Articles by Herschel Smith

Dan Riehl conveys a report on one of Governor Rick Perry’s solutions to the war at the border.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said on Saturday that as president, he would consider sending American troops into Mexico to help defeat drug cartels and improve border security. He indicated that any such action would be done “in concert” with the Mexican government.

“It may require our military in Mexico working in concert with them to kill these drug cartels and to keep them off of our border and to destroy their network,” Mr. Perry said during a campaign appearance here.

Dan observes that:

As I suspect there’s little to no support across America for deploying troops to Mexico under any circumstances – and it would likely never happen in the first place – it was, in a word, dumb to even bring it up. Pssst, Rick, if you have to cross the border to deal with a problem, maybe the border IS the problem to stay focused upon if you’re running for President of a, you know, sovereign nation? Imagine that. Suggesting sending troops into Mexico only reinforces the idea of a reluctance, or inability to deal with the core issue – sealing the border. It may even be somewhat honest on his part. But it’s simply not good politics. Perry may not only be in Texas right now. But if this keeps up, he will be and will remain there after 2012.-

I suspect that Dan is right and there is no stomach for sending troops of any kind into Mexico.  I have advocated some variant of what Perry is suggesting, although it’s difficult to know exactly what he is suggesting since he has given no detail.  In Texas Border Security: A Strategic Assessment (and also previously) my advocacy has included (but has not been restricted to) the following:

1. Searching every vehicle that crosses the border checkpoints.
2. Increased sting and undercover operations by law enforcement to root out corruption.
3. Sending the U.S. Marines to the border to (a) construct and occupy combat outposts and observations posts, (b) conduct regular foot patrols of the border, and (c) be allowed (by the U.S.) to cross the border if necessary to chase Mexican insurgents.
4. Taking Congressional action to remove legal requirements such as the SCOTUS decision in Tennessee v. Garner, thus allowing the Marines to conduct combat operations at the border rather than law enforcement operations.
5. U.S. Special Operations Forces raids against Mexican cartel high value targets inside of Mexico (with or without the permission of the Mexican government, unilaterally, and without Mexican involvement).

Several military and former military friends and contacts have weighed in with me recently with the view that the gravest national security risk faced by America today comes from South of the border, not Pakistan or Yemen.  I have recommended treating this as a war against warlords and insurgents rather than a law enforcement operation, and my sense of things is that the American public, even if they don’t support sending U.S. troops into Mexico in companion operations with Mexican troops, support some sort of militarization of the border.

For the American public, however, it always seems a legitimate solution to send the National Guard to the border.  We tried this, and because of lack of training, the application of Tennessee v. Garner to their operations, arming orders that focus on prevention of incidents, misunderstanding of the Posse Comitatus Act and why it doesn’t really apply to border troops, and host of other problematic bureaucratic entanglements, a National Guard outpost was overrun by Mexican fighters partly because the troops didn’t even have weapons.

Sending National Guard troops to the border is a Potemkin solution as we have previously demonstrated.  But military operations alongside Mexican troops – as Perry has suggested – will be equally ineffective while the border isn’t secure.  There is absolutely no replacement for securing the border, regardless of how the solution might be dressed and served up.

Another Potemkin solution is given to us by Terry Goddard, Attorney General of Arizona (lengthy quote).

As the Attorney General of Arizona, I have been part of law enforcement on the southwestern border for most of the past decade. My office confronted border crime on an almost daily basis. From that view, it is clear that much of the “secure the border” debate is nonsense. Again and again, symbols trump reality, misinformation buries the truth. Programs like building a bigger border wall or enlisting police in the local enforcement of immigration laws are sold as ways to make the border more secure. They will not. In the latter instance, the “cure” could actually make the crime problem worse. Equally misguided is the idea that a force buildup alone can keep the border secure in the face of increasingly sophisticated smuggling organizations—the cartels.

Since improved border security is a common denominator in the immigration debate, both sides should be anxious to know what actually works. This paper is based on the assumption that sincere parties on both sides want to go beyond the rhetoric and the symbols. I believe a more effective border defense is possible, but not on the present course. Not by the Administration’s defense-only buildup of Border Patrol and National Guard on the border, and not by the huge investment in bricks and mortar or the quasi-military responses proposed by the Administration’s critics.

