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host · 10-17-2006, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

You would engage in such a challenge but you would loose. Any answer I ever encounter comes down to me being a bigoted xenophobe and not once addresses the issue at hand. Don't think that I have a monopoly on excluding perspective. Please give me your leftist drivel by the way, I would welcome it, you might find I am not so unreasonable when presented with facts and basis, as opposed to condescension and pomp.

I can't reach you, Mojo...you "know what you know".... my ambition with the effort in this post is to provoke the suspicions of others who might read this thread, that you, and other folks who "know what you know", are heavily influenced by neocon propagandists:

I begin with Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes, writing in David Horowitz's neocon propaganda "rag", "FrontpageMag:

Quote:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=17828
<h1 style="margin-bottom:10px;">Washington Finally Gets It on Radical Islam</h1>

by Daniel Pipes 
FrontPageMagazine.com 
April 25, 2005

Does the Bush administration really believe, as its leadership has kept repeating <A href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010919-2.html">since right after 9/11</A>, that Islam is a "religion of peace" not connected to the problem of terrorism? <A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2021">Plenty of indications suggested that it knew better</A>, but year after year the official line remained the same. From the outside, it seemed that officialdom was engaged in active self-delusion.
In fact, things were better than they seemed, as David E. Kaplan establishes in an important investigation in U.S. News & World Report, based on over 100 interviews and the review of a dozen internal documents. Earlier arguments over the nature of the enemy – terrorism vs. radical Islam – have been resolved: America's highest officials widely agree that the country's "greatest ideological foe is a highly politicized form of radical Islam and that Washington and its allies cannot afford to stand by" as it gains in strength. To fight this ideology, the U.S. government now promotes a non-radical interpretation of Islam.

In "<A href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050425/25roots.htm">Hearts, Minds, and Dollars: In an Unseen Front in the War on Terrorism, America is Spending Millions to Change the Very Face of Islam</A>," dated today, Kaplan explains that Washington recognizes it has a security interest not just within the Muslim world but within Islam. Therefore, it must engage in shaping the very religion of Islam. Washington has focused on the root causes of terrorism – not poverty or U.S. foreign policy, but a compelling political ideology.
A key document in reaching this conclusion was the <A href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/counter_terrorism/counter_terrorism_strategy.pdf">National Strategy for Combating Terrorism</A>, issued by the White House in February 2003, which served as the basis for the bolder, more detailed, Muslim World Outreach, completed in mid-2004 and now the authoritative guide. (A government discussion of this topic, dating from August 2004, is <A href="http://www.usaid.gov/policy/cdie/session10.html">available online</A>.) The U.S. government, being a secular and predominantly non-Muslim institution, faces many limitations in what is at base a religious dispute, so it turns to Muslim organizations that share its goals, including governments, foundations, and nonprofit groups.
The tactics for fighting radical Islam and promoting moderate Islam vary from one government department to another: it's covert operations at the CIA, psyops at the Pentagon, and public diplomacy at the State Department. Whatever the name and approach, the common element is to encourage the benign evolution of Islam. Toward this end, the U.S. government, Kaplan writes, "has embarked on a campaign of political warfare unmatched since the height of the Cold War." The goal is:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
to influence not only Muslim societies but Islam itself…Although U.S. officials say they are wary of being drawn into a theological battle, many have concluded that America can no longer sit on the sidelines as radicals and moderates fight over the future of a politicized religion with over a billion followers. The result has been an extraordinary—and growing—effort to influence what officials describe as an Islamic reformation.</BLOCKQUOTE>

