The House Draws A (Very Faint) Line In The Sand

Today the House made a small first step toward recapturing some authority as to the deployment of US forces into combat.  It passed the milder of two alternative resolutions relating to President Obama's use of force in Libya and his concomitant apparent violation of the War Powers Act.

The resolution, which has no practical impact given a SCOTUS holding that resolutions lack the force of law as the president has no opportunity to exercise his veto, still does have symbolic effect.  And, as history shows quite clearly, politics can be all about symbolism.

Should the White House deign to respond to the resolution's requirements, the task isn't particularly onerous.  All the Deep Thinkers surrounding the Oval need do is explain what its intentions in Libya are, what the cost of attaining these has been to date, and some other ancillary matters.  There is no demand that an assessment of probable success be offered.  However, the resolution does seek an explanation as to why the president did not abide by the sixty day provision of the War Powers Act.

It would be nice to see a unitary, internally consistent statement as to the goals of the operation in Libya.  To date there have been two not necessarily congruent goals attributed to the NATO run air campaign.  On the "official" level, it is to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe by protecting innocent civilian lives.  On the "unofficial" level of presidential declaratory policy, the goal is the removal of Gaddafi from power.  While it is possible to merge the two, the logic is less than direct.

The cost to date is, as wars go, quite modest.  But even modest expenditures must be justified given the current parlous state of federal finances.  Beyond that, it would be nice to see an estimate of consequential expenses such as the reduction in air frame and powerplant hours.  Aircraft and their systems age, and it is not desirable to push them into mechanical senescence absent good reason.

Most interesting of all would be the Obama and company's reasoning behind its ignoring the requirements of the War Powers Act.  While no administration has cottoned to the Act, all have more or less gone along with its spirit--the involvement of congress--by seeking and receiving some sort of support, usually in the form of a joint resolution authorizing the proposed action in broad and necessarily vague terms.  The Obama "team" has not followed the custom.

One reason given by the Deep Thinkers is rather preposterous on the face.  It has been held that the use of air delivered ordnance alone does not cross the line triggering the War Powers Act.   It has also been argued that since all the US has been doing since the first few days has been supporting combat forces supplied by other NATO members, the threshold has not been transgressed.  This is reasoning on a par with that of President Clinton who held, in effect, that getting one's knob polished in an anteroom to the Oval was not having sex.

The most important implication of this rare act of congressional courage is by passing this resolution the body is trying to get some measure of dual control with the president in the making of war.  This is a very good thing and very long overdue.

Not that congress would necessarily provide an effective check on a president's desire to flex a little bit of military muscle.  Both House and Senate have demonstrated the reflexes of a lap dog when past presidents have sought congressional buy-in on a proposed adventure in regime change.  The politics of partisan advantage will and have taken precedence over any reasoned discussion of just what national interest might be at stake or what might constitute the better state of peace expected to emerge when the shooting and killing stop.  The resolution authorizing use of force in the wake of 9/11 went through with a whoop and a hollar and an absence of mature consideration as to what was at stake or how long and difficult the "war on terror" might be.  The same was true only more so with regard to the invasion of Iraq, arguably the greatest foreign policy blunder since Wilson took the US into World War I.

There is a very real reason why congress should be involved up to and including passing a declaration of war before the US mounts an intervention.  All interventions are both contingent and asymmetrical in nature.  All are contests of political will in which the opponent has the greater since he has the most at stake.  By fully involving congress in the decision to go to war, the opponent is put on notice that the war is supported by the totality of the American political structure and is not simply the personal exercise of pique and power by the president.

Meaningful congressional action at the start of a war will go a very long way to toughening the American political backbone.  It would make the process of turning the war to partisan advantage far more difficult.  It would go a great distance to assuring escalating support should demands of the war increase, as they always do.

Congressional involvement of a meaningful as opposed to a pro forma sort would also put a check on overly quick or robust presidential action particularly if neither party dominated both branches of government.  It might even make an administration think through what it hoped would come as a result of the proposed war in support of policy.

Since the vast majority of wars will continue to be limited ones in support of policy.  (Real, existential, total wars will probably come upon us too rapidly for any consultation until after the use of force has been commenced.)  Consultation with congress, the need for congressional approval might combine to produce both a better policy and a better understanding of the limits of military employment.  This would be a very, very fine change from past practice.

The practice of treating congress as an equal in the decision making process might even, to get a bit utopian, have the effect of educating the more lofty thinking liberals in House and Senate who believe that diplomacy is some sort of totem or fetish to be waved whenever a threat looms.  They might even come to realize that there are situations in the world where the best diplomat carries an M4 carbine or is at the controls of an F16 or a Predator.

The point of the exercise, however, is not education of warm hearted liberals or clipping the wings of overly imperial presidents but providing a context best suited for assuring the level of political will without which no intervention can have any hope of succeeding.  To be united means to win.  And, to be united requires that congress be a full and effective partner with the president.

War is not (or should not be) partisan in nature.  Neither is it one belonging to one branch of government.  It is to be hoped that this mild, almost apologetic, resolution is the first indicator of congress belatedly becoming aware of reality.  Well, the Geek did write "hoped."  That's all one can do.

Defense, Diplomacy, And Development

Those three words constitute a sort of mantra which issues from the mouth of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at every opportunity.  They also define much of the debate soon to be entered into by the congress as the US makes another of its fitful attempts to come to grips with the deficit and the government's chronic inability to live within its means.

When congress in its collective excuse for wisdom makes the attempt to limit American expenditures, it will be traveling a road already passed over by the British Parliament.  The Coalition government of Cameron and Clegg  inherited a financial debacle from the Labor predecessor which has necessitated deep and painful cuts in all areas of the British budget.  High on the list of those cut was the Ministry of Defense.

