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William Pfaff writes Exploiting the bin-Laden Opportunity:
Killing Osama bin Ladin leaves the United States facing two doors that open two ways into the future. The choice made could determine the eventual place the United States occupies in contemporary history.
One door—less likely to be chosen, I fear—leads towards greater international and national security, and lessened conflict in the Middle East and Asia. Taking it, the United States government would make known that having settled its account with the terrorist movement which attacked New York and Washington a decade ago, it now will remove American forces from Afghanistan, and from Iraq as well—as promised by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign in 2008.
Its quarrel with the Taliban in Afghanistan originated in the support they gave al Qaeda in 2001. That matter is now settled. The future of Afghanistan is now for the Afghan people themselves to determine, which eventually they will do, whatever the interference of foreigners.
The United States should declare that it wishes Afghanistan well, has no designs on its resources, and looks forward to reciprocal relations of friendship with any Afghan government which can plausibly claim a national mandate, is at peace with its neighbors, and wishes good relations with the United States.
The United States would generously assist in the country’s reconstruction, after its many years of suffering and war. It would willingly participate in an international effort by Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and their Central Asian neighbors to find constructive permanent resolution to existing conflicts of interest and policy, and would in particular seek and support a just settlement of the violence that has been suffered by Kashmir.
The other door—I fear the one more likely to be entered—leads towards more conflict, by way of sentiments such as were apparent at the Monday White House press conference dealing with the bin Laden operation. Reporters battered John O. Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism advisor, and other officials, with questions about Pakistan’s knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, an army town near Islamabad harboring three regiments and a military academy. Is Pakistan ally or enemy? Pakistanis are asking the same question about the U.S. ...
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:
The shoe dropped on Larry Franklin. In a much anticipated culmination of an investigation that could have wider reaching implications, the Department of Justice arrested Franklin, a man closely associated with Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowoitz:
Federal agents arrested a Pentagon analyst on Wednesday, accusing him of illegally disclosing highly classified information about possible attacks on American forces in Iraq to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group.
The analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, turned himself in to the authorities on Wednesday morning in a case that has stirred unusually anxious debate in influential political circles in the capital even though it has focused on a midlevel Pentagon employee.
The inquiry has cast a cloud over the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which employed the two men who are said to have received the classified information from Mr. Franklin. The group, also known as Aipac, has close ties to senior policymakers in the Bush administration, among them Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is expected to appear later this month at the group's annual meeting.
The investigation has proven awkward as well for a group of conservative Republicans, who held high-level civilian jobs at the Pentagon during President Bush's first term and the buildup toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who were also close to Aipac. They were led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary who has been named president of the World Bank. Mr. Franklin once worked in the office of one of Mr. Wolfowitz's allies, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary for policy at the Pentagon, who has also said he is leaving the administration later this year.