Declassified State Dept. Documents: Taliban Tried to Stop bin Laden from Attacking U.S.

[Truth2Tell]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50300

AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Regime Pressed bin Laden on anti-U.S. Terror
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Feb 11, 2010 (IPS) - Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.

The evidence contradicts the claims by top officials of the Barack Obama administration that Mullah Omar was complicit in Osama bin Laden's involvement in the al Qaeda plot to carry out the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sep. 11, 2001. It also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting that it has no interest in al Qaeda's global jihadist aims.

A primary source on the relationship between bin Laden and Mullah Omar before 9/11 is a detailed personal account provided by Egyptian jihadist Abu'l Walid al-Masri published on Arabic-language jihadist websites in 1997.

Al-Masri had a unique knowledge of the subject, because he worked closely with both bin Laden and the Taliban during the period. He was a member of bin Laden's Arab entourage in Afghanistan, but became much more sympathetic to the Afghan cause than bin Laden and other al Qaeda officials from 1998 through 2001.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50300">Continued...

[sandnsea]

1. Not exactly

"Harboring bin Laden, but hesitant to sever diplomatic ties with the U.S. completely, the Taliban claimed there was insufficient evidence to convict bin Laden of terrorism, going so far as to say that Saddam Hussein was behind the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam."

"Frequent contradictions in Taliban statements to U.S. diplomats. The Taliban claimed that 80% of their officials and a majority of Afghans oppose Osama bin Laden's presence, yet also claimed that the Taliban would be overthrown were they to extradite bin Laden, due to his popularity in Afghanistan and around the Muslim world. Mullah Omar called bin Laden "an enemy," according to a Pakistani informant, while other Taliban officials tell the U.S. that Mullah Omar is the primary reason why bin Laden continued to be afforded sanctuary in Afghanistan, despite the fact that 80% of Taliban officials opposed his presence."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB134/index.htm

I will go find what I can at the National Security Archives.

[Truth2Tell]

2. The central point here

IMO, is that the Taliban do not share the ultimate anti-American aims of bin Laden and al Qaeda, and they never have. They do not pose an existential threat to America that requires they be wiped from the face of the earth. We can make peace with them. That's the truth that the ongoing false conflation of the Taliban with bin Laden is designed to hide.

[Go2Peace]

3. But peace would mean we can't clear the region for the new PIPELINE

[Chulanowa]

7. I have my limits

I've often discussed native history with people. The results of European contact and warfare were terrible and crushing, and for the most part, totally unforgivable.

"For the most part"?

The Mexica (Aztec) empire spanned over several dozen conquered tribes. In the capital city of Tenochtitlan, and presumably around the rest of the empire, there was a continual parade of human sacrifices from these vassal states. men, women, and children slaughtered, dismembered, and often eaten (Waste not, want not!) under the belief that if they weren't, the sun would burn out.

The rampant death and destruction that stretched for four hundred years was terrible and horrifying... but there is no doubt in my mind that the Mexica were just as terrible, just as horrifying. Even with every ounce of harm Cortés brought to the native peoples of what would become Mexico, I would have no problem with going back in time and shaking the man's hand for his role in the destruction of the Mexica empire and its institutions of slavery and slaughter.

What's this got to do with your post? I see the Taliban the same as I see the Mexica. Cortes could have played nice and dealt with them as a sovereign state equal to his home in Spain. And thousands and thousands of slaves would have kept getting chopped up for the joy of Huitzilopitchli. We could make peace with the Taliban, and let them rape the shit out of the people of Afghanistan. Though choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil, sometimes it must be done. Shaking hands with the Taliban will kill as many, if not more people than will driving them as far from power as we can get them.

Nope. They don't pose a threat to us. But they pose a very clear threat to the people of Afghanistan. And if that doesn't mean squat to you.. .Well, fine. it does mean something to me, though.

[EFerrari]

10. The people of Afghanistan do not want us there. n/t

[Mari333]

15. [phone]

[choie]

11. "choosing the lesser of two evils..."

and how many innocent citizens of Afghanistan have we killed to rid them of this "evil"? I'm no Taliban apologist, but this rationalism of our excursion into Afghanistan (which we also used to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein) is hypocritical at best, and a war crime at worst.

[Chulanowa]

12. If we weren't already there, I would agree

Honestly, I wouldn't support "We need to go in to topple the tyrant!"

