DON’T GO THERE, MR. PRESIDENT!

By Tom Hayden

- 17,000 OR 21,000 MORE AMERICAN TROOPS WILL NOT PROTECT AMERICANS AGAINST AL QAEDA ATTACKS.

The Obama Plan instead will accelerate any plans al Qaeda commanders have for attacking targets in the United States or Europe. The alternative for al Qaeda is to risk complete destruction, an American objective that has not been achieved for eight years. A future terrorist attack need not be planned or set in motion from a cave in Waziristan. The cadre could already be underground in Washington or London. The real alternative for President Obama should be to maintain a deterrent posture while immediately accelerating diplomacy to meet legitimate Muslim goals, from a Palestinian state to genuine progress on Kashmir.

President Obama is right, at least politically, to take very seriously the threat of another 9/11 from any source. Besides the suffering inflicted, it would derail his agenda and perhaps his presidency. This is all the more reason he must understand that by repeatedly threatening to “kill al Qaeda” he is provoking a hornet’s nest without protection against a devastating sting.

The hard choices are laid out very clearly in writings by the CIA’s former point man on Osama bin Ladin, Michael Scheuer, who also ran the Agency’s rendition program and still supports it. Scheuer is a tough guy, in other words, who says the options are either to kill all the jihadists, make it quick, and withdraw [not a real option], or begin pursuing an agenda which addresses what he calls Muslim issues: the American military and civilian presence in the Arab Peninsula, the unqualified US support for Israel, US support for states which oppress Muslims [China, India, Russia], US exploitation of Muslim oil and suppression of its price, US military presence in the Islamic world, US support and protection of Arab police states. [Michael Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, 2008]

Such an approach would create an option to violence for many millons of jihadi sympathizers and potential recruits. It would create an incentive not to inflict terrorism, blow up airplanes and hotels, or deploy a nuclear bomb in a suitcase. It would disturb the multinational oil companies and the Israel lobby, but open a better path to stability than wars against the Muslim world.