A more effective border strategy starts with the money; the torrent of cash pouring across the border into the cartel pocketbooks. Cartels are, first and foremost, business enterprises.  Sophisticated cartel organizations are formed not for any lust for power or to employ the bosses’ relatives, but because they maximize profits. Cartel agents do not threaten, terrorize, and kill because they love the work, or out of religious zeal. They do it because they are very well-paid. So, go after the money. Taking away the profit cripples the organization. Conversely, as long as the money from drug sales and human smuggling—which may total more than $40 billion a year—flows to the cartels, the violence in Mexico, the sophisticated smugglers crossing our border, and the perception that nothing is being done to defend the border will continue.

We can also do a much better job of taking the fight directly to the drug cartels using the full arsenal of law-enforcement methods. We can significantly reduce the number of illegal crossers and the amounts of illegal drugs smuggled, as well as the violence in Mexico. The answers are straightforward; the mystery is why they have not been taken up long ago.

Read all of his report.  We should indeed use all tools at our disposal, including freezing assets and other tools mentioned by Goddard.  But this notion that “force alone” cannot secure the border is juvenile, and similar to the population-centric counterinsurgency mantra that “you cannot kill your way to victory.”  Of course you can, and of course force can make the border secure.  And of course the involvement of local law enforcement can help federal efforts (if such efforts exist at all).

It strikes me as silly and and stolid to suggest that something we have never tried won’t work.  It also strikes me as silly and stolid that Perry’s advisers haven’t to this date informed him that he cannot score the nomination while holding his current views of immigration and the border.  Finally, it strikes me as particularly dangerous for the American voting public not to be informed enough to know when a recommendation (such as sending National Guard troops to the border, or going after cartel assets to the exclusion of all other efforts, including border security) is a Potemkin solution.  It’s the sovereignty and security of America that is at stake.

Prior: Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment

Katie Pavlich writing at Townhall has the report.

Multiple sources, including sources from ATF, DOJ  and Congressional offices have said there is a white paper circulating within the Department of Justice, outlining the essential elimination of ATF. According to sources, the paper outlines the firing of at least 450 ATF agents in an effort to conduct damage control as Operation Fast and Furious gets uglier and as election day 2012 gets closer.  ATF agents wouldn’t be reassigned to other positions, just simply let go. Current duties of ATF, including the enforcement of explosives and gun laws, would be transferred to other agencies, possibly the FBI and the DEA.  According to a congressional source, there have been rumblings about the elimination of ATF for quite sometime, but the move would require major political capital to actually happen.

“It’s a serious white paper being circulated, how far they’d get with it I don’t know,” a confidential source said.

After a town hall meeting about Operation Fast and Furious in Tucson, Ariz. on Monday, ATF Whistleblower Vince Cefalu, who has been key in exposing details about Operation Fast and Furious, confirmed the elimination of ATF has been circulating as a serious idea for sometime now and that a white paper outlining the plan does exist.

So does this report exaggerate the situation?  Turning to Examiner reporter David Codrea, there at least seems to be a serious shakeup in the works.

“Word is leaking out of HQ this week, to us plain old agents in the field that our new Acting Director is in fact planning on making some personnel moves very shortly,” a thread on the CleanUpATF website titled “Sweeping Out the 5th Floor” begins.

CleanUpATF is the website co-founded by whistleblowing ATF Special Agent Vince Cefalu to expose bureau waste, abuse, corruption and fraud, and has been the source for many tips that have been proven by investigation, including the initial allegations of gunwalking and the association of walked guns with the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry—something which the Chief Counsel’s Office and top management were acutely aware of early on—including this correspondent’s reporting on it.

Per comment poster “Plain Old ATF Agent”:

The Acting Director has told the 5th floor jerk off’s that the management of ATF will look entirely different by January 1 and has said in so many words that most will be gone. Mr. Jones is not too impressed with what he has seen and been told thus far by the 5th floor executives. Jones is telling people close to him at DOJ and at the OUSA in Minnesota that he can’t believe some of the people are in the positions they are in and that the agency is in worse shape than he was led to believe.

This assessment has also been shared with this correspondent by other sources, some hearing scuttlebutt that a partial realignment of senior executive staff may happen as early as today.

Whether the end result is termination or reorganization of a large number of ATF agents and analysts or complete breakup of the organization, there are a few things things that are obvious to the astute observer.

First, it isn’t clear how much of victory it is for those of us who oppose the existence of the ATF as an overly-bureaucratic, hyper-regulatory obstruction of firearms freedom and rights in America.  What happens going forward isn’t planned or considered because none of this is very well planned or considered.

And that leads to the second point.  This is a function of the political machinations of the Obama administration.  This has nothing to do with making the ATF better, or ending the ATF as we know it, or any other predetermined altruistic end.