The British military, naval, and air services were not simply cut, they were mangled.  The Royal Air Force now possesses the fewest aircraft since before the first shots of World War I.  The Royal Navy in its entirety would not be adequate to provide anti-air and anti-submarine screening for a single US aircraft carrier.  The Royal Army has shrunk to a level which would preclude a successful replay of either the Falklands War or even the intervention in Sierra Leone.

Bad is this seems, there are more cuts in the pipeline.  Dr Liam Fox, the Minister of Defense, has promised more whacks will be taken as soon as the British wrap up their ground presence in Afghanistan.  While Dr Fox specifically mentioned "redundant" vehicles, it is generally understood that the draw down in forces will go beyond vehicles and to the troops who ride them, drive them, and fire their guns.  At least another brigade equivalent in the general purpose forces will permanently case its colors.

Given that Prime Minister Cameron is chomping at his bit to hit the Afghan exit, the next ramp down of British military capacity will come sooner rather than later.  Even though the prime minister and his defense colleague assure the British public (and the US government) that the UK will remain capable of "broad spectrum" operations and will retain its "superb" special operations forces and will acquire more of the new generation of submarines, doubt as to British capacities to join with allied forces in combined and joint operations must linger.

It is clear that the British expect the US to retain its military capacities unscathed by the same budgetary and financial forces which have buffeted the UK.  The same thinking seems to apply generally across Western Europe.

How this wishful thinking can be maintained in the face of accelerating American force withdrawal from Europe boggles the imagination.  There are currently 42, 000 US personnel in Europe.  By 2015 the figure will drop to 37,000.  In comparison there were 213,000 stationed in Europe as the Berlin Wall fell.  And, that number was down from the high point in 1962 of nearly 277,000.

The American justification for the continued retreat from Europe is purely financial.  The aggregate GDP of the European Union is ten percent greater than that of the US.  At the same time the combined defense budgets of the EU states is a mere fraction of that imposed on the US.

It is worth noting that the logic of withdrawal has a momentum of its own.  Force strengths like rocks tend to roll down hill.  And, the imperatives of finance can far outstrip the power of gravity.

The US will lose some significant tactical flexibility and rapidity of response by pulling out of Europe.  It will take measurably longer to move force across an ocean.  More importantly, the interposition of an ocean between the US and the likely conflict areas of the Mideast and Africa provide an important political distance between any future flareup and the decision makers inside the Beltway.  Political and psychological distance is far more critical in slowing or preventing a response than the mere add-on of a few thousand miles.

It may be that this consideration will be moot by the time 2015 rolls around.  There is no way that the American defense department is going to be spared the budget trimming meat ax.  President Obama has made that clear.  Outgoing SecDef Gates has concurred, wholeheartedly.  At least four hundred billion dollars will go over the next decade.  Probably more.  Perhaps even a lot more depending upon the electoral fortunes of the defense conservatives of the Republican Party.

Implicit in the mantra of Secretary Clinton is the hope that insofar as the "defense" leg of the triad is shortened, the legs of "diplomacy" and "development" will be elongated in compensation.  This hope is both false and misplaced.  There is no powerful base of support for either diplomacy or development.

For many of We the People, even among those who are most aware of global politics and the Game of Nations, "diplomacy" is seen as a quasi-mysterious process involving gobs of talk, rounds of dinners, and photo ops.  Whatever it is that diplomats do and with whatever results, there is no belief that it should cost much money.  "Diplomacy" is something like a wand which is waved at vexing problems rather than a useful tool of state in the estimate of many outside of that dismal profession.  So, why does it need money?

"Development" is in even worse shape in the mind of many of us.  Foreign aid is tantamount to an obscenity in the estimate of many conservatives both in and out of congress.  At best it is seen as a form of bribery, a form of rent-a-friend which all too often does not pay off.  At worst it is conceived of as a way of furthering corruption in the recipient country while fostering tumor-like growth in the bureaucracy which doles it out.

Again the recent experience in the UK points at the limits of both debate and understanding when it comes to diplomacy and development.  Critics of the Coalition have pointed with disdain to the Cameron proposal to increase the development budget of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by more than a third at the same time that the British military is undergoing enforced, unilateral disarmament.

Advocates of the British move argue that by fostering education, good governance, and economic development in unstable or collapsing states, the need for military intervention or active defense against terror attacks originating in such places will be obviated.  The same points have been advanced here not only by Secretary Clinton and others in Foggy Bottom but also by Secretary Gates.  If anything Mr Gates has been a more robust proponent of foreign aid as a means of precluding later military action than have the denizens of State and USAID.

In principle it is hard to dissent from the perspective that prevention through foreign development assistance is far preferable to sending in the Marines at some future date.  In principle a strong case can be made for the effective use of foreign aid as a means of helping to create political and social tranquility within a recipient country such as to preclude it becoming a failing state.  In practice, though, it is far easier to identify the examples where foreign aid has not brought about either internal political and social harmony and progress or bribed the recipient government into accepting American policy leadership.

The Cold War landscape is carpeted with the corpses of failed foreign aid programs.  Africa is littered with the results of foreign aid driven corruption, inefficiencies, and betrayed expectations of a better life.  The same is true in large swaths of Asia and Latin America.  The aid has not been simply from the US.  Americans are not the only people to have failed in the development through aid game.  All who have played it have experienced more failures than successes.

Nor did the situation change with the end of the Cold War.  One need look no further than Pakistan than to see that truism at work.  But, if more convincing is necessary, all that is needed is to take a peek at the totality of those receiving development assistance at the government-to-government level to see that lack of success trumps success by a huge margin.

The palpable lack of success in the government-to-government development efforts will go a very long way to assure that budget cutters will find the funding for these programs a politically attractive target even though very few real dollars will be saved even if the totality of US foreign aid in all categories were to be zeroed out.  Slashing here is one of those look-good, feel-good votes that are so attractive to politicians unwilling and unable to make tough decisions.

