ONE DOWN ….. By Dick Shriver

“We don’t come from anywhere”, said our Basque friend and host, Jose, in the five star (my rating) Urepel Restaurant in the old part of Spain’s Basque enclave, San Sebastian. Jose and his colleague, Niaki (my spelling since my computer has no Basque letters … his name is derived from Ignatius), then gave us a lesson in Basque history, explaining that there are many theories about where the Basques came from, but no proof that the Basques came from anywhere but where they live today. There are 2 million of them in the northwest corner of Spain at the westernmost junction of France and Spain; there are several million Basque diaspora, mainly in Latin America, but especially in Chile where Basques at one point constituted nearly half the population.

There are traces in the surroundings of Basque country that date back 150,000 years. Cave drawings have been found that were created 12,000 years ago. Their language has no obvious connection with any other ... certainly not Spanish (my ear sensed a touch of Finnish, or Georgian, or one of those other unintelligible languages .... and their machine-gun rapidity of speech suggests they evolved with extra-large brains and neural canals). Ethnic homogeneity has doubtless played a role in Basque insularity and independence; while dictator Franco favored the Nazis over the allies, Basques helped downed allied aviators escape over the Pyrenees.

Mention the word “Basque” in the US, and people think of ETA (Basque Fatherland and Liberty), with an image of an ethereal group of scheming, secretive, swarthy terrorists eager to topple the Spanish government, possibly killing others indiscriminately. ETA’s initial and primary goal had always been greater autonomy for the Basques, living mainly in northwestern Spain (some spill over into France), with violence as one of their tools. They assassinated Generalissimo (and dictator) Franco’s chosen successor, Admiral Luis Carrera Blanco, shortly before Franco’s own death in 1975. This assassination, ironically, may well have led to Spain’s multi-year emergence from a dictatorship to a democracy under Franco’s second choice, King Juan Carlos I.

Our friends further described how the Basque separatist and terrorist group, the ETA, had all but disappeared through a combination of amnesties, international police actions, and laws passed by the Spanish government, aimed specifically at the ETA, prohibiting violence to achieve political ends.

ETA, infamous for its terrorist tactics from the late 1950s up to the present, had originally been cited as the organization responsible for the Madrid train bombing in 2004; subsequent investigations, however, led to the indictment and conviction of a single Moroccan nationalist with no known ties to either ETA or al Qaeda). Earlier this year, ETA signed a permanent peace treaty with Spain ending its 60 years of assassinations, kidnappings and bombings which resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,000 people.

ETA was not, of course, an international terrorist organization. It was established to achieve political autonomy from Spain. Religion was not even a factor (as in Ireland, say) as the Basques are also largely Catholic. It was simply a small group of people who were determined to break away from Spain. For a time, they did attract some measure of sympathy from other Basques and various socialist/communist groups around the world. What they wanted, in short, was to be left alone (though their terrorist tactics were reprehensible).

Such was not to be. The Spanish Government held the line and played a good game of carrot and stick, combined with spies and patience, to wear the dissidents down. The ranks of ETA dwindled over the past ten years. Terrorist acts and deaths caused by the ETA all but vanished. They began to fight amongst themselves. Their funds dried up, in large part the result of international police cooperation and confiscation. Finally, by early 2011, there was only a handful of ETA leaders left to surrender and receive amnesty, to be released from prison with full rights returned, and to sign a permanent peace treaty.

As we sit here in the Hotel Mont Igueldo, on a 500 foot promontory looking almost straight down into the Atlantic and with an unprecedented view of the entire city and harbor of San Sebastian, we see a small country within a country that is very self-satisfied today, with unemployment half that of the rest of Spain and a prosperous regional economy. It is questionable whether ETA served any useful purpose, and certainly caused harm: as a minimum, it gave the region a bad name for decades. ETA may also, however, have given Spain its king, Juan Carlos, and the amazing story of how he converted a dictatorship into a democracy ... a story that heads of state in, say, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan might well wish to re-read.

