Tired Old Terrorists

This week brings intimations of mortality from Osama bin Laden and Carlos the Jackal, two aging terrorists who achieved reknown by cutting short the lives of countless unknown others in pursuit of their ideology.

The mastermind of 9/11 is reduced to making an audiotape to hitchhike on the "accomplishment" of the 23-year-old loser who couldn't find his way to the lavatory to blow up an airliner, claiming that the work of "the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes” of 9/11.

Without claiming credit for the botched effort, bin Laden seems to be, according to a terrorism expert, attempting to franchise the Al Qaeda name, like McDonald’s, "to create mutual benefits. The benefit for bin Laden is he gets to associate himself with this attack. The benefit for the regional group is it gets to use the Al Qaeda name for fund-raising and recruiting.”

In doing so, bin Laden is putting himself in the position of those retired minor celebrities who appear in TV commercials to promote iffy products with their waning fame.

What may lie ahead for Osama, if he doesn't end his days in the cave equivalent of a nursing home, is suggested by the fate of Carlos the Jackal, now in a French prison after terrorizing Europe and the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s.

Carlos is suing makers of a documentary about him to get in on the final cut of the film in order to protect "his intellectual property rights to his name and biographical image."

As heedless as they have been about the value of human life, neither Osama nor Carlos is immune to the inroads of aging and the seductions of immortality, a sad commentary on the pathetic few who can create so much pain and fear for so many in the modern world.

Time for Bare-Knuckled Eloquence

In his acceptance speech, Barack Obama put aside the poetry, took off the gloves and threw down the gauntlet for John McCain--reminding even those who have been observing him closely that, behind the charisma, is a steely politician determined to win an election.

"If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander in chief," Obama said, "that's a debate I'm ready to have.

"For while Sen. McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats that we face. When John McCain said we could just 'muddle through' in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell--but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."

Critics will carp about the lack of well-turned phrases in tonight's address, but the candidate was clearly not looking to replicate Martin Luther King's eloquence of 45 years ago but to turn "I have a dream" into the reality of wide-awake political power.

At every turn, he tied McCain to failed Bush policies, noting that his opponent has "voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Sen. McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change."

To the challenge of putting "meat on the bones" of his calls for change, Obama offered a laundry list of tax proposals and incentives to transfer economic burdens from middle-class families to corporations and upper-income taxpayers that will jump start debate on the issues of the campaign.

He called for finding common ground on divisive issues like abortion, gun control and gay rights rather than using them for political advantage.

The Republican swiftboaters are certain to twist what he had to say into attack ads, but one thing is clear: This time around, they won't have a clear field when they do. Obama may not win the election, but he will not go down without a bare-knuckled fight.

Musharraf Marches On

A year from now, when Bush is gone, what will President Clinton, McCain or Obama do about our most annoying ally, Pervez Musharraf?

Here he is today, sashaying around Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, pooh-poohing the notion that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden is of any importance in the war on terror and insisting that Pakistan is as stable as a rock.

His 100,000 troops on the Afghan border are not "trying to locate Osama bin Laden and (Ayman-al) Zawahri, frankly," Musharraf tells a conference at the French Institute for International Relations. "They are operating against terrorists, and in the process, if we get them, we will deal with them certainly."

As for the instability that led him to declare a state of emergency only weeks ago, Musharraf is sanguine. "I can assure you that nothing will happen in Pakistan," he says. "We are not a banana republic."

We have heard these songs before and, after years of being euchred out of $100 million by the Pakistani President's shell game without finding out where his nuclear weapons are, even the Bush Administration is catching on.

The State Department's counterterrorism chief is complaining about "gaps in intelligence" about the activities of extremist groups in the tribal regions.

"We don't have enough information about what's going on there. Not on al-Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban," he says.

Our next President's priority will be picking a Secretary of State who will stop buying Musharraf's song and dance and make sure we get what we are paying for in Pakistan.

Exit White House Musharraf Critic

With Pakistan imploding, the only top Bush official who has been criticizing President Pervez Musharraf in public for some time now is leaving her position.

In July, Frances Fragos Townsend, the President's homeland security advisor, who resigned today, said that Musharraf's cease-fire with tribal leaders to drain support for Islamic extremism was a failure, acknowledging frustration that Al Qaeda had rebuilt its infrastructure and links to affiliates, while keeping Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since 9/11.

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” she said. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”

At the same time, Townsend was suggesting that, if Musharraf wouldn't take action, the US would.

"Just because we don't speak about things publicly doesn't mean we're not doing things you talk about," Townsend told a TV interviewer who asked why the US does not conduct special operations and other measures to cripple Al Qaeda.

"Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table,’" she said, "...no question that we will use any instrument at our disposal" to deal with Al Qaeda and bin Laden.

Townsend's unexplained departure now to "pursue some private-sector opportunities" comes at a time of crisis with Pakistan.

There is no way of knowing why the one-time official in the Clinton Justice Department, who was mentioned as a possible successor to Alberto Gonzales, is leaving now, but Bush fatigue, disappointment and disagreement over what to do in Pakistan are certainly among the possible reasons.

The YouTube Terrorists

Now, after Osama’s pathetic stand-up routine, the Al Qaeda video production company is announcing a special with “the last testament of one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers, marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks.”

