction. As bin Laden explained in his 1996 declaration of war on the United States:
[W]hen dozens of your troops were killed in minor battles, and one American pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu, you left the area defeated, carrying your dead in disappointment and humiliation. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge. But these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. God has dishonored you when you withdrew, and it clearly showed your weaknesses and powerlessness.
Bin Laden was emboldened to believe that if U.S. foreign policy could be influenced by a score of military deaths in an East African backwater, it could be changed fundamentally by thousands of civilian deaths in the United States itself. Thus, the road to 9/11 started in Beirut, led a decade later to Mogadishu, then wound its way through Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Aden before arriving in New York City, Washington, D.C., and a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania (italics added). No one could have anticipated the exact chain of events. But the retreats from both Beirut and Mogadishu nonetheless set those events in motion by feeding a dangerous perception of American weakness.
The problem with this argument is obvious … a lot of other things happened between 1983 and September 11, 2001. For example, one major historical event stands out, the stationing of hundreds of thousands of US troops in Saudi Arabia and the subsequent invasion and liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi control. Indeed, in his 1996 declaration of war against America, Bin Laden cited the presence of non-Muslim American troops in Saudi Arabia as a key reason for his jihad against America.
There is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land. ... The presence of the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve in the world. The existence of these forces in the area will provoke the people of the country and induces aggression on their religion, feelings and prides and pushes them to take up armed struggle against the invaders occupying the land.
One could undoubtedly construct an argument that it was this US decision that pushed Bin Laden to act. He also referenced US support for Israel and the UN sanctions against Iraq — pushed by the United States — which caused widespread human suffering.
In Michael Moore’s polemic, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” the director claims that it was the US decision to send weapons to the mujahedin fighting the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that led to the events of September 11. That is a dubious argument, but there is a kernel of truth that the war in Afghanistan did embolden some jihadists, like bin Laden.
The truth is, there’s no singular explanation for Bin Laden and al Qaeda’s radicalism, and there’s certainly no singular explanation that can be blamed on American policymakers. Should the United States have stayed in Beirut and Somalia indefinitely because leaving would have emboldened bin Laden? Indeed, Hoffman and Ware’s argument removes agency from bin Laden al Qaeda, as if their nihilism, sociopathy, and malignant worldview is not the primary reason for their embrace of terrorism.
What’s happening here is not a careful review of the historical record. Rather, the authors distort what happened in the past because it allows them to further the argument they want to make about what should happen in the future. Hoffman and Ware want to argue that Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan is bad for US national security and will weaken America, so they fit the square peg of US withdrawals from Lebanon and Somalia into a round hole. But, of course, I could make the exact opposite argument: that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is good for US national security because stationing American troops in an Islamic country inflames Muslim public opinion— just look at the example of bin Laden and the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia. When a foreign policy pundit offers a monocausal explanation for an historic, global event, you should immediately suspect that you’re being had — because the chances are that is exactly what is happening.
Blurring the Picture
Another tactic that foreign policy pundits use to manipulate and confuse is to use scary words and images that, upon deeper scrutiny, have little relationship to the underlying argument.
For example, Hoffman and Ware claim that leaving Afghanistan will have a similar result to the US leaving Iraq in 2011 and the eventual rise of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Today in Afghanistan, the United States is similarly understating and underestimating the threat posed by the Taliban. If anything, the situation in Afghanistan is more dangerous. When America withdrew from Iraq, there was no single terrorist adversary capable of toppling democratically elected Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki in Baghdad. The Taliban, however, has that potential and makes no secret of its intention to re-impose theocratic rule over Afghanistan. It therefore poses an existential threat to the democratically elected government of President Ashraf Ghani in a way that no contender had in Iraq a decade ago. Moreover, the Taliban’s longstanding, close alliances with al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and Pakistan’s Tehrik-i-Taliban endow it with additional attack capabilities that did not exist in Iraq at the time of 2011 U.S. withdrawal.
