LA
Times
Analyst Says Pakistan Should be at the Top of the 'Axis of Evil'
By
Leon Hadar
IMAGINE
THE following scenario, which includes all the historical analogies
that neo conservative ideologues like to apply - World War II,
Hitler, appeasement - plus a bonus reference to the evil du
jour, Spain.
As
American and Allied forces invade Nazi Germany in 1945, Adolf
Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and several SS troops flee to Fascist
Spain, where they hide in the Pyrenees Mountains and mount guerrilla
attacks against the Free French government. The American response?
To ask Generalissimo Francisco Franco if he would be kind enough
to send some of his forces to catch those Nazis - and it would
be nice if it could all be wrapped up before the 1948 presidential
election.
Sound
absurd? Well, there is an element of the absurd in the acrimonious
debate on 9/11 taking place these days. Lawmakers and pundits
are arguing about what could have been done to prevent the terrorist
attacks. But they all agree that if Americans could rewind history
to pre-9/11, they would have done everything humanly possible
to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and
his Al Qaeda associates - sooner rather than later.
But
why look backward? Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri - the war-on-terrorism's
Hitler and Himmler, respectively - are still alive and well, as
far as we know, and living somewhere in Pakistan. Yet to whom
is the United States assigning the task of dealing with the gravest
threat to its national security and to ensure that such horrific
events won't happen again? To the best and the brightest in the
American armed forces and intelligence services? You would assume
that we owe as much to the victims of 9/11 and their families.
But
no. In fact, the job of wiping out the leaders of the group responsible
for the worst attack on the homeland has been outsourced to a
corrupt and incompetent regime that is ruling a country where
anti-American Islamist groups roam the streets - and the corridors
of power.
Indeed,
Pakistan's military and security services, which are in charge
of hunting Bin Laden and his troops, were once allied with the
Taliban, the former Al Qaeda protectors in Afghanistan. And some
of its members are sympathetic to a radical Islamist agenda. Until
recently, the nation's top nuclear scientist was selling his country's
secret military technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Pakistan
should have topped President Bush's "axis of evil" list.
Instead, it has been designated as a "non-NATO" ally
of the United States. And its leader, Pervez Musharraf, a military
dictator who ousted the country's democratically elected, although
admittedly unpopular, government, has been feted in Washington
as a key partner of the United States in the global campaign to
combat terrorism.
This
policy helped to produce last month's pathetic spectacle in the
war on terrorism. Musharraf was eager to divert media attention
from AQ Khan's nuclear arms bazaar and to impress visiting US
Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Thus,
Musharraf and his aides raised expectations that Zawahiri would
be captured in a major battle with the guerrillas. But the Pakistanis,
after bungling the military operation and suffering many casualties,
discovered a network of secret tunnels that the fighters had used
to escape. Adding insult to injury, Al Qaeda's No. 2 figure showed
up on a new audiotape calling for Musharraf's overthrow.
Some
military observers might conclude that the Pakistani Army just
doesn't have the competence to mount a serious fight against Al
Qaeda and capture its leaders. Other critics might explain the
failure to apprehend Bin Laden and his associates by pointing
to the support that radical Islamists enjoy among the rank and
file of the Pakistani military and security services.
Take
your pick, but consider what an American "war president"
would have done in that 1945 scenario. He would have given Franco
an ultimatum: Catch Hitler and Himmler, hand them over to us alive
or dead, and destroy all the SS remnants. And do it ASAP. If you
can't deliver, the full force of the US military will be employed
to make that happen.
Americans
should not wait for congressional commissions and historians to
explain why their war president wasn't taking that same kind of
action against Bin Laden and Zawahiri in 2004, and why he decided
to subcontract the job to an inept and untrustworthy military
dictator whose associates espouse anti-Americanism, coddle terrorists
and sell WMD to "rogue states." What they know already
sounds even worst than appeasement.
The
writer is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato
Institute. This article appeared in the Los Angeles Times