In at least two dozen countries, Kaplan writes:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Washington has quietly funded Islamic radio and TV shows, coursework in Muslim schools, Muslim think tanks, political workshops, or other programs that promote moderate Islam. Federal aid is going to restore mosques, save ancient Korans, even build Islamic schools…individual CIA stations overseas are making some gutsy and innovative moves. Among them: pouring money into neutralizing militant, anti-U.S. preachers and recruiters. "If you found out that Mullah Omar is on one street corner doing this, you set up Mullah Bradley on the other street corner to counter it," explains one recently retired official. In more-serious cases, he says, recruiters would be captured and "interrogated." Intelligence operatives have set up bogus jihad websites and targeted the Arab news media.</BLOCKQUOTE>
In all, various agencies of the U.S. government are active in this Islamic activity in at least 24 countries. Projects include:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
the restoration of historic mosques in Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan. In Kirgizstan, embassy funding helped restore a major Sufi shrine. In Uzbekistan, money has gone to preserve antique Islamic manuscripts, including 20 Korans, some dating to the 11th century. In Bangladesh, USAID is training mosque leaders on development issues. In Madagascar, the embassy even sponsored an intermosque sports tournament. Also being funded: Islamic media of all sorts, from book translations to radio and TV in at least a half-dozen nations.</BLOCKQUOTE>
Madrassahs, or Islamic schools, are a particular concern, for these train the next generation of jihadis and terrorists. Washington deploys several tactics to counter their influence:

<UL>
<LI>
In Pakistan, U.S. funds go discreetly to third parties to train madrassah teachers to add practical subjects (math, science, and health) to their curriculum, as well as civics classes. A "model madrassah" program that may eventually include more than a thousand schools is also now underway.</LI>
<LI>
In the Horn of Africa (defined by the Pentagon as Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen), the U.S. military finds out where Islamists plan to start a madrassah, then builds a public school in direct competition with it.</LI>
<LI>
In Uganda, the U.S. embassy has <A href="http://www.manahijj.com/Artical_3849.htm">signed three grant awards</A> to fund the construction of three elementary-level madrassahs.</LI></UL>
Kaplan quotes one American terrorism analyst saying, "We're in the madrassah business." But not all aid has an explicit Islamic theme. American money is partially funding a satellite version of the Sesame Street in Arabic stressing the need for religious tolerance.
Funds for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has nearly tripled, to more than $21 billion; and of this, more than half goes to the Muslim world. In addition to the familiar economic development programs, political projects involving Islamic groups, such as political training and media funding, are moving to the forefront. Spending on public diplomacy by the State Department has risen by nearly half since 9/11, to nearly $1.3 billion, with more expected. This largess has funded, among other programs, the Arabic-language Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television. Despite many complaints, Kaplan says they are showing signs of success. Plans ahead include making Alhurra available in Europe, and expanding programming in Persian and other key languages.

Comments:
1. Working to change how Muslims understand their religion, of course, raises some difficult implications. It is one thing to want to help moderate Muslims and quite another to locate them. As I noted in "<A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2226">Identifying Moderate Muslims</A>," there is great confusion over who really is a moderate Muslim and <A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/227">the U.S. government so far has a terrible record</A> in this regard. I sure hope those implementing the Muslim World Outreach agenda are engaging in the necessary research to get it right.
2. The possibility exists that U.S. taxpayer dollars funding Islamic media, schools, and mosques will beef up their capabilities, for influencing Islam and promoting Islam are easily melded, especially given <A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/article/90">the pro-Islamic attitudes of American political leaders</A>. (For this reason I have <A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/183">criticized</A> the building of a mosque in Iraq and madrassahs in Indonesia.) To promote Islam contravenes the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") and one constitutional expert, Herman Schwartz, deems the sponsorship of Islamic institutions to be "probably unconstitutional." This again points to the need for extreme care.

