Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

A relatively minor quote by Bruce Riedel, respected Brookings scholar and former head of Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review earlier this year, in this article in the New York Times caught my attention. Riedel said that “Even if we get a second round of voting, the odds are still high that Karzai will win. We have a fundamental interest in building up the legitimacy of the Karzai government.”

My worry comes from the second half of the quote and the use of the terms “fundamental interest” and the sharp focus on “the Karzai government” when Riedel talks about legitimacy.

First, on the “fundamental interest” part — can we declare a new rule among national security think tank wonks? When one uses phrases like “national interest” or “fundamental interest,” can that expert please explain what is meant by this word, “interest?”

With sugar on it and for the sake of the country, can we please explain what we’re talking about when national security experts invoke “interests?” (You know what happens when one assumes…)

Second, on Riedel’s point on “building up the legitimacy of the Karzai government,” I think he must have made a slight mistake here in offering this quote. I’m pretty sure he meant to make the case that the world has an interest in ensuring that Afghanistan’s governing institutions are legitimate. That’s different than narrowly focusing on “the legitimacy of the Karzai government.”

Sorry to be the stickler here, but it’s an important point. Neither the United States, nor any outside actor, can enhance the legitimacy of any Afghan political actor unilaterally or through our own actions. It’s foolhardy to think so, and I think is tied up with notions like American exceptionalism and how we view ourselves in the world.

It’s going to require those Afghan leaders to take the initiative. Frankly, as Hardin Lang from CSIS and I argue in an article for Foreign Policy.com this week, the Obama administration would do well to require Afghanistan’s next leader to meet certain standards before we pour more resources in there. Read more

A central claim of the Cheneyite pro-torture faction is that the Bush administration’s torture program generated intelligence that successfully stopped specific plots and saved American lives. One of these plots was a plan to fly a plane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, which torture supporters continue to insist was the result of information gotten from torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

But, as former FBI agent Ali Soufan reiterated in an op-ed on Saturday, the Library Tower plot “was thwarted in 2002, and Mr. Mohammed was not arrested until 2003.”

America’s torture enthusiasts, however, are not so easily deterred by such trivia. Echoing a claim by former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, the Weekly Standard’s Thomas Joscelyn insists that there was another Library Tower plot in the works. Citing a July 13, 2004, CIA memo which stated that an Al Qaeda operative named Hambali “admitted that he was grooming members of [a] cell for US operations -– at the behest of KSM -– probably as part of KSM’s plot to fly hijacked planes into the tallest building on the US West Coast,” Joscelyn writes that “we are left with the following“:

While the leader of the original four-man cell was arrested in 2002… two other members of the cell (Lillie and Zubair) remained free until after KSM’s capture. Lillie and Zubair reportedly moved on in their terrorist careers, but they still had originally volunteered to take part in a suicide hijacking. Do we really want to bet that they would not have eventually achieved their martyrdom? And who is to say that their superiors would not have repurposed them for a suicide hijacking once again? [...]

Regardless, KSM, Hambali and “Gun Gun” managed to establish a significantly larger cell comprised of an additional 14 members. The U.S. government’s short biography of Hambali notes that the cell was established as early as 1999. Members of the cell… received “advanced doctrinal and operational training, including at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.” And this cell, pilots and all, was being groomed for U.S. operations, probably targeting the “tallest building” on the West Coast.

I couldn’t have put it better myself — this is what torture’s defenders are left with: “Do we really want to bet…and who is to say…was being groomed…probably targeting.” Having to couch one’s claims in that much conjecture should be a pretty clear signal that those claims are really weak. (As Ken Gude noted last April, “one former National Security Council official put the ‘Library Tower story’ in Al Qaeda’s ‘what if’ category along side ‘what if Superman had worked for the Nazis.’”) Not that any of this will deter the Weekly Standard, where they still believe to this day that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had a secret pact to divvy up Poland.

The US Forest Service issued and then retracted a Labor Day warning advising hikers to “beware of campers in national forests drinking Tecate beer, eating tortillas and playing Spanish music” because “they could be armed marijuana growers.” A high-ranking Forest Service official in Colorado also identified people speaking Spanish and eating Spam or Tuna as “warning signs of possible drug trafficking.”

The warnings, which were issued as part of a slide show presentation for law enforcement officials and the general public, came after police arrested two people for allegedly growing 14,500 marijuana plants in a Colorado forest. However, little information about the case has been disclosed, including the names of the defendants. Polly Baca, co-chairwoman of the Colorado Latino Forum has accused the US Forest Service of racial profiling and says the warning is discriminatory and could put Hispanic campers in danger. Julien Ross, Executive Director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, further added:

“All Coloradans, and in particular elected lawmakers, should restrain from blaming entire communities for the acts of a few individuals…because a perpetrator’s immigration status has nothing to do with propensity for criminal action, such policies do not prevent crime and erode community trust. Research shows immigrants to be far less likely to commit crimes than native born citizens and to actually contribute to making neighborhoods safer. Lawmakers concerned about the drug trade would be better served focusing on lessening the demand for drugs in their local district than scapegoating immigrants. “

Hank Kashdan, associate chief of the U.S. Forest Service, apologized on behalf of his colleagues:

“It is inexcusable, and we regret that this insensitivity distracted attention from the real problem of illegal marijuana cultivation on federal land and the threats to human safety and environmental degradation it poses.”