While diplomacy is no magic wand to be waved at international problems and development no anodyne for internal debacles, both are necessary, even valuable, complements to defense.  The "vanilla" diplomacy of building upon coinciding national interests as well as carefully targeted development aid focusing on projects which are modest in scale, immediate in visible effects, and sustainable over time by local resources alone can go along way to limiting the need for more robust measures--and cost a lot less.

At the same time it must be recognized that "vanilla" diplomacy and targeted development have very real limits.  There are states which require a coercive approach.  There are states which will collapse and fail or have governments come to power which are not only adverse to the interests of the US and its allies but are willing to use asymmetrical means to demonstrate this.

In these contexts it must be remembered that all forms of coercive diplomacy rest finally upon the material ability and political will of the US to employ force in support of its policies.  Likewise the hostile state must be defanged.  The collapsed or collapsing state might well require outsiders come and impose peace.  In all these eventualities, eventualities which will become more rather than less likely over the next decade or two, credible and relevant military force is necessary if a positive outcome from the perspective of the US is desired.

Schoolrooms in Pakistan will not necessarily prevent violent political Islam from taking firm and continuing root there.  Nor will clinics in Yemen assure the place does not collapse into a welter of internal warfare.  Sudan will not become a thriving multi-ethnic, multi-religious, democratic state simply because some donor or another pumps in buckets of cash.  The same caveats may be made with respect to many other psuedo-states.

These unpleasant ground truths imply strongly that planners, both those dealing with budgets and those whose game is international strategy, must put defense first.  This does not mean the US is condemned to be an impoverished bunker, but it does mean that the existence of a full-spectrum and flexible military capacity cannot be sacrificed on the alters of diplomacy and development.

Nor does it mean the cost of budgetary sanity is surrender to hostile forces.

It does mean, however, that the congress and administration must be intelligent and realistic in their world view.  That, unfortunately, is probably too much to expect.

Viva! El Presidente Calderon! But Not Some Others

President Felipe Calderon in addressing Congress once again demonstrated an unfortunate propensity for blaming the US for Mexican problems. Facing a deteriorating security situation back home with politicians increasingly occupying center stage in the cross hairs of rifle sights, the Mexican leader took his time in the congressional spotlight to urge or, perhaps more properly, demand that the legislative worthies reimpose limits on American rights of gun ownership.

Even though there is an absence of compelling let alone convincing evidence that many of the weapons captured from criminal gunslingers originated in the US, Sr Calderon averred that the US is as responsible for the guns in Mexican shootouts as it is for the drug demand which prompts them. There is no doubt about the latter. There is much doubt about the former.

Even if every firearm more modern than a Brown Bess were to be confiscated in the US, the Mexican pistoleros would be inconvenienced in no meaningful way. Given the number of captured weapons which originated in the Mideast, Northwest Asia, South America, and Asia, there seems to be no more difficulty obtaining heavy firepower in Mexico than in, say, Somalia or Yemen.

Presumably Sr Calderon was playing for the folks back in Buncomb County when he made his demand. If not, it shows that he is as badly served by his internal security chiefs as he was by his translator at yesterday's welcoming ceremony.

Sr Calderon may also be playing to the home folks with his whining reprise of we-gotta-get-migration-reform-now. The same may be true concerning his never ending invocations of Arizona as the fountainhead of all things anti-Hispanic.

Certainly Sr Calderon is aware that his country has laws defining citizenship, legal alien status, and the crime of being illegally present upon Mexican soil. He must know that Mexican police at all levels of jurisdiction regularly arrest and deport illegal aliens with the exception of those individuals who "regularize" their presence in Mexico by the payment of a "fee" to the arresting officer and/or his superiors. Sr Calderon may even be aware of the number of illegal aliens in Mexico who are robbed, beaten, raped, or killed by Mexicans. Even Mexican media report these incidents, if bloody enough.

Sr Calderon would be the first to defend Mexico's rights to define legal alien status, to control entry by foreigners into Mexico, and to secure Mexico's borders. It is unlikely in the extreme that Sr Calderon shares President Obama's post-modernist, we-are-all-passengers-on-spaceship-Earth mentality as represented by the American president's observation that "we are not defined by borders."

Sr Calderon is a firmly committed Mexican nationalist. This is precisely what he--or any other president--ought to be. He is in favor of "migratory reform" because it is in Mexico's national interest to use the US as a safety valve for its mobs of unemployed as well as a source of hard currency via remittances. He is in favor of restricting Americans access to certain categories of firearms because this is in his party's political interest even if flatly irrelevant to the stability of the country.

Indeed, his resolute offloading of ultimate responsibility for as many of Mexico's internal social, political, and economic problems onto the broad shoulders of Uncle Sam shows his wide, deep commitment to Mexican national interest--both real and mythic. To accept that responsibility for most of the many inequalities, injustices, which blemish Mexico would be to violate the strong central tenets of Mexico's defining mythology which holds that proximity to the US is at the root of all domestic evils.

Overall, one must congratulate Sr Calderon for acting as a good nationalist. Give him the credit he deserves for pursuing Mexican national interest as such is defined by the Mexican politically articulate elite. That is his job and he is doing it well.

Then there are some of Sr Calderon's fellow travelers. Particularly those who are card carrying members of the Open American Borders party.

The Open American Borders party is eclectic in its membership. In it are to be found assorted "migratory rights" folks and the non-governmental organizations which serve to amplify their voices, various and sundry "progressives," and last, but far from least important, numerous political and media personalities in Latin America.

A recurrent, unifying theme ties the diverse elements of the Open American Borders party. The theme has a major and a dependent component.

The major component is migratory freedom is a well-established human right enshrined in international conventions. The contingent component is that of equating the free movement of capital with a presumed freedom of worker movement.

