A recent study by the Pew Research Center indicates that 10 years after the September 11 attacks, support for Islamic fundamentalism is growing within the Muslim world and that U.S. efforts to produce an ideological counterproposal to Islamic terrorism have fallen short.
Statistics released May 17 reveal, for example, that 47 percent of
Pakistan's 187 million people “sympathize” with Islamic fundamentalism and 4 percent believe that suicide bombing is sometimes justified. In Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan, the statistics show that 31 percent, 24 percent, and 36 percent respectively also support Islamist radicals who are the main force behind today's dominant terrorist groups such as Al Qaida, Hamas and
Hizbullah.
I think the best description of Robert Gates is that he is a very smart bureaucrat who exemplifies the concept of go along to get along. He demonstrated this admirably in his farewell ‘warning’ as reported in the Wall Street Journal. This was a “guns or butter” speech designed to reassure the defense industrial complex that the safety of the U.S. will depend on the continued acquisition of pointless complex and expensive weapons systems.
Rather interestingly in this speech Gates ignored two pieces of information that might have caused him to reconsider his advocacy of super weapons systems.
America can be a superpower or a welfare state, but not both.
Phi Beta Iota Sidenote: BOTH of the above “choices” are corruption incarnate. The correct choice was articulated by Thomas Jefferson: “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.”
EXTRACT:
In a series of farewell speeches, Mr. Gates has warned against cuts to weapon programs and troop levels that would make America vulnerable in “a complex and unpredictable security environment,” as he said Sunday at Notre Dame. On Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Gates noted that the U.S. went on “a procurement holiday” in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration decided to cash in the Cold War peace dividend. The past decade showed that history (and war) didn't end in 1989.
Robert Steele Sends. This is personal. In1995, Gates was one of four Americans invited to address the French national conference on “Waging War and Peace in the 21st Century.” He followed me on the schedule, and on hearing my presentation, sashayed up to the stage, sniffed dismissively, and said “I'm not even going to touch that.” As we now know, I nailed it in 1989 for General Al Gray, in 1992 for the Whole Earth Review, again in 1995 for all in France (and separately in USA for COSPO under Joe Markowitz and for US Government as a Whole), and again in 2000 for NATO. And onward to the UN and various multinational audiences who lack a single nation ready to play a leadership role in the M4IS2 arena. Robert Gates was arrogant then, he is ignorant now….and he does “do maintenance,” that is all he has done as a placeholder at Defense. Gate's farewell comments are crap, pure and simple. He has overseen the waste of America's blood, treasure, and spirit with abject amorality that Dick Cheney would be proud of. He has failed to demand what Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) called for–a strategy, a force structure (the four forces after next) suited to the 21st Century, and an acquisition system with integrity.
Anatomy of a Murder: How NATO Killed Qaddafi Family Members
28 May 2011
How many times must a parent bury a child?
Well, in the case of Muammar Qaddafi it's not only twice: once for his daughter, murdered by the United States bombing on his home in 1986, and again on 30 April 2011 when his youngest son, Saif al Arab, but yet again for three young children, grandbabies of Muammar Qaddafi killed along with Saif at the family home.
Now, I watched Cindy Sheehan as she bared her soul before us in her grief; I cried when Cindy cried. Now, how must Qaddafi and his wife feel? And the people of Libya, parents of all the nation's children gone too soon. I don't even want to imagine.
All my mother could say in astonishment was, “They killed the babies, they killed his grandbabies.”
The news reports, however, didn't last more than one half of a news cycle because on 1 May, at a hastily assembled press conference, President Obama announced the murder of Osama bin Laden.
Well, I haven't forgotten my empathy for Cindy Sheehan; I haven't forgotten my concern for the children of Iraq that Madeleine Albright said were OK to kill by U.S. sanctions if U.S. geopolitical goals were achieved. I care about the children of Palestine who throw stones at Israeli soldiers and get laser-guided bullets to their brains in return. I care about the people of North Africa and West Asia who are ready to risk their lives for freedom. In fact, I care about all of the children–from Appalachia to the Cancer Alley, from New York City to San Diego, and everywhere in-between.
On 22 May 2011, I had the opportunity to visit the residence of the Qaddafi family, bombed to smithereens by NATO. For a leader, the house seemed small in comparison, say, to the former Clinton family home in Chappaqua or the Obama family home. It was a small whitewashed suburban type house in a typical residential area in metropolitan Tripoli. It was surrounded by dozens of other family homes.