WHEN IN DOUBT, GO WITH THE MILITARY …. By Dick Shriver

In 1985 I chaired the ”First World Conference On Counter Terrorism” which took place in Washington, DC. In attendance were more than a hundred counter-terrorist experts from a dozen countries including Germany, Canada, Italy, England and Israel. Virtually every US agency engaged in counter-terrorist activities at the time was represented including the FBI, CIA, the Secret Service, US Customs and the maverick of law enforcement, ATF, or Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (the concept of a department of homeland security was not even a gleam in anyone’s eye at the time). I asked the late Al Haig, a friend from my days in the Pentagon, if he would make the keynote address: he agreed.

The Europeans and Israelis set the tone for this conference. By 1985, they had experienced the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre by Palestinians, the Bader-Meinhoff Gang in Germany, the hijacking of an El Al flight that resulted in the Entebbe raid, and the Red Brigade of Italy …. Their message to us was: “Get ready, America … you’re next”. At that time, the worst act of terrorism inflicted on the US had been the suicidal destruction of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon, killing 243 marines; this incident was deemed a criminal act rather than an act of terrorism, though a relatively unknown (at the time) organization that called itself “Hezbullah” was involved. In fact, all of the attendees at this first conference on counter-terrorism were from the international law enforcement community.

Our conference and Haig’s subsequent publication of an Op-Ed piece on the topic in the Washington Post after the conference had zero impact on US policy. In fact, as a group we had little sense that terrorism would become the threat it is today to the American way of life, nor do I recall that anyone even proposed any serious policy recommendations beyond some meek efforts to increase US awareness of the matter.

If someone had proposed a consolidation of the multitude of agencies that now comprise the Department of Homeland Security, no one would have taken it seriously. If anyone had speculated an attack, say, by suicidal Islamic radicals hijacking commercial airliners, no one would have bothered to take notes. If anyone had speculated that we might one day launch two pre-emptive strikes, one against Afghanistan and the other against Iraq, our group would have complimented the speaker on a great imagination. There was no message from this first public discourse on international counter-terrorism to carry to our head of state at the time, President Ronald Reagan (though if we had been so motivated, Al Haig could have carried such a message).

The fact is, it took vastly more to get the attention of the world’s leaders. After the blowing up of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, other than an official investigation and an attempt to assassinate Muammar Qaddafi by an air strike, we did nothing. After the attack on the US Cole, we did little. After the attack on the US marine Barracks in Lebanon, we got out. After the first attack on the World Trade Center using a truck loaded with explosives, a urea nitrate-hydrogen gas enhanced device that was intended to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, our response was a criminal investigation (6 were killed and over a thousand injured right at the very site of the 9/11 attack).

What does it take to get the attention of a national leader for such threats? I suspect that so long as the threat is considered to be a criminal act, no major policy change is likely to be considered. If the threat is considered to be a military threat, we have a better chance of giving the matter the attention it deserves. The professionals in our CIA and defense department are much more attuned than the law enforcement community to think in terms of an enemy eager to do us in on a wholesale basis. Until we have a better mechanism of categorizing potential major threats to the homeland, I fear we will continue to be vulnerable to attack. President George Bush’s definition of our response as a “war on terror” was, and still is, correct.

Honor and Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a difficult subject for me to find a position. I spent a year there from 2004 to 2005 (thanks to my fellow blogger, Russ Deane). I love the Afghan people, the culture and the country, so my heart tells me that we should stay until the country is stabilized and well on its way to becoming a developing country.

My head tells me something else, however, that this is another example of the current crop of foreign and national security advisors (and their cheerleaders at The New York Times and The Washington Post) failing their President and their country. In a War on Terror, you don’t fight to hold real estate. You fight the terrorists – and for the most part, they have decamped to other climes – and you fight their bankers, trainers and suppliers.

Iraq had the money and Saddam had the inclination to bankroll terrorism on a grand scale. The war in Iraq, therefore, (the war that our foreign policy elite called an unnecessary war, the war that everyone hates Bush for, the war that was the successful war) was a far more important battle in the War on Terror than Afghanistan can ever be. The Taliban were just Al Qaeda’s landlord, charging Osama rent to stay in the country, but Iraq was something different.