It’s all reactionary and it has to do with political cover.  This has to do with making the problem go away in the headwinds of the coming election, because the election is all that matters.  The sad fact is that the good ATF agents – those ones who want to lock up criminals and assist law abiding citizens in gun ownership and publicly bearing arms – end up being collateral damage in Obama’s cover.

The entire nation deserves better.

From CNN:

Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani will be put to death for several charges of rape and extortion, charges that differ greatly from his original sentence of apostasy, Iran’s semi-official Fars News agency reported Friday.

Gholomali Rezvani, the deputy governor of Gilan province, where Nadarkhani was tried and convicted, accused Western media of twisting the real story, referring to him as a “rapist.” A previous report from the news agency claimed he had committed several violent crimes, including repeated rape and extortion.

“His crime is not, as some claim, converting others to Christianity,” Rezvani told Fars. “He is guilty of security-related crimes.”

In a translated Iranian Supreme Court brief from 2010, however, the charge of apostasy is the only charge leveled against Nadarkhani.

“Mr. Youcef Nadarkhani, son of Byrom, 32-years old, married, born in Rasht in the state of Gilan is convicted of turning his back on Islam, the greatest religion the prophesy of Mohammad at the age of 19,” reads the brief.

Of course that’s the way the brief reads.  The Iranians are lying.  The reason, by the way, that Islam requires Muslims to execute those who “apostatize” from Islam is that Islam is epistemologically vapid and vacuous, and logically uncompelling.   When your belief system lacks an intellectual edifice, you have to militarize its expansion and ability to retain “adherents.”  This is what puts incidents like the forced “conversion” of Steve Cenntani in context.  Those who are confident in their faith don’t require the use of weapons for influence.

So apparently al Qaeda propagandist, Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in Yemen by a CIA-led strike.  So this raises some important questions.

First off, while my friend Michael Ledeen wants to support the Green movement in Iran, I want to do this along with (a) reversing the executive order on assassinations issued by President Ford, (b) assassinating General Suleimani, Hassan Nasrallah, and a whole host of other unsavory characters, and fomenting an insurgency inside of Iran.  I pleaded for killing Baitullah Mehsud before his name became a household word, and toasted his demise when it happened (Edit: And now that I think back on this event, quite literally I laughed out loud and celebrated his death, just as I did Zarqawi).  I haven’t changed any of my views.  So let’s not level silly charges that I’m going soft or becoming a leftist.

But we have just rained ordnance down on a U.S. citizen by executive order.  Does anyone see any problems with this?  I (think I) have divorced myself from the fact that Mr. Obama approved this; as my readers know, I am no supporter of Mr. Obama.  But while I think less highly of the high value target program’s effectiveness than he does, I  supported his approval of the mission against UBL.  UBL wasn’t a U.S. citizen.

In this case, though, things are different.  The constitution affords certain protections to U.S. citizens.  I discussed this with co-writer Glen Tschirgi and he suggested some alternative solutions to the dilemma.  For example, Congress could have issued a bill that strips U.S. citizens of their citizenship when a person identifies with a formally designated terrorist entity.  There might be a set of other reasons that a person must relinquish their citizenship.  Now, to be sure, I can think of problematic aspects of such a solution, such as the fact that we would be relying on the accuracy and viability of the U.S. State Department’s program of identification of terrorists, or possibly corruption of the process.

But the fact of the matter is that we didn’t pursue any of these approaches.  Awlaki was still a U.S. citizen when we executed him under executive order.  For some odd reason, that little thing called “due process” keeps coming to mind.

UPDATE: Kevin Williamson weighs in a bit at NRO.  David French responds at NRO with what I consider to be an uncompelling argument.  The issue doesn’t focus on the term “assassination.”  The issue focuses on the protections afforded by the constutition to U.S. citizens.  If it’s legal to execute U.S. citizens without due process, then queue the argument up.  I’ll listen.  And this isn’t analogous to stumbling upon a shooter on the field of battle who happens to be a U.S. citizen.  This is the premeditated targeting of a U.S. citizen without due process.  Again, queue up the argument for this.  Tell me how this fits within our legal framework?

There are many failures in this administration’s foreign policy, but one glaring failure seems to capture all of the incompetence and lack of vision in a single snapshot.

That Pakistan’s behavior has been duplicitous for years is well known.  That the Haqqani network of fighters is killing U.S. Soldiers is equally well known.  They are noted as the most dangerous network of Islamic insurgents in the region.  In fact, the Haqqani group had a relationship of patronage with al Qaeda before AQ became big.  They have more than just a regional focus, and have had fighters in other parts of the world.  AQ learned their military skills mainly from the Haqqani group.  That Pakistan’s ISI is fond of the counterbalance in Afghanistan that they feel Haqqani provides them against Indian influence is well known.

