Parliament of Fools

Oh, the indignation! The outrage! That sinking feeling that you've been made fools of and rendered obsolete, and you may as well pack up and go home, and leave the job of running the country to the people who are already in charge, and quit pretending you have any say in the matter. Yes, this is the “feeling tone” we're getting out of Congress these days, and even though it's nothing more than feelings, it's quite on target. Congress is obsolete, but their obsolescence is of their own making, since they have always found it more politically expedient to cede their Constitutional powers and privileges to the sitting president (whoever it happens to be at the time) and to the Supreme Court (by refusing to redefine its scope, which it has the right to do) than to take responsibility. The courage to speak up and defy the president might be found in, say, 1 in 100 at best – the rest are all too eager to robotically raise their hands in the best Supreme Soviet style, and to sign pretty much anything that's placed in front of them. And as for the theory that the American people elect the best out of their number to represent them, well... how many Congressmen are the slightest bit more intelligent, rational, and non-impulsive than the average voter? I prefer to think most politicians are sent off to Washington just to get them out of our face (and to get them to shut up as well).

There has to be a theory somewhere that explains all this. All I know is that we regularly send people to Washington because they appear to have ideas... some of them seem downright bold; courageous, even. But the minute they get there they're grabbed up off the street and taken in a windowless van to some underground surgical facility where a plate is implanted in their head which turns them into petty, thieving, submissive, compliant nobodies. It's like something out of a “body snatchers” film. And when asked to explain their transformation, they mumble something about “compromise” (also known as pleasing no one by trying to please everyone).

In the meantime, the presidency rides triumphant, having accreted unto itself virtually all of the meaningful and significant powers and privileges that the Constitution explicitly assigns to Congress – and much more besides. So Congress becomes a rubber stamp in the best Warsaw Pact tradition, and you will hear nary a whimper about this from anyone in that “august body” (but more than a whimper from people on the outside). And it's not as if Congress has ceased to “make laws”. It's just that their laws typically originate somewhere in the executive branch, and the ones that don't are subject to, first, veto, and second, being completely ignored by the president and his minions. And as if that weren't enough, the Supreme Court reserves (un-Constitutionally, I might add) the right to declare any law passed by Congress null and void, which they do with alarming frequency. So much for the delicate and exquisitely-designed “separation of powers”.

So what are we talking about here? A flaw in the Constitution, or a flaw in human nature? I say both. The Constitution was a marvelous document as long as men of good will were in charge, but it started, fairly early in our history, to fail various stress tests, chief among them being wars. Wars have a magical way of turning presidents into dictators, and when the war is over not all of those dictatorial powers are returned to whence they came; a good deal are held onto because, well, it's good to be king, and you never know when they'll come in handy again. And anyone knows it's easier to rule by diktat than by vote; tyranny is for lazy people.

But does Congress take this lying down? Not a bit of it! They pass various “war powers acts” which are designed to restore the balance of power – but those acts are ignored, and there's nothing they can do about it. Any American president determined to be a “war president” can ask, paraphrasing Joseph Stalin, “How many divisions does Congress have (compared to me)?” And the answer, of course, is zero. And this doesn't bother anyone in Congress on a day-to-day basis; they would just as soon someone else take charge and thus be responsible, accountable, and blamable when things go wrong. The ideal for a Congressman is to be elected, go to Washington, and go into a state of suspended animation until it's time to campaign for re-election; that way he avoids making mistakes and taking blame. His record is pure and spotless, because it contains nothing – but that is apparently preferable to taking risks. (And, please note, the voters agree with this premise, or at least behave as if they do. They would rather send a bland nonentity to Washington than someone with ideas, because ideas are – somehow – threatening.)

Oh wait, I almost forgot – Congress also has “the power of the purse” (and I'm not talking about hitting a masher over the head with it, although that might be more useful than what is actually done). The president can't do a thing – can't move a muscle – unless Congress approves the funds. Yeah, well... by the time enough palms are greased, and enough late-night phone calls are made, those funds generally get approved even if no given individual will say they approve. And in those rare cases when there's a “showdown”, and a threat by one or both sides to (Shudder! Shake!) “shut down the government”, Congress always buckles and the president always gets his way.

So really, Congress is powerless, hopeless, and ridiculous. It doesn't even have a clearly-defined mission any more – at least not one that can't be readily taken over by someone else (in the executive branch, with far more efficiency). But they have to be kept in business for the sake of appearances – because we're busy “spreading democracy” throughout the world, based on the premise that our system is the best ever devised by man, and besides, look at how well it works, etc. Besides, if the president dissolved Congress the way leaders in other countries can dissolve parliament, and established himself as dictator, he'd still have to deal with the courts. (But how many divisions do they have, hmmm? You can see how long a two-branch system would last – about as long as it would take the president to have the Supreme Court demolished.)

