2. Pakistan is “seriously perturbed” by Washington's allegation that Pakistan is the “epicenter” of terrorism, and by the hint that the U.S. might engage in hot pursuit of Taliban onto Pakistan soil. As a neighbor, Pakistan is concerned at the prospect that NATO will train up a big 150,000-strong Afghanistan Army.

3. The U.S. seems uninterested in achieving reconciliation between Tajiks and Pashtuns, which would have to be part of the solution.

4. The U.S. seems to be overly reliant on the military to impose social peace, which in any case they have not succeeded in doing for the last eight years.

5. Pakistan is petrified that big U.S. military operations will push a new wave of Pashtuns from Afghanistan into Pakistan, where they would become an element of instability.

6. Obama seems to be deliberately conflating the Taliban with al-Qaida when in fact the two are distinct.

A Pakistani official told the Daily Times, “Our stand is consistent that more troops are not the remedy for the war-torn country, as it will lead to more hatred and create more militants ... We have been saying that only purposeful dialogue can bring peace and stability in Afghanistan.”

7. They complained that Obama seemed to lump Pakistan with Afghanistan.

Now that it has leaked that the U.S. will also expand its drone strikes into Baluchistan, Pakistan is upset about that step, as well.

Nir Rosen, who knows the situation on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan intimately, dismisses Gen. Stanley McChrystal's plans for counterinsurgency in Afghanistan as based on the advice of "celebrity pundits" unfamiliar with ground realities and unduly influenced by their idea of what happened in Iraq.

The thing is, it only matters symbolically. Everything I read in open sources suggests that al-Qaida has almost no command and control structure left.

Tom Engelhardt decries what he sees as President Obama's surrender to the U.S. military-industrial establishment on the issue of the Afghanistan surge.

Al Jazeera English interviews Adm. Mike Mullen on Obama's Afghanistan surge, and the interview is British-style combative journalism, though Mullen remains unfazed.

But a new report commissioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shows that, in fact, the U.S. military may have had bin Laden in its grasp, and decided that dropping the net was too risky a proposition. The study, released Monday, is titled “Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today.” According to the report, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld turned down requests for a larger American troop presence to block escape routes from Tora Bora.

Rumsfeld had emphasized a small American footprint in Afghanistan from the start of the war. He was famously besotted with the idea of warfare conducted by small, agile teams working with local allies and heavy air support. Accordingly, at Tora Bora, there were fewer than 100 American commandos on the scene. Although officials in Washington, including the president, had been told that the Afghan soldiers accompanying the Americans were tired, cold and not that invested in capturing bin Laden, requests for American reinforcements were denied.

The study contradicts the claim of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that it wasn’t conclusive at the time where the terrorist leader was. In fact, according to the report, bin Laden was clearly in reach at Tora Bora. Even he thought it was already over: Expecting to die, he wrote up a last will and testament.

Apparently, Rumsfeld was convinced that sending more troops would antagonize the local population, potentially causing an insurgent resistance. By November -- one month before the battles at Tora Bora took place -- American planners had also already begun shifting emphasis and attention to preparations for a war in Iraq.

Host Melanie Morgan: Given the nature and danger of bringing these terrorists to American soil, where do you think is the most safe place to be when they get here and this trial begins? Where would you put your family?

John Bolton: Well, not New York City, I'm afraid to say. This is part of the callousness and the really, lack of professionalism and judgment to put them on trial anywhere in the United States in civilian courts. 

The cowardice on display here is difficult to overstate -- and to behold without being ill.  I lived in Manhattan on 9/11 and for many years thereafter.  For weeks -- even months and years after that attack -- it was widely assumed that New York would be a likely target for another attack, but I never heard a single New Yorker -- not one -- talk about fleeing the city or hiding their family in some faraway place.  During the 2004 election, New Yorkers voted for the candidate who wanted to treat Terrorism like a law enforcement problem over the pseudo-tough-guy "war president" by a margin of 80-20.  The fears engulfing Bolton and which he's attempting to infect the country with are found almost exclusively among this species of war-mongers obsessed with flamboyant -- and very public -- rituals where they proclaim their own "strength" and "courage."