The major premise is a carefully crafted misstatement. The several treaties and international agreements hazily mentioned all refer to prohibitions on a state's prevention of exit. These agreements are directed against Berlin Walls and similar efforts intended to hold a population captive. None are directed against a sovereign right to determine eligibility for admission or citizenship. In short, it is an international no-no to limit a person's right to leave but it is not a similar no-no to refuse a person admittance.

The minor premise is also a perversion of reality. States can and do limit the free movement of capital. Routinely states have limited how much cash a person can take out of a country, or bring into it. Laws which impinge on the movement of funds between countries dot the legal landscape. Indeed, such laws are at the heart of effective operations against transnational terrorism. They are part and parcel of the host of trading-with-the-enemy laws which have existed during every modern armed conflict as well as many of the unarmed sort.

Countries either inhibit or promote international capital flow on the basis of perceived national interest. If it is in a country's national interest to do so, capital flow will be encouraged by all available means. If the self-defined national interest requires inhibiting the movement of money, such will be the case.

Even the most capitalistic of countries, even the most vocal exponents of open, free trade will and have when national interest requires operate to restrict, even end the ability of money to cross the border. This sweeping statement applies to the US as much as to any other free trade oriented economy.

National interest should be the sole basis for a country's policies on immigration. If the self-defined national interest is best served by enhancing the in-migration of foreign workers of a given or even all categories of worker, then the borders should be opened accordingly. If the converse applies, the borders should--must--be closed.

National interest may include the admission of aliens for humanitarian reasons. Or because a person or group faces persecution at home. These non-economic considerations are a legitimate component of national interest as they reflect the values and ethical imperatives of the nation.

Importantly, there is no human right to enter any given country. The US is under no ethical or legal imperative to open its borders for any reason other than as a consequence of national interest. For this reason (as well as many others) no country has the right to demand that we admit their citizens. Likewise they have no standing to criticize efforts by the US or any of its several states to arrest and deport foreigners present without legal status.

The concept of criminal trespass exists not only as regards privately owned property but for nation-states as well. In a federal system of joint exercise of sovereignty the several states have as much right and duty as the central government to prevent or punish those who are criminal trespassers. This is what Arizona has done, effectively to place into a state context the already existing federal law.

Mexico and the several Mexican states already do the same. Sr Calderon knows this even if the majority of the Open American Borders party do not. It may be possible to forgive the Open American Borders party members for their ignorance and its consequences. It is not possible to do the same for Sr Calderon.

Sr Calderon needs to get a grip on the realities of life. He needs to go home and concentrate on forcing the Mexican elite to live up to their collective responsibility to act in a way calculated to so improve the lives of Mexicans generally that the need to enter the US without the benefit of law as well as the drive to join the criminals in their war for money are, if not obviated, at least lessened.

A Disturbing (To Some) Fable

The first red of the dawn sun was breaking over the low hill at the east end of the valley. To each side the higher cliffs were already brilliant in the new day. A group of men are assembling in the courtyard surrounded by a low stone wall. To one side a stone and adobe building spreads. From a door a tall, thin man emerges.

He walks to the front of the group, now formed in three rough lines. The man spreads a rug before him. The others do likewise. Facing the sun which has now fully risen, the wraith like man keels. The men behind him do the same. The man slowly bows his forehead to the ground.

A convulsion runs though his bent body. His legs kick straight out behind. He falls, rolls to one side. The men behind him do not notice immediately.

A second later the man's body shudders again. His head blows apart, a melon under an invisible sledge hammer. Behind him a scream echoes to the mountains.

A kilometer or more away five men pack up their specialist equipment. The trigger puller, his spotter, the three man security detail, prepare to pull out of the hide they have occupied since the CIA officer and his two local "assets" piloted them in two nights earlier with assurances the target would be arriving.

"I've got an "abu" in the local force." The CIA man had said. "He hasn't been wrong yet. You can bet on it."

The trigger puller remembered thinking, "Yeah. I am. My life. And the lives of the other guys too."

It was high step it time now. High pucker factor. It won't take the turbans long to be out for blood. Two or three klicks down the mountain. A race between the team getting to the extraction point and the bad guys finding them.

A voice from hundreds, thousands? of miles away whispered in the team leader's ear. "The imagery is good. Looks like a clean cancel. An attaboy all the way around. Haul ass!"

"Roger that," the team leader whispered in reply. The team was already fast walking down the scree covered, bush laden slope.

And, so it might have been. This would have been one of the most desired outcomes had CIA gone beyond the initial planning stages and, after gaining all the requisite approvals from the Executive and Legislative branches, put the planning to work in the real world. This would have been the endgame of the program Congress never knew about.

Where's the problem? Who would not have approved of a well-thought out program to kill the leadership cadre of al-Qaeda or Taliban?

There was--and is--no need for the statutorily responsible committees of Congress to have been briefed on any tentative, never developed, never proposed for execution program to kill (or capture--have to put that option in for the squeamish) the command echelon of a group which has attacked the United States, killed its citizens, sent seismic waves of shock though its social, political and economic institutions. If the plan, the program had been fully developed on paper then there might have been a need to brief the Gang of Eight on its existence, its potential benefits--and risks.

There would have been a need to debate any ethical considerations, to discuss the legality of assassination. To consider the possible impact of the US effort and involvement, either direct or indirect, becoming public knowledge.

But, the idea of pushing the cancel button on al-Qaeda heavies up close and personal on the ground rather than through the distant, sanitary method of Predator delivered Hellfire missiles needed to be presented and approved if and only if its development had gone beyond, far beyond the very preliminary stages. Such was apparently not the case. The idea went nowhere.

CIA is no stranger when it comes to assassination. It took very heavy hits in public from the Church Committee for the planned attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba. Lost in the chest-pounding over the morality of such efforts was a basic reality: The CIA did not initiate the plans for these killings and many in the Agency did not approve of killing high level political leaders fearing the destabilising consequences of doing so.