Look closely at the double-switch taking place here. The paragraph starts by arguing that the US is understating and underestimating the threat posed by the Taliban. But if you read closely how that threat is spelled out, it is the Afghan government that is in danger — not the United States. I don’t think anyone, including President Biden, would disagree with the assessment that Kabul is at risk of falling to the Taliban. But Hoffman and Ware aren’t arguing that we should stay in Afghanistan to protect the democratically-elected government there — instead they are focused on the alleged threat to the United States. Thus we have the last sentence of this paragraph, which vaguely references the Taliban’s “additional attack capabilities” and indirectly suggests that this could be a threat to the United States. But how exactly? The Taliban has never planned and carried out a terrorist attack on American soil. The other groups mentioned are primarily focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and al Qaeda has not launched a significant terrorist attack against the United States for nearly two decades. Even with ISIS, no Islamic State fighters from Iraq or Syria perpetrated a terrorist attack on American soil either.
With its vast counter-terrorism apparatus and hundreds of billions of dollars spent to protect America from a major terrorist attack, if the US cannot keep al Qaeda at bay (as it has for the past two decades), what was the point exactly? The very argument that the US, after 20 years of war, must remain in Afghanistan to stop al Qaeda would suggest that everything we’ve done since 9/11 hasn’t worked at all. So why would 20 years of doing more of the same now lead to success?
Hoffman and Ware, however, have a response to this:
America’s counter-terror resources are also likely to be stretched particularly thin going forward, making managing the threat from afar even less plausible. Afghanistan is now only one of many terrorist hotspots around the globe, which seem to be multiplying. Security conditions are deteriorating in Mozambique and the Sahel, for instance, while sectarian clashes in Northern Ireland raise fears of “The Troubles” returning. At home, far-right terrorism runs rampant. Even if U.S. intelligence agencies find ways to effectively manage terrorist safe havens without soldiers on the ground, their attention and vigilance will necessarily be spread thin.
Let’s put aside the fact that far-right terrorism in the United States is a domestic concern and thus not something that the military or intelligence agencies, like the CIA, would be involved in. Why would US counter-terrorism resources be stretched thin by sectarian clashes in Northern Island or deteriorating security conditions in Mozambique? Neither of these is a direct threat to the United States. Is there really a scenario in which US intelligence agencies tell the president, “we’d like to do something about this al Qaeda training camp, but we’ve got our hands full with people fighting in Belfast?”
The US War on Terrorism Has Not Made America Safer
I could go on by pointing out other fallacies in Hoffman and Ware’s argument, but I think you get the idea. The facts are clear: strengthening homeland security, creating no-fly lists, locking cockpit doors on airplanes, making it harder to create a fake driver’s license, and forcing intelligence agencies to share information, are just a few of the cheap and little-noticed steps that have kept America safe from a major terrorist attack since 9/11. It’s much harder to argue that invading and occupying Iraq or fighting a 20-year war in Afghanistan did anything to protect Americans. And you don’t have to believe me: it’s implicit in Hoffman and Ware’s argument. If these missions had worked as intended, there’d be no need for the US to stay in Afghanistan now.
Will leaving Afghanistan increase the potential for a terrorist attack against the United States? Sure, it’s possible the Taliban may take over Afghanistan, invite back al Qaeda, allow them to set up training camps, and then sit back and do nothing as they carry out their dastardly deeds. Common sense would suggest that the Taliban didn’t fight a 20-year war to let the same thing that removed them from power two decades ago happen again. But I suppose you can’t discount it completely. But the chances of that happening need to be balanced with the risks of America continuing to fight a war in Afghanistan — and spend billions more — for years to come with no guarantee that it will lead to a satisfactory outcome. Hoffman and Ware argue that a small US presence in Afghanistan will keep Americans safe from a future terrorist attack. Arguably, having no US presence in Afghanistan will have the same effect.
