Benjamin C. Works, Executive Director

--Celebrating Chaos Theory Since 1990--

_

SIT 8-21; Friday. August 21, 1998

"We have important work to do --real opportunities to seize, real problems to solve, real security matters to face."

• William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, Aug. 17, 1998

He said it; he acted his part, and the hammer fell --sort of. This was just opening night of a Desert Storm writ-small against a highly fluid target. SIRIUS does not yet know how the follow-on operations will play out and will assign a final grade later. But this was an attempt at a "risk-free" punitive strike and in war, there are no risk-free strikes; what we saved in human risk, we gave up in effectiveness of that strike against fixed points on a map, when people are the targets and are constantly in motion. If we did not hit the people, then the risk is that we have only added to their recruiting abilities, while scattering the best targets we will ever have into non-targets. Hence we must now rely on police methods for results. I am not impressed.

This is why. To completely root out Osama's headquarters & camps, somebody has to go in on the ground to arrest suspects and collect the documentary evidence. Suspects should have been neutralized through death or arrest. Further, bomb teams already on the move have to be intercepted. The US Armed Forces did not go down on the ground, though they gave the three sites in Afghanistan and a bonus-site in Sudan a good whacking. Word about the success of international police intercepts is pending and will occur over months and years.

My sense is that too many of Osama's people got away and, further, we have handed propaganda talk points and visual images from both Sudan and Afghanistan to our enemies. Then, one Tomahawk SNAFUed in Pakistan, killing 5 and providing further propaganda. Nobody has been arrested in great numbers and 2 UN employees were wounded in the Afghan capital, Kabul, after the strike. I'll give this a couple of days, but I think this strike is the worst possible form of counter-attack out of a range of more aggressive options.

A single-strike Tomahawk chop reduced immediate risk of our personnel to harm, but maximized a fluid and mobile enemy's chances to survive, reorganize and launch further bomb plots around the globe. Long-range strike fighters "from our secret base in Shangri-la" could have spotted moving people at the last minute and hit them directly. In trying to spare our personnel for fear of criticism over losses, we have, probably, ensured more bombing attacks, rather than fewer, and with no material delay in the timing of those attacks. It is up to the border guardians and police forces in conjunction with Interpol, the FBI and other intelligence services to stop the attacks.

The principal target groups were the three Afghan camp groups comprising six target areas associated with Osama bin Laden, and which we now know hold as many as 600 fighters-bombers at a time. Estimates are that 2500-3000 have joined Osama's movement. His assets are greater, as is his target-set for bombings; thus, our target set must be greater and wider cast. The US must accept a human risk among its most professional Special Operations, CIA and FBI forces in order to succeed in suppressing this homicidal cancer. Our allies must cooperate fully and nobody may remain undecided. Thus far, SIRIUS is not certain these conditions obtain.

The fourth target, a chemical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, is associated with Saddam Hussein and Colonel Qaddaffi of Libya so that strike sent a greater message to a longer distribution list of outlaws. The plant is suspected of concocting "precursor" chemical ingredients, which, when blended with other "precursors" create VX nerve gas. Hitting such a large fixed target with

Tomahawks was the correct choice in this case; this is the kind of target they were designed for.

One hundred years ago, on Sept.2, 1898, a British Army under Lord Kitchener and including young Winston Churchill, tried to teach Sudan a lesson just outside Karthoum at a battlefield called Omdurman. There the fundamentalist followers of the false Prophet, the Mahdi, were gunned down in rows by the Maxim guns and Enfields of Kitchener's smaller force. About the same time, the US Army in the Philippines began its fight with the Moro Muslims of the Philippines.

We are at war with these Islamic extremists a hundred years later in both localities. I mention these "embellishing" historical facts because they are highly meaningful to our Islamic foes, who have a long memory of sanguinary Christian incursions into their world and who still wish to rebalance the moral-theological equation with the value-free Left of the New World Order. They operate on meaningful anniversary dates, under their Islamic calendar. So those days have to be understood and security provisions taken.

Is this a one-shot strike or a sustained campaign? Given Osama was "not at home" when the bombs struck, and that he was not immediately arrested or grabbed, then we must measure this operation over the next days, weeks, even years. An aggressive Special Operations strike could have swooped down after the Tomahawks or strike fighters and liquidated these remote targets. But that did not happen in one package this time, and carries sensitive diplomatic consequences our leaders chose not to hazard --for now.

Bombs fell and things exploded, but what about his financial mechanisms, his ways and means of forging passports and documents? His key accomplices? Bomb Damage Assessment in the morning --and we have "cloud cover" as an excuse to complicate and delay that report, though other technical means exist to see in considerable detail through clouds-- can count dead bodies and destroyed trucks, but not interrupted bank accounts or intercepted terror teams.

Expatriate Cells: Meanwhile the survivors move down the road, reorganize swiftly and attack. Cells in the United States and elsewhere may opt to accelerate their plans, but there is no hurry and their operational security is the driving factor, not Mr. Clinton's timing. We shall have to partly rely on the goodwill of the overwhelming majority of our Western Muslim immigrant communities to help monitor extremists around the edges in Jersey City, Brooklyn, California and elsewhere. These communities have cooperated with Mayor Giuliani and the FBI in the past and can be expected to do so again. Security, here in New York, is as tight as it can be set.