No such qualms existed with respect to the targeted killing of lower level political and military personnel. The Quang Ngai Special Platoon program and its very controversial follow-on, the Phoenix program did assassinations as part of the total effort to disrupt the organisation of the Viet Cong and National Liberation Front. On some occasions these assassinations were very effective. On others they were counterproductive.

If anyone at CIA reviewed the history of these activities during the Vietnam War they would have seen the plethora of problems concerning mounting operations intended to kill (or capture) designated hostile personnel. A review of the Israeli experience would have demonstrated the same mix of success and disaster, problems overcome and difficulties which killed the operation deader than the intended target ever could be.

Hard target kills are no easier from the ground than they are from the air. The same difficulties of information acquisition and rapidity of operation exist. The same problems of killing only the desired target exist as to the complications if the wrong person is aced or there is too much collateral death.

Ground operations carry a very real problem of deniability. No matter how carefully personnel are selected, trained, equipped, sanitised and inserted the chance of a team member being captured or a dead body being recovered and identified at least as to nationality exists. Nor does the use of foreign personnel obviate the difficulties. Further, foreign personnel often lack the reliability and motivation of US forces.

On balance there are any number of very sound reasons to consider and reconsider ground based hits. If the clandestine service people reviewed the mixed record of US activities in Vietnam they would have seen the pitfalls far outnumbered (and certainly outweighed in effectiveness) the successes. An unbiased appraisal of the overly celebrated Israeli "hit teams" would have reinforced this impression.

Quite simply, air delivered death is preferable to the ground borne sort. Predators with Hellfires may have the risk of killing the wrong person or too many people, but they are inherently non-provable. Absent a shot down pile of wreckage there is no way of verifying the sneaky Americans were out and about snuffing the odd hostile here and there.

Leon Pinetta's partisan effort to protect Nancy Pelosi from the consequences of shooting off her mouth in finest Joe Biden style along with the concomitant Progressive Caucus driven hue and cry for hearings on how that horrible CIA did this without telling us has two destructive results. The first is to assure that we will never use a ground team to target Osama or any of his senior level ilk. The second is worse.

Should anyone at any time in any place dust Osama or Omar or any of the assorted Abduls, Mohammads, and Abu Ya Fools who constitute the command echelon of any Islamist jihadist group, the soft-hearted and feeble minded as well as Islamist apologists everywhere will blame the US for the death. Uncle Sam will be excoriated not only in Islamist polluted countries but elsewhere for having stooped to assassination.

Suicide bombers are OK. Snipers are evil. An interesting way to parse violence and death.

Everyone Line Up--It's Time To Bash CIA

The Geek is glad he is not in the spook business. It's getting more dangerous to work for CIA than it is to go out for a meal in Peshawar. Try to do the job of obtaining time sensitive intelligence according to the rules du jour and some day you'll be looking for a lawyer as the Justice Department of a new administration tries to hang your butt from the highest yardarm to the applause of the "progressives" within We the People.

Then, if in a time of great panic such as the immediate aftermath of 9/11, should you be so bold as to come up with an idea for a "needed capacity" to counter terrorism and have the effrontery to keep it concealed from Congress at the direction of a secrecy freak Vice-President, the politicos of the Democratic Party and a goodly chunk of the MSM will howl as if you had both burned the Constitution and plotted a coup d'etat. It doesn't matter if the still undescribed program never went beyond the initial planning stage and that only in fits and starts. No siree, all that matters is that the evil three initial agency and the troglodyte veep were involved.

The performance of CIA Director Leon Panetta in this flap is, to say the least, both suspicious and unseemly. Mr Panetta, who has an unexcelled record in partisan politics of the most bare knuckled sort, seems to have moved with a speed and directness which was as unwarranted by the presumed threat to the Union as it is compelled by the needs of the Democratic Party, particularly the need to provide cover to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi concerning her allegations of having been kept in the dark and fed only horse poo-poo regarding waterboarding and the rest of the "intensive interrogation" panoply.

On the other hand if you play by all the Congressionally mandated rules such as those prohibiting using unseemly individuals as humint sources and, as a result, do not accurately predict hostile actions, then you will stand both accused and convicted of the high crime and misdemeanor of "intelligence failure." Or, because the rules established by Executive and Congress alike prohibit assassination, some high profile political figure will lambaste you for having failed to protect the Republic and, thus, failing to fulfill your oath of office.

It is no wonder that Janet Reno in one of her few trenchant comments accurately characterised CIA as suffering "battered child syndrome." Those folks just can't win no matter what they do.

The American intelligence community generally and CIA in particular have shown a distressingly high number of institutionally driven failures over the past several decades. Most of these have originated from a proliferation of intelligence community members, which brings with it turf battles, institutional agendas and related negative features. Still other failures have resulted from the excess of caution which has struck the agencies generally and CIA in particular in the years since the Vietnam War. Layers of committees, liaison groups, ad hoc working groups have conspired with the growth of a CYA bureaucratic mentality to make assessments ever more fuzzy, increasingly Delphic, and decreasingly useful to decision makers.

One longs for the days when a brilliant senior analyst such as Dr Sherman Kent, the Director of the Office of National Estimates, could write an assessment which ran counter to the desires of the chief consumer of intelligence, the president, which was clear, internally consistent, well-documented, and absolutely bang-on. That the president decided to reject the intelligence and follow his own inclinations is not the responsibility of either Dr Kent or CIA.

During the Vietnam War, CIA became increasingly the non-team player of the spook community. Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon became ever more frustrated with the Agency's lack of team spirit and finally stopped reading product they did not find agreeable. As a result CIA massaged the data, weakened the conclusions, and fuzzed up the analyses in an attempt to meet with presidential favor. This was a blunder of world class proportions.

