Obama's Decisions

Aaron Zelin has a thoughtful article in FP's The Middle East Channel today.   In it, he essentially asks: what happens if the Obama plan to eradicate AQAP works?   Will they then again look away from Yemen and focus on something else, ignoring the structural challenges that remain?  If they do, Zelin reminds us, we'll be dealing with this again and again.  It will be like those Saw movies: endless sequels that nobody I know wants to see. 

Zelin also brings up this provocative question:

Another issue has to do with the legality of targeting an American citizen. How the Obama administration decides to handle the situation with Anwar al-Awlaki will shed light on the United States' legal policy vis-à-vis the war on terror. Will it lead the United States down a slippery slope that further erodes the rule of law and its legitimacy in the eyes of the international community? Or, will it affirm Obama's statement in his inaugural address: "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

 I would quibble slightly with the wording- I think this will show if Obama wants to lead us back up that slope, since we sprinted and tumbled ass-over-tea-kettle down it the last nine years, to the point where it is hardly shocking that a citizen could be killed extra-judiciously.   There is a case for it, of course- he is at war with the US.  I'm not a legal scholar, though, and am reluctant to sound off half-cocked on this.

There has been some talk of trial, though that brings up another boatload of questions both legal and political.   The Yemeni government might be more amenable to arresting and extraditing al-Awlaki if he can get a fair trial in the US.   I don't like the "kill or ok maybe capture" strategy, especially for someone who is as low-level as al-Awlaki, but it is better than "kill at all costs".  Obama has to be willing to withstand the empurpled bloviating of ignorant senators, commentators, and other slackers for whom nothing less than a "trial" at dawn followed by a noon execution will suffice.   Long term thinking has to be the key.  Zelin's article helps to shape that framework.

The Grand Chessboard

Or the little one. 

MOSCOW, Sep. 22 (Saba)- Yemen ambassador to Moscow Mohammed al-Hilaly denied on Wednesday reports over the Yemen national chess team played against the Israeli team within the framework o the World Chess Olympics in its 39th edition currently taking place in Russia.

In his statements to Saba, al-Hilaly said that the Yemeni chess team was surprised by the first round draw which placed it in front of the Israeli entity.

He added that the team withdrew from the game which made the organizing committee to set the Yemeni team as a loser and announced win for the Israeli entity team.

The ambassador emphasized that the news which circulated that the Yemeni chess team played against the Israeli team are false and baseless.

Because, you know, that would be awful.  

Look, I am ok with Arab solidarity and defending the Palestinians, especially with a far-right government in Israel (though the timing of this is a little off).  But sports, or at least competition, should generally be removed.  There is no need to punish the participants.  

This is one of those stories where you either get angry or shake your head and laugh.  I am leaning toward the latter, mostly because of the terms "false and baseless", which is a level of outrage normally only seen when another candidate circulates rumors that you might, in fact, be running a child sex ring.   Although I suppose that the late Bobby Fischer would approve of this tactic.  Perhaps the Yemenis were just paying homage to one of the best?

The danger of al-Qaeda

Heavy fighting in Hawta today, in the south.  The army is taking it to AQAP, or at least trying to- it seems that the militants have a better chance at living once the army gives them their full attention.  Although it might be assumed as much, I don't think this is a direct result of Counter-terrorism chief John Brennan's talks with Salih.  I don't think the talks hurt, of course, but it has been my contention that Salih sees AQAP as enough of a threat to his regime that he wants to be going after him.  As far as AQAP is concerned, there is no double game. 

But that can also be a problem.  The fighting is displacing thousands in an already explosive and on-the-edge south.   This is creating yet another IDP nightmare for a government that may or may not have the will, but certainly does not have the means, to deal with it. 

Brennan's advice to Salih has to mention that while he eradication of AQAP is a fine goal, try not to burn the country to the ground in doing so.  There has to be support for what could be perceived as failure, even if it looks bad in the press and no-nothing mouth-breathers criticize Obama for "weakness."   In a speech at the US Institute for Peace, Daniel Benjamin outlined the administration's strategy for Yemen, and it seems they are taking the long view, at least in theory.  I hope this is the case.  It is tough in today's 1-hour news cycle to be able to slow-foot things and work 10 years down the road, especially with such a volatile issue as terrorism.  But to not do so is insane. 