So if it's all for show, and everybody knows it, why all the fuss over the CIA? Well, you don't have to dig very far down to figure out that the fuss isn't about the CIA per se, or even about anything it does or has done, but whom they did it for, namely George W. Bush and his team of Eeeeevil (as Rush Limbaugh would say) Republicans. Do you honestly think Dianne Feinstein would be freaking out if these offenses had occurred under a Democratic president? Please. They wouldn't even be holding hearings. What they seem to forget, of course, is that the CIA under Bush and the CIA under Obama are.... mmmm... probably just about identical. “Oh, but Obama told them to quit doing those naughty things!” Well, maybe he did and maybe he didn't, but it hardly matters. The CIA is going to do things their way no matter what, because they are accountable to nobody, and that includes Congressional committees and presidents. Oh sure, every once in a while they'll offer some low-level chump up as a sacrificial animal, but that's only to satisfy everyone and keep the pitchfork-wielding peasants at bay. The notion that Congress can “reform” the CIA is like saying that sheep can “reform” wolves.

And some will say, to be perfectly frank, that this is, maybe, the way things ought to be. After all, the CIA is full of smart, dedicated people who are not only much smarter than anyone in Congress, but probably much less corrupt (at least in the material, vs. moral, sense). And I am not one of those who believes that the CIA, along with other intelligence agencies, constitutes a “parallel government”. Most of what the government does matters little to them, or not at all. They don't mind letting it just fumble and lurch along on its merry way. What counts is power, connections, information – and, most of all, The Game. Give the intel guys a game to play, and they're happy. Start to criticize, or attempt to thwart, the game, and you get push-back, which is what is happening right now. Not only push-back, but push-back directed at the same wretches who gave them all that power (and money) in the first place, namely Congress. What ingrates!

So yeah, the CIA thing is just the latest in a long line of insults – the immediately previous one being immigration policy, and before that Obamacare, and waging war on Syria (which, fortunately, got vetoed by Putin – doing the job the U.S. Congress should have done). Obamacare, for that matter, has reared its misshapen head again because of the Gruber kerfuffle – which has added a new expression to the American lexicon. Getting “Grubered” is defined as getting lied to by the president in order to get a bill passed by Congress (them again!). And as to who to blame for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they've been going on so long that no one knows, any longer, who to blame – so they wind up blaming no one (an ideal outcome if you're a president or an ex-president). Unlike homelessness, which magically disappers whenever a Democrat takes over the White House, wars have a pesky way of lasting, and being highly visible (not to mention costly).

And it's not as if this is anything new. Who, among American liberals and Democrats, does not basically blame the Vietnam war on Richard Nixon, even though he inherited it from Johnson who inherited it from Kennedy? Someone who is only "anti-war" as long as they don't like the guy in the White House isn't really anti-war, are they? And someone who is only anti-CIA if we're talking about stuff that happened when someone from the other party was in the White House isn't really anti-CIA, are they? And the trouble with Congress – one of many – is that they are regularly subject to this sort of completely irrational, politically-based thinking... and they don't even realize it, or see it as a problem. “Of course we hate everything the other side does, and of course we love everything our side does!” It has nothing to do with moral absolutes, or principles, or even coherent policy. And yet we keep electing them, again and again. But maybe, at this late date, it doesn't matter, since they have given away any power they may have once had, along with all discernible integrity. Rather than rely on Congress to do the right thing and dissolve itself, maybe it's us who should be the realists and just pay attention to the president and his empire, and reserve Congress for occasional comic relief.

Point of Ordure, Mr. Chairman

First we had the journalism profession up in arms because the FCC was going to assign someone to every newsroom in order to keep the hired help in line. That was good for a few larfs. Now we have the Senate and the CIA standing toe-to-toe and arguing about who has been spying on whom, and who hacked who's computers, and who has, or thinks they have, or pretends to have, oversight over whom... and so on. This is one of those cases where, quite frankly, I don't care who wins because both sides deserve to lose, and lose big. It's like what happens when two schoolyard bullies get into a fight – everyone else wants it to keep going until both of them have to be carried out on stretchers.

Another way of putting it is that the Senate (and Congress in general) and the CIA (and the intelligence community overall) deserve each other. The rise of the intel cabal to its place of preeminence in the government was aided and abetted by Congress, which has been only too happy to give up its Constitutional prerogatives, one by one, almost since the founding. It seems to have started with war powers, but has escalated more recently to the point where Congress is as ignored and left out as the proverbial wallflower at a high school dance. The Executive Branch does as it damn pleases, and the courts reverse all the hard work of Congress on any whim that strikes their fancy. In fact, one could seriously question whether we need the Legislative Branch at all – except that they do the donkey work on laws that the Executive Branch wants, because the latter have better things to do with their time. You could say that Congress is little more, on any given day, than an extension of the White House staff – and you'd be right. And I say this fully aware that we still have, allegedly, a two-party system, and that the two parties in question are at perpetual knife-points about just about everything... except that they're not. As I've pointed out before, all the debates are about trivial and marginal issues, and are staged primarily as demonstrations that the Legislative Branch is not obsolete. (And when you have to stage meaningless debates about trivia, that's the best indicator that said branch is, in fact, obsolete.)

