A rare political post
[update: i’m not alone in my thoughts on this]
No one blinked when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was proclaimed to be the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. It seems as though half a dozen people, at one time or another, have been claimed to be “masterminds” on this, but maybe my memory just isn’t very good. However, I felt that a huge red flag went up when Mohammed further claimed to be behind the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Bali nightclub attack, the 1993 WTC attack, and even the shoe bomber (seriously, the shoe bomber?).
So while I admit i’m not really qualified to comment, here goes: I have serious doubts that Mohammed committed even half of the crimes he’s “confessing” to. I think he knows that he’s not going to ever see the blue sky again regardless of what happens. I think he’d like people to remember his name. I think he’d like to take as much credit as Osama or anyone else for Islamic radicalism (and it’s not as if Osama is in any position to challenge him about it).
On top of all that, you have to consider the US government’s point of view. I don’t think there’s a conspiracy afoot to make this guy look worse than he is. But at the same time, if the public decides that he’s single-handedly responsible for a lot of the terror in the world, then the government has has very little incentive to disabuse us of that notion.
After all, this is a guy we’ve been holding on Guantanamo. He’s a living symbol, both of the danger we face in the modern world and of the alleged value of secret prisons and extraordinary rendition and our other shameful policies.
So what it comes down to is that KSM will probably continue to confess to all manner of things. I won’t be surprised if he confesses to killing JFK, bombing Hiroshima, sinking the USS Maine, and leaving Pedro Martinez in to pitch the 8th inning of game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.
The administration seems to be trying to have its cake and eat it, too. If Mohammed really masterminded all of this, then it appears that Al Queda isn’t nearly as decentralized, compartmentalized, and all-fired dangerous as we’ve been led to believe. It appears that we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives on a global war against one guy, whom we now have in custody.
If, as seems more likely to me, Mohammed didn’t actually have much to do with most of these things, then terrorism is still a very real threat, and all we have to show for the war effort is a lackwit braggart who has little intelligence value beyond headline-grabbing.
So which is it? Are we still fighting a war we’ve already won, or are we fighting a war in which we’ve made essentially zero progress? And which of those is supposed to make me feel better about the conduct of my government?
March 16th, 2007 - Posted in Politics | |