But what is so stark about this example is the obscene display of an administration fighting with itself, but only in whispers.  No one wants to be seen publicly disputing what Admiral Mullen said, because they know he telling the truth.  No one wants to look into the eyes of the families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan and tell them that the country which harbors those who did it is our ally.  So they do it in whispers.

The “anonymous sources” who tried to walk back Mullen’s comments are cowards.  But they exemplify an administration whose foreign policy is in absolute crisis.  They don’t know how to hold Pakistan accountable.  They have put little forethought into lines of logistics other than Khyber and Chaman from the port city of Karachi – so they are beholden to the Pakistanis (and this which is heavily dependent on Russia doesn’t count compared to this).  They have no long term vision for true alliances in the region where India would be a much better friend than Pakistan.

Make no mistake about it.  Mullen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are trying to fight a war.  The Obama administration just undercut the Chairman in a campaign of whispers by cowards.  It is obscene in the superlative, and a sure sign of utter failure.

Two very important individuals in the military (and now consulting) community, Barry McCaffrey and Robert Scales, have penned a much-anticipated study entitled Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment.

The state on the ground in the war with the Mexican cartels is remarkable.  We’ve already discussed how the Mexican cartels have adopted military-style tactics, techniques and procedures.

Mexican drug cartels are using military weapons and tactics while also recruiting Texas teenagers to carry out their operations, which are evolving into full-blown criminal enterprises, experts said.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven C. McCraw said last week in a report given to Congress that the cartels “incorporate reconnaissance networks, techniques and capabilities normally associated with military organizations, such as communications intercepts, interrogations, trend analysis, secure communications, coordinated military-style tactical operations, GPS, thermal imagery and military armaments, including fully automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades.”

There is apparently massive corruption in the U.S. border patrol, and the Mexican cartels have law enforcement officials at the local, state and national levels on their payroll.  In order to combat the smuggling operations across the Rio Grande, Texas is creating a marine division.  The reach of the cartels goes into the High Schools in Texas where they are recruiting children for cartel work.

McCaffrey and Scales add to the bleak picture by showing how the cartel strategy has changed from control through locations South of the border to control via operations at least one county deep into Texas, and they discuss the increased criminalization and violence associated with the cartels.  The bleak picture dovetails with an assessment by Robert Bunker at Small Wars Journal.

Ten years after the 9/11 attack by Al Qaeda, the United States has reached a pivotal strategic decision point in our national policies. Are we to continue with our national security policy of focusing on that terrorist entity (and its group of networks) as the dominant threat to the US and the homeland or will the Mexican cartels (and their supporting gang networks) now be recognized as replacing Al Qaeda as the number one threat to our government and safety of our citizens? While the violence potentials of Al Qaeda are universally recognized— we will never forget the thousands of our dead mourned after 9/11— the violence associated with the criminal insurgent potentials of the Mexican cartels and their ability to corrupt and undermine governments in the Western Hemisphere must now be considered far more threatening to our nation.

The cartels’ influence expands to thousands of U.S. cities and communities, and there are on the order of 18,000 cartels members or associated workers in Texas alone.  The ability to intimidate and corrupt is unmatched in U.S. history – there is no national analogue to which the U.S. can refer to combat this menace.

The task for McCaffrey and Scales is big, and the bar set high.  As for their recommendations?  They sweep across a range of options, coordinated relationships, and increased efficiency in law enforcement.  Counterintelligence and sting operations are of course important, as is rapid response capabilities and increased manpower.

McCaffrey and Scales do recommend the involvement of state troops (i.e., National Guard), but all efforts in this program are seen as led by Texas Rangers.  It is fundamentally a civilian-led operation.  Perhaps this focus is in deference to the Posse Comitatus Act (Section 1385, Title 18 U.S.C.), but it isn’t at all clear that U.S. troops should be forbidden or even could be forbidden from participating in border security under this act.

Furthermore, McCaffrey and Scales have a problem with their recommendation to use National Guard under the current circumstances.  Recall that in Arizona, a National Guard-manned post was attacked and overrun by cartel fighters.  Immediately after this, the following assessment was proffered.

Unfortunately, I must report that “Armed does not always mean “armed” as most Americans would understand. There are various states of being “armed.” These are called “Arming Orders (AO)” which define where the weapon “is,” where the magazine “is,” where the bullets “are” and where the bayonet “is.” They start at Arming Order One which could best be described as a “show of force” or “window dressing” in the worse case.