Programming Notes

I'll be in DC next week for the Foreign Policy Research Institute's conference on "The Foreign Fighter Problem".   My panel is on the Yemen Case Study (surprisingly enough), and the paper for the panel will be delivered by AJG pal Chris Boucek of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  Also on the panel are Jeremy Sharp of the Congressional Research Service and WINEP's Barak Salmoni.  We'll be starting at about 8:45 on Tuesday, which is unfortunate seeing as how the Bears have the Monday Night Game.  The whole conference looks excellent, and if you are in the area and interested just run your mouse over this word, and you can get all the info you desire.

The Oath

PBS will be showing The Oath tomorrow, the Laura Poitras documentary about Salim Hamdan and Abu Jandal.  Here is the official blurb.

Filmed in Yemen and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, The Oath interweaves the stories of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantánamo facing war crimes charges. Directed by Laura Poitras (Flag Wars, POV 2003; the Oscar®-nominated My Country, My Country, POV 2006), The Oath unfolds via a narrative rife with plot reversals and betrayals that ultimately leads to Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantánamo and the U.S. Supreme Court. Winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Excellence in Cinematography Award: Documentary. A co-production of ITVS in association with American Documentary/POV.

And here is the trailer.




Check your local listings.  I look forward to seeing it, and have heard nothing but excellent things.  I'll try to have something up about it on Wednesday, but I am not a terribly good critic.  

Waq al Whaaa???

Sorry for the awful awful title.  But Greg has emerged from his Pynchonian silence to blog back at Waq al-Waq.  Catch it before it fades away, somehow.

Niqab News

Haley Sweetland Edwards, who was once kind enough to post her thoughts on the niqab on this very blog, has a piece up in Slate's XX page.  It is about France's ban of the burqa.  It is well-argued, and shows the difficult and frustrating dilemma of taking your own commitment to plurality seriously- it is sometimes uncomfortable, and there is no hard line dividing right and wrong.  It is easy on the extremes, but difficult the closer you get to the middle. 

Haley is also now writing from the Caucuses at The Haley Bureau, which is an unassailably cool thing to do, and the official position of Always Judged Guilty is immense jealousy.   There is a longer piece on the burqa controversy up there now. 

Walking back (slightly) on Anwar al-Awlaki

In 2003, I came around to supporting the war in Iraq, with quite a bit of force.  Part of it was relative youth, and the misplaced thrill of being a liberal who disagrees with liberal orthodoxy.  Part of it was hatred for Saddam.  A large part of it was that I came to the conclusion- and I remember where I was when this hit me, at the apartment of the girl I was seeing at the time, boring her with my vacillations on the war- that there was just so much information out there it was impossible for the administration to mess it up.  They could take all the knowledge they wanted and apply it to not messing things up.  I don't want to sound like Tom Friedman, who says his fault was trusting the Bush administration, and thus slightly shifting blame.  It was poor analysis on my part- I misread both Iraq and America.  And yet, I was certain.

That is a pretty circuitous way of beginning this piece on Anwar al-Awlaki, someone whose supposed prominence I have blasted.  Certainty is the death of good analysis, which I what I suppose I aspire to.  It is incredible to me that people like Kristof, Peretz, and Krauthammer can still be so strident and certain about things when they were deeply and fundamentally wrong about the major FP question of the last decade. 

So I want to walk back, a little.  I do think al-Awlaki is a threat, as his knowledge of English and of America allows him to manipulate things in this country more than bin Laden.  That said, he is at most a useful tool- in the right hands he can be very dangerous.   I think as the anti-Muslim bigotry in the US gets ramped up and endorsed at high levels he will be able to strike a chord, especially among young Muslims who have are probably increasingly disillusioned about what it means to practice Islam in America (note: that is speculation on my part.  I admit to not having my finger on the pulse of the teenage Muslim community). 

But I am not going to sprint backwards.  For instance, I'm probably not going to endorse this Telegraph article from Philip Johnston, titled "Anwar al Awlaki: The New Osama Bin Laden?"  (Correct answer: no).  As a way of trying to tamp down some of the hysteria related to this dude, I will fisk in full below the jump.

Greg Johnsen as Thomas Pynchon

For those of you that miss Greg's blogging- and I count myself firmly in that category- he's quoted in today's long-ish NYTimes article about military aid to Yemen.   We can pretend that counts as micro-blogging, or something.   The article is mostly about the debate surrounding the aid and how it should be used.  I'm kind of torn about this- based on a number of factors, I tend to give this admin the benefit of the doubt, particularly when it comes to the long game.  But I also tend not to give anyone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Yemen, because I am a smug bastard.  