Keeping Score: One strike at one target-set is simply not a campaign. So, we must see how the CIA, FBI, Immigration Services, foreign Police departments and Interpol do, country by country, day by day, ferreting out these terrorist rats. I am far from satisfied, the more details are leaked from official sources, and my guts are again in a knot. Has Mr. Clinton's team really cooked up a plan? Or is this merely a muscular reaction for political purposes that stirred up a bee's nest?

Only as cumulative results are demonstrated over days and weeks may we assure ourselves that we are actually decreasing the risk of bombing, rather than increasing risk by stirring up this uncontrolled hornets' nest of vengeance-seekers, sympathetic to or already aligned with Osama. How Islamic governments contribute is critical to measurement, and I am guardedly hopeful for the longer term.

A not-classified, unofficial source who is a close associate of SIRIUS explained Thursday night that Osama's target list has expanded to include public places such as Grovesnor Square, London --where our embassy is-- which means that Paris squares and public venues in New York, Rome and other capitals are also potentially in the target cross hairs. The problem with a bomb in Grosvesnor Square or anywhere in London is it might also be confused for a "Real IRA" blast, further destabilizing international affairs in the short term by adding confusion to the mix.

The source also murmured "Monimbo," the title of an Arnaud de Borchgrave novel of some years back. On the other hand, Crown Prince Abdullah's very traditional and conservative wing is very alarmed by Osama, yet Netanyahu's Likud government continues to flagrantly provoke the Palestinians through games with their water supplies in Hebron, etc. Bibi got his wish fulfilled in Hebron yesterday when a Settler rabbi was killed and he can get away with further punishment of that town of almost 200,000.

Oil prices have crashed, and with them, cash flows from Algiers to Riyadh, to Kuala Lampur and Jakarta; the IMF and Bob Rubin have not helped. Our friendly governments are facing real problems in their streets. These strikes did nothing to resolve those fundamental and structural problems.

On Thursday an Orthodox Church in North Albania was badly damaged by a bomb, further suggesting the relationship between Osama's hyenas and the jackals of the KLA. Remember, the CIA and FBI have been assisting the Tirana government in chasing Islamic bombers up in Geg-Land for days. I receive other conflict advisories and see much in the newswires of smaller incidents and littler targets that both conform to and confirm the pattern of unchecked violence in Africa and Asia. Smart bombs may erase dumb guerillas, but they do not correct the consequences of dumb policies.

Metastasizing The masters of Islam thought they could control the servant and by keeping the focus in the boondocks of Afghanistan, exhaust the nervous energy of the most faithful --or get them slaughtered off in a worthy cause, as Pope Innocent expected when launching the Crusades. Alas, Osama's cabal metastasized into an uncontrollable independent force. Here are the consequences. The Osama fundamentalist movement has metastasized under our noses and the Clintons didn't stop it when they could have supported the Anti-Taliban faction of General Dostan. Nor did the Right do their job, though friends of SIRIUS delivered aid to Dostan's force in April (?) when Mme Albright and Mrs. Clinton were vaingloriously making loud anti-Taliban invocations in favor of the benighted women of Kabul..

We must accept that those among our own Fundamentalist-Pentacostal Christians who cheer on Israel in hopes the Temple of Herod may be rebuilt to fulfill Biblical prophesy are also stirring their Islamic fundamentalists. There are a lot of "conservative" Christian idiots in Dixie enthusiastic about just this. Osama's friends know that for the Temple to be re-erected, the Harim al Sharif and Mosque of Ali must be torn down. Those Islamic sites are the third holiest in Islam after Medina and Mecca. Thus, Jimmy Swaggert-types play into Osama's recruiting game as much as the NOW gang's vocal leaders do.

The propaganda images we have given Sudan and Saddam guarantee further metastisization, just as the Waco attack goaded a few American extremists to take homicidal action.

It comes back to the fact that though no planner would have expected to wipe out Osama himself, Osama must be captured or killed. This has not happened and, thus, the book remains open. Mr. Clinton's speech on Thursday did not make up for Monday, and our operations in Afghanistan neither made up for Al Khobar, Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, nor did they prevent further operations underway or future operations.

In a sense the strike is too sanitary, too risk-free; one more designed to please artificial rules of UN politesse, rather than solving the problem of rogue Caliban terrorism. General Shelton's reputation is on the line. He is a Green Beret and is supposed to be a Fighter. He did not commit Delta Force, and Mme Albright did not persuade Taliban to arrest Osama, Did Shelton fail to persuade his civilian masters to do the necessary and manly thing to protect our women and children first in this "Titanic" year?

I will say this, our American troops are not following Bill Clinton; they are defending their fellow-citizens, following the Flag, the Constitution, and for now, General Shelton. Whomever is in command, those fighters who remain with the colors will respond willingly, but the fighters are fewer and the bureaucratic trimmers more numerous with each passing month of the Clinton Era. There is a downward spiral in the quality of our human assets that cannot be supplanted compensated for by higher quality gadgets. Lives were not put at serious risk, but were security problems solved? Only the tally of the next days and weeks will supply us with the answer.

The Wag the Dog Question remains legitimately open.

© Copyright 1998 Benjamin C. Works-SIRIUS