Another blunder which severely damaged, even permanently impaired the Agency was the Congressional hue and cry over actions taken by CIA at the behest and direction of presidents ranging from Eisenhower to Nixon and including Democratic icon JFK. These actions and programs were quite understandable and even appropriate in the context of the Cold War as perceived by the the men in the Oval. Nonetheless in the wake of the defeat in Vietnam and the self-inflected wound of the Watergate Affair, the revelations of the so-called "family jewels" to the Church and Pike Committees filled the nostrils of Americans with a foul stench.

The stench adhered improperly to the Agency which did the work not the presidents who ordered the work be done. An uncritical media and less than candid politicians were ready, no, eager to portray the CIA as a policy making body rather than the policy executing entity it actually is. The end result was to convince We the People that the folks in Spookville were a bunch of dangerous rogues who needed the closest supervision by the presumably responsible adults of Congress.

Without close supervision and a tight leash, the people of CIA were a clear and present danger to the Republic. We the People were quite willing to believe this utterly wrong view since to most of us the activities of an agency tasked with, among many other things, espionage and clandestine activities, must be filled with psychological monsters of the worst sort. After all, who other than a warped individual would deal in treachery, suborn treason, steal secrets and, when ordered to do so, conspire to overthrow the government of a foreign power?

Given the abuse which included the infamous action by President Carter and his CIA Director, Stan Turner, in ridding the Agency of its "deadwood," which included some of the most experienced covert and clandestine operators, it is not surprising that the spooks coiled in on themselves. CIA went into a form of fetal position with committees proliferating and caution becoming the watchword.

The Reagan administration slowed but did not reverse this trajectory. CIA was used properly in the opening years of the proxy war in Afghanistan but its assets were wasted on the poor policy choices made by the Reaganites in Central America. By the time the dust was settling and the Cold War entering the pages of history, CIA was remembered for its failures (eg it didn't get the implosion of the Soviet empire right) rather than its successes (for example, don't turn Afghanistan over to the Pakistanis.)

Now CIA gets some grudging credit for the results of such direct actions as the use of armed Predators in the FATA. (An interesting side note. In the old days, CIA did the same sort of thing in, for example, Southeast Asia, using its paramilitary capacity. This was latter the recipient of much congressional opprobrium during the days when Frank Church rode high.) On the other hand, CIA is damned for having used unsubtle techniques to obtain time sensitive information from captured enemy personnel and running "secret" prisons in assorted distant places.

Unfortunately, it will be a mort of years before currently classified intelligence estimates regarding critical topics such as pre-invasion and post-invasion Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the totality of the hostile Iranian programs will be available to historians. Starting twenty and more years after the fact, historians came into possession of Vietnam era estimates and prognostications. Those of CIA are, retrospectively, the most accurate and honest of all the products of all the competing members of the "intelligence community."

The same may well be true regarding contemporary topics of concern. It may prove that the controversial actions of intensive interrogation, off-shore prisons, extraordinary renditions, and even the unknown but never brought to the real world program presently causing such bloviation were necessary, even essential.

In short, Congress and Attorney General Holder are poorly advised to start bashing and seeking indictments when so little is known not only about the programs, but, more importantly, the results of these taken in the context of the gestalt of the intelligence picture over the past decade or so. The Republic is less endangered by the spooks than it is by politicians and media in need of a quick fix of publicity and artificially engendered public fears.

GOP Does The Wrong Thing--For The Wrong Reason

In an action ignored by the MSM in the tidal wave of financial crisis and bail out bill votes, Senate Republicans blocked an enhanced Iranian economic sanctions bill for the second time in roughly a month. The bill which had already been passed by the House was a melding of two previous bills (one "authored" by Senator Obama) would have both taken action against companies doing business with Iran's banking and energy sectors and encouraged divestment in foreign companies commercially involved with the mullahocracy.

On 2 October Sen Wayne Allard of Colorado exercised his "prerogative" to stall passage.

Unsurprisingly Senate Majority Leader Reid accused the Republicans of playing politics with the legislation because of Obama's connection with it. No doubt that is part of the story.

But, only part.

The rest of the story revolves around the word, "prerogative."

How's that?

Earlier attempts to pass the components of the bill as two separate enactments were resolutely opposed by the White House. The opposition came not because the Cheney-Bush Administration had suddenly gone soft on Iran. No. Nothing like that at all.

The opposition came, not because the neocon ninnies of the Current Administration hated Iran less, but because they love the "prerogatives" of the Presidency more.

Of all the sins committed by the Current Administration--and they are legion--none has been greater than its single minded fixation upon elevating the power of the Presidency to heights undreamed of by such "imperial" presidents as Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan or Franklin Roosevelt. The goal pursued so diligently by the neocon theoreticians under the direction of Dick Cheney was to exalt the power of the President to a level surpassing that advanced by Alexander Hamilton.

As Vice President Cheney made clear and public more than seven years ago, well before 9/11, the Administration had the intent of permanently "strengthening" the Offices of the President and Vice President. He put it in terms of regaining power lost to the Congress since Watergate and its aftershocks. But, it was clear that his vision was not limited to simple restoration of authority.

He wanted more. Much more.

Along with his personal legal counsel, David Addington, Cheney used the Office of Legal Counsel, which serves as a sort of in-house Supreme Court for the Administration, as well as his close personal relationship with George W. Bush to pursue the end of firmly installing the Unitary Presidency Theory as the axis mundi of American government.

The pursuit of secrecy along with the invocation of executive privilege were part of the process. So also was the constant reiteration of the discredited notion of "inherent powers" deriving from the President's role as Commander-in-Chief.

Brilliant but warped young neocon lawyers exemplified by John Yoo cranked out the necessary opinions from the bowels of the OLC which made "legal" reprehensible actions such as the use of waterboarding and other mechanisms of "intensified interrogation." Or, the unending confinement of "unlawful enemy combatants."