There have been a couple of signs that they are trying to do the right thing in Yemen, especially when it comes to establishing relationships with the tribes.  This is a good thing to do because not only does it give us some leverage in a post-Salih world, but also because it might help undercut on of AQAP's strengths- namely, their increasing coziness with the tribes.  But in American politics there is always the temptation to say "screw it, let's just throw some guns at them."   I will believe that there is a more long-term strategy when I start to see non-military aid promises fulfilled. 

What I found strange in the Times article actually came at the end, in Greg's quotes.  I will put the three paragraphs here in full.

If the Saleh government was once seen in Washington as too cozy with Islamic militants, that has changed, in part because Al Qaeda has stepped up its attacks. In recent weeks, Yemeni security forces have rousted Qaeda fighters from the southern city of Lawdar. In retaliation, Al Qaeda on Friday published the names of 55 regional security, police and intelligence officers, calling them “legitimate targets.”
“That response shows Al Qaeda sees a real threat from security forces,” said Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen scholar at Princeton. But Mr. Johnsen said the priorities of President Saleh, an autocrat whose family has ruled for three decades, do not coincide with those of the United States.
“If we’re just pouring money and equipment into the Yemeni military in the hopes that it will be used against Al Qaeda,” Mr. Johnsen said, “that hope doesn’t match either with history or current reality.”

I'm not quite sure what is going on here.  I don't want to say what Greg means, but my take is that there should be an "only" before "against Al Qaeda".   I hope Greg will correct me if I am wrong, but I think Salih does want to stop this generation of Qaeda, as they are intent on ruining him- no negotiations.  Our interests in that field at least loosely dovetail.   The fear, to me- and this isn't so much a fear as it is a guarantee- is that Salih will use our aid money against the Houthis and the Southern Movement.  

This is the big paradox, and one the article strangely avoids.  What Salih is facing is a violent crisis of legitimacy.  His right to rule is bought by hardly anyone.  And yet, our goal in Yemen is to maintain at least enough government to fight AQAP and (hopefully) tackle some of the major structural issues.  If our aid money is used by the government to fight their other enemies, that will increasingly delegitimize Salih, and the United States.  Propping up Salih is the least-bad of a number of bad options.  We can't make it worse by doing nothing except giving him new toys.

The cost

Andrew Bacevich has stirred a lot of talk lately about the limits of US power, the wars we are in, and what we can do as a nation- talking that goes beyond CT/COIN debates or even "Can Iran Get a Nuke" discussions- but fundamental questions about national interest.  Some of the discussion is spurred by the 9/11 anniversary, which is understandable.  James Fallows linked us to probably the shortest David Foster Wallace essay ever, in which he asks if 9/11 victims should be considered martyrs instead of victims, and that is the price we have to pay for living in a free society.  It had been asked before, of course, but never that I have seen in the martyr terms. 

Pivoting off both of these thoughts a bit, I am going to poke my minor nose into the debate with a question.  This is one for which I have no answer, at all.   It is a very specific, though not entirely far-fetched scenario involving my two favorite places, one which I think puts this fundamental question in very stark terms. 

If you know, very certainly (again, this is hypothetical), that AQAP was going to be able to bring down a plane in downtown Chicago, say crash it down State Street, killing many (thousands?), and knew the only way to stop it would be to invade Yemen, would you?  This invasion might not be as costly as Iraq or Afghanistan, but would certainly run in the tens of billions and lose many soldiers, and there would probably be no clear-cut victory.  I don't mean "let the attack happen" in a Truther sense; this is fiction.  I am also aware there is no alogrithm for "citizens' lives v. dollars spent".  I chose Chicago because I live here, with loved ones, any one of whom (myself included) could be downtown at any given moment.   So these are the things that you have to think about: potential personal loss as measured against what your country can afford; what you personally can endure versus the traumatic shock of another major attack, weighed against the divisions yet another war would bring to our society.  And, perhaps, the life of your cousin spending the day at Macy's against the life of an anonymous soldier, bleeding out in an impossible land.

I don't have any answers, but this is something that, between the Yemen stuff, and my budding mayoral campaign, that I want to explore.   Any thoughts are always welcome.