Imagine the following scenario, which includes all the historical analogies that neoconservative ideologues like to apply -- World War II, Hitler, appeasement -- plus a bonus reference to the evil du jour, Spain.
As American and Allied forces invade Nazi Germany in 1945, Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and several SS troops flee to Fascist Spain, where they hide in the Pyrenees Mountains and mount guerrilla attacks against the Free French government. The American response? To ask Generalissimo Francisco Franco if he would be kind enough to send some of his forces to catch those Nazis -- and it would be nice if it could all be wrapped up before the 1948 presidential election.
Sound absurd? Well, there is an element of the absurd in the acrimonious debate on 9/11 taking place these days. Lawmakers and pundits are arguing about what could have been done to prevent the terrorist attacks. But they all agree that if Americans could rewind history to pre-9/11, they would have done everything humanly possible to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda associates -- sooner rather than later.
But why look backward? Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri -- the war-on-terrorism's Hitler and Himmler, respectively -- are still alive and well, as far as we know, and living somewhere in Pakistan. Yet to whom is the United States assigning the task of dealing with the gravest threat to its national security and to ensure that such horrific events won't happen again? To the best and the brightest in the American armed forces and intelligence services? You would assume that we owe as much to the victims of 9/11 and their families.
But no. In fact, the job of wiping out the leaders of the group responsible for the worst attack on the homeland has been outsourced to a corrupt and incompetent regime that is ruling a country where anti-American Islamist groups roam the streets -- and the corridors of power.
Indeed, Pakistan's military and security services, which are in charge of hunting Bin Laden and his troops, were once allied with the Taliban, the former Al Qaeda protectors in Afghanistan. And some of its members are sympathetic to a radical Islamist agenda. Until recently, the nation's top nuclear scientist was selling his country's secret military technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