The neocon views of Yoo and Company justified the President's action of unilaterally abrogating the ABM Treaty with Russia (OK, to err on the side of accuracy, the Soviet Union.) The notion that the Senate having ratified the treaty and thus, under something called "the Constitution," giving it the force of Federal law should ratify the abrogation was brushed aside as an unnecessary and Constitution eroding infringement on the President's sole "prerogative" to conduct foreign policy.

Cheney, Yoo and all the other neocon ninnies overlooked then, as they have more recently, the slight consideration of historical fact.

During the run-up to and the waging of the War of Independence, much patriotic vitriol was poured on the idea of the British monarch's "royal prerogative." During the writing of the Constitution and the campaign to see it ratified, the proponents of the new US organic document took great pains to show how the American president would not have any shadow of the much hated "prerogative." (Take a look at Federalist 69 for a good example of this. Madison at his most incisive.)

The President as Commander-in-Chief is "First General" of the US military. He has the authority to conduct the war. He does not have the authority to decide to have a war so that he might conduct it.

Congress is given the sole power to decide when the US is going to wage a war. Then the President, not the Congress, conducts it.

In a similar way, the President conducts foreign policy. He does not have the "prerogative" to define it on his own authority. Neither does he have the sole capacity to formulate it.

Given that the Constitution is silent on the precise distribution of authority to formulate and define the foreign policy of the US, it stands to reason that Congress and Executive must engage in the messy game of conflict-and-consensus.

When Congress wants to take the lead in foreign policy, particularly when it considers legislation which places it in the role of not simply formulating policy but directing a specific mechanism of implementation, the Executive has both the right and obligation to inform Congress as to its stance on the proposed act. If Congress passes legislation which the Executive finds unacceptable in the conduct of foreign policy, then the correct course of action is to veto the bill.

Claiming "prerogative" is not the right thing to do.

But, at least the claim was consistent with the Current Administration's multi year campaign to manufacture the-all-powerful-presidency from the gossamer of historical distortion and legal logic rooted only in a will-to-power.

So, What's So Great About Democracy In Action?

The Geek enjoys irony. He thinks that one cannot be a historian without a well developed appreciation of the ironic in human affairs--particularly the political parts of life. There is something sublimely ironic about the current US administration fretting publicly about the lack of democratic progress in Russia. The current administration and some wallahs in congress seem particularly upset by the fact that Vladimir Putin has been slowly and certainly with a patience unseen in Russia since the early days of Joe Stalin, aggregating power into his own hands.

The New York Times gave vent to the latest distress in the current administration and congress only yesterday. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/world/europe/15diplo.html?em&ex=1192593600&en=51d9d6f4b8978a4a&ei=5087%0A. It's worth a look (and a chuckle).

Admittedly, the current US president thinks he is the greatest practitioner of personal diplomacy in the past few centuries. He is entitled to his misapprehensions, his delusions of adequacy, but not at the expense of realistically assessing American national interests.

Russia under Putin has been seeking to (re)establish its status as a Great Power in sharp opposition to the current administration's desire to decree that since the end of the First Cold War the world is strictly unipolar. To do this, Putin has garnered power into his own hands--with the seemingly willing collaboration of others in the Russian government and its supporting infrastructure.

The current US administration would be well advised to recall that Russia has little real experience with democracy. Beyond that, the current administration and the wallahs in congress would do well to consider whether democracy is a system which recommends itself to Russia--or many other countries.

We Americans have made a fetish out of democracy without really examining what the word might mean outside of the theoretical pages of a political science or civics textbook. Before shaking our heads with either frustration or outrage over the practices of Vladimir Putin, we might take a good, hard, critical look at democracy in action here in the good old United States of America.

Consider the words of SecState Rice during her Moscow visit. “If you don’t have countervailing institutions, then the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development.” She was criticising the lack of an independent judicial system or legislature in Russia.

Has she looked around Washington lately?

Has Dr Rice noticed, for example, how Vice-President Cheney has beavered away to gather power to the Executive Branch at the expense of the other two branches? Did she even notice back when she was National Security Advisor that she and then SecState Powell were kept out of the loop regarding the invasion of Iraq?

Did she notice the perversion of intelligence? Did she notice the manipulation of Congress?

If she did, then where is the accuracy of her anti-Putin comment?

If she didn't, then is she aware enough of time and place to be this nation's top diplomat?

Others who have criticised Putin might look around the acres inside the Beltway and wonder about the real meaning of democracy given a few realities. The chance of changing members of congress in recent elections (except by death or resignation) is lower than in England during the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century--the era of rotten and pocket boroughs. The wallahs in congress resemble a school of fish, changing direction in a flash in response to opinion polls or, more likely, the dictates of large campaign contributions.

The inside-the-Beltway-critics of Putin might modulate their tongue wagging if they considered who is represented in congress, voters or donors. We all know the answer to that.

They might be a little less eager to complain about the slow down in democratic reform in Russia when they consider the relative stupidity of American foreign policy as practiced by the current administration or the complications introduced by ideologically blinded members of the Surrender Now! crowd in congress. The critics of Russia under Putin might bite down on their carping if they took a good look at the realism by which Russia defines its foreign and domestic interests in comparison with the US.

None of the foregoing considers other historical and systemic flaws in the American brand of democracy. It doesn't take into account the long evolution of an expanded franchise. Neither does it examine the questionable impacts of this expansion. There is no mention of big city machines, let alone a detailed account of the negative impact on democratic processes by either big money contributors, focus groups, negative campaigning, or the primacy of political operatives and strategists such as James Carvelle or Karl Rove.