3. I heartily endorse the Muslim World Outreach approach; this is hardly surprising, for it closely aligns with my own recommendations. Here are excerpts from my January 2002 article, "<A href="http://www.danielpipes.org/article/103">Who Is the Enemy?</A>":
<BLOCKQUOTE>
The United States, an overwhelmingly non-Muslim country, obviously cannot fix the problems of the Muslim world. … But outsiders, and the United States in particular, can critically help in precipitating the battle and in influencing its outcome. They can do so both by weakening the militant side and by helping the moderate one…Weakening militant Islam will require an imaginative and assertive policy, one tailored to the needs of each country.
But let us not delude ourselves. If the United States has over 100 million Islamist enemies (not to speak of an even larger number of Muslims who wish us ill on assorted other grounds), they cannot all be incapacitated. Instead, the goal must be to deter and contain them…That is where the moderate Muslims come in. If roughly half the population across the Muslim world hates America, the other half does not. Unfortunately, they are disarmed, in disarray, and nearly voiceless. But the United States does not need them for their power. It needs them for their ideas and for the legitimacy they confer, and in these respects their strengths exactly complement Washington's.…
[T]he U.S. role is less to offer its own views than to help those Muslims with compatible views, especially on such issues as relations with non-Muslims, modernization, and the rights of women and minorities. This means helping moderates get their ideas out on U.S.-funded radio stations like the newly-created Radio Free Afghanistan and, as Paula Dobriansky, the Undersecretary of State for global affairs, has suggested, making sure that tolerant Islamic figures—scholars, imams, and others—are included in U.S.-funded academic- and cultural-exchange programs.</BLOCKQUOTE>
4. It is very good that David Kaplan has made available the outlines of Washington's efforts to fix Islam. This is a project too large for the government alone to work on; the body politic as a whole needs to argue it out.From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2546

The 2002 "presentaion" by Murawiec is of interest, in addition to it's warped content, because of the slate.com article that follows this WaPo piece, and links Murawiec to Richard Perle, "top ten" neocon !

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies
Ultimatum Urged To Pentagon Board

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page A01

A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.

"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.

"Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East.

The briefing did not represent the views of the board or official government policy, and in fact runs counter to the present stance of the U.S. government that Saudi Arabia is a major ally in the region. Yet it also represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration -- especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon's civilian leadership -- and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers.

One administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly within the U.S. government. "People used to rationalize Saudi behavior," he said. "You don't hear that anymore. There's no doubt that people are recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem."

The decision to bring the anti-Saudi analysis before the Defense Policy Board also appears tied to the growing debate over whether to launch a U.S. military attack to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The chairman of the board is former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle, one of the most prominent advocates in Washington of just such an invasion. The briefing argued that removing Hussein would spur change in Saudi Arabia -- which, it maintained, is the larger problem because of its role in financing and supporting radical Islamic movements.

Perle did not return calls to comment. A Rand spokesman said Murawiec, a former adviser to the French Ministry of Defense who now analyzes international security affairs for Rand, would not be available to comment.

"Neither the presentations nor the Defense Policy Board members' comments reflect the official views of the Department of Defense," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in a written statement issued last night. "Saudi Arabia is a long-standing friend and ally of the United States. The Saudis cooperate fully in the global war on terrorism and have the Department's and the Administration's deep appreciation."

Murawiec said in his briefing that the United States should demand that Riyadh stop funding fundamentalist Islamic outlets around the world, stop all anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli statements in the country, and "prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services."

If the Saudis refused to comply, the briefing continued, Saudi oil fields and overseas financial assets should be "targeted," although exactly how was not specified.

The report concludes by linking regime change in Iraq to altering Saudi behavior. This view, popular among some neoconservative thinkers, is that once a U.S. invasion has removed Hussein from power, a friendly successor regime would become a major exporter of oil to the West. That oil would diminish U.S. dependence on Saudi energy exports, and so -- in this view -- permit the U.S. government finally to confront the House of Saud for supporting terrorism.

"The road to the entire Middle East goes through Baghdad," said the administration official, who is hawkish on Iraq. "Once you have a democratic regime in Iraq, like the ones we helped establish in Germany and Japan after World War II, there are a lot of possibilities."

Of the two dozen people who attended the Defense Policy Board meeting, only one, former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger, spoke up to object to the anti-Saudi conclusions of the briefing, according to sources who were there. Some members of the board clearly agreed with Kissinger's dismissal of the briefing and others did not.

One source summarized Kissinger's remarks as, "The Saudis are pro-American, they have to operate in a difficult region, and ultimately we can manage them."

Kissinger declined to comment on the meeting. He said his consulting business does not advise the Saudi government and has no clients that do large amounts of business in Saudi Arabia.

"I don't consider Saudi Arabia to be a strategic adversary of the United States," Kissinger said. "They are doing some things I don't approve of, but I don't consider them a strategic adversary."