But... We're already in Afghanistan. We've overthrown the government that was there, crippled the country, and now the dangerous oppressive Talibastards are trying to take it back over. I can see no reason to let them accomplish that.

How many innocent civilians have we killed? Too many. But that is not our intent - not that that matters much to those who are dead. it does matter in that we can do better, improve our intelligence and tactics to minimize this number as much as possible. If we drop our pants and leave, letting the Taliban take over, knowwhat will happen then? Reprisals. Everyone who allied with us, from the corrupt fuckers in the Northern Alliance, to the garbage collectors in the streets of kabul, will end up with a fucking bullet in their brain for being "collaborators". How many people do you think that will leave dead?

Our presence isn't good for the Afghani people at large. But the Taliban would be worse. The plan seems to be to keep the Taliban down, and when they're good and broken, we leave and let the Afghans mop up what's left.

[Bigmack]

13. Well reasoned.....

I only have a couple of minor quarrels with that reasoning.

What happens if we can't achieve your goal of leaving when the Taliban is "good and broken"? We've been there 8 years, we now have 100,000 troops and another 100,000 "contractors" in the field. We have total control of the air, unlimited supplies, and the only modern weapons systems in the area. And at this point the Taliban, numbering around 25,000, control most of the country. We can't always bend the will of people to our our point of view, and certainly not by killing their civilians. The Afghans are worried about reprisals from the Taliban sometime in future, but they see their civilian dead every day. If I were an Afghani, I know where my loyalties are, and they would not be with foreigners who want to control me and my government and kill my people to prove their point.

My other point would be .... Who died and left the US the Gardian of What's Right in the World? Our history is replete with examples of the US taking the wrong side and doing the wrong thing.... but now we're the arbiter of right and wrong?
I could write a long essay on this, but the Commandant of the Marine Corps during the first part of my time in the Corps says it better than I can....

`I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar soaked fingers out of the business of these (Third World) nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the `haves' refuse to share with the `have-nots' by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don’t want and above all don’t want crammed down their throats by Americans.' –
Gen. David Shoup, United States Marine Commandant Medal of Honor recipient.

[Chulanowa]

14. Addressing them...

The first point is easy to answer. The Taliban regained nominal control over most of the country because George Bush completely ignored Afghanistan for five years. In military terms, that's a long fucking time. We are boosting troop levels to give the theater the attention it needs in order to actually do the fucking job that we should have been wrapping up by 2004 at the latest.

Second point, nobody did. As I said, I don't support the US riding in on a white horse, guns a-blazing. However, we are already in Afghanistan, and I adhere to a "you break it, you buy it" look at foreign policy. We marched into Afghanistan, stomped the shit out of it, and now we have a responsibility to repair it, elevate it, and bring it back to "viable state" standards. This is what pisses me off the most about a lot of people on DU, who apparently want to - pardon the phrase use - cut and run. We owe it to the people of Afghanistan to fix the damage we wrought on them - not just with the 2001 invasion, but also if possible the damage we did during their civil war in the 80's.

As for being the arbiter of right and wrong... that's a sticky point. But the people of the two countries - the US and Afghanistan - stand pretty much united in the idea that the Taliban are in the "wrong" camp of things.

[Bigmack]

16. You lost me at "cut and run"...

It's a meaningless, cowboy, schoolyard phrase having no bearing on real wars.

We get into wars for strategic reasons... mostly mistaken strategic reasons. We need to get out of wars for strategic reasons, not some vague aphorism. What can we win?.. what can we lose? And at what cost.

Like Vietnam, we could possibly "win" the war in Afghanistan. But at what cost? How many American lives? How many Afghani lives? How much American money, which is in short supply right now? At what cost to our international standing, both military and diplomatic?

In Vietnam, we faced the collapse of the military.. not my words, but those of Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr., published in Armed Forces Journal, 7 June, 1971
( http://libcom.org/history/vietnam-collapse-armed-forces ) We must surely be approaching that state in our current military. To "win" in Afghanistan and lose our military effectiveness would surely be a Pyrrhic victory.

We have nothing to win in Afghanistan. The "pipeliners" say that's why we're there, the "druggers" say we're there to control the opium. We pragmatists note that it's cheaper to buy those commodities than to send an expensive modern army to take them. We cannot drag 14th century people into the 21st century with bombs, drones, and troop "surges".