Then there are the questions regarding the American version of an independent judiciary. Where's the independence in a system which allows regulators to be legislature, executive, and judiciary? Where is the authentic independence in a Federal judiciary which allows, no, demands ideological litmus tests for appointments and confirmations? Or in state systems depending upon the election of judges?

The US political system including its more-or-less democratic aspects was designed to be inefficient. The practical politicians who served as architects of our system understood that only conflict between central and state governments as well as within the central government would assure sufficient inefficiency to protect the rights and liberties of the citizens. Their intentions were good. Their knowledge base was appropriate.

But they could not foresee the future. They could not see the rise of the administrative state and regulatory law. They could not forecast that the day would come when the three branches of the central government would combine forces to subjugate the states, almost achieving the Hamiltonian goal of reducing states to mere administrative entities.

Certainly the drafters of our system could not guess that the day would come when the combination of population size and technological developments in communications would require that politicians engage in an endless race for the money. A race that assured that the larger the contribution, the louder the voice.

The Geek is no fan of authoritarian systems. Quite the contrary. He is too much of an anarchist at heart to accept the dictates of authority.

He regrets that Russia is not a flourishing democracy. Someday it might become one. Even more the Geek regrets that the US is not living up to the democratic ideals it so righteously proclaims to others. He hopes that some day we might live up to the standards of our rhetoric.

Until that Utopian day, the Geek would be pleased mightily if our government wallahs could cool the hypocrisy.

The Iraq Milestones--Markers of What?

Remember what the Geek has written many times. The wars in Afghanistan and even more, Iraq are contests of political will. The opponents are not the men in the field carrying guns or planting bombs. The real opponents, the ones who count the most in the ultimate outcome of the wars are the populations of Afghanistan, Iraq and, perhaps most importantly, the United States.

The political will of Americans and therefore their "representatives" in Congress is dependent on several factors. Highest on the list are clarity of the goal, number of dead bodies, and the belief that we are winning.

For the moment the Geek is going to focus on Iraq since that is the locus of most debate as well as greatest losses, largest troop commitment, highest expense, and most expansive stakes.

How do we know if we're winning?

In a conventional war between regular forces using equivalent weapons, doctrine and equipment such as World War II or the Korean War, progress to victory can be measured on a map. If the wide, sweeping arrows showing advance favor our side over time, it is pretty evident that we are winning. If the lines showing where our and the enemy's forces are in contact stay stationary or nearly so over time, it is rather sure that a battlefield stalemate has developed which must either be broken by some bold new move, or shifted over to negotiation.

In wars such as we fought in Vietnam and are fighting in Iraq, there are no sweeping arrows. Nor are there lines of contact. Maps are no use.

So what do you use?

There are a number of alternatives. Some we tried in Vietnam such as the infamous body counts. Simplistic approaches such as counting corpses or even weapons captured proved to be both inaccurate and misleading. The body counts also showed themselves to be of hypnotic appeal to the media, politicians, and others seeking simple, dramatic ways to illustrate winning or losing.

Ultimately, the body count fetish was an important contributor to the self-inflicted defeat in Vietnam. That's the major reason the US military and government alike have downplayed it in Iraq.

Since it is undeniable that the ultimate responsibility for stability and peace in Iraq lies with the Iraqis, the idea of using benchmarks or milestones to measure progress to success was put forward by members of Congress and the Administration along with their academic advisers.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

On the surface, yes. It all depends on what the milestones measure.

Get a grip on this. The milestones are artificial. They are creations of American policymakers. They are, in short, made in America by Americans for ultimate American consumption.

This means the milestones may or may not measure anything that is at all relevant to the situation in Iraq. We didn't ask the Iraqis what they think should be measured, the goals they think they must attain. No. We decided what was relevant to them and their ultimate success.

As if that wasn't unfortunate and wrong-headed enough, our milestones were developed by the same type of great minds that really, really believed against all available evidence that the Iraqis would rise as one and embrace liberal, pluralistic, secular democracy and free enterprise the instant the repressive boot of Saddam was lifted from their necks.

The same type of great thinkers who really, really believed that Iraq was actually a fully functioning nation-state which groaned under a dictator. Yeah. Right. Dream on.

These milestones were created in the main by individuals who were not only culturally ignorant regarding Iraq but historically ignorant concerning the United States and how long it has taken us to become a reasonable facsimile of a liberal, pluralistic, secular democracy with a free enterprise economy.

Is it legitimate to expect the Iraqis who have no, repeat, no, real experience with anything approximating a democratic system as such is understood in the US to create one in a handful of months?

Of course not. The Iraqi society is deeply factional, intensely regional, and heavily oriented to the personalised. Just like ours for the vast majority of our history.

That's right. The US spent most of its first two hundred years as a factionalized, regionally oriented society where personal relations counted for far more than institutional ties.

We fought a war over regional loyalties. The old loyalties soldiered on in the supposedly defeated South for another century and some would argue they still exist today. The Confederacy may have been replaced by the States' Rights movement and the States' Rights movement by the Southern Baptist Convention, but a number of regionally identifiable threads run through them all.

There are other examples of long standing factional, regional, and similar divisions that run through American history from the get-go to the present day. The Geek doesn't have time to list them all, let alone discuss them. You can make up your own roster.

Why should the Iraqis be expected to do so much better than us in developing and installing a legitimate federal system particularly after we spent years either ignoring or deprecating the regional differences and tribal affiliations that are so much the warp and woof of Iraqi life?

They can't. Any milestone that purports to measure any progress toward turning Iraq into, shall we say, the Switzerland of the Mideast, is hallucinatory at best.

Then there are the milestones directed toward measuring the honesty, efficiency and capacity of the Iraqi government. Let's get a grip on that idea, measuring the honesty, efficiency and capacity of a government to understand and solve the real problems of the real people of the commonweal.

Maybe the best way to examine the notion is to apply it to our own Federal establishment.

Next post (if some politician doesn't torque me off first.)