TTK Ciar's Journal: Here Comes The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

2006-11-12: Here Comes The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

So the Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives and of the Senate -- barely. On one hand this could be a good thing, as control of our government will be closely divided and it therefore might get less done. On the other hand I'm somewhat distressed by the attitudes of the people around me (most of whom are Dem-aligned), who show great faith that "their guys" are the champions of all that is good and just, and that they can be trusted to do the right thing. Some give lip-service-level recognition to the idea that maybe the Democrats are as corrupt and given to graft and bribery as the Republicans, but in general the dissatisfaction with our government has dropped tangibly.

I remember the same thing happening in reverse, when the Clinton administration went out and the Bush administration came in. Republicans, who had been foaming at the mouth at the evils perpetrated upong the american people by their government, suddenly started thumping each other on the back and singing the fed's praises, as if anything had meaningfully changed. Of course the Bush administration picked up where the Clinton administration left off, and americans' civil liberties continued their free-fall. On Clinton's watch we saw the expansion of police powers (re-interpretation of RICO to permit massive increases in Civil Forfeitures, no-knock searches, warrantless searches), abuse of eminent domain, weakening of posse comitatus, the Clipper Chip, and the deployment of face recognition technology to airports and bus stations. Bush picked up the ball and ran in the same direction, giving us domestic spying programs, institutionalized torture of suspects, intense weakening of habeas corpus (qv the Military Commissions Act of 2006, aka "Quisling Act", aka S3930), further police power expansions under the PATRIOT Act, and the creation of massive protest-free zones around political presentations.

Politicians are not champions of freedom or justice, whether they align themselves with the Democrats or Republicans. Partisans who believe either party will work to make life better for the american people are deluding themselves.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a friend who identifies as Republican. When I mentioned that the Republicans only give lip service to the right to keep and bear arms, he stated that he was a Republican, and that he supported the right to keep and bear arms. It didn't occur to me until then that for most people the demarcation between politicians and their constituents is fairly unclear. Republican constituents by and large believe in less governmental intervention, fiscal responsibility, the right to keep and bear arms, a stiff national defense, and free trade. Democratic constituents by and large believe in civil liberties, education, checks on corporate abuses, religious and racial tolerance, development of communal resources, and a robust health care system.

If Democratic and Republican politicians upheld the same values as their constituents, the world would be a much better place. As it is, however, politicians of every stripe value getting elected, first and foremost. They give lip service to their constituents in order to gain their votes, and when elected they will make a big show out of enacting some piece of legislation or policy which seems to further their constituents' agendas. But underneath this veneer of goodwill, politicians are not interested in upholding their constituents' values, or even doing the jobs they were elected to perform. They consistently work against the interests of the people in order to further their own political careers, and to enrich themselves, their families, their friends, and their political allies.

After six years of Republican domination, we have a government which is more intrusive and controlling, less fiscally responsible, less capable of defending the country, and more hostile towards entrepreneurship than ever before. They did allow the so-called "assault weapons ban" to die, but have otherwise done nothing to reduce the obstacles piled up against the citizens' ability to obtain and responsibly use firearms. It wasn't that they tried and failed to improve the state of the nation -- they deliberately neglected opportunities to make the government better and instead prioritized the acquisition and consolidation of wealth and political power. Bush and his administration, for instance, deliberately passed up multiple opportunities to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, both before and after the 9/11 attacks, putting the country's security at risk, because it was politically expedient to do so.

This is from Jeffrey Clair's book, Grand Theft Pentagon , in which he documents actual events illustrating the irresponsible behavior of the Bush and Clinton administrations (pp22-26, copied without permission, mistakes are probly my typos made in transription):

Kabir Mohammed is a 48-year-old businessman living in Houston, Texas. Born in Paktia province in southern Afghanistan, he's from the Jaji clan (from which also came Afghanistan's last king). Educated at St. Louis University, he spent much of the 1980s supervising foreign relations for the Afghan mujahiddeen, where he developed extensive contracts with the US foreign police establishment, also with senior members of the Taliban.

After the eviction of the Soviets, Mohammed returned to the United States to develop an export business with Afghanistan and became a US citizen. Figuring in his extensive dealings with the Taliban in the late 1990s was much investment of time and effort for a contract to develop the proposed oil pipeline through northern Afghanistan.

In a lengthly interview and in a memorandum supplied by his lawyer, Kabir Mohammed has given a detailed account and documentation to buttress his charge that the Bush administration could have had Osama bin Laden and his senior staff either delivered to the US or to allies as prisoners, or killed at their Afghan base. Portions of Mohammed's role have been the subject of a number of news reports, including a CBS news stroy by Alan Pizzey aired September 25, 2001. This is the first he has made public the first story.