Other members of the board include former vice president Dan Quayle; former defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown; former House speakers Newt Gingrich and Thomas Foley; and several retired senior military officers, including two former vice chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired admirals David Jeremiah and William Owens.

Asked for reaction, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said he did not take the briefing seriously. "I think that it is a misguided effort that is shallow, and not honest about the facts," he said. "Repeating lies will never make them facts."

"I think this view defies reality," added Adel al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to Saudi leader Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz. "The two countries have been friends and allies for over 60 years. Their relationship has seen the coming and breaking of many storms in the region, and if anything it goes from strength to strength."

In the 1980s, the United States and Saudi Arabia played major roles in supporting the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, pouring billions of dollars into procuring weapons and other logistical support for the mujaheddin.

At the end of the decade, the relationship became even closer when the U.S. military stationed a half-million troops on Saudi territory to repel Hussein's invasions of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Several thousand U.S. troops have remained on Saudi soil, mainly to run air operations in the region. Their presence has been cited by Osama bin Laden as a major reason for his attacks on the United States.

The anti-Saudi views expressed in the briefing appear especially popular among neoconservative foreign policy thinkers, which is a relatively small but influential group within the Bush administration.

"I think it is a mistake to consider Saudi Arabia a friendly country," said Kenneth Adelman, a former aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is a member of the Defense Policy Board but didn't attend the July 10 meeting. He said the view that Saudi Arabia is an adversary of the United States "is certainly a more prevalent view that it was a year ago."

In recent weeks, two neoconservative magazines have run articles similar in tone to the Pentagon briefing. The July 15 issue of the Weekly Standard, which is edited by William Kristol, a former chief of staff to Quayle, predicted "The Coming Saudi Showdown." The current issue of Commentary, which is published by the American Jewish Committee, contains an article titled, "Our Enemies, the Saudis."

"More and more people are making parts of this argument, and a few all of it," said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University expert on military strategy. "Saudi Arabia used to have lots of apologists in this country. . . . Now there are very few, and most of those with substantial economic interests or long-standing ties there."

Cohen, a member of the Defense Policy Board, declined to discuss its deliberations. But he did say that he views Saudi Arabia more as a problem than an enemy. "The deal that they cut with fundamentalism is most definitely a threat, [so] I would say that Saudi Arabia is a huge problem for us," he said.

But that view is far from dominant in the U.S. government, others said. "The drums are beginning to beat on Saudi Arabia," said Robert Oakley, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan who consults frequently with the U.S. military.

He said the best approach isn't to confront Saudi Arabia but to support its reform efforts. "Our best hope is change through reform, and that can only come from within," he said.

background:

Quote:

http://www.slate.com/?id=2069119
The PowerPoint That Rocked the PentagonThe LaRouchie defector who's advising the defense establishment on Saudi Arabia.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2002, at 7:49 PM ET

......According to Newsday, Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard N. Perle, a former Pentagon official and full-time invade-Iraq hawk, invited Murawiec to brief the group, so Perle can't exactly distance himself from the presentation. But he can do the next best thing—duck reporters' questions. Murawiec also declined reporters' inquiries, including one from Slate.....

.....When he spoke on panel with Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute on Dec. 1, 1999, Murawiec was introduced as having just moved to the United States after "a dozen years" of working as managing director of GeoPol in Geneva, "a service that supplies advice to European clients, similar to what Kissinger Associates offers from New York, except without the accent." That is a bit of an overstatement. A Google search of "Murawiec and GeoPol" produces 12 hits. Compare that to the 10,300 hits on Google for "Kissinger Associates."

Murawiec's résumé would predict many Nexis hits, but a search of his name reveals just five bylines: Twice already this year, Murawiec has contributed to the neocon publication the National Interest, on the subject of Russia. [Correction: Murawiec wrote for the National Interest once in 2000 and once in 2002. The topic both times was Russia.] In 1999 he wrote for the Post's "Outlook" section on "internationalism," and in 1996 he contributed a piece to the Journal of Commerce on Russia. His only other Nexis-able byline is a dusty one from the Jan. 23, 1985, edition of the Financial Times, which describes Murawiec as "the European Economics Editor of the New York-based Executive Intelligence Review weekly magazine."