One of the classic American answers to TV network and cable trash is not watching and, even in our new unmediated media world, making editorial judgments about the value of enemy propaganda.

TV and cable networks, take note. We appreciate knowing about this garbage, but you are not compelled to rub our faces in it.

Osama Has Jumped the Shark

There is something weird about Osama bin Laden’s new tape, an old-timer with dyed facial hair or, even worse, a chin rug, trying to be “with it” by snappy remarks about Bush, the Democrats and Iraq, the mortgage crisis, the new British and French leaders, whatever. He and/or his ghost writer must watch the Daily Show in a bad translation.

Al Qaeda may well be planning new terror attacks on the U.S., but it’s not likely that the garrulous elderly man in this new Islamic infomercial is in charge of them. He is too busy reading Michael Scheuer and Noam Chomsky.

Six weeks ago, the director of national intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell pointed out “it’s been a year” since there was a confirmed sighting of bin Laden: “There are rumors about his illness...I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan, and...only speaking to a courier, staying completely removed from anything we could exploit to find him.”

Trotting out bin Laden on the anniversary of 9/11 may be a boost for jihadist morale, a reminder of the good old days of terrorism, but the next step would be a roast on Comedy Central.

Our Fortune Tellers: Petraeus & bin Laden

Does the word “impotent” ring a bell? While George Bush boasts about “kicking ass” in Iraq during his Australian stay, Americans and their Congress are in a state of suspense awaiting word from one of our own generals and a man who lives in a cave.

Today’s New York Times reflects the waiting-for-Petraeus bind with an anonymously sourced story that relies on “White House officials” and “a senior military officer” to tells us “Petraeus, Seeing Gains in Iraq as Fragile, Is Wary of Cuts” while columnist Paul Krugman predicts:

“Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.”

If the Washington spin is not enough to make us feel queasy, there are anonymous sources in the Middle East to promote a 9/11 anniversary TV special that promises a "soon, God willing, video message by the Lion Sheik Osama bin laden, may God protect him."

In the promo, the Lion Sheik appears to have had a makeover, complete with beard dye job, by an Al Qaeda stylist.

When he appears in Washington, Gen. Petraeus will no doubt be his usual trim self and his message more reassuring than bin Laden’s, but the bottom line will be essentially the same: Our safety and peace of mind depend largely on ragged zealots in a part of the world where the richest, most powerful nation in history does not control events.

When Bush gets back from bragging Down Under, maybe he can explain how that happened, but don’t hold your already bated breath.

Bush and bin Laden in Hiding

The melodrama is in its final act, and we still don’t know if it ends with a whimper or a bang. Dubya is in a bunker, beleaguered by the demons he set loose here and abroad. Osama is in hiding too, and for all we know, may be dead.

On Meet the Press, the director of national intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell points out “it’s been a year” since there was a confirmed sighting of bin Laden: “There are rumors about his illness...I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan, and...only speaking to a courier, staying completely removed from anything we could exploit to find him.”

Bush is more visible, literally, but he too is in hiding--from Congressional investigators closing in on his Administration’s criminality and the growing pressure to change course in Iraq.

The Bush bang, impeachment, is unlikely even though there is growing talk of it. Osama’s crisis is clearly coming as an American consensus builds for going into Pakistan to get him.

But even as Bush and bin Laden decline, the damage they have done is all over the political landscape. The next election and the next phase of terrorism won’t change the heightened fear and distrust they created.

We can’t board a plane, go to a stadium or walk a crowded street feeling as safe as we did because of bin Laden. But, instead of giving us back some of our pre-9/11 sense of security, Bush took away more of it--we can’t assume that whoever we elect won’t break the law, spy on us or send young people to die half a world away without our consent.

The next President will not only have to end the war in Iraq but find ways to rebuild the political system that worked for more than two centuries and use it to counter terrorism rather than just speechify about it to win elections.

With any luck, when they look back at Bush and bin Laden, future generations will wonder how bad actors could have held the stage so long.

Straight Talk About Taking Out Al-Qaeda

Finally someone says the glaringly obvious about what we have to do to prevent terrorist attacks here: Stop wringing our hands about Musharraf’s shaky situation in Pakistan and cross the Afghanistan border to take out bin Laden’s people who are dug in there.

Lee Hamilton, 76 years old with no political ambitions, said it straight out on CNN yesterday: "If there's anything we should have learned, it's that we must not let Al Qaeda have a sanctuary, which they certainly do in Pakistan today."

For years now, Pakistan’s President has been playing the Bush Administration like a violin, promising cooperation and doing just enough to placate us while keeping the militants in his own country at bay. But Musharraf’s political games have left the United States increasingly vulnerable.

Even Bush and Cheney see by now what has to be done. “In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence,” the New York Times reported yesterday, “intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.”

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”

According to the Times, “Ms. Townsend...acknowledged frustration that Al Qaeda had succeeding in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.”

It will undoubtedly take a highly sophisticated combination of overt and covert operations to do what has to be done in Pakistan, but, as usual, it is taking someone like Lee Hamilton to say so out loud.

If Bush and Cheney are lusting to invade somewhere, they should forget Iran and do what has to be done in Pakistan. They won’t have to take over a whole country and stay, as they did in Iraq, just get in far enough to uproot Al Qaeda and get out.