WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is expanding its shadowy battle against militants in Yemen, including a planned new CIA base nearby in the Persian Gulf, in an attempt to stop a lethal branch of al-Qaida from capitalizing on the political turmoil in Yemen.
The White House has increased the numbers of CIA officers in Yemen, and has signed off on the new base from which to fly armed drones to hunt militants in Yemen, to be completed by next year.
I am just back from a phenomenal conference on UN Air Operations put together by Professor Walter Dorn and Major Bill March. The highlight of that event was Senator Romeo Dallaire, LtGen (Ret), author of Shake Hands with the Devil as well as the more recent They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children.
Here are my notes on points made by Senator Dallaire, followed by some additional personal views of my own with respect to the future of the UN, NATO, and regional organizations long overdue as stewards of their respective regions peace and prosperity.
+ Drawing on history we can project into the future (not in a linear fashion, but from an informed foundation). We need to do both, we cannot go on as we are with our short-term perspective.
+ We must achieve a communion of humanity in the larger context of the planet as a whole–this is a grand strategic vision in which nation-states are actually limiting elements.
+ National and regional planning must be integrated into a larger global planning and forecasting process; we must go global.
+ The will to intervene in important, and should be but is not, common sense. Refugees and displaced persons are vectors for disease and root sources of rage.
Our economy is almost entirely based on a Darwinian competition–many products and services fighting for shelf space and market share and profits. It's a wasteful process, because success is unpredictable and unevenly distributed.
The internet has largely mirrored (and amplified) this competition. eBay, for example, not only pits sellers against one another, it also pits buyers. Craigslist makes it easy for buyers to see the range of products and services on offer, making the marketplace more competitive. Google, most of all, encourages an ecosystem where producers can evolve, improve and compete.
I think the next frontier of the net is going to use the datastream to do precisely the opposite–to create value by making coordination easier.
I defer to NightWatch but it is the naivete of the IC that cannot
comprehend that the rest of the world does not look like the US……….This is territory that is NOT administered by the Government of Pakistan but rather by the Tribal Elders. The permission is required by Pakistani Law, something that the US continues to fail to understand. I guess, in the vain of old movies, “What we have here is a failure to communicate”……
UPDATED 26 October 2011 (Vatican focus on global financial reform / authority, need for ethics – avoids addressing secular corruption as we suggested in below letter sent January 2011)
The President wants $400B shaved off security over 12 years. The DNI thinks he is excluded from that number. Possibly, but that's only because the President hasn't yet come up with a similar number for intelligence. $80B for all intelligence is too much, and intelligence agencies need to cut back. Congress in its Appropriations bill implores the DNI to think differently as we head into this new era. But there is no real program to do that. The community was breathlessly awaiting the DNI's strategy. It is a short list of nice sentiments, duly framed and posted on all the floors, without a hint of irony. Yet the DNI is not completely insensitive to the situation. When presenting his strategy, he observed that since 9/11 intelligence has only grown, and that there is no living experience with cutbacks nor any mechanisms for managing it. It simply isn't done. Mr. Leiter, the NCTC chief, was agitated at the meeting, sensing a train wreck. Along with Gates, he cautioned that a salami slicing approach would be the absolute worst way to do it. Like Gates, Leiter promptly resigned a week later, preferring to go out on top, before the deluge.