One could ask, plaintively, at what point did legislators cease to represent the people in any meaningful way? And I guess one would have to attribute this to things like bribery, lobbies, interest groups, special pleading, etc. -- in other words to things that have been around since the day after the Constitution was ratified. But again, the trajectory has been a long, slow curve upward – correlated, roughly 100%, with the portion of our gross national product, i.e. our productivity, that was confiscated by Congress and turned to dubious uses. When tax rates were low they had less to play with, and hence were less besieged by people wanting a handout. As, over time, they took a bigger bite out of the flesh of the hapless working American, they had more to play with, and hence were the targets of more, and more irresistible, temptations – not only in the form of money per se, but even more in the form of power. Power, and glory – or, maybe power without glory. Isn't that just as good? And this actually brings us back to the intelligence complex.

You have to admit, at least the hard-core intel types aren't in it for the fame – unless you count strictly intramural reputation as fame. And they aren't even particularly in it for the money. No, it's all about power, which is, supposedly, a product of knowledge, AKA intelligence. The spy has power simply because he can find things out about other people without them knowing – i.e. it's an asymmetrical relationship. He can exploit people without them knowing they're being exploited – sort of a sophisticated, high-tech version of a peeping tom. And that seems to be enough for these characters most of the time. They are content to live – and occasionally die – in obscurity, because they hold the power... the golden keys... the combination to every lock. They are people for whom secrets are like unto pearls of great price, and for whom secrecy, and the arts and crafts thereof, comprise their highest-valued skill.

Now... certain of us are occasionally fooled and misled by the notion that the intel agencies are somehow working for the good of the American citizen, or to protect our way of life (whatever that entails these days)... that they are super-patriots, willing to sacrifice anything to keep the wolf from the door. Well, no. OK – there may be a few genuine patriots slaving away in the bowels of CIA or NSA or some other intel headquarters, but they're either deluded or in denial as to the true agenda and priorities of those for whom they slave. (And they'll never get a corner office, I guarantee you that.)

Am I saying that this is the age of cynicism? Yes, to a great extent. The average citizen may be harboring some residual feelings of patriotism – love of country – but his leaders have grown way beyond such childish, grade-school and social-studies-class foolishness and have acquired a new respect for milking the system for all it's worth. “Intelligence” is no longer, assuming it ever was, about patriotism, any more than “defense” is about pursuing the ideals of the Founding Fathers. And again, I suppose that this is inevitable given the universal concupiscence of politicians when it comes to money and power (sex being a sub-category of power, note). Even the few with good intentions who are sent to Washington by starry-eyed supporters come down with “Potomac fever” the minute they get inside the Beltway, and never recover – nor do they want to. What, after all, is fragile human nature when confronted with that much confiscated wealth, the levers of power, the (kind of pathetic, when you think about it) “perks”? The reason power and money corrupt is that human beings are corruptible – and nothing lends itself more to this process than big government. It would be like expecting dictators to be philosopher kings; it just ain't gonna happen. Fallen human nature is against it. Thus, the folly of ever expecting the sins and offenses of big government to be cured by more government (an affliction which befalls “conservatives” from time to time). No, the idea is: Less, or none. Line up all the government agencies like ducks in a shooting gallery and start plugging away. I guarantee that the more that fall, the more refreshed and liberated and energized we will all be.

Consider, for a moment, how the omnipresent, omniscient intelligence complex came to be. It started in earnest – and by necessity, assuming the war was necessary, which Pat Buchanan questions – during World War II. For two decades up to that point, our unofficial policy when it came to other countries was: They don't bother us, we don't bother them. But all that was to change, and permanently, on that “date that will live in infamy”. So along came the intelligence agencies, and they multiplied like rabbits – internal, external, one for each armed service, overlapping missions, the occasional gap (which 9/11 was not, BTW)... and, like any other government entity created to deal with an emergency (war or otherwise), they turned out to have everlasting life. They could not be killed, because “mission creep” is always way ahead of whoever it is that doles out funding (Congress, for example). World War II was followed in close order by the Iron Curtain, and the Cold War, and all the other artificially life-extending circumstances that required us to keep armies of spies fully deployed around the globe as well as internally, because there are enemies everywhere, don't you know. Add to this our expanding economic and political empire, and you have the perfect formula for the dominance of “intelligence” over all other functions of government. We did not give up on military conquest, but preferred the economic kind – less messy, more efficient. But for economic conquest to work, one must have information, and the intimate symbiosis between the intelligence community and the business community arose quite naturally out of this necessity.