Executive Intelligence Review, as scholars of parapolitics know, is a publication of the political fantasist, convicted felon, and perpetual presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. It's not clear exactly when Murawiec left the LaRouche orbit. An article by LaRouche that appeared last year in Executive Intelligence Review calls Murawiec "a real-life 'Beetlebaum' of the legendary mythical horse-race, and a hand-me-down political carcass, currently in the possession of institutions of a peculiar odor." In 1997, LaRouche's wife Helga Zupp LaRouche wrote in Executive Intelligence Review (republished in the LaRouche-affiliated AboutSudan.com Web site) that Murawiec "was once part of our organization and is now on the side of organized crime." The truth value of that statement surely ranks up there with LaRouche's claim that the Queen of England controls the crack trade. To say, zero.

When Murawiec departed LaRouche's company is unclear, but Dennis King, author of 1989's Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, thinks it came when many followers split as LaRouche's legal problems grew and climaxed with a 1988 conviction for conspiracy and mail fraud. "[Murawiec] was not a political leader," says King, "but a follower who did intelligence-gathering."

Now that Murawiec has assumed such a vocal place in the policy debate, the man who gave him the lectern owes us the complete back-story. Over to you, Richard Perle.

Paul Reynolds of the BBC reports on the money flow to the Rand Corp., and then the Rand Corp. report, "Civil Democratic Islam: partners, resources and strategies" by Cheryl Bernard is examined.... following that is a Wapo report that tells us that Ms. Bernard is married to Zalmay Khalilzad, protege of Bush admin. insider, Thomas E. Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha......

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200407061...as/3578429.stm
or http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...as/3578429.stm
Preventing a 'clash of civilisations'

By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

A strategy for the West to counter Islamic extremism by supporting Islamic moderates has been put forward in a report funded in part by a conservative American foundation.

It says that the West should help religious "modernists" in the Islamic world in order to prevent a "clash of civilisations."

It states: "It seems judicious to encourage the elements within the Islamic mix that are most compatible with global peace and the international community and that are friendly to democracy and modernity."

The report, called "Civil Democratic Islam: partners, resources and strategies", was drawn up by the Rand Corporation with financial help from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a conservative trust fund which hands out more than $120 million a year to universities and other research organisations.

It is a sign perhaps that some American conservatives, many of whom want to press democratic reform in Muslim countries, realize that a focused approach is needed.

Suspicions

It is a contribution to a debate well under way in the West. The latest manifestation of this debate was a recent speech by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey, who wondered why Islam was "associated with violence throughout the world." His conclusion is not dissimilar to that of this report.

"Is extremism so ineluctably bound up with its faith that we are at last seeing its true character? Or could it be that a fight for the soul of Islam is going on that requires another great faith, Christianity, to support and encourage the vast majority of Muslims who resist this identification of their faith with terrorism?" he asked.

<h3>The United States and its allies need to be more discriminating in the way they perceive and interact with groups who call themselves Islamic
Cheryl Benard, Rand Corp</h3>

The recommendations have also come as the Bush administration is proposing to use the G8 summit in the American state of Georgia in June to push the issue of democratic and social reform in the Middle East. The summit will coincide with the handover of power in Iraq to an interim Iraqi government.

The Bush initiative has raised suspicions in Arab countries and among some of America's European allies who do not want anything imposed from the outside.

Islam's crisis

The report's writer, Cheryl Benard, said: "The United States and its allies need to be more discriminating in the way they perceive and interact with groups who call themselves Islamic.

"The term is too vague, and it doesn't really help us when we are looking to encourage progress and democratic principles, while being supportive of religious beliefs."

The report states: "Islam's current crisis has two main components: a failure to thrive and a loss of connection to the global mainstream. The Islamic world has been marked by a long period of backwardness and comparative powerlessness."

It says that Muslims disagree on what to do about this and identifies four essential positions in Muslim societies:
# Fundamentalists who "reject democratic values and contemporary Western culture."

