September, 2002

Donald Rumsfeld has another good idea and Don's ideas are always interesting, sometimes breathtakingly so.

His idea is that U.S. Special Forces (those green beret guys) will be inserted into countries where Don thinks al Qaeda operations might be lurking just beyond reach. First (and interesting) is that they'd be there for the long haul and out of uniform, blending in with the locals. Second (and more interesting) is that they'd be there without the host country knowing about it.

Bad manners, to say the least Don.

These Special Forces guys will be empowered to kill the network's members and destroy their facilities. Of course, the last time I checked, Special Forces were military, a part of the Army (SOCOM).

So if I have this straight, we're going to insert (Don doesn't say whether by night airdrop behind city limits or 2nd class train ticket) military troops into sovereign nations, undercover, to kill what we hope will be al Qaeda operatives.

Don doesn't say who makes the call on who is and who isn't, whether they're actual bin Laden operatives or just university kids with the bold anti-American ideas university kids are likely to have these days. Hasn't said either, what happens if the local police take issue to an arbitrary killing here and there and get mixed up in a shoot-out between the bad guys and the extra-bad guys.

Military troops in civilian clothes are known in most parts of the world as spies or saboteurs and are shot without much American-style justice. That should lead to some interesting situations. Good thing George shrugged off the World Court.

Yet this is not really new ground, just a continuation and polishing-up of Nixon-Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush dirty tricks ground. I guess Rumsfeld really ought to be congratulated for calling it what it is and sanctifying those nasty little messes that brought us the shame of Allende under Kissinger and Iran Contra under whoever advised Reagan. The same mindsets that armed Iraq against Iran, then Iran against Iraq and eventually pulled the rug out from under the Kurds.

It's all a board game.

But the sovereignty issue comes into this somewhere and whether or not the concept of sovereign nations means anything in the world today. These guys are not concept guys, they're corporate guys and they look at the world as something to be solved before the Annual Meeting. The World is not solvable, it's a work-in-progress that lasts longer and means more than the four-year terms of presidents and the latest poll results.

Let's suppose. Let's suppose the Brits put whatever their equivalent of Special Forces is on American soil, without the knowledge of our government. Assassinating various members of IRA cells in our country (who might well be U.S. citizens), might make us just a bit testy. Israelis mopping up Palestinian support groups in Manhattan could be looked upon as an infringement upon the American legal system. Then again, maybe not. Our government is doing strange things these days under the law.

The World Trade Center isn't the only edifice we lost on 9/11. Collapsing as well, were equality under the law, regard for the integrity of sovereign nations and a particularly American mindset that favors justice rather than revenge. It is perhaps the last that is most worrisome. But Rumsfeld and the entire bunch, from home security to presidential advisors, have followed (or pushed) and embellished George Bush's belief that 9/11 makes a necessity of these extraordinary governmental requirements.

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." William Pitt, British Prime Minister

Pitt wrote that 200 years ago. America has never been the home of tyrants and is no longer the home of slaves. We fought a revolution over tyranny and a civil war to end slavery.

We will not allow a return to either condition.

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