After considerable searching, I was able to find a complete copy of the Memorundum of Understanding/Rules of Engagement pertaining to the National Guard Deployment (“Operation Jump Start”), which I could then review.

After reviewing the MOU/ROE, I contacted several senior “in the loop” National Guard Officers that I have previously served with, to determine how many soldiers would be “armed” and their Arming Order number. After confirming The El Paso Times article that “very few soldiers there would carry weapons,” I was advised that during the next 90 days, amongst the few soldiers that have weapons, no soldier will have an Arming Order greater than AO-1, which means that an M-16 will be on the shoulder, there will be no magazine in the weapon (thats where the bullets come from), and the magazines stored inside the “ammunition pouch” will in most cases have no ammunition, they will be empty.

It was also conveyed to myself that in the unlikely event that a soldier is ever harmed on the border, the Arming Order will not be raised. Every individual I spoke to envisions no circumstance where there will ever be soldiers at AO-3/4, where a magazine with ammunition would be immediately available. Instead the soldiers will simply be kept farther away from the border if needed. They will be deliberately kept out of harms way.

I know you are thinking (maybe screaming), “but Why?” The easy public relations answer is that a soldier could kill someone. The National Guard is going to ensure that there is not a repeat of the incident in which Esequiel Hernández was killed by a US Marine along the Border.

There are also numerous regulations pertaining to weapons. There is a requirement that a soldier must qualify with his weapon on an annual basis. Reasonably, you must be “qualified” with your weapon before you may carry a weapon. However, ranges for weapons qualification are extremely limited. National Guard soldiers normally perform their once a year required qualification when they go to Annual Training at Ft. Stewart, Ft. McCoy…… This year they are going to “the border” and unless there is a “regulation M-16 qualification range” down the road, they will not be able to get qualified. There is also the question of weapon storage and how do you prevent theft.

Even disregarding all of this, the rules for the use of force will prevent the effective use of the National Guard to accomplish border security.  That is, unless something drastically changes.

I have recommended that we view what is going on as a war against warlords and insurgents who will destabilize the state both South and even North of the border.  I have further recommended that the RUF be amended and the U.S. Marines be used to set up outposts and observation posts along the border in distributed operations, even making incursions into Mexican territory if necessary while chasing insurgents (Mexican police have used U.S. soil in pursuit of the insurgents).

While militarization of border security may be an unpalatable option for America, it is the only option that will work.  All other choices make the situation worse because it is allowed to expand and grow.  Every other option is mere window dressing.

While McCaffrey and Scales have done a service in their outline of the scope and magnitude of the problem, their recommendations are, needless to say, underwhelming.  They kick the can down the road, and the road only becomes more dangerous with time and distance.  Above it was said that there is no national analogue to the menace at the border.  The only analogue to this problem is the most recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The problem has exceeded the ability of law enforcement to cope.

From David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh writing at Examiner and Sipsey Street Irregulars we learn how Operation Gunwalker (or Fast and Furious) was no botched sting operation.

In a letter dated June 1, 2010, then Phoenix ATF Group VII supervisor David Voth instructed a Federal Firearms Licensee in Arizona as follows:

Dear Sir,

Per Section 925(a)(1) of the Gun Control Act (GCA) exempts law enforcement agencies from the transportation, shipment, receipt, or importation controls of the GCA when firearms are to be used for the official business of the agency.

Please accept this letter in lieu of completing an ATF Form 4473 for the purchase of four (4) CAI, Model Draco, 7.62×39 mm pistols, by Special Agent John Dodson. These aforementioned pistols will be used by Special Agent Dodson in furtherance of the performance of his official duties. In addition, Special Agent Dodson has not been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. If you have any questions, you may contact me at telephone number 602-605-6501.

Sincerely,

(Signature)
David Voth
ATF Group Supervisor
Phoenix Group VII

In the lower left-hand margin of the one-page letter is the hand-written notation:

“Picked guns
up 6/10/10
Paid Cash”

“Paid Cash” is underlined.

The existence of this letter provided to these reporters by a previously reliable source familiar with the Fast and Furious investigation, coupled with interviews of other sources across the country which put it into context, provides startling proof that the Federal government did not merely “lose track” of weapons purchased by “straw buyers” under surveillance by the ATF and destined for the Mexican drug cartels. In an undercover operation ordered by Fast and Furious supervisor David Voth, the U.S. government purchased firearms with taxpayer money from licensed firearms dealers, instructed them to conduct the sales “off the books,” and used an ATF agent, John Dodson, to deliver them directly to people that Dodson believed were conducting them across the border.