The Taliban are an enemy du jour. Tomorrow it will be the Iranians, or the North Koreans, or the Yemenis, or ...... Do we take on all the bad guys in the world? That's presuming we know who the bad guys are, of course. Our choices in the past have been not so good.

Ultimately, tell me how many American dead is Afghanistan worth.. give me a number.

Look what 58,000 dead got us in Vietnam.

[Chulanowa]

18. Then you completely miss why I use the phrase

Of course I suspect that I actually lost you at "the" and you just wanted a better excuse to admit to ignoring absolutely everything I said, in order to repeat stock phrases that have no bearing whatsoever on any of the points I brought up.

Would you have preferred I expanded the phrase into something less soundbytish?

Okay. I think those DU'ers - and many others - who are advocating getting the fuck out of Afghanistan right now are racist, useless pieces of shit who need their flabby fucking mouths punched. This DOES include you, because as far as I can tell, you are just as much a self-absorbed, nearsighted, brainless prick as any of the others. This is because we have royally fucked Afghanistan seven ways from Sunday. We've destroyed infrastructure, we've ripped out the government by the roots, we've empowered warlords, we've neglected the Taliban. We have, in every sense of the word, completely FUCKED this country. it's fucking fifth-world because of us. And you want to shrug, say "fuck it" and abandon the place. Why? Because they're brown muslims, and that shit just doesn't fly on the left any more than it does on the right, does it? You come from a long and proud white American heritage of fucking shit up, ruining other people, and hwne it coems time to take responsibility and clean up the shit you've smeared all over, you flip the bird and walk off.

Does THAT make more sense than simply saying "cut and run"? Are you feeling happy to have my notions expounded upon?

Now that we've cleared that up, maybe now you can understand me a little better. Since we have pretty much destroyed this country, we are responsible for fixing it. There's that R-word again, better hide!

[Bigmack]

19. I didn't break it.. and I don't want to pay...

money or blood... to fix it.

Re-read what Gen Shoup said.... he says it better than I could. Trying to "fix" a country or people is racial arrogance of the first order. Kind of a "white man's burden". We didn't make Afghanistan a 5th world country... history, religion, culture, and endless war did.

I'm the one - me and Gen Shoup - who wants to "fix" Afghanistan by removing the most disruptive element... the US and Western troops.

[Chulanowa]

21. I think we're done here

If you're going to tell me that the Afghans are the sole people responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan... then you're a fucking idiot. I know it's not polite, but Jesus Christ, there's no kind way to say it. That is fucking dumber than shit.

"I didn't break it!" - exactly the bullshit I'm talking about.

Fuck you, and fuck off.

[Bigmack]

23. Have a nice life... nt

[sandnsea]

8. The central point is they can't be trusted

Because they'll say anything as is evident from their claims about Saddam. And they're fighting for power in Afghanistan now, and that's the real point.

[TexasObserver]

4. The Taliban would have turned UBL over.

This false claim that the Taliban wanted war with the US was a justification and has been all along.

This entire set of wars is based upon "want to," not national security.

[ThomCat]

5. Exactly. We went to war, and remain at war, because of

economic and geopolitical maneuvering, with oil being a major reason, not because of anything the Taliban real did or didn't do.

The dishonesty that got us into these wars should be resulting in war crimes trials in our own courts against our former presidential administration. If using all the power of the oval office to lie to the entire nation to start totally unjustifiable and unnecessary wars under totally false pretenses isn't treason then nothing is.

[sandnsea]

9. They said that in 1998 too

They said they would turn him over for years. They just couldn't because his followers would attack them.

[Robb]

17. Bingo.

It would be sort of like Indiana State Troopers promising Ohio they'd hand over John Dillinger in 1934.

[NNN0LHI]

6. But I thought KSM was the mastermind of 9/11?

This is getting so confusing.

Don

[KonaKane]

20. This sustains my main complaint about the Afghanistan war.

And that is, that it was started needlessly, wrongly. We have chosen to make an enemy, and then use the fight to justify a greater war because they are "now an enemy". Not to say I can relate to a thing about Taliban values and worldview, but it's beginning to look like the attack on Afghanistan - like Iraq - was a load of horseshit launched from a nation in a blind rage from being attacked, no actual thinking involved.

[howard112211]

22. Kick. This should be permanently glued to the front page of DU !