Now, I'm not saying, as some do, that the rest of the government actually works for the intelligence complex. It would be more accurate to say that they are all employees of a higher power. The intel side only seems to have more power because it keeps secrets and can get away with more. But are they running the whole show? I doubt it very much, and one reason is simply, why would they? Why bother? They have their empire – their “parallel government” -- and they don't need to waste time bossing the tools on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Those latter entities have their uses... and the appearance of separation of powers helps when they're dealing with the citizenry (not that there aren't plenty of chuckles and guffaws in Langley or Ft. Meade at their follies). One could almost say that Congress and the White House pretend to be in charge but aren't, whereas the intel agencies pretend to not be in charge, but are. But again, being in charge, I suspect, is secondary to playing the game.

And this is the real key. Intelligence is a game, and ultimately it doesn't even matter who wins or who loses. Losers can write memoirs too, after all. The appeal is that of action – of manipulation – of being in the midst of it all – of knowing what really happened and why, and who did it. Imagine spending a lazy Sunday afternoon riffling through the Top Secret/Kill Self Before Reading files in the basement of the CIA. Wouldn't you then have all the answers – about JFK, 9/11, Jimmy Hoffa... and so on? The great mysteries of our time, revealed? It's tempting to think so. But again, is the ultimate truth really what it's about? Remember, it's a game. Old CIA and KGB guys get together and reminisce over vodka and Cuban cigars: “Ah yes, those were the days. And I'm sorry about poor Percy, but he had to go, you know.” “Think nothing of it, old friend, we got back at you with Ivan, remember.” “Oh yes, I do remember – good show.” (chuckles all around) So when anyone is “eliminated” it's, basically, because they got in the way – not of national security but of the game, like some pinhead running onto the field during the Super Bowl. They get due diligence – but the game goes on. (I imagine this is a major aspect of the JFK story – he was done in by a cabal of cold warriors, intel game-playing types, plain cynics, opportunists, sociopaths, and maybe one or two genuine patriots. Sort of a dream team, if you will. But mainly, he got in the way of the game.)

So the intelligence cabal was partly created (by the Executive Branch and Congress) and partly self-created. It grew and multiplied like the brooms in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. And because it dealt in secrets, everything about it had to be secret as well – budget, staffing, operations, influence on foreign governments, and so on. And... now this is where it gets weird (or pathetic)... Congress is, allegedly, charged with “oversight” when it comes to intelligence operations. Well, who charged it? Itself, of course. So every once in a while a few intel bigwigs trek up Capitol Hill in order to provide a briefing, behind closed doors, to one or more Congressional committees – but how do those committees know that the intel guys aren't just blowing smoke up their butts? They don't, obviously – how could they? What are they going to do, go up to Langley or Ft. Meade in a motorcade with flashing lights to see if the intel guys were telling the truth? “Trust but verify?” How about “Don't trust, and afraid to verify.” Even if they were shown all the secrets down to the third sub-basement, what about the fourth and fifth sub-basements? If someone tells you they've told you all there is to know, how do you know? So it's really impossible. Add to this that the intel agencies have secret budgets (all approved, sight unseen of course, by Congress), and probably take a good chunk out of other budgets as well. How about a personnel count? You've got people on the books, people off the books, contractors, informants, deep-cover operatives, moles, rats, stool pigeons... every species, from high fliers to bottom feeders. “Oversight”? It's a total joke. And yet Congress, in its infinite narcissism, insists on keeping up the pretense, and all is well until they get too close for comfort, and then you have the current situation, with the very people who created the monster now in high dudgeon because said monster is galumphing through the formal garden.

And what's most delicious about the current hostilities is that it's largely Democrat members of the Senate who are feeling victimized -- yes, the same people who will use any means at their disposal to increase the size of government and the extent of its reach into the lives of private citizens – but their own hallowed halls are to be kept sacrosanct, right? Sorry guys, that's not the way it works. Cookie Monster want more cookies, and it doesn't care where it gets them.

What do I recommend? Well, it's too late to get rid of the intel cabal – might as well try to get rid of an inoperable tumor once it's taken over every organ system. It would actually be easier – and more fun – to get rid of Congress, but since they apparently have their uses even in the midst of appearing useless, that seems unlikely as well (not to mention that it would require some minor modifications to the Constitution – but it's widely ignored anyway, so I don't see that as as a major issue). No, I really do think that there is no solution short of waiting for the system to collapse of its own weight – but that could take many more lifetimes even though the process seems to be accelerating. Better to focus one's serious attentions elsewhere, and just let these sorts of controversies serve as comic relief.