They go further to discuss how Dodson was almost surely set up to keep him from becoming a whistle-blower for the illegal operation.  This isn’t news.  But what is certainly news is how the news treated this revelation.  Bob Owens followed up this story with analysis of his own, and then remarks concerning a Fox News article on the same subject in one of the comments:

Fox News pretty much lifted their article part and parcel from Codrea and Vanderboegh, and should be considered plagiarists. No link to either of their sites, and Sispsey Street was only mentioned in passing; the Examiner not at all.

David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh have been out front on this scandal ever since it broke.  In fact, they helped to break it.  Their contacts beat any other in the main stream media.  Yet as Owens notes, there isn’t even a single link to Sipsey Street Irregulars or Examiner.  The failure properly to source simply propagates, with The Daily Mail sourcing Fox News.

For a period of time Matt Drudge had a link to the Fox News article as his headline.  This, my friends, is stolen traffic.  Fox News stole the content investigated and written by Codrea and Vanderboegh and posted it as their own.

This is shameful in professional journalism.  Fox News owes David and Mike an apology and explanation.

One final note concerns the explanation by Voth of how the Gun Control Act allowed exemption from its stipulations for LEOs.  One commenter remarks at Owens’ post:

Using agency funds (taxpayers’ money) to buy the weapons to be transferred to the cartels means that the operation has, prima facie, violated U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, chap. 96, section 1960-61, defining the use of federal funds to illegally obtain and/or transfer controlled substances and/or items to unauthorized third parties.

To do this within the law (as in a drug transaction) requires a bench warrant from a state or federal court. The buying or selling has to be done in a controlled manner, the item(s) must never be out of law enforcement control (meaning they at least must be tracked), and they cannot cross state lines or national boundaries without proper notification of authorities on the “receiving end”.

“Fast & Furious” and “Gunwalker” have, on the face of it, violated all of the above provisions.

The argument that the exemptions were intended to allow the trafficking of weapons across national borders is ridiculous in the superlative.  Of course, this won’t fly anywhere, not in court or even with the court of public opinion.  Also note how Voth failed to mention the Arms Export Control Act.

This article from The Hindu provides a good summary history of the Haqqanis.  Upon reading it, consider just how well connected and globally minded they are.

Born in the early 1950s, Jalaluddin Haqqani hailed from the Zadran tribe of the Pashtun ethnic group. He studied at a seminary in Datta Adam Khel, and would likely have gone on to become a rural cleric — had it not been for a series of dramatic events that transformed Afghanistan, eventually bringing to power a new class of armed clerics who would displace both the traditional tribal élite and the modernising left-wing secularists who had swept them aside.

In 1973, Afghan communists overthrew the decaying monarchy. Even though the new President, Daud Muhammad Khan, was the deposed king’s brother-in-law, he declared the country a republic. President Khan presided over a dramatic process of social reform — marked, among other things, by an emphasis on women’s rights. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, fearful that Mr. Khan’s nationalist rhetoric would seduce ethnic Pashtuns living on its side of the border, responded by backing an insurgency spearheaded by the Afghan Islamists.

Five years before the crisis that would suck the Soviet Union into Afghanistan, Jalaluddin Haqqani declared war against the Afghan state. Helped by the ISI, he developed sources of funding in the Middle East, using the flow of cash to build an impressive military apparatus.

The ISI, though, wasn’t Jalaluddin Haqqani’s only source of support. In the wake of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, journalist Steve Coll has revealed, he was cultivated as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset. Charlie Wilson, a right-wing politician who helped funnel tens of millions of dollars to the Afghan jihadists, described Jalaluddin Haqqani as “goodness personified.”

Key figures in the global jihadist movement — among them Osama bin Laden — learned their military skills in camps set up by Jalaluddin Haqqani, and maintained a close relationship with him in the years that followed.

Mustafa al-Hamid, an al-Qaeda linked ideologue and writer who served with Jalaluddin Haqqani’s forces, wrote a hagiographic account which was published in the jihadist magazine al-Somud last year. The “majesty in his personality was a model for the great religious scholars of Afghanistan and students of the knowledge of the pure mujahideen, who now stand as an impregnable bulwark against the largest crusader attack upon the Islamic nation.”

From the outset, scholars Don Rassler and Vahid Brown have noted in a seminal paper, that Jalaluddin Haqqani helped shape the global jihadist movement’s ideas.