By the end of 1999 US sactions and near-world-wide political ostracism were costing the Taliban dearly and they had come to see Osama bin Laden and his training camps as, in Mohammed's words, "just a damned liability". Mohammed says the Taliban leadership had also been informed in the clearest possible terms by a US diplomat that if any US citizen was harmed as a consequence of an Al Qaeda action, the US would hold the Taliban responsible and target Mullah Omar and the Taliban leaders.

In the summer of 2000, on one of his regular trips to Afghanistan, Mohammed had a summit session with the Taliban high command in Kandahar. They asked him to arrange a meeting with appropriate officials in the European Union, to broker a way in which they could hand over Osama bin Laden. Mohammed recommended they send bin Laden to the World Criminal Court in the Hague.

Shortly thereafter, in August of 2000, Mohammed set up a meeting at the Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt between a delegation from the Taliban and Reiner Weiland of the EU. The Taliban envoys repeated the offer to deport bin Laden. Weiland told them he would take the proposal to Elmar Brok, foreign relations director for the European Union. According to Mohammed, Brok then informed the US Ambassador to Germany of the offer.

At this point the US State Department called Mohammed and said the government wanted to retain his services, even before his official period on the payroll, which lasted from November of 2000 to late September, 2001, by which time he tells us he had been paid $115,000.

On the morning of October 12, 2000, Mohammed was in Washington DC, preparing for an 11am meeting at the State Department, when he got a call from State, telling him to turn on the TV and then come right over. The USS Cole had just been bombed. Mohammed had a session with the head of State's South East Asia desk and with officials from the NSC. They told him the US was going to "bomb the hell out of Afghanistan". "Give me three weeks," Mohammed answered, "and I will deliver Osama to your doorstep." They gave him a month.

Mohammed went to Kandahar and communicated the news of imminent bombing to the Taliban. They asked him to set up a meeting with US officials to arrange the circumstances of their handover of Osama. On November 2, 2000, less than a week before the US election, Mohammed arranged a face-to-face meeting, in that same Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, between Taliban leaders and a US government team.

After a rocky start on the first day of the Frankfurt session, Mohammed says the Taliban realized the gravity of US threats and outlined various ways bin Laden could be dealt with. He could be turned over to the EU, killed by the Taliban, or made available as a target for cruise missiles. In the end, Mohammed says, the Taliban promised the "unconditional surrender of bin Laden". "We all agreed," Mohammed tells us, "the best way was to gather Osama and all his lieutenants in one location and the US would send one or two cruise missiles."

Up to that time Osama had been living on the outskirts of Kandahar. At some time shortly after the Frankfurt meeting, the Taliban moved Osama and placed him and his retinue under house arrest at Daronta, thirty miles from Kabul.

In the wake of the 2000 election Mohammed travelled to Islamabad and met with William Milam, US ambassador to Pakistan and the person designated by the Clinton administration to deal with the Taliban on the fate of bin Laden. Milam told Mohammed that it was a done deal but that the actual bombing of bin Laden would have to be handled by the incoming Bush administration.

On November 23, 2000, Mohammed got a call from the NSC saying they wanted to put him officially on the payroll as the US government's contact man for the Taliban. He agreed. A few weeks later an official from the newly installed Bush National Security Council asked him to continue in the same role and shortly thereafter he was given a letter from the administration (Mohammed showed us a copy of this document), apologizing to the Taliban for not having dealt with bin Laden, explaining that the new government was still settling in, and asking for a meeting in February 2001.

The Bush administration sent Mohammed back, carrying kindred tidings of delay and regret to the Taliban three more times in 2001, the last in September after the 9/11 attack. Each time he was asked to communicate similar regrets about the fairlure to act on the plan agreed to in Frankfurt. This procrastination became a standing joke with the Taliban. Mohammed tells us, "They made an offer to me that if the US didn't have fueld for the cruise missiles to attack Osama in Daronta, where he was under house arrest, they would pay for it."

Kabir Mohammed's final trip to Afghanistan on the US government payroll took place on September 3, 2001. On September 11 Mohammed acted as translator for some of the Taliban leadership in Kabul as they watched TV coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Four days later the US State Department asked Mohammed to set up a meeting with the Taliban. Mohammed says the Taliban were flown to Quetta in two C-130s. The US team issued three demands:

1. Immediate handover of bin Laden;

2. Extradition of foreigners in Al Qaeda who were wanted in their home countries;

3. Shut-down of bin Laden's bases and training camps.

Mohammed says the Taliban agreed to all three conditions.