The Pentagon Makes Its Move

As you may recall, around 3 weeks ago I put up a post dealing with the CIA's takeover of a major piece of the Army's mission (CIA 1, Army 0 – Nov. 28). More recently we received news that the Army is not just going to take this sort of thing lying down. An article entitled “Pentagon plans spy service to rival CIA's” from Dec. 3 makes this clear. Now... one could say that this proposal has nothing to do with the CIA's growing private (and secret) army... nothing to do with “turf wars” or push-back. But one would be wrong. Of course, it has everything to do with turf battles, and is obviously a case of major push-back. “Oh, so you want to take away the cream of the Army's military mission? Fine, then – we'll start pecking away at your spy mission.”

Let me self-quote from the previous post: “... the article quotes an Obama advisor: 'Should the [CIA] be looking to be the principal player in a global drone war versus its more traditional role as the principal collector and analyst of foreign intelligence?' Well – I think that question's already been answered. While the Army sits all alone and feeling blue, the CIA moves in and takes the best people and the best missions. I'm sure they'll continue to collect intelligence – but only enough to support their own military operations. And the Army will be left alone to do nation building, social and humanitarian work, and to continue being a lab for social experimentation.”

So yeah, the Army could have rolled over and played dead. But instead they played a card described as “an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size”. The key player in all this would, naturally enough, be the Defense Intelligence Agency, which – now get this – would become “more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units”. In other words, they would move in on the CIA's turf and take away a chunk of their mission, but remain friends, just like the farmer and the cowman in “Oklahoma”. Right. The CIA's really going to go for that. And as to elite military commando units – isn't military intelligence already closely aligned with them? Don't they talk? Apparently not, judging by some of what has happened over the last few years.

And what is the CIA supposedly going to get out of all this? I can tell you from direct experience that many Army personnel consider “Army intelligence” to be a contradiction in terms. This may not be a fair assessment, but there it is – and I don't think it's any different from any other age-old communications gap between fighters and thinkers. The fighters think the intel guys are all nerdy eggheads who never get their hands dirty and subsist mostly on guesswork... and the intellectoids in the military consider the fighters to be violent (duh), impulsive, no-neck jugheads. And the friendly rivalries that result – oh, my! Especially when it comes to “resourcing” -- another word for money. The point is that if this is what the Army thinks of its own intel types, you can only imagine what the “real, professional” intel types think of them. Are they just misunderstood, square pegs in round holes? No – what's more likely is that they're amateurs – and now they want to send out their own “surge” to do... what? Things the CIA can't, or won't, do? Surely that can't be allowed to stand. What is more likely is that in any given instance, the military intel guys will be second-class citizens and will have to subsist on scraps while the CIA feasts. That's just the way the dominant group treats its inferiors. Nothing personal, it's just about status and hierarchy.

Ah, but hope springs eternal. Some of these military intel types will be “clandestine operatives” and “will be trained by the CIA”. Sounds like someone never got over being non-selected for Boys State.  And get this: “Unlike the CIA, the Pentagon's spy agency is not authorized to conduct covert operations that go beyond intelligence gathering, such as drone strikes, political sabotage or arming militants.” In other words, the military intel types are not allowed to undertake military operations; that will still be left to the civilian intel types.

If this all sounds completely topsy-turvy and like something out of Lewis Carroll, that's because it is. Here's another gem: “Because of differences in legal authorities, the military isn't subject to the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA, leading to potential oversight gaps.” So the CIA is subject to “congressional notification requirements”? That's the first I've heard of it. As far as I know, they present their top-secret annual budget, get it rubber-stamped by Congress, and go on their merry way, enjoying maximum authority and zero accountability. I've never seen, or heard of, anything that would contradict this, and yet it's presented as a major consideration.

But wait! There's more! (as they say in Veg-o-Matic ads) – a week or so after the Pentagon played that card, the Senate – certainly no opponent of military expansionism – said “Whoa, there, pardner!” It seems they are concerned with costs (for once!) and with “management failures” in defense intelligence (as the CIA sits up in its tree with a Cheshire Cat grin – undoubtedly having furnished some of the evidence for said management failures). So... the Pentagon gambit seems to have been declined – at least for the time being. But it is fascinating to see this struggle acted out in such an overt manner. It's paradoxical, to say the least.