# Traditionalists who "are suspicious of modernity, innovation and change."

# Modernists who "want the Islamic world to become part of global modernity."

# Secularists who "want the Islamic world to accept a division of religion and state."

The report says that the modernists and secularists are closest to the West but are general in a weaker position than the other groups, lacking money, infrastructure and a public platform.

Education

It suggests a strategy of supporting the modernists first. This would be done by, for example, publishing and distributing their works at subsidised cost, encouraging them to write for mass audiences and for youth, getting their views into the Islamic curriculum and helping them in the new media world which is dominated by fundamentalist and traditionalists.

It goes onto the say that traditionalists should be supported against the fundamentalists by publicising the traditionalist criticism of extremism and by" encouraging disagreements" between the two positions. It says that "in such places as Central Asia, they (traditionalists) may need to be educated and trained in orthodox Islam to be able to stand their ground."

A third strategy would be "to confront and oppose the fundamentalists" by, among other things, challenging their interpretation of Islam and revealing their links with illegal groups and activities.

Support for the secularists would be cautious and very selective, for example by encouraging "recognition of fundamentalism as a shared enemy."

The latest draft of the US government's own proposals are reported to include the promotion of parliamentary exchanges, the offering of advice on legislation, support for literacy campaigns, and the promotion of more access to personal and development finance.

The Rand approach is more overtly political and has definite diplomatic gains in mind.

I posted an article on 11/19.2005, about Zalmay Khalilzad, husband of Cheryl Bernard, who is the author of the Rand Corp. article:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...77&postcount=4
in this TFP thread:
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=1941577#post1941577"> Why Have Dems & Repubs Sold Out To Chalabi & How Do We Take Back the Government?</a>

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...3401-2001Nov22
Afghan Roots Keep Adviser Firmly in the Inner Circle
Consultant's Policy Influence Goes Back to the Reagan Era

By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A41

Four years ago at a luxury Houston hotel, oil company adviser Zalmay Khalilzad was chatting pleasantly over dinner with leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban regime about their shared enthusiasm for a proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline deal.

Today, Khalilzad works steps from the White House, helping President Bush and his closest advisers in attempts to annihilate those same Afghan officials.

From his perch as a member of the National Security Council and special assistant to the president, the Afghanistan native is one of the most influential voices on Afghan policy.

He is the only White House official to have lived in Afghanistan, and he has a visceral feel for the region's tensions and history. His long-term influence on matters pertaining to Central Asia is made apparent by a photo in his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Snapped next door at the White House, it shows President Ronald Reagan and Khalilzad huddled in discussion with an Afghan leader, who at the time was battling to oust the Soviets.

"Zalmay is the ideal man for Afghanistan, because he is an Afghan himself and he's grown up there and knows the country," said Richard Dekmejian, a specialist in Islamic fundamentalism at the University of Southern California and an acquaintance for more than a decade. "He brings firsthand knowledge of the country together with the perspective of a policy expert. He's at the right place."

Since the 1980s -- as a Reagan administration policy planner, a consultant, a Pentagon strategist and a Rand Corp. scholar -- Khalilzad, a U.S. citizen, has been in contact with myriad squabbling Afghan warlords and political leaders.

Over the decades, he has evolved from a Cold War activist, celebrating the retreat of Soviet forces from his homeland, to a more moderate voice, calling for friendly persuasion with the Taliban. Now, he is a hawk urging the Taliban's destruction.

His evolving views are evident in a long string of journal articles, position papers and newspaper columns.

"The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran," Khalilzad wrote four years ago in The Washington Post. "We should . . . be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction. . . . It is time for the United States to reengage" the Taliban.

More recently, though, he began stressing that action against the Taliban "now is essential."

"The danger is growing," he wrote late last year with Daniel Byman of the Rand Corp. in Washington Quarterly, a policy magazine. "Soon the movement will be too strong to turn away from rogue behavior. It will gain more influence with insurgents, terrorists and narcotics traffickers and spread its abusive ideology throughout the region. . . . Alternatives to confrontation have little promise."

