We Have Nothing To Fear ...
... No seriously, we need not worry about an al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan.
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.
Don’t Fear The (Grim) Reaper
Today, I have a piece up at the New Republic about the potential threat of an al Qaeda terrorist attack emanating from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. When the US departed from Afghanistan last month, one of the widely expressed fears from foreign policy pundits was that with the Taliban back in charge in Afghanistan, an al Qaeda safe haven would soon follow. Such a series of events has long been deemed a serious security threat to the United States.
Here, for example, is Ryan Crocker, former US ambassador to Afghanistan, making precisely this argument:
The Taliban is back, there they are, roaming the streets of all 34 provincial capitals, now. This is not a kinder and gentler Taliban. These guys are hardened, tough, ruthless. In other words, they're the guys that brought us 9/11 by sheltering al-Qaeda, and they're back. Al-Qaeda will be back with them. So, the president, sadly, has re-created the same environment we had just before 9/11. So, the president has really put the band back together. This particular band, of course, attacked our country.
I say this with as much respect as I can muster about a man who spent 40 years in the US foreign service … but this argument is simply idiotic. Indeed, the notion that an al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan represents a serious threat to the United States is about as dumb a foreign policy argument as there is. This is truly saying something, because I can assure you there are dozens of foreign policy arguments out there, masquerading as deep strategic insight.
First of all, the idea that Joe Biden has recreated the same environment as existed before 9/11 is frankly absurd. As I argue in the New Republic:
The single most obvious and far-reaching change since 9/11 is that the U.S. is now far more prepared for a major terrorist attack—and able to stop one. Before September 11, the FBI and CIA did not share intelligence information. That meant that the CIA failed to inform domestic law enforcement about the presence of two Al Qaeda terrorists in the country, both of whom participated in the 9/11 attack. Today, both agencies are required, by law, to cooperate and share information.
After 9/11, Congress appropriated $97 million for airlines to replace flimsy cockpit doors with hardened, bulletproof ones. That alone made it virtually impossible to duplicate a 9/11-style attack. Congress made it more difficult to counterfeit driver’s licenses. And the federal government created no-fly lists and tightened immigration restrictions to prevent potential terrorists from entering the country.
Crocker and so many in the foreign policy elite seem oblivious to the fact that after 9/11, the United States took a series of proactive steps to ensure that the American homeland was better protected from a potential terrorist attack. The idea that the only factor influencing the ability of terrorists to attack the United States are events more than 8,000 miles from American soil is unbelievably reductive and ludicrous on its face.
And what is even more remarkable about Crocker’s statement is that he seems incapable of understanding that the domestic politics around terrorism is 180 degrees different than it was in the summer of 2001. As I argue in the piece:
In the run-up to 9/11, President George W. Bush and those around him repeatedly downplayed requests from his CIA director, George Tenet, and the National Security Council’s director of counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, to respond aggressively to intel warnings about a potential terrorist attack. Tenet famously had his “hair on fire” about Al Qaeda. So, too, did Clarke, who was convinced in the summer of 2001 that a major attack was imminent. Bush famously told his intelligence briefer, who had flown to the president’s ranch to warn about a potential attack, that “you’ve covered your ass now.” It’s unimaginable that a presidential administration would be so blasé today if faced with such mounting evidence of a likely terrorist incident. Indeed, had the Bush administration mobilized even a half-hearted government response in the summer of 2001, it’s highly unlikely that 9/11 would have occurred.
Look at the media response to Joe Biden withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan — universal condemnation. Much of that response was because of the perceived threat to al Qaeda and the potentially heinous nature of Taliban rule. The politics of counter-terrorism today are simply not comparable to the way things were 20 years ago — and no American president is going to sit back and do nothing (as the Bush administration did in 2001) if there’s even a whiff of a threat to the US homeland.
Not Your Parent’s Taliban
Beyond the evolution in how the US approaches and defends against terrorism, Crocker’s statement, which has been echoed far and wide by other foreign policy pundits, assumes that the Taliban are litte different from the group that ruled the country before 9/11.
Here’s my reaction to that notion in gif form.