CIA 1, Army 0

Two very much related stories appeared in Sunday's paper, one entitled “Soldiers worried about Army future” and the other “Obama's choice of CIA director to signal course”. What makes them “very much related”, you ask? Well, it's simply that the CIA has, of late, taken on a military role that rivals that of the special operations forces, the Army's included, and also takes a big chunk out of the Air Force mission. Time was when the Air Force would strike first (remember "shock and awe"?), then the Marines would go in to soften things up, then the Army would come in like a human wave, and once things were settled down a bit the special ops guys would fan out into the jungle (desert, whatever) to start fighting insurgents and guerrillas on their own terms. Problem is, while this model was still supposedly alive and well the regular Army was gradually reduced to doing, much of the time, things they were never trained to do – things like “nation building” (which can include everything from supervising elections to building schools to supplying food, water and medical supplies to conducting focus groups to – for all I know – changing diapers). In other words, in many parts of the world where we are occupiers, the Army has been turned into a bunch of social workers – not that the work is not important or useful, but you don't need combat-trained people in fatigues to do it. And at the same time, the CIA has its own army, made up largely of mercenaries (AKA “contractors”) to do the really important stuff – not just security but also special ops-type stuff, which makes me wonder, do we even need the uniformed special ops guys anymore? (And – does this have something to do with Petraeus' downfall?)

See, the gradual evolution (or devolution, depending on one's point of view) of the U.S. military model, or “vision”, has been away from set-piece battles (the last of which, arguably, occurred in Europe and North Africa during World War II) and toward relatively autonomous, small-unit operations requiring a significantly different kind of training. This made perfect sense, given that the nature of the enemy had changed; we were no longer facing armies, but small groups of rebels/insurgents/guerrillas who knew the terrain (both in the literal and cultural sense), and who were, in most respects, indistinguishable from the general populace (because, in fact, they were the general populace – at least some of the time). And it's not as if we'd never fought other people on their own turf before; consider Germany in the last days of World War II. (The atomic bomb kept us from having to fight the Japanese on their home turf – which, in fact, probably saved more Japanese lives than were lost in the bombings. But I digress.) But again, it was the old model with armies in uniform, weapons that looked like weapons (vs. IEDs, e.g.), and, yes, “rules of war”. (Both sides used gas in World War I. Neither side used it in World War II. That's right – the Nazis did not choose to regress to gas warfare. This is never pointed out, of course. They also treated our POWs much better than the Japanese did; there will never be a “Hogan's Heroes” about a Japanese prison camp.)

What we are faced with now is summed up in the article as follows: “Soldiers who were trained to fight tank battles shifted to a style of combat that emphasized politics, cultural awareness, and protecting the local population from insurgent attacks.” In other words, changing diapers (figuratively speaking, at least). This began in Vietnam (remember "hearts and minds"?) but has really come to a head in the post-9/11 world. Actually, I would say that the transition, on our side, was prefigured in the war in the Pacific, but it came to a head in Vietnam, where we went over there expecting to fight a nice clean, crisp, European-style war and wound up nostril-deep in swamps and jungles. That took some getting used to, and in fact we never got used to it. The lean little monkey-like creatures who lived there, and who ran around without having to carry 50-pound packs, finally managed to get rid of us... and you can say what you want about “politics”, but, in my opinion, we lost largely because we didn't know how to fight that kind of war, and refused to learn. You'd think carpet bombing, Agent Orange, and Napalm would have done the trick, right? Good old American know-how. And yet, mysteriously, we had to leave and the communists and the “Cong” got to stay. They had home field advantage, certainly – but then so did Germany, and they wound up buried in ashes.

I think the difference may have to do with styles of warfare – and the fact that we can win when we're fighting a war our way, as long as the other side is also fighting the war our way. But if they choose some radically alternative method, and are on their home turf besides, we're at a decided disadvantage and are likely to lose (as in Vietnam) or be stalemated (as in Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan). I'll take this one step further – I think we might well have wound up stalemated in Japan, and forced to sign a treaty rather than their having to unconditionally surrender, if it hadn't been for the A-bomb. This can never be proven, but subsequent events do provide plenty of room for speculation. Land wars in Asia just don't seem to be our forte, and no amount of training or “readiness” can make them so. I guess we could pretend to fight the way they do (that's one thing special ops forces are supposed to be able to do), but I'm not sure how far that would go. I think you really have to have their mindset – their brains – for it to work. (To cite an extreme case – do we have any defense against suicide bombers? Not really – and one reason is that we simply don't understand them. Since we don't “get” what it would take for someone to do that, we have a hard time coming up with any answers – defensive or otherwise. Knowing “the mind of the enemy” is always Job One, and if that is unknowable, everything else can fall by the wayside.)