Khalilzad was born 50 years ago in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, 70 miles south of the Soviet border. While still young, his family moved to the regional capital of Kabul, where his Pashtun father worked in the government, which was then a monarchy.

"They certainly would have been people among the intellectual elite of the time," said Thomas E. Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "They became Kabuli, the Parisians of Afghanistan: urbane, urbanized people."

Khalilzad's first glimpse of the United States came as a teenager, when he visited this country in a student exchange program run by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker charitable organization, Gouttierre recalled. Khalilzad went home with a passion for American culture, including basketball.

"He saw and played basketball while in the U.S.," said Gouttierre, who coached Khalilzad on a student team. "As it turned out, he was not a great player. I knew then he would be a better intellectual than a basketball player."

After completing high school in Kabul, Khalilzad earned an undergraduate degree from the American University in Beirut, followed by a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1979 -- the same year the Soviets invaded his homeland.

For the next decade, Khalilzad was an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, also serving as executive director of the Friends of Afghanistan, a support group for the Afghan mujaheddin then battling the Soviets.

From 1985 to 1989, Khalilzad worked at the State Department as a special adviser to the undersecretary of state, consulting on the Iran-Iraq War and on the Soviet war in Afghanistan. He belonged to a small group of policymakers who successfully pressed the Reagan administration to provide arms -- including shoulder-fired Stinger missiles -- to anti-Soviet resistance fighters in Afghanistan.

He then served as undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration while it waged war against Iraq. Later, he worked as a senior political scientist at Rand, a consulting company that performs policy studies for the U.S. military. He directed strategy for Rand's Project Air Force and founded the corporation's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

He also joined the board of the Washington-based Afghanistan Foundation, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to raising interest in the country. He became the primary author of a foundation position paper that urged U.S. officials to prod the Taliban and its opposition toward joining forces in a new, broad-based government.

During the mid 1990s, while at the for-profit Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analyses for Unocal Corp., a U.S. oil company that hoped to construct gas and oil pipelines across Afghanistan. At the time, Unocal held signed business agreements with the Taliban.

In December 1997, Unocal brought top Taliban leaders to the United States to view its operations in Houston. Khalilzad joined Unocal officials at a reception for the visiting Taliban delegation. Over dinner, Khalilzad challenged the leaders on their treatment of women, whom the Taliban jailed for failing to cover their faces with veils. His debate with Amir Khan Muttaqi, Taliban minister of culture and information, escalated into a spirited dissection of the precise language of the Koran.

Khalilzad's wife, Cheryl Bernard, is an Austrian writer and feminist whose novels champion women's rights.

Over the years, Khalilzad has written and edited books with such titles as "Strategic Appraisal: The Changing Role of Information in Warfare," "United States and Asia: Toward a New U.S. Strategy and Force Structure" and "Aerospace Power in the 21st Century." He also co-wrote, with his wife, "The Government of God: Iran's Islamic Republic."

After Bush's victory last November, Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defense Department. He also counseled Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. In his current role, he answers directly to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

"He is scholarly, cool. Always a smile. Outgoing," Dekmejian said. "He's not a preacher type, one who goes out there and moves the masses. But he is very good at addressing small groups of people. He is not an arrogant government person. He has an open mind."

Gouttierre said the White House is lucky to have an expert in diplomacy and military affairs who also has a gut-level feel for the politics of Afghanistan.

"He's the right kind of a guy at the right place right now," he said.

If you read my posts on the thread linked here, and above the preceding WaPo article, <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=1941577#post1941577"> Why Have Dems & Repubs Sold Out To Chalabi & How Do We Take Back the Government?</a> ....you might begin to wonder it Mojo, Ustwo, et al, arw correct in their pronouncements about Islam, or whether their opinions are heavily influenced by neocon propagandists, John Rendon, and "the Rand Corporation with financial help from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a conservative trust fund which hands out more than $120 million a year to universities and other research organisations..... As much as anything else, folks, the negative PR intended to divide and conquer Islam, is about control of the oil, and other neocon and corporatist ambitions of global dominance...
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