Twenty years ago, the Taliban were swept from power after al Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks. One might assume that the Taliban would not make the same mistake twice. Yet, Crocker and others seem incapable of even considering the possibility that the group might have learned after two decades in the wilderness. Or one could consider what has happened in the 19 months since the Taliban signed the Doha agreement with the United States. That agreement, signed in February 2020, calls on the Taliban “to prevent any group or individual, including al-Qa’ida, from using the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”
Now the cynic might argue that no one can trust the Taliban to keep their word. But the Doha accord also included a pledge that the Taliban would not carry out any further attacks against US combat troops. For 18 months, until US troops completely withdrew last month, they assiduously adhered to that provision. Moreover, the Taliban assisted the United States in evacuating more than 120,000 people out of Kabul in two weeks and provided security for the effort.
Did they do this out of the goodness of their heart? No. “They did it because it was in their interests to do so.”
As I wrote in the TNR piece:
The U.S. is dangling major carrots before the Taliban. Administration officials have spoken of potential U.S. recognition of the new regime, a position that surely will be dependent on how the Taliban deal with Al Qaeda. In addition, the U.S. has previously provided support to the Taliban in combating the rise of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, which is a direct rival to the new regime. The prospect of such continued assistance—hinted at recently by General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—would make it less likely that the Taliban would allow Al Qaeda to operate with impunity. Indeed, it hardly seems coincidental that the first high-level administration official to meet with the new Taliban rulers was CIA Director Bill Burns, who ventured to Kabul late last month.
The Taliban also need significant economic assistance from the West. Upsetting the U.S. by allowing Al Qaeda to stand itself up again is not the way to further those goals. The cynic will argue that the Taliban are more wedded to their ideology and hatred of the West than they are to pragmatic goals like not getting attacked by the U.S. again. But practically everything that has happened since the signing of the Doha agreement in February 2020 suggests otherwise.
Quite simply, there are far more reasons to expect that the Taliban will seek to prevent another 9/11-style attack against the United States — and for the most basic and obvious of reasons. It is their interest to do so. The Taliban 2.0 is surely not as naive as the first iteration of the group about the dangers in hosting al Qaeda. The group’s leaders also appear to understand that ensuring the US sees them not as an intractable enemy will go a long way toward helping them stay in power.
Safe Haven, Shmafe Haven
Finally, there is the issue rarely addressed when we talk about an al Qaeda safe haven — why does it even matter?
For a good part of the 20 years after 9/11, al Qaeda had a safe haven in northwest Pakistan — one that in the first 2.5 years after the Taliban were swept from power was largely unmolested by US attacks. Indeed, the first US strike against al Qaeda in Pakistan did not occur until June 2004. Yet, al Qaeda was still not able to mount an attack on US soil.
Moreover, even without a safe haven in Afghanistan, there have been major jihadist attacks throughout the West: the Madrid bombings in 2004, London in 2005, the coordinated attack in Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people, major bombings in Brussels, and a series of shootings and bombings in Turkey in 2016. Again, none of these were initiated from a safe haven. As for the United States, the two deadliest jihadist attacks since 9/11 were the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernadino, California, and the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016 (the second deadliest mass shooting in US history). Both massacres did not originate in a safe haven, were inspired by the Islamic State (a group that came into existence, in part, because of the Iraq War), and were made possible by law US gun laws.
In 2020, 19,000 Americans died from gun violence, and another 24,000 lost their lives in gun-related suicides. More than 93,000 Americans died of a drug overdose, and more Americans will likely die in the next few hours from Covid-19 than have been killed by jihadist terrorists in the 20 years since 9/11. One might argue that these issues deserve far greater attention from policymakers than the unlikely possibility of a major terrorist attack emanating from Afghanistan.
The simple reality is that if one were to come up with a list of 100 threats to Americans, terrorism would be incredibly far down the list. Terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan would likely be outside the top 100. That people like Ryan Crocker think it should be at the forefront of US foreign policy is as good an argument as any not to listen to people like Ryan Crocker.
What’s Going On?
Josh Marshall thinks Kyrsten Sinema is done in the US Senate.
Republican governors appear extremely intent on ensuring that as many people as possible get sick from COVID-19 …
… like, for example, Mississippi Governor, Tate Reeves
Smart piece by Jeff Stein on Mark Milley and the threat of an unhinged president using nuclear weapons.
Renee Graham tackled an issue bothering me for weeks — the parents who orphaned their kids because they refused to get vaccinated.
Musical Interlude
Over the weekend, I was listening to “Hey Jude” by the Beatles, and I decided that I really wanted to learn the song on piano (I used to play it when I was much younger). So that’s what I’m going to spend the next few weeks doing! Wish me luck.
Thanks, love this message. Also: link to the Graham piece didn't come through and I'd love to read it!