Terrorism has dropped off because Saddam, not the Taliban, is gone. A 600 page translation of Iraqi secret police correspondence, released by the Pentagon in 2008, shows just how heavily involved in world terrorism Saddam was. Without a magnifying glass, you would have missed this story in The New York Times, of course – it covered the story in all of two paragraphs back among the truss ads – but then the importance of a news story is often inversely related to the space The Times devotes to it. What is important is that Saddam was a key player in world terrorism, as important in his way as Osama bin Laden was in his.

If the Taliban were to take power in Afghanistan tomorrow, they would resume oppressing their people, but it is a pretty good bet that they would not invite Al Qaeda back. The rent Osama paid them was not worth the ten years they’ve spent in the wilderness. There may be reasons for the West to stay in Afghanistan – reducing the probability of its resuming its status as a narco-state and keeping a lid on Pakistan are two that come to mind – but we should no longer be there to fight terrorism.

The war in Afghanistan is not being fought the way you need to fight terrorism. One of the most successful battles against terrorism is being conducted in the southern Philippine Islands with zero publicity (except, of course, from Robert Kaplan of The Atlantic, the greatest war correspondent since Marguerite Higgins fifty years ago). There are only a handful of Green Berets assisting Philippine forces and together, they have trounced Al Qaeda. When the time comes for us to leave, we will do so with a decisive victory and no lingering commitments. We have kept the costs low and our options open.

The swelled heads who are advising the President have learned nothing from Vietnam. They are suffering from the Talleyrand Syndrome (i.e., they forget nothing and they learn nothing). They haven’t read (or, at least, haven’t understood) John Nagl, Hyman Rothstein, Mike Moyar or any of a number of thoughtful military intellectuals who have a better grasp of counterinsurgency than they do. The war is being treated just like Vietnam. Clear and hold, body counts, a corrupt local government aided and abetted by the international community’s own form of corruption; it’s not as if the thinking hasn’t progressed on counterinsurgency since 1960, it’s just that those in authority don’t seem to know that (or at least care).

What makes these advisors truly blinkered, though, is their willingness to telegraph their moves, and to slap a smiley face on stupid decisions. If you announce withdrawals a year in advance, subject, not to progress in the battlefield, but on the election cycle, you are not fighting to win, you are not even fighting to a draw; rather, you are fighting to lose and expending American lives while you are doing so. If the Taliban believes that we are leaving, why shouldn’t they lie low and wait to take over once we’re gone? There will be some fireworks before then, of course, to encourage us to leave and to create the illusion that there is still a war going on, but there is no reason for them to have an all-out Tet Offensive until we’re gone and they have a clear field.

But however inadequate the President’s civilian advisors have been, they don’t know any better. Admiral Mullen and Generals Petraeus and Allen, on the other hand, do know better and they, too, have behaved irresponsibly by letting it be known that they opposed the President’s plan. They have not resigned, which is the only honorable way for a member of the military to distance himself from a strategic decision made by the Commander-in-Chief. By their staying in office, the President’s decision has become their decision and they no longer have the right to dissent.

These are great American heroes and honorable public servants, which makes it all the more distressing that they behaved as they did. Obviously, these distinguished military men believe that the President’s decision will not lead to a disaster or they would be more outspoken than they are, so it is incumbent on them not to distance themselves from the final decision. It has become a team decision and they have made it their decision since they are staying as part of the team. Dissent only makes things worse. If Congress forced them to go on the record, shame on Congress.

As the James Bowman, the great historian of the concept of honor, has noted, we as a nation are fast losing all sense of what honor requires of us. Honor required that Admiral Mullen and Generals Petraeus and Allen refuse to let critics goad them into expressing of their opposition publicly and that they simply acknowledge that the plan was jointly conceived and that they stood behind the final version of the plan. It is ominous that three of the greatest military minds in the country don’t understand that it is wrong to stay in office to implement an order you don’t believe in, or, alternatively, to let the word go out that you disagreed with a plan that you’re implementing so that if things don’t work out, you can save face and point a finger somewhere else.

Ignorance of what honor demands is a far more serious matter to the United States than the outcome of the war in Afghanistan.

Thomas F. Berner
www.WeThePeopleBlog.net
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