In 1980, for example, Haqqani asserted that Middle Eastern charity to the Afghan campaign did “not absolve the individual Muslim of the duty to offer himself for the jihad.” Abdullah Azzam — bin Laden’s mentor, Lashkar-e-Taiba co-founder and ideological patriarch of the global jihadist movement — arrived at the same conclusion four years later, when he declared the Afghan jihad fard ‘ayn, an individual obligation. When bin Laden shifted base to a pink stucco three-storey home in Khartoum in 1991, having fallen out with Saudi Arabia’s royal family, Jalaluddin Haqqani used the opportunity to operate on a wider stage. He backed Hasan al-Turabi’s Islamist regime in Sudan, and sent volunteers to fight in Bosnia. In 1991, at a meeting in Karachi, he also bragged about his war against India, saying his networks had “trained thousands of Kashmiri mujahideen and have made them ready for the jihad.”

Nizamuddin Haqqani, Jalaluddin Haqqani’s deputy, proclaimed in 1991 that the U.S. and Russia were “both infidel forces.”

Bin Laden’s close relationship with the Haqqanis helped him act on those ideas during his last, tortured months in Afghanistan — scarred by an increasingly bitter relationship with Taliban chief Mullah Muhammad Omar which saw al-Qaeda’s leader confined to the city of Kandahar.

“From that point on,” Dr. Rassler and Dr. Brown record, “al-Qaeda came to increasingly rely on the Haqqani network’s autonomy from the Taliban in Loya Paktia as a launching pad for its declarations of war on the West.”

Bin Laden’s declaration of jihad against the West — his most sweeping manifesto and ideological keystone of the 9/11 attacks, was critically issued from a Haqqani camp in the Zhawara valley.

Since 9/11, the Haqqani network has survived by using the same geographical advantages that stood it so well during the anti-Soviet jihad: its control of key routes from Pakistan into Afghanistan, and its ability to retreat south across the border.

Now take note of one particularly stolid commentary at Reuters.

Pakistan hopes the United States will eventually welcome the participation of the Haqqanis in any Afghan peace talks. Kabul also understands the group can’t be excluded.

Although the Haqqanis fall under the command of Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, U.S. officials believe they do not always accept Taliban authority and can act independently.

Jalaluddin has historically shown a penchant for changing sides, as the Americans know all too well, and he may be more flexible than the hardline Siraj.

Washington is scrambling to bring stability to Afghanistan at it gradually withdraws from the country. Striking a deal with the Haqqanis may be wise while the ailing Jalaluddin might still have a say.

That was no mistake, and you don’t have to read it again.  Reuters is recommending that we strike a deal with the “ailing” elder Haqqani who likes to switch sides rather than his more radical son.  And hurry.  The ailing Haqqani may die, in which case whatever deal we might have struck with him – which was sure to be honored by his more radical son – will have been a missed opportunity.

This is what happens when ignorant people assign themselves the responsibility and authority to become Afghanistan / Pashtun / Islamic / Jihadist / Pakistani experts.  Also, regarding that last paragraph in The Hindu piece on control of key routes from Pakistan into Afghanistan, who was it that issued the warning about the coming logistical struggle because of the attacks on lines through Khyber and Chaman, and that, three and a half years ago?

Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell has a post up on Presbyterianism and gun rights concerning “Presbyterian” leadership and anti-gun advocacy.  I like the spirit of his post, but there are two very problematic aspects to his post.

First, he conflates the PCUSA with Presbyterians.  Not so.  Not at all.  There is the PCA, the OPC, the RPCNA, the ARP, and so on.  Presbyterianism isn’t a monolith, and the PCUSA is noted as the very left wing of Presbyterianism.

Second, and most important, Sebastian argues thusly:

I really don’t like it when churches insert themselves into political matters under the guise that these are really spiritual matters. Murder, rage, and vengeance — these are all matters of the spirit. Gun control is a matter of politics

And that, my friends, is exactly how to lose the gun rights argument.  Make it a political debate where, with enough pressure, votes and power, a man can take away what God has granted.  There is more background in Let Him Who Has No Gun Sell His Robe and Buy One, and Dr. Greg Bahnsen has much more.  But the short version is that the right to self defense is a right seen by our forefathers as inalienable.  That  means that it isn’t subject to the ebb and flow of politics.

My right to firearms ownership is granted by God, no  matter what the PCUSA says.  They’re just wrong.  But the way to defeat wrongheaded arguments is not to remove our rights from the framework of righteousness and morality.  It is to prove our opponents wrong on this very basis.

The problem is that while Sebastian claims that gun control is a matter of politics rather than religion (“spirit”), it really is a matter of religion and righteousness and morality rather than politics.  He has it exactly backwards.  I’m not being critical.  I’m trying to ground our rights in something other than the machinations of the political animal.

