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Posted on 09/30/2001 1:45:00 PM PDT by AM2000

The United States was wrong to have spurned the Iranian offer in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, argues M D Nalapat

Were it not for Colin Powell's fondness for the men in uniform running - sorry, ruining - Pakistan, he would perhaps have found more time to contact our own Minister for External Affairs and Defence Jaswant Singh. The two have the same perspective when it comes to terrorism: succumb. While Powell opposed Desert Storm and then declined to agree to go into Iraq and finish the job by capturing Saddam Hussain, Singh surrendered to all the terrorist demands at Kandahar, including some "weighty" ones not yet disclosed to the public. Today, Powell has stepped in once again in defense of those that use violence against democracies.

First was his deliberate snub to Iran. That country has played a very positive role in Afghanistan, backing the Pashtun, Hazara, Uzbek and Tajik moderates against the zealots trained in Pakistan. Tehran indicated publicly that it was willing to actively assist the US war against the World Trade Center bombers, only to be confronted by a sneer from Colin Powell on world television, no less. Small wonder that the hardliners there quickly prevailed over those favouring cooperation with the former Great Satan (that Friday, after September 11,the US was not demonised in prayer for the first time since 1979).

Colin Powell may not know it, but it is not just Pakistan that is next door to Afghanistan but Iran as well. If a mangy military dictatorship, itself responsible for most of the terrorist fighters now harrying the international community, could be showered with so much reward for so little substantive action, surely Powell could have held in check his feelings towards the clerics who are so influential in Iran. Instead, he deliberately insulted that proud country, in pursuance of his desire that Pakistan, and only Pakistan, be involved within the region in the ongoing conflict. Of course, Beijing expects no less from its principal "dear friend" within the Bush team, Colin Powell. The PRC stands by its friends, as it has shown in the case of Pakistan. And Powell stands by the PRC.

By repeatedly disclaiming any intention of ridding the region of the Taliban (clearly hoping that he can save Mullah Omar's regime the way he did Saddam's), the US Secretary of State has lowered motivation and morale within Russia, the Commonwealth Independent States (CIS), the Northern Alliance, the anti-Omar Taliban and India to cooperate with Washington. All that the man, whose only genuine victories in combat (and these have been spectacular) have come from bureaucratic turf battles, cares for is to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive". Let the swamp that sustains Osama and a 100 others like him remain. If this be the only objective, why expect India, Iran,Russia, the CIS and the Northern Alliance to help?

Indeed, by delaying a vigorous US riposte to the New York and Washington bombings, Colin Powell has emboldened the terrorists, convinced them of the thesis they have been fed with -- that the US is a paper tiger that a few body bags and orchestrated protests will scare away poll-mad politicians from action. Both India, as well as the US, are responsible for September 11. India by its weak-kneed policy at Kandahar, which convinced the terrorists that huge democracies are just giant hot air balloons, and the US, for taking it as "India's problem", and not following up on the pile of documentation supplied to Washington by New Delhi on the terrorist networks. Terror forms a unified field, an archipelago where those trained can jet across the world in days. Unless the scourge is put down anywhere it erupts, it will explode everywhere.

In June this year, the US State Department was - through private channels - told that while India was target practice, the US was the target, and that the only way of averting disaster was to help the Pashtun nationalists who are within the Taliban, as well as the Northern Alliance. The South Asia bureau - Clinton followers to the end - sneered at such "crazy" analysis. They had just handed over $ 41 million to the Taliban, some of which would have come in handy for September 11.Today, by linking arms with the very force that sustains the Taliban - the jehadi army of Pakistan - Colin Powell is sabotaging the US's new war as effectively as he undid the results of the old.

Even in 1990, it was Powell who waited and waited before attacking Saddam, giving the fiend time to mobilise street opinion and disperse his financial and other assets to stop future Butlers from getting at them. The demoralised Iraqis would have fled had the US Air Force and Marines been used within six weeks of the invasion of that courageous little country, Kuwait. Instead, Powell fashioned a hammer to swat a fly. And missed.

With each day that goes by without retaliation, without proof that the Wrath of God will fall not on the victims but on the perpetrators of terror, Colin Powell is helping the terrorists organizations to send their assets and key commanders to safety in Pakistan, leaving behind a hollow shell. George Bush will pay a heavy price for depending on the terrorist's best friend, just as his father did. The catch is that the rest of the democratic world will as well.

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