GWOT, an Assessment

by emptywheel

Best as I understand it, these are the main features of George Bush's GWOT thus far.

• Stings that net terrorist arrests of people whose sole affiliation is only ever with fictional terrorists the FBI creates
• Widespread domestic and international surveillance--of our phone calls, email, peaceful assembly, and bank records--that has never been definitively connected to any worthwhile arrest
• Torture-based arrests and long-term incarceration of people loosely affiliated with real terrorists
• A half-hearted war in Afghanistan that has done little to eliminate the underlying threat
• A pointless destabilizing war unrelated to terrorism

Stings that net terrorist arrests of people who only ever affiliate with fictional terrorists

By asking an FBI employees to pretend to be a terrorist, we set up a few widely-celebrated arrests. But the arrests seem to net people whose crime is an affiliation with fictional Al Qaeda members. We get people like a group of very poor African-American men looking for free goodies and some kind of identity, yet balking at the mention of carrying out any real operation. We get people who, when set up by fictional buyers and fictional sellers, will engage in proliferation. And meanwhile, we seem to have almost no arrests of people with affiliations with actual Al Qaeda members.

Widespread domestic and international surveillance--of our phone calls, email, peaceful assembly, and bank records--that has never been definitively connected to any worthwhile arrest

They are collecting  all aspects of our data: phone, email, and bank records, putting them into huge databases so they can sift through them to find patterns that might--or might not--reveal terrorism. Along the way, they've invented a new kind of probable cause to justify using such data mining to pursue people who haven't committed any act of terrorism, but rather have exhibited certain communication patterns. We've started spying on groups assembling peacefully, dedicating spying money and personnel to observe such notable threats as Quaker groups.

Torture-based arrests and long-term incarceration of people loosely affiliated with real terrorists

We torture people to force them to turn in further terrorists or confirm myths we want to tell. We tortured Abu Zubaydah, for example, and he turned in Jose Padilla, a US citizen whom we locked up with no recourse for years. Big surprise! That sound method of law enforcement has resulted in a case, "Light on facts," one that may never result in prosecution. We also tortured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi so he would help us concoct Dick Cheney's favorite myth about a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, one that turned out to be false.

A half-hearted war in Afghanistan that has done little to eliminate the underlying threat

At the time when we needed to invest in developing civil society to cement our victory in Afghanistan, we pulled troops and funds from Afghanistan. As a result, we never extended peace and stability across the country. And now, the Taliban is returning to its former position of power.

A pointless destabilizing war that created more terrorism

To justify the Iraq War, we refrained from destroying Zarqawi's camps when we had easy opportunities to do so. We then used propaganda--sometimes illegally targeted toward the American market--to turn Zarqawi into a boogeyman to create the illusion of a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Along the way, Al Qaeda entered the power vacuum, using Iraq as a training ground to replace Afghanistan. Meanwhile, while we were busy fighting this as a WOT, a civil war broke out. And our stated enemy, Iran, gained so much from our foolish war that now the warmongers are clamoring for a war there to undo the damage.

Yup. It seems the only way they can create even the appearance of progress is to torture people or create fake terrorists, then build legal proceedings around the fake busts that result. Splendid.

Comments

[Mimikatz]

The contracts, don't forget about the contracts. It may not be what it is all about, but it sure is a lucrative sidelight.

[Kagro X]

If they make actual progress, the need for contracts begins to dry up.

The reason we need contracts is because there's a "war" going on. And to prove there's a "war," there has to be a mounting casualty count.

We keep thinking the rising number of American dead is going to undermine support for the war. But the GOP plan has always been precisely the opposite. The more who die, the stronger they think their "let their deaths not be in vain" argument gets. The more who die, the more stinging they think their "cut and run" accusations become.

[Sally]

Cut and run, Mr. Rove? Your leader did that in Afghanistan.

[John K]

That could hardly be more concisely or effectively put.

What a devasting indictment of this administration. Why aren't we seeing this on op-ed pages across the country? (Rhetorical question)

[njr]

why are we not seeing this on op-ed pages acriss the country?

while the whole world is watching us, and the words are in their pages... we're not making friends anywhere in the world

[Mary]

Great overview.

Even with the SWIFT program, what are the chances that we can track down terrorist sources and funding if we can't find where we mislaid that 9 billion of Iraq reconstruction money?

[John Casper]

Great review emptywheel.

[Meteor Blades]

We don't know yet, and we may never know, but calling the arrests in Florida a "sting" is premature in my opinion.

To me, a sting is when you hear that a man is looking to hire somebody to kill his wife and you slip in a cop who pretends to be a contractor who tapes the conversation and nails the guy on conspiracy. Huzzah. I heartily approve.

But was this a sting? Or did an FBI infiltrator join a wacko group and start making specific suggestions about targets it might strike and how it might do so, tape the stupidly excited responses of others in the group, then trigger arrests? That is not a sting, but something else entirely.

Several of us ex-SDSers managed in 1976 to obtain our individual FBI files via the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act. Although much was blacked out, by judicious comparison of each others' files, we figured out who two police infiltrators were and probably a third. Mirabile dictu, they were the fellows who had introduced discussions about bombing this or that, or assassinating political leaders. We had, in all cases, ejected them after listening them repeat such suggestions over several months in the late '60s.

As I said, I make no judgments in this particular case. But I remain skeptical.

[margaret]

It's the contracts and the treason and the dead and damaged on both sides and the destruction of the cultural heritage of both sides: theirs, architecture, art, historical records, intellectuals, teachers; ours, the Constitution and the rule of Law.

[Davis X. Machina]

But the GWOT delivered two elections already, and will likely deliver two more.

Don't think of it as a 'war' -- think of it as the world's most expensive campaign commercial.

The real war aim is the delegitimization and marginalization of any domestic opposition to Junta Boy and his kleptocrats, for as much as a generation.

[prostratedragon]

And so in aggregate is outlined the what, how, and why (and thus who) of this tragic misadventure.