Thursday, March 18, 2010 – Gordon Chang, Bentley Rayburn, Ben Lerner

Frank begins today’s show with an analysis of the Obama Administration’s drone strikes into Pakistan.  Gordon Chang on why we can’t trust China in the War on Terror. Major General Bentley Rayburn on why we need to prevent President Obama from killing the airborne laser program, a promising initiative that will protect us from missile attacks.  The Center for Security Policy’s own Ben Lerner concludes the show with an assessment on how vital Guantanamo Bay is for protecting us from the worst terrorists in the world.

MONOLOGUE – March 18, 2010

Speaking of the worst of the worst in the world, I want to tell you we’re suddenly being exposed to some interesting data from the Central Intelligence Agency about attacks (that to the best of my knowledge it hasn’t quite acknowledged it is responsible for) involving predator and other unmanned drones being used to rain down lethal fire on quite a number of Al-Qaeda’s senior operatives with, we’re told, devastating effect. And I have to say, I have some mixed feelings about this. I’m entirely supportive, as you are in our Secure Freedom Radio listening audience, at the prospect of sending these murderers, these thugs, these Shariah-adherent jihadists to their seventy two virgins without further adieu and without exposing American service personnel to the dangers of trying to capturing them.

My mixed feeling comes in because I suspect that knowing where they are, were we able to go in and snatch them. Yes at some risk to our folks, no doubt about it; they would represent treasure troves of actionable intelligence that would enable us to do a far more comprehensible job of rooting out and destroying the team of which they’re a part. And the danger of just killing the individual and not getting at that larger team, is as we have seen, Al-Qaeda and other organizations operating under this rubric of Shariah have a capacity relatively quickly to repopulate their senior leadership. And that’s why I’m concerned that the Obama Administration’s decision to simply snuff these guys may actually be translating into a more persistent problem, not one that is being truncated.

So by all means, let’s take these guys out. Take them out of the battlefield for sure, take them off the planet if necessary, but I hope some care is being given in the process of deciding on these targets and executing against them; not only to be attentive to the difficulties, the prospect that we might inadvertently kill innocent civilians which we know has been a serious constraint on some of the attacks to date, not only that we should be concerned about the sensibilities of our Pakistani allies who won’t let us generally speaking come in on the ground to operate against these Al-Qaeda folks, but that we’re sensitive to the idea that we don’t want unnecessarily to lose the vital intelligence that may enable us actually to deal a decisive blow against those who are currently operating with relative impunity (a little less today, thanks to this aggressive predator and other drone campaign) in Pakistan against our forces in Afghanistan and perhaps in the wider world beyond.

Now one reason why I have to tell you I think that we’re killing these guys rather than trying to capture them, is not only some of the sensitivities that I just mentioned, but also that there’s a real concern about what to do to these folks if you do snag them. Do you turn them over to the Pakistanis, who have been— let’s not kid ourselves— basically protecting them (their completely compromised intelligence services having given rise to some of those groups in the past, the Taliban most especially)?

Do you try to get them out of you know, wherever it is you grabbed them and bring them back to Guantanamo Bay? Well you can’t really do that because the Administration, after all, is determined to close Guantanamo Bay. Do you bring them back to the United States, at which point they immediately get constitutional rights and are entitled to be lawyered up? Which we have seen greatly diminishes the prospect that you will get that actionable intelligence out of them, in the case of Abdulmutallab (the Christmas Day “Panty Bomber”). So what to do?

Well, as the result of the Administration’s approach to all of this; I think they have put themselves in a box, whereby as a practicable matter, all they can do is kill them. And so, on the one hand, better that than allowing them to continue to operate with impunity. But on the other hand, wouldn’t it be a good idea to revisit some of the decisions that have been taken to date that might make it less likely we have foreclosed the opportunity to extract from them through aggressive interrogation techniques perhaps the kind of information that might enable us to really deal a lethal blow to those who are trying to destroy us?

Well that’s my thought. Let me know yours.