So with that as background, what are soldiers worried about these days? (And note that some of them are so worried they are committing suicide – in record numbers.) “Some officers worry that the service is reverting to a more comfortable, rigid and predictable past.” Translation – go back to the old models, scenarios, and “war games” that have been outdated for decades. But hey, at least it's familiar... it's understandable... and it's “American”, rather than the “dirty fighting” that we encounter so often in third-world pestholes. So – no clear, future-oriented sense of direction. But hasn't the experience of the Middle East over the past ten years provided a new model? Apparently not. And why is this? Simply that we've been fighting (or not fighting) unwinnable wars over there – not only unwinnable in the strategic sense but unwinnable because that was the plan all along. (This is me talking now – and I've made the argument more than once on this site, so won't elaborate on it again at this time. But I suspect that a gradually-increasing sense of this is taking place within the military – along with all the resentment and frustration one would expect. In this sense, it's a psychological recapitulation of Vietnam, except that Vietnam was not designed to be unwinnable, it just turned out that way.) So a sense of futility and absurdity develops, and when soldiers, who feel these things on a deep level even if they are unable to articulate them, look to the future, all they can see is more of what we have now – at best. No clear mission, no victories, no “exit criteria”, no nothing – just go somewhere, make loud noises and kill things, and go home (if you're lucky). How is anyone supposed to tie this to patriotism, home, family, human values? Heaven knows, they try hard enough – but the attempts are in themselves absurd, and speak more of desperation than of discovering any real links. Soldiers can mouth all the words they like about “fighting [halfway around the world] to preserve our freedoms” but deep down I suspect they know it's a hoax. 

And then there is the very real, human nature-type question, who to blame? Vietnam boiled down to LBJ and “the best and the brightest”, with JFK getting off scot-free. Iraq and Afghanistan are, of course, all about “terrorism”, which the other side calls “defense of the homeland”. OK – those are two world views not readily reconciled. But is “terrorism” to blame? All it is is a word that someone in Washington made up and then defined in order to serve their own ends. Or is it the people who think terrorism can be defeated? Or, more likely, the people who say terrorism can be defeated, even though they know full well it can't? Or, also likely, the people who use terrorism as an excuse for pursuing other agendas – things like power, money, “immanentizing the eschaton”, etc. (OK – for that last, you can start by checking out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanentize_the_eschaton. It refers, in this case, to Evangelicals and Christian Zionists trying to accelerate the End Times by fulfilling Biblical prophesies (mostly from Revelations) using (and abusing) our military, national wealth, politicians, personal freedoms, and reputation on the world stage. Do I have to say any more about how well this has worked out so far?)

It's actually fortunate (for the power elite) that so much of the military is drawn from the working (or non-working) classes, since they tend to be more fatalistic and less questioning of authority or events. “Shit happens” is their watchword... and they seldom sit down and analyze precisely where that shit that happens comes from. If they did, we might have a real proletarian revolution on our hands – you know, the kind Obama was supposedly leading before he actually became president and developed a new respect for perpetual war.

But back to the Army for a moment. The article also refers to “a Pentagon defense [read “war”] strategy that emphasizes air and naval power over ground forces.” Well – maybe, but how many Navy guys are wandering around Afghanistan in boots and fatigues carrying a rifle? And as to the Air Force – don't all of those drones belong to the CIA? I mean, honestly – when I look at our recent and current conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa I see more of a CIA “footprint” than all of the military services combined. This is, in fact, the elephant in the NCO club, but it's apparently too big for anyone to actually see. The Army is quickly being rendered obsolete – not by the other branches as much as by the so-called “intelligence” agencies. They can blame it on the other services if they like, but that's just about age-old rivalries, not reality. 

And what about those budget cuts (which have yet to kick in, you'll notice)? Well, as I've said before, if you took our “defense” budget and reduced it to just what is actually needed for defense, as opposed to war, you could probably cut out about 80% or so. As it is, these “draconian” cuts are more or less the equivalent of one less mocha latte per week for the average metrosexual – painful yes, but hardly fatal. (And wasn't it clever, by the way, of Congress to hold “defense” hostage when they were designing the “fiscal cliff”? They picked the one thing that they knew would never actually be cut – at least not by enough to make any difference. This tactic is called (in government circles) “gold watching it”.)

Here's another quote from the article: “(T)he Army has not been able to articulate a clear mission that will enable it to hold on to its shrinking share of the Pentagon budget.” Well... actually, “articulating a mission” is not the Army's job, but the job of its civilian overseers – you know, guys like the secretary of the army, the secretary of defense, and the president. Expecting the Army to articulate its own mission gets things precisely backwards. Oh, I'm sure plenty of senior leaders in the Army would just love to get a chance to articulate their mission – but it might not have a whole lot to do with the best interests of the country as a whole. (I'm envisioning things like “nuke every Islamic city in the world” -- you know, level-headed stuff like that. Senior Army officers are smart, but their elevators don't ever go quite to the top floor – as witness Gen. Petraeus. And besides, if we'd wanted a country where the military was in charge, we would have designed it that way.)

Plus, you have to understand that pitting the services against one another is a game politicians play. They already know how much in the way of resources is going to each service, and which major programs are going to be supported, but they just enjoy the spectacle. And yes, it's all terribly wasteful – but since when has anyone in Washington been concerned with that?