John Bolton and his comrades love to run around accusing anyone who doesn't want to wage more wars of being an "appeaser" and "surrendering" to Terrorists, but Bolton's cry here is the ultimate, definitive surrender:  I'm too scared of the Terrorists to go about my normal life.  I'm too petrified even to have my family in the same city as a terrorist trial.  We can't adhere to our normal political system because the Terrorists will kill us all.   Given Bolton's comments, this might be the most ironic and desperate book title in the history of publishing:

All over the world, countries have put terrorists on trial in their largest and most important cities -- London, Madrid, Mumbai, Denpasar (the capital of Bali).  That's because their countries weren't flooded by meek, frightened little men like John Bolton who want to send their fellow citizens to bomb and invade as many countries as they can find in order to conceal and compensate for the suffocating cowardice revealed by both his life and these comments.  It's a natural human instinct to try to prove to the world that one possesses exactly those characteristics which one most lacks -- which is why right-wing warriors of the type represented by John Bolton are so desperate to prove their Churchillian courage and resolve, always from the safest and most risk-free distances.

* * * * *

Quite related to all of this, Brad at Sadly, No examines what he calls American elites' "nationalist narcissism. They believe not only that America has the right and the duty to be the 'dominant' country in the world, but that every other country in the world should be talking forever about how wonderful we are."  It's not hard to understand the source of their need to constantly have affirmed what Newsweek's Howard Fineman this week calls "our special destiny" as he frets that Obama is failing to salvage it by not keeping the U.S. at the Center of the World.  It's the same need that makes John Bolton and his comrades endlessly try to prove to the world how tough and brave they are even as they hide from and cower before Terrorists.  There are many reasons why America is a country perpetually at war, but this warped and broken psychological state -- weak and frightened individuals cheering on faraway wars as a means of feeling tough and strong, all justified by our own Supreme Specialness -- is one of the leading causes.

UPDATE:  As he does on a virtually daily basis, Glenn Beck today perfectly illustrates this syndrome (h/t Atrios):

UPDATE II:  An email I received from Jesse Levine, counsel in New York City's Law Department:

All of your recent posts have been on the mark, albeit depressing. Today's Bolton post resonates most with me, because on 9/12 I started working in the Emergency Command Center as I did for the next several weeks. Apart from working on the supply logistics (I was in a different agency then), I attended incident command meetings, which included new rumors of threats and assessments. When the Law Department formed the World Trade Center Unit, I became Assistant Chief and besides my litigation responsibilities, I prepared witnesses for the 911 Commission and NIST investigations. I also supervised the evidence gathering team that was documenting the City's response to the disaster. Through all of that I marveled at the bravery of the unsung heros of the response and aftermath, and not just the uniformed forces. I also saw the bravery of thousands who flocked to the City from all over the country to help.  For a creep like Bolton to try to project his fears on the rest of us is disgusting.

That about sums it up.

* * * * * 

Can anyone reconcile Obama's homage to "our legal traditions" and his professed faith in jury trials in the New York federal courts with the reality of what his administration is doing:  i.e., denying trials to a large number of detainees, either by putting them before military commissions or simply indefinitely imprisoning them without any process at all?

During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Eric Holder struggled all day to justify his decision to put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial because he has no coherent principle to invoke.  He can't possibly defend the sanctity of jury trials in our political system -- the most potent argument justifying what he did -- since he's the same person who is simultaneously denying trials to Guantanamo detainees by sending them to military commissions and even explicitly promising that some of them will be held without charges of any kind. 

Once you endorse the notion that the Government has the right to imprison people not captured on any battlefield without giving them trials -- as the Obama administration is doing explicitly and implicitly -- what convincing rationale can anyone offer to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in New York?  If you're taking the position that military commissions and even indefinite detention are perfectly legitimate tools to imprison people -- as Holder has done -- then what is the answer to the Right's objections that Mohammed himself belongs in a military commission?  If the administration believes Omar Khadr belongs in a military commission, and if they believe others can be held indefinitely without any charges, why isn't that true of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?  By denying jury trials to a large number of detainees, Obama officials have completely gutted their own case for why they did the right thing in giving Mohammed a trial in New York.

Even worse, Holder was reduced to admitting -- even boasting -- that this concocted multi-tiered justice system (trials for some, commissions for others, indefinite detention for the rest) enables the Government to pick and choose what level of due process someone gets based on the Government's assessment as to where and how they're most likely to get a conviction:

Courts and commissions are both essential tools in our fight against terrorism . . . On the same day I sent these five defendants to federal court, I referred five others to be tried in military commissions.  I am a prosecutor, and as a prosecutor, my top priority was simply to select the venue where the government will have the greatest opportunity to present the strongest case with the best law. . . . At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is a federal court.