But the larger point here is that the argument for remaining in Afghanistan is so tenuous that Hoffman and Ware need to confuse the facts, exaggerate the threat, and tell readers a story grounded more in 1 percent scenarios than 99 percent realities. It’s easy to fall for their arguments, but merely applying a soupçon of scrutiny is all that is needed to expose their fallacies.
Cuomo Agonistes
More than twenty years ago, I was offered a job at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to be a speechwriter for Andrew Cuomo. I preferred to move to New York than stay in Washington DC, so I didn’t give them an answer for several weeks. Then, one afternoon, I got a voicemail from someone in the department’s communication shop asking me to check in. I feared the call back because I assumed they’d want an answer from me, and I still didn’t have one. Nonetheless, I phoned back, and the conversation took an unexpected turn.
Rather than asking me if I had made a decision, my contact wanted to let me know that Cuomo was a very difficult person to work for and regularly berated and yelled at his staff. She said I should be aware of that fact before I decided to come on board. It took me a few minutes to understand what was happening: she was trying to dissuade me from taking the job she’d offered to me. If the person you’d be working for, who had already determined that you’d be a good fit for the position, is trying to talk you out of taking it — don’t take it. Suffice to say; I didn’t.
Whenever I think about Cuomo or debated casting my vote for him as a New York State resident, I recall that conversation — and how awful it must have been to work for him. Cuomo’s reputation as a demanding boss is well-known. He yelled and berated his staff, pitted them against each other, and expected complete and unswerving loyalty. In my 20s, I might have worked for a boss who was a “screamer.” But at a certain point, it’s a work environment that no adult should accept. Cuomo treated his staff so poorly because, frankly, that’s what bullies do. They get away with it because they have the power to avoid any consequences. It’s the same reason Cuomo sexually harassed the women on his staff — and not his close aides, mind you, but an executive assistant, young staffers, and a female state trooper. What were they going to do? Tell the governor to cut it out or report him to HR (as some did), and risk losing their job or missing out on a promotion. This is why sexual harassment in the workplace is so insidious. It allows bullies and narcissists to exercise power with the implicit threat of a derailed career behind it.
Cuomo’s defense against his accusers is that he was just being friendly and misunderstood evolving social norms. Bullshit. “Being friendly” was just another way for Cuomo to exercise power and dominance over his underlings. Asking a female staffer about her dating habits or running a hand down a state trooper’s back is an explicit reminder that he’s in charge and he can do and say what he wants. Claiming that his victims didn’t understand that his affection wasn’t intended to be harassing is another way of putting the burden on them — and acting as though he doesn’t have agency for his behavior. Cuomo is an adult operating in a modern workplace, and his behavior is scrutinized by the millions of people who elected him. Not knowing the rules does not qualify as a defense. It’s an admission of guilt.
In the context of Cuomo’s decades-long bullying, the New York Attorney General’s report chronicling his disgusting behavior toward women is hardly a surprise. Bullies bully, and they target the most vulnerable in their midst. Cuomo has been doing it for years. That he is finally now paying the price for it is an altogether positive outcome. Good riddance.
Musical Interlude
I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who sent me kind words about the passing of my friend Gareth Hughes. The New York Times had a lovely obit of him last week. To further honor his life, I wanted to post this version of “Not Fade Away,” which Gareth claimed was the greatest rock ‘n roll song ever written because it offers so many varied musical options. In other words, you can take the song and the jam in such different directions. I can’t think of a better example that makes his point than this version by the Grateful Dead.
One day, back in 2019, I mentioned David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” on Twitter and said it was David Bowie’s best song. Gareth responded:
As I said, the guy knew music.
I find it amazing that there are still intelligent people that believe that the U.S. should be the world's policeman. Not only is it a ludicrous idea, the end result is inevitably that the local populations come to detest our country. Even with your deep (and excellent) analysis, I can't fathom the goals of Hoffman and Ware. But then, that fits seamlessly with much of politics and government.