Comments on: Political Goss

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 12:14:56 +0000

A note on Pakistan. Relations are shrouded in mystery. The 911 Report spills a tanker of ink on this and illuminates very little. Obviously there are deep ties into CIA and other US intelligence from the resistance to the Soviet Afghan occupation (back when Sunni-based Islamic radicals were the good guys), but the Report stops looking back in ‘93. A lot of it describes how the US tries and tries and tries to get the Pakistani government of the day to do US bidding, round up this or that group that became “al Qaeda”. But who is friend and who is foe is not in the least bit clear and it’s changing all the time. Since Bush opened the Whitehouse to Musharraf, a thug dictator with a nuclear bomb under US sanctions, its been kid gloves all the way. It’s a hornet’s nest that almost exploded with India in mid 2002. Okay, if the temporary cooling of that thing is success, my question is what’s the cost? Hard to know, the deals are submerged in enigma. And that’s how it has to be. Deals, corporate investment and clandestine government policy, not force. The US doesn’t have the conventional military juice available to force either Pakistan or India to do anything right now, and Iraq makes the hornets there more than a little ornery. I have zero confidence in Bush management of the inevitable crisis. If Bush wins in November, I’ll be forced to agree with Toby that the policy evolved into “success”–if he staves off the thing blowing up. But 2009 is a long, long ways away.

By: cs

cs — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 08:46:22 +0000

Toby — Thanks for accepting my apology about the spelling error. Can you talk a bit about why you think this down-’n-dirty stuff is necessary: Where you think it succeeded in the past? And why you believe it was discontinued post Church committee?

By: Toby Petzold

Toby Petzold — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 07:55:17 +0000

Ha, ha. No problem, cs. I’ve had my surname butchered a hundred different ways. “Petzoid” is a particular favorite because one of my old bosses called me that for years (like Mr. Burns never quite knowing Homer Simpson’s name).

As for DeepBlade:

Spouting in favor of dirty operations is a sign that of US diplomatic weakness.

I just think you’re being naive. The cooperation of Pakistan is definitely a “diplomatic” victory. Where were they just before the atrocities of 11 September 2001? Not on our side, I don’t think. And yet Bush has taken them there (at least Musharraf and the anti-Islamist elements). No credit to the President on that? What a surprise!

It may also be that our soft-line with the Saudis, which I and many anti-war Leftists find distasteful, to say the least, may, in the end, prove to have been the right approach. Everyone knows they’re dirty and cuplable in so much of the Wahhabist-Islamofascist doctrines and practices, but we have maintained our relationship in such a way that we have now seen them come over to the proactive side of the equation against the terrorists. Is it all for show? Maybe. But it may also be a genuine recognition that they will also be destroyed by the monster they did so much to create if they don’t help us.

So, we have, in fact, scored some diplomatic successes with the Muslim world —and the more we do in that regard, the more likely it is that we will be able to avail ourselves of their humint assets.

Remember: most of these tyrants know that the Western way is the best way. They just don’t want the people they oppress to know it, too. But America has always had it in her to fight dirty when the chips are down. We need to leave “diplomacy” to the superficial chattering classes and find a way to get down and dirty where it counts. It’s the way we will have to fight asymmetrical forces. It is foolish to doubt this.

By: Deep Blade

Deep Blade — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 05:41:13 +0000

I should have mentioned that I thought it was probably a typo.

By: cs

cs — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 04:05:37 +0000

Oh, DB and Mr. Petzold — My sincere apologies for a legitimate mistake. I did not mean anything perjorative; just aging eyesight and misread the name.

By: Deep Blade

Deep Blade — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 00:05:50 +0000

I concur with cs. But I don’t want to get a flame war started. I’ve never had to delete or alter a comment. So, in the nip-it-in-the-bud department, I’d prefer not using pejorative alterations of names. Even though I find many of his views abhorrent, I’d like Toby to feel welcome to give them here. Deep Blade welcomes all views as long as they are given in a civilized manner.

By: cs

cs — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:54:50 +0000

Good answer, DB. I’d like to add that the CIA’s “humint” complaints are probably to a large extent specious anyway. Iran Contra, Afghanistan — the CIA’s support of UBL, for pete’s sake — are post-Church same-old-same-old covert fiascos.

Besides, I attended both a seminar and public address by a former CIA op/counterintel director on this “humint” scam. This guy’s less-than-suble thesis was that the American public is ultimately to blame for 9/11 because our “squeamishness” about torture, assassination and international crimes like gun running and money laundering impeded intelligence gathering! Really, the guy said this, as if our intelligence agencies no longer trucked in such things . . .

I think we make at least a couple of important mistakes when we talk about the intelligence community: One, when we speak of it as some homogenized whole instead of institutions as factionalized and riddled with politics as any other bureaucracy; and two, when we fail to point out the lineage of these factions when we discuss “failures of intelligence” and purported remedies.

Porter Goss’s lineage is to the Cold War right wing within the intelligence community — the right wing responsible for the Coup in Guatemala, the Bay of Pigs, the attempt to undo the Kennedy administration and/or nuclear war by failing to report early evidence the nuclear build up in Cuba — and that’s just some of the early stuff.

Mr. Petzoid, gimme a break!

By: Deep Blade

Deep Blade — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:51:07 +0000

Sure, the US would be so much more moral and civilized without the Church and Pike Committees. Yeah, let’s go back to the 60s & 70s when the CIA dropped foreign leaders like bowling pins: Lumumba, Diem, Allende, Sukarno — more than a million dead followed that last one. (Though the best they could do to Castro was an attack on his beard.) I’ll take the good, moral reaction of good Americans forcing the Ford Adm. to order an end to the CIA assassination shop. It was a fine moment in American history, one of the few where a lot of us came to realize our effect on the world.

Unfortunately, as is evident from the hubris this commenter displays, there is a new kind of kick-some-ass mentality that’s pretty rampant in America today. What these guys don’t understand is that this cloak-and-dagger stuff bites both ways. Spouting in favor of dirty operations is a sign that of US diplomatic weakness. Unsurprisingly, Porter Goss is a hero for this crowd.

By: Toby Petzold

Toby Petzold — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 08:14:54 +0000

I think it’s a silly Leftist conceit to claim that what we need is an “objective” DCI. We actually need someone who’s willing to make the sort of “dirty” humint choices that were precluded by the Churchists. I’d like to see you post something on the great harm caused by the overreaction to the CIA of the 1960s and early 70s. We still haven’t recovered from that spate of nut-cutting.