O's 'fixes' will fail
Feeding more fat to obese US intelligence
Ralph Peters
New York Post
January 9, 2010
On Christmas day, a terrorist known to our intelligence system tried to blow up 300 innocents on a US-bound flight. Our government's response is to take porno pictures of your wife and daughter. A radical-Islamist US Army major, known to our intelligence system, massacred his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Our government's response was to offer counseling sessions. A triple agent, known to our intelligence system, detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA outpost, killing seven Americans and a cousin of Jordan's king. Our government's response is to shift intelligence assets away from targeting terrorists to support development efforts.
Our president assures us that no individual is to blame. No one will be fired. It was only "the system," that elusive beast, that failed.
Well, our intelligence system is made up of people. People failed. Starting at the top. The dazzlingly incompetent Janet Napolitano, a "man-caused disaster" if ever there was one, needs to be removed from her job heading Homeland Security. White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan should be placed on double-secret probation and warned to pull up his grades. As for the National Counterterrorism Center chief who abandoned his post to go on a ski vacation the day after Christmas, I leave his fate to you, gentle reader.
None of these people, including our president, took what almost happened on Christmas seriously -- until the public outcry spooked them. To energize the bureaucratic proles, you have to chop off aristocratic heads. But President Obama won't use the guillotine. He's protecting incompetents. At our nation's expense.
The corrective measures announced Thursday boil down to two things: Buy more stuff (additional computer systems, full-body scanners, etc.), and re-arrange the deck chairs.
That won't do it. These measures don't address the two enduring handicaps our intelligence community (and our government) suffers in our duel with Islamist terrorists.
First, you can't win by playing defense. Our unseemly protective measures relinquish the initiative to our enemies. Punishing law-abiding US citizens at airports is a disgrace, not a virtue. The only effective way to reduce the terrorist threat is to kill terrorists. Nothing else -- not even the humiliation of innocent air travelers -- will work.
Yet the politically correct group-think mentality in Washington is so pervasive and pernicious that even Robert Gates, who's been a great secretary of defense in so many ways, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this."
Oh, really? Suppose we had killed young Umar Abdulmutallab on the ground with al Qaeda in Yemen? Might that not have protected Americans more effectively than making them miss their holiday flight connections? Any program that takes intelligence assets away from finding and killing terrorists is a mistake. Improving crop yields in southern Afghanistan won't keep Americans safe from Islamist fanatics. What about this is hard to understand?
Problem No. 2 is the nature of our intelligence system itself: It's morbidly obese. The well-intentioned creation of new bureaucracies after 9/11 only worsened the problem, creating more layers of fat. I prescribe a rigorous diet and exercise -- not force-feeding the system more funding calories.
Our intel system is vast, redundant, intractable, self-satisfied, cautious and slower than crosstown traffic during a presidential motorcade. Our Islamist enemies are lean, really mean, agile, ruthless and, above all, imaginative. Ragtag fanatics are out-thinking us. Why? Because bureaucracy, although it has its place, hates fresh ideas. The terrorists grab a good concept and run with it. We staff it to death, then decide it's far too risky.
Before launching an attack on a confirmed terrorist target in Afghanistan, our combat units need up to a dozen different permission slips. Think al Qaeda or the Taliban work that way?
We're not being defeated. We're defeating ourselves.
As a former Military Intelligence officer, I know the answer isn't more inexperienced hires or throwing more money at well-connected defense contractors. The answer is to emphasize quality, and for our leaders to foster a culture of risk in the field and personal responsibility in the Cabinet. We need to be creative and willing to commit sins of commission, rather than waiting for terrorists to expose our sins of omission.
Instead, we'll continue to penalize honest citizens (handing al Qaeda a massive, continuing win). Those full-body scanners? If you don't think porn shots of innocent women will end up on the Internet, you probably believe that trying terrorist butchers in civilian courts will make al Qaeda respect us.
We need to check under the burqas, not the halter tops.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
"We need to check under the burqas, not the halter tops."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
How are you going to keep the burqa checkers motivated if you don't let them do some halter tops occasionally?
Seriously though, you've hit the nail on the head. Hire some pros and cut some pols out of the business. Stop inconveniencing people and focus on profiling. Get some cojones into the intel community and stop threatening them with prosecutions.
But I'm just rephrasing what you said.
Rahm Emmanuel said all you need to know about this president-elect and his administration. You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.
Obama is like a self-absorbed body builder who only exercises his muscles for the sake of getting more muscles. (I actually worked for someone who was similarly self-absorbed and probably considered himself simiarly "ripped". He was a grade a jerk. And like Obama, his authority and power was used almost exclusively for self-promotion.)
We can then expect Obama to use the crisis for the sole purpose of exercising his power to increase his own power. At least until public outrage forces him to exercise his power on their behalf.
Once you have the template in your head, the issue doesn't matter. Whether it's eeeevil Carbon, healthcare, bailouts, air force one flybys, Chrysler's bankrupcy, GM's bankruptcy, TARP, the Chicago Olympics, Cambridge police, Copenhagen, Skoal, Kobe beef, or cash for clunkers is irrelevant. To Obama, it's all about Obama.
Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security. Whatever happens, the response of this administration will deliver less of both as a result. Thanks, but no thanks, I'll Maddenize myself and drive instead.
Eric
III
Great article, but missed one important point.
Not only do the "powers that be" fail to profile the right individuals, resorting to taking porn pics of your wife/daughter/girlfriend, but they make a point of prosecuting anyone that bitches about it. Try going through one of the Gestapo checkpoints at the airport and complain while they are violating you. Try commenting to a flight attendant about it.
It's all still somehow Bush's fault.
Word verification: prewar (no $h!+)
Correctamundo!