I spoke with a neighbor who described how three separate smart bombs hit the home and exploded, another one not exploding. According to the BBC, the NATO military operations chief stated that a “command and control center” had been hit. That is a lie. As anyone who visits the home can see, this home had nothing to do with NATO's war. The strike against this home had everything to do with NATO adopting a policy of targeted assassination and extra-judicial killing–clearly illegal.
Phi Beta Iota: We consider the attacks on Tripoli to be outrageously illegal and immoral by every standard. There is every reason for the non-NATO world to bring war crime charges against every participating NATO nation.
Peacekeepers from the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) park their tanks near the main Bakara market during fighting between Somalia government soldiers and Islamist insurgents in the capital Mogadishu, on May 23. Feisal Omar/Reuters
Phi Beta Iota: As with all regional organizations including security organizations such as NATO, the AU lacks a multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making (M4IS2) capability. Until they have one, they will remain at the mercy of predatory states and corporations.
Robert M. Gates is one of those people the Beltway Consensus refers to as a “serious adult”: not overtly partisan, measured in his pronouncements, possessed of actual knowledge about the job he has been charged to do. The adulation he has received is certainly understandable if we grade on a curve; his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, established an Olympic record for petty vanity, nasty abrasiveness, and disastrous professional judgment. Such a collective sigh of relief greeted Rumsfeld's departure that his successor was bound to shine in comparison.
But what of Gates's record on his own merits? He is given to making such comments as, “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the President to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” A normal person would infer that he is opposed to the types of military intervention that have contributed significantly to a near-bankruptcy of the country. Yet in practice he has taken concrete measures to protract the very problem he professes to deplore.
President Obama appears to have no interest in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) as a source of accurate information for decision making and policy formulation. John Brennan, his counter-terrorism chief and principal advisor on intelligence issues routinely circumvents the IC when the administration needs strategic intelligence to guide its national security deliberations. During the last two years decision making and policy formulation in the White House (WH) has been informed by having trusted outside advisors develop strategic papers on the subjects under discussion. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings (retired CIA) was called in twice to produce strategic studies of Afghanistan and the al Qaeda Movement. These studies informed WH discussion of strategy and policy including determining if a surge strategy would be successful in Afghanistan. Last August the WH asked for another study on the Magherb that warned of social unrest and the potential of upheaval. Although some CIA analysts did participate in these studies, the fact is that the ODNI, the National Intelligence Council, and CIA did not participate as institutions. The papers produced were not vetted by IC nor did the DNI appear to participate in any of the strategy sessions that the President chaired in the WH.
Intelligence support to military operations (SMO) does appear to have the attention of the WH. Indeed in a recent article in Washington Post, “Personalities over Structures in the Intelligence Community?” Walter Pincus reviewed the changes that were to occur within the National Security Establishment with the retirement of SecDef Bob Gates. Typical of the Post, Pincus did not engage in any analysis and did not address one of the most significant changes, the appointment of Michael Vickers to the post of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
Vickers spent ten years in the U.S. Army Special Forces (1973-1983) and then migrated to a three year tour (1983-1986) at CIA where he directed the transfer of arms and other supplies to the Pashtun Tribes then fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He then resigned from CIA to follow an academic path that eventually led to a doctorate in political science and from he moved into a prestigious think tank. In 2007 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.
Although his credentials in the intelligence field are remarkably thin and there is little evidence that he really understands irregular warfare, Vickers represents the growing movement to cast intelligence functions as principally SMO. The reported move of General David Petreaus to be the next director of CIA and the move of his predecessor Leon Panetta to be secretary of defense reinforces this conclusion. So does recent actions by General James Clapper (USAF ret.) who as DNI is also moving to make SMO the central function of U.S. Intelligence. It would appear that even CIA is going to be expected to function in support of military operations.
Phi Beta Iota: Sherman Kent is assuredly turning in his grave. Not only has the current “clerkship” of the US IC set US intelligence back a half century (while spending so much money for no results that they are now a target for cuts), but the “clerkship” of US IC has also wasted a full 20 years during which they had an opportunity to create a Smart Nation and establish multinational information-sharing and sense-making as a foundation for creating a prosperous world at peace. We also note with interest the White House preference for “intelligence” from sources other than the US IC. The US IC is, in one word, corrupt. It lacks integrity.