This meeting in Quetta was reported in carefully vague terms by Pizzey on September 25, where Mohammed was mentioned by name. He tells us that the Bush administration was far more exercised by this story than by any other event in the whole delayed and ultimately abandoned schedule of killing Osama.

In October 18, Mohammed tells us, he was invited to the US embassy in Islamabad and told that "there was light at the end of the tunnel for him", which translated into an invitation to ocupy the role later assigned to Karzai. Mohammed declined, saying he had no desire for the role of puppet and probable fall guy.

A few days later the Pizzey story was aired and Mohammed drew the ire of the Bush administration where he already had an enemy in the form of Zalmay Khalilzad, appointed on September 22 as the US special envoy to Afghanistan. After giving him a dressing-down, US officials told Mohammed the game had changed, and he should tell the Taliban the new terms: surrender or be killed. Mohammed declined to be the bearer of this news and went off the US government payroll.

Towards the end of that same month of October, 2001 Mohammed was successfully negotiating with the Taliban for the release of hostage Heather Mercer (acting in a private capacity at the request of her father) when the Taliban once again said they would hand over Osama bin Laden unconditionally. Mohammed tells us he relayed the offer to David Donohue, the US consulate general in Islamabad. He was told, in his words, that "the train had moved". Shortly thereafter the US bombings of Afghanistan began.

In December Mohammed was in Pakistan following with wry amusement the assault on Osama bin Laden's supposed mountain redoubt in Tora Bora, in the mountains bordering Pakistan. At the time, he said, he informed US embassy officials the attack was a waste of time. Taliban leaders had told him that bin Laden was nowhere near Tora Bora but in Waziristan. Knowing that the US was monitoring his cellphone traffic, Osama had sent a decoy to Tora Bora.

From the documents he has supplied to us and from his detailed account we regard Kabir Mohammed's story as credible and are glad to make public his story of the truly incredible failure of the Bush administration to accept the Taliban's offer to eliminate bin Laden. As a consequence of this failure more than 3,000 Americans and thousands of Afghans died. Mohammed himself narrowly escaped death on two occasions when Al Qaeda, apprised of his role, tried to kill him. In Kabul in February, 2001, a bomb was detonated in his hotel. Later that year, in July, a hand grenade thrown in his room in a hotel in Kandahar failed to explode.

He told his story to the 9/11 Commission whose main concern, he tells us, was that he not divulge his testimony to anyone else, also to the 9/11 Families who were pursuing a lawsuit based on the assumption of US intelligence blunders by the FBI and CIA. He says his statements to the 9/11 commissions were not much use to the families since his judgement was, and still remains, that it was not intelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks, but the political negligence of the Bush administration.

I wish there were authors who were willing to turn their critical eye (and pen) to politicians of both parties, rather than criticising one party's leaders while overlooking the abuses and incompetencies of the other party's leaders. Unfortunately they all seem to have cast their lot in with one side or the other, and selectively demonize only the members and actions of the opposition. In so doing, I feel that they undermine their own credibility, and foresake opportunities to analyze and discuss political corruption as a whole. I think we could learn a lot by looking at what all political dysfunction has in common, without focussing unduly upon the liberal or conservative manifestations of it. It seems to me that the similarities of Democratic and Republican corruption are more important than their differences, and that there are probably common social factors underlying the promotion of all government corruption. If we learned more about what we, The People, are doing to enable dysfunction and abuse, then we might be able to do something about it. Unfortunately a necessary prerequisite of this analysis is the recognition that both sides suffer from the same affliction, and that is something people are simply unwilling to do. It would reveal the belief that "if we just vote Our Guys into power, it will solve all our problems", as a sham. This belief is the foundation of partisan political activity among the constituents of both major political parties.

So now the tables have turned, and the Democrats have "Their Guys" in control of the legislature. Doubtless the Democratic constituency will turn a blind eye to the incompentence, corrpution, and abuses which will follow, while the Republican constituency will strive to eradicate this corruption by voting "Their Guys" back into power. All the while pretending that the corrupt practices enacted by "Their Guys" before the Democrats gained power, never happened.

I fear that the country will only sink deeper into a quagmire of financial, industrial, and social ruin as long as people cling to their delusions and keep voting in the same rotten lying self-serving aristocrats, election after election. Will the american people ever wake the hell up?

-- TTK