Does that remotely sound like a "justice system"?  If you're accused of being a Terrorist, there's not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you based on ensuring that it will win.  Even worse, Holder repeatedly assured Senators that the administration would continue to imprison 9/11 defendants even in the very unlikely case that they were acquitted, citing what they previously suggested was their Orwellian authority of so-called "post-acquittal detention powers."  Is there any better definition of a "show trial" than one in which the defendant has no chance of ever being released even if acquitted, because the Government will simply thereafter assert the power to hold him indefinitely without charges?  

I understand that sending even a limited number of Terrorism suspects to federal court is politically difficult and controversial, as the last couple of days have demonstrated.  But by refusing to embrace and defend the core principle of justice at stake here -- that a distinguishing feature of our political system is that we don't imprison or kill people without charging them with a crime and proving their guilt in a real court, and that military commissions and indefinite detention are un-American (which Democrats argued under Bush) -- the Obama administration has made it far more difficult for it to defend what it is doing, as well as for those who want to defend their decision to give trials to 9/11 defendants.

To see how that works, here is part of the exchange I had on MSNBC this week with George Pataki, while debating trials for 9/11 defendants:

MR. GREENWALD:  If you look at how the British treated the people who did the London subway bombings, the Spanish who treated the people who did the Madrid subway bombings -- even India just put on trial the sole surviving terrorist who perpetrated the Mumbai massacre last year. Even Indonesia gave trials in their real cities to the people who blew up the nightclubs in Bali.

It's only the American conservatives who are feeding the terrorist agenda by saying that we're too scared to hold trials --

MR. RATIGAN: Hold on, Glenn.

MR. PATAKI: Can I respond to that, Dylan? Only the -- only the -- only the American conservatives? Then tell me why Obama and Holder are using military tribunals against those who blow up Americans in acts of war overseas?  They're just picking these particular terrorists for trial in New York because they blew up civilians in New York. So what their logic is, "Kill thousands of civilians and you can get a civilian trial; kill one or two overseas, and we're going to use military tribunals."

That makes no sense.

For those wanting to defend the administration, what's the answer to that?  The same thing happened when Rep. Nadler, as part of the same segment, tried to defend the Obama administration's decision to try the 9/11 defendants in New York:

REP. NADLER:  I think that our tradition is that people accused of heinous crimes get trials, and they get trials in the area in which the crime is committed, which is right here. And I think it's exactly the right thing to do. . . .That's the way it ought to be, and we ought to show the world that we adhere to our traditions of justice and that these terrorists are not going to cause us to abandon the law.

MR. PATAKI: ... We are going to use military tribunals. They're saying they're perfectly fine for some terrorists, but these terrorists they're going to try here. What's the justification for that, Jerry?

REP. NADLER: Well, I -- well, I don't think there is any justification.

MR. PATAKI: I don't either.

The administration should have the courage of its convictions and defend jury trials as a linchpin of American justice, which would entail giving them to all Terrorism suspects not captured on any battlefield.  But by refusing to do so -- by exhibiting the very cowardice of which Holder accused Republicans, i.e. denying Terrorism suspects a trial -- the administration has no cogent argument to make in its own defense.  It's just another case of the administration wanting to bask in the rhetorical glory of "the rule of law" while simultaneously trampling on it for petty political convenience.

UPDATE:  The blogger Patterico -- who, notably, is a prosectuor himself and thus inclined to be empathetic with prosecutorial goals -- nonetheless compiles additional evidence to criticize Holder's decision as follows:

You can see that what we have is an administration that is choosing where to try the detainees, not based on some principle or neutral protocol (as they claim), but based on where they can win. They’re rigging the game.

And if they lose, they won’t let him go anyway.

This is just further evidence that the KSM trial will be a show trial.

It's worth reading the arguments from a prosecutor about why the administration's conduct is such a breach of basic justice, even as they cynically wrap themselves in the rhetoric of the sanctity of jury trials and the rule of law.

UPDATE II:  For a crystal clear refutation of the claim that it's normal to use military commissions for the crimes at issue here, see this comment from the always-enlightening Pow Wow, which is based on this equally enlightening interview by Marcy Wheeler of Lt. Col (and now-Law Professor) David Frakt, highlighting the numerous myths on which the case for military commissions is predicated.