I'd be more worried about the CIA/other alphabet agencies than Muslims.
I completely understand this guy’s frustration, but as a former military guy, he should understand the WWII acronym FUBAR better than anyone. What makes Peters think that removing idiots one, two and three, and replacing them with idiot four will make any difference—any difference at all?
"The only effective way to reduce the terrorist threat is to kill terrorists."
The only effect of killing terrorists is to generate more terrorists. The only way to reduce the terrorist threat is to take the profit out of it (hint: you and they don't define 'profit' the same way). Killing Muslim fundamentalists is 'profit' to them -- they go to heaven, they believe. You're doing them a favor.
The only way to block them is to rig the game so that their next attack cannot bring them anything they want. You know how to do that; you just don't want to do it.
---
...even Robert Gates, who's been a great secretary of defense in so many ways, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this." Oh, really? Suppose we had killed young Umar Abdulmutallab on the ground with al Qaeda in Yemen?
Answer: there would be six others stepping up to take his place and vie for the honor of dying for Islam. Gates is right.
"The answer is to emphasize quality, and for our leaders to foster a culture of risk in the field and personal responsibility in the Cabinet."
I can't recall reading anything this funny since Dave Barry's 2008 wrap-up a year ago.
Not to point fingers but, in the book by Joe LeBleu [Long Rifle] he notes how the administration of GWB changed the ROE and when the USMC took over from the Army they lost Fallujah in four days.
Five layers of permission to take the shot/action changed from warfighting to CYA.
Gates was a big part of that.
"Answer: there would be six others stepping up to take his place and vie for the honor of dying for Islam. Gates is right."
Bravo Sierra. There is not an infinite supply of them. They don't just want to die (Osama seems still to be alive), they want to kill us and convert the infidel world to islam.
They can't do either if they are dead.
Jon
III
Not long ago of one of the forums I ineffectively help to populate, someone raised the idea that our biggest problem in the intelligence field is our tendency to act on warnings and notifications prematurely without sufficient evaluation, thereby racing toward a dead end. For decades, literally, I (having retired decades ago) insisted on the thesis that our greatest failures come from NOT acting. You can simply review our failures in your mind and come up with many examples. Look for successes. Let's count them together: Midway. . . oops. Ran out.
Our National Command Authority all the way to the top can be characterized by using the words of Robby Burns: "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie. . . ." Houston, we have a problem.
Aughtsix suggests: "they want to kill us and convert the infidel world to islam."
--Both-- of those?
Islam has had as its mission since the 7th century to convert everyone. They figured out long ago they can't do it with the sword, so why are they now using the sword? To convert us? If there's any 'Bravo Sierra' floating around, that's it.
The sword is now used today to get our attention, like the story of the man with the mule. They want something from us. What? They want us to stay on our side of the street and stop 'contaminating their culture'.
If that means we don't send any more American dollars, devalued as they are, over there, that's OK by me. You?
I say: exit, leaving big signs reading: "Figure it out for yourselves" and see what happens.
Best bet: we get to watch the whole ME slowly devolve. It should be very entertaining.
rexxhead said...
Aughtsix suggests: "they want to kill us and convert the infidel world to islam."
--Both-- of those? (/snark)
OK, I should have said "either/or".
Happy now? Sheesh.
I say: exit, leaving big signs reading: "Figure it out for yourselves" and see what happens.
A mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv? You're OK with that?
I'm not at all happy with your idea of just leaving them alone to implode. They have, despite their proclivity for internecine warfare, never given up the Quranic injunction to isalmize the world, and at the "point of the sword"... or nuclear device.
There are now, and there will soon be more, nuclear weapons in the ME. So, are we to leave them to their own destruction, not to mention that of Israel, and possibly our own as well? Are we simply to sit back and count on their own internal differences to ensure that they leave us alone? I suppose you would be comfortable if they could only hit Europe?
Weakness in their foes is what they rely on... and despise. It encourages them.
And this:
"They want something from us. What? They want us to stay on our side of the street and stop 'contaminating their culture'."
is incompatible with this:
Islam has had as its mission since the 7th century to convert everyone.
We who say we believe in Liberty have a very big problem. It is that we here in America are the last gasp of the same. We are beset by enemies on all sides and from within who despise the very notion. We must deal with and defeat them all, sooner or later. I would agree that we should clean out the vipers within first, but we cannot lose sight of the barbarians at the gates either. Simply withdrawing in the forlorn hope that the threats will eat themselves will only hasten our destruction.
Jon
III
Just because some of Islam wants to "convert" us, doesn't mean they have the means to succeed. Imagine Islam as a fire, and a national defense as firefighters. Colonial conquering of peoples in the Middle East is like removing the fuel. Stopping buying huge quantities of oil from the Middle East is like cutting off the air. Withdrawing from colonial occupation and other irritants is like lowering the temperature below ignition.
Colonialism is an evil only one step removed from slavery. That option is out. Withdrawing our troops is peaceful and saves money. That is a great idea. The Middle East only supplies something like 15% of our oil, we could buy that elsewhere. Then we let anyone who is tired of living in the middle ages as a peasant oppressed by the church, such as the women and children, emigrate and wear halter tops and get university degrees. That bleeds off the fuel.
Look at all the Middle Eastern terrorists we've seen since 9/11. Do we see teams of commandos successfully smuggling nukes? Or shoe bombers and underware bombers so incompetent they should be given a psych eval? If the Middle Eastern bombs were going off every week in American cities, then I'd agree we are facing a viable war threat. But they aren't. A cheap, peaceful response that works shows strength both morally and budget-wise. I don't care about impressing their most radical members. I care about discouraging attacks on Americans without turning Americans into Soviets.
Post a Comment