I hadn’t watched the previous GOP debates, and only watched about two minutes of this one.  I turned the channel after Santorum’s answer on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

It went something like this (I tuned in late the Bret Baier’s question).  Suppose that the insurgency within Pakistan combines with sympathetic elements of the Army and ISI to take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.  What would you do?

Rick Perry answered something like this.  Working with allies in the region is very important, and our recent refusal to sell more fighters to India is problematic.  Our allies need to know that we are there and will be there is a crisis – and also that we might need them in a crisis.

Okay, but incomplete and not quite adequate as I’ll discuss in a moment.  Then Santorum weighs in and issues a rebuke (of sorts) to Perry, saying something like:

“I’ll answer the question on Pakistan since (voice raised slightly and talking sternly at this point) I’m not sure that it was answered before.  Working with allies won’t do it.  We must work with elements within Pakistan and those who might be our friend, such as Pervez Mucharraf, to turn back the insurrection.”

If Perry’s answer is inadequate, Santorum’s answer was dense and doltish.  Note well.  Musharraf was sacked by the Pakistani people in August of 2008.  He left office with the Parliament hating him, and frankly with most of Pakistan hating him.  The Islamists had good reason, since he was seen by them as an apparatchik of the U.S. (he clearly was not, from our own perspective), and the balance of Pakistan hated him because the Pakistan economy had sunk to depths of despair.  It hasn’t really gotten any better since then, but that doesn’t matter for the attitude and atmosphere in 2008.  The Pakistani people wanted change, and they got it by sacking Musharraf.

In an event in which the Pakistani Army cannot turn back an insurrection, or is participating in it, Santorum wants to turn to … Musharraf … hated and sacked by his own people!  What’s Musharraf going to do?  Stand in the road to Islamabad with a gun and threaten the ISI and Haqqani’s fighters as they come to take over the center of power?

It is a salient question whether Pakistan is an ally or enemy in the regional war.  The uninterested public is just now hearing about Haqqani’s fighters and their help in the recent attack on the U.S. embassy.  I have been tracking the Tehrik-i-Taliban, the LeT, the various Kashmiri insurgent offshoot groups, Haqqani’s organization and so on for years now.

I have watched when, as I forecast, the Khyber and Chaman passes became almost too dangerous to transport fuel and materiel, leading me to beg and plead with the strategists and policy-makers to engage the Caucasus region for  alternate logistics routes.  The strategists listened, but not well enough.  Steve Schippert and I have held long conversations trying to ascertain ways to use India as a logistics route (as well as other ways to engage them in Afghanistan).  It has the ports, it has the rail and road system, and it is sympathetic to our cause.  The only problem is that we would have to traverse across parts of Pakistani controlled Kashmir to get to Kabul.

Do we overtly treat Pakistan as the enemy in the campaign that they are, duplicitous as they have been, or do we go on pretending that the Durand line actually means anything and that Pakistan is on our side?  We covertly treat them as the enemy, viz., the secrecy surrounding the UBL raid.  How overt do we go with this?

This I know.  Steve and I agree that India is a much more natural ally in the global war on terror than is Pakistan.  Michael Yon agrees:

After much travels through India, I believe we are natural allies. We have much to learn and gain from each other. India and the United States should do what is natural. We should deepen our ties. Our relationship must be sincere and bonded.

And maybe that’s what Rick Perry is saying.  If an insurrection happens in Pakistan and their nuclear assets are in jeopardy, it will take much more than Musharraf to secure them.  This exigency needs to be war-gamed well in advance, and if the Pentagon hasn’t already done this … oh well, be sure, they have already done this.

Securing the nuclear assets will take not only the combined forces of SEALs teams and Delta Force, but several companies of Marines and Rangers to provide force protection while the operation occurred.  It will require significant support from air assets, transport, and good intelligence.  Even then, it’s likely only to be partially to moderately successful and we will sustain high casualties.

But to believe that we could operate with the assistance or help of the Pakistanis themselves is to believe that we could have done the UBL raid by informing Pakistan first.  One would also have to believe that Pakistan didn’t really show the remains of our air assets to the Chinese.

This is why I hate the debates and don’t watch them.  They are like political versions of Jeopardy.  You have seconds to tell us the “right” answer to our question (what’s right will be up to a vote), when in reality, no President is going to issue orders for securing Pakistan’s nuclear assets without reference to the Pentagon’s war-gaming.  And no President is going to call Musharraf.

The debates are set up for sound bite, turn-the-channel, laugh-a-minute night time America.  For really understanding anything about a candidate, they are literally useless.

Prior: The Feeble Superhero: Pakistan Freely Tugs on Superman’s Cape