Congrats to Secretary Clinton

Fri, 10/30/2009 - 12:32pm

I think we all tend to criticize too much and praise too little, especially with public officials. So I was impressed today to see proven provider John McCreary, who has forgotten more about intelligence than I will ever know, commend Hillary Clinton for her sharp comments in Pakistan yesterday:

"The US secretary of state questioned Pakistan's commitment to the fight against al-Qaida, saying she found it hard to believe that no-one in the Pakistan government knows where senior figures are hiding.

"I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," she told a group of newspaper editors during a meeting in the city of Lahore on Thursday.

Bravo for Secretary Clinton.  Either the Pakistani security services contain senior officers who know where bin Laden is and are lying or they are incompetent and ought to be dismissed. There are no other explanations for Pakistan having become the headquarters for al Qaida and the base area for international Islamic terrorism.

‘Nuff said.

AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images

Thomas E. Ricks | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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I'll bite

by Norwegian Shooter on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 2:03pm

Congrats to Tom Ricks for linking to a piece by John McCreary. That is the type of source I am looking for when I read this blog. Keep up the good work. Speaking of work, I'll have more of it next week, so you'll probably be without my interminable insights for a while. Hope you can make it through.

PS Good picture of Clinton too, it almost inspires empathy for her. BTW, I support her, but I'm not a fan.

To What Gain?

by wmenschevans on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 3:06pm

Mr. Ricks -

I'm ordinarily a huge fan of your work, but the praise of Clinton seems a little off here. How are US interests advanced by publicly trashing the Pakistanis? Are Pakistani officials any more likely to be helpful if we insult them? Are senior official somehow more likely to look for/turn over Bin Laden or purge the ISI of extremist sympathizers? Will the Pakistani population like us any more?

If I saw a concrete benefit coming from tough talk, I think it'd make more sense, but her remarks just feel (understandably) cathartic to me. I can't imagine they'll change Pakistani behavior.

In Private - Not in Public

by Tyrtaios on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 3:41pm

Praise in public - criticize in private. This wasn't the brightest diplomatic approach I've seen, especially making these remarks after the Pakistani military finally ventured into South Wizeristan in force.

I would tend to agree

by MDrew on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 8:43pm

but this seems so blatant that it almost has to be a conscious tactic by the admin at large. If she's off the res doing this, then she's way way off. So I think it looks more like they want to play some public good-cop-bad-cop. It does seem high-stakes to me, and i don't think Pakistan is going to change its behavior much til things really start to move with India. But i guess this is what they want to try.

Who should be embarrassed?

by kunino on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 4:15pm

McCreary's somewhat addled argument is that Pakistani security people should be ashamed if they don't know where Osama bin Laden is, which would be sorta true if the man is in Pakistan -- a dubious proposition, although McCreary overlooks that.

We can however be confident that, if not dead, bin Laden is somewhere on the planet, so how much shame should McCreary, Clinton and the rest of the world be heaping on the $49.8-billion US intelligence community for the same failure? We've been told this get-Osama campaign is a major priority and that it included at one point a guy carrying a very tall corpse's thighbone onto the field of battle in 2001 to match against other, mutilated corpses to see whether they might be bin Laden's.

Many or perhaps most senior al-Qaeda captures since 2001 have been achieved by by foreign police services rather than US intelligence, which is now known largely for the many non-aQ innocents picked up in misaimed mass sweeps in sundry parts of the world -- and later, if lucky, released with no stain on their characters. In many such cases, years later.

So the Paks give up OBL and

by JPWREL on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 8:12pm

So the Paks give up OBL and we exact justice - then what? Does al Qaeda then quietly disappear into the mists of history? Do all the assorted reasons that al Qaeda exists merely dissolve because of the nabbing of this character?

His public capture would certainly be a high five moment like the capture of Saddam but does it really mean anything? My guess is probably not other than a chance for more pundits and politicians to get some face time on cable TV gloating and trying to claim some of the credit for themselves.

Nut jobs on right wing radio will mentally contort themselves in explaining to us how Obama should not be credited with a capture that CHENEY/Bush were incapable of achieving in eight years. And lefty Democrats will have a rare opportunity to bask in the reflected glory of a mil/intel operation that actually went right.

In the meantime al Qaeda will likely continue to do what they do. And Americans will feel the same anti-climatic meaningless that they felt when Saddam swung by the neck and the carnage continued.

Well put.

by jsinaiko on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 10:11pm

Well put.

Keep in mind that those

by Brett on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 3:12am

Keep in mind that those comments came off as particularly assholish in the wake of the major bombings that had just occurred in the days before.

Either the Pakistani security services contain senior officers who know where bin Laden is and are lying or they are incompetent and ought to be dismissed.

They're not bloody omniscient, and their main contacts were with the Taliban, not Al-Qaeda.

There are no other explanations for Pakistan having become the headquarters for al Qaida and the base area for international Islamic terrorism.

What kind of stupidity is this? Pashtun Pakistan (particularly the FATA) became a haven for Al-Qaeda because the Pakistani government barely had any control over it, and the whole area is an insurgency's wet dream (mountainous as hell).

I guess by the author's standards, the US is either actively aiding the Afghan Taliban or is completely incompetent and should leave, because otherwise, how would the Afghan Taliban exist?

Rice would not have gotten away it...

by ian.d.smith on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 9:17pm

I agree, Tom. But you have to admit: Condeleeza Rice doesn't get away with this sort of "undiplomatic" talk 1.5 yrs ago except on FNC. Dems would have said it was "unhelpful" to state things like that, without even acknowledging that it is partly true. Now, of course, Dems enjoy using it as an example of how a Democratic administration can be just as tough and effective at security matters than GOP admins.

Wrong

by arvay on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 9:29am

"Either the Pakistani security services contain senior officers who know where bin Laden is and are lying or they are incompetent and ought to be dismissed. There are no other explanations for Pakistan having become the headquarters for al Qaida and the base area for international Islamic terrorism."

Easy to explain. Pakistan wants a non-India-friendly government in Kabul and will do nothing to assist us until we arrange that. Should be obvious.

Congrats to Secretary Clinton

by suresh sheth on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 10:53am

Truth hurts and so Secretary Clinton’s comments naturally infuriated Pakistan.

Pakistan became ‘terror center of the world’ by choice and then spread terror to not just Afghanistan, India and US but to the rest of the world besides suffering itself from these self-inflicted wounds.

No body forced Pakistan’s democratic government to facilitate relocation of Osama bin Laden from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Benazir Bhutto’s government chose to do so of its own free will.

Nobody forced Pakistani Army and Intelligence to create this ’jihadist Frankenstein monster’ in 1990s. Pakistani Army and Intelligence chose to do so with approval and financing by Pakistan’s democratic governments.

Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor had told 9/11 Commission in March 2004: “Pakistani Army was the ‘midwife’ of Taliban“.

Ex-CIA official Bruce Riedel said in an interview on 1/29/2009 that ''In Pakistan, the jihadist Frankenstein monster that was created by the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service, is now increasingly turning on its creators. It's trying to take over the laboratory.''

Pakistan continues to deny the existence of Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) located in Baluchistan province of Pakistan when even General McChrystal termed QST as the biggest threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan.

Tiresome denials

by KXB on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 12:59pm

Basically, Pakistan argued from 2001-2008 that the best way to deal with terrorism was to give them a blank check, and ask no questions. And that policy led to an Afghanistan which is more unstable now than a few years ago. We saw more attacks on Indian civilians during this period as well. So, the rules have changed, and the Pakistanis, which have failed to deliver, now argue this is unfair?