So – while the Army dithers, and wrings its hands, and feels like a wallflower – what's going on a few miles up the Potomac, at CIA HQ? There, all is groovy and smurfy, thanks to a virtually unlimited, and top secret, budget... and the advantage of being above the law at all times and in all places (a privilege the Army might envy now and then, but seldom gets to enjoy). And yet, they seem to have things to deal with as well – and I'm not talking about the precipitous departure of Gen. Petraeus, who was only the most recent to cross over that great divide between the military and the “intel” community – which is like being promoted from field hand to butler in the Old South.

What's on the CIA's mind, according to the article, is – will they get to keep their new favorite toy, namely armed drones? Gone are the days of secret codes, trench coats, and messages hidden under park benches; now the CIA has major firepower, and no intention of giving it up. The article refers to “the agency's pronounced shift toward paramilitary operations” -- the question being, will that trend continue or be reversed somehow? (And if so, by whom? Oh, right, the president. You know – that same guy who knew absolutely nothing about Benghazi and Petraeus, and had to catch up by watching CNN?) Yes, apparently there is some concern that the CIA has become another branch of the military, albeit not in the same chain of command (or any other, for that matter). It's one thing to have an agency that knows everything about everyone – we went through that with the FBI in Hoover's day – but to have one that, in addition, has its own army and its own high-tech weaponry.... why, that's... that's... almost like the places we've always fought against! Who can forget the way the Gestapo rode roughshod over the German military... or the way the KGB intimidated the Russian military? The article cites Petraeus as having “sought to cement the agency's ties with the military...”. Well, right -- “cement” is also another word for “dominate”. And by the way, guess who the CIA recruits for its private army? By and large, veterans of the uniformed special ops forces. Yes, the “best and the brightest” (and probably the most merciless) from the military are being skimmed off the top, offered sky-high pay and the chance to see the world and meet (i.e. kill) people. Who could resist?

The final paragraph of the article quotes an Obama advisor: “Should the agency be looking to be the principal player in a global drone war versus its more traditional role as the principal collector and analyst of foreign intelligence?” Well – I think that question's already been answered. While the Army sits all alone and feeling blue, the CIA moves in and takes the best people and the best missions. I'm sure they'll continue to collect intelligence – but only enough to support their own military operations. And the Army will be left alone to do nation building, social and humanitarian work, and to continue being a lab for social experimentation. (We wouldn't want to give those guys guns and trust them with an actual mission, would we?) Sounds like “win-win” all around.

"Betray-Us" Betrayed

I’m trying to get a grip on this whole Petraeus thing, and I have to admit that it’s a tangled web.  While it’s too early to draw any obvious conclusions (since there aren’t any), a few preliminary comments can at least be offered.

First of all, it’s not about sex.  Never was, never will be.  I mean… can you imagine, a Democratic administration letting someone go for sexual dalliance?  Please.

Second, it’s not about keeping Petraeus from testifying before Congress about Benghazi.  They can call up anyone they want at any time to testify on any subject, no matter if the person is on active duty, retired, a convicted felon, etc.  Surely even the Obama people know that.

Now that that’s settled (and 90% of the commentariat have been answered in the negative), some thoughts about the ever-expanding cast of characters:

Senior generals in the military don’t have delusions of grandeur and omnipotence -- they really are grand and omnipotent.  At least that’s what everyone tells them many times each day.  So is it any wonder they fall prey to the delusions of power, the foremost of which is, invariably, that they can do anything at any time and get away with it?  Plus, military officers tend to have a Puritan streak, mediated by a Southern upbringing and Evangelical faith, so when they fall on their face sex usually has something to do with it.

Another thing to remember is that the military officer corps is a profoundly middle-class institution. Rich men no longer send their sons to war; that stopped with the Kennedys. So we're talking about, if you will, the bourgeoisie in uniform – with all the values that implies, as well as the guilt when those values are violated. (By contrast, the enlisted ranks are a working-class institution, which means they are more fatalistic and have less impulse control, and little or no guilt... but, paradoxically, are more likely to wind up with post-traumatic stress disorder. This is something that invites research.)

Senior generals in the military also tend to attract groupies -- both in and outside the service.  Power is an attractor -- didn’t Henry Kissinger say that?  Power, masculinity, medals… ability to outdo much younger men in push-ups… these qualities have impressed women ever since civilization began.  Consider the outright leanness of guys like Petraeus and Allen -- nothing at all like the pink, squishy appearance of guys like Dick Cheney or, for heaven’s sake, Karl Rove.  When a woman is looking for a real man, as opposed to one with just temporary power, who’s she gonna call?  The nearest 4-star general, o’course.  And, needless to say, the fact of the guy being already married only adds to the savor. To the predatory female, the ultimate game is to get a desirable man away from another woman, not just to get him in the, um, general sense.

So what this means is that even a senior general who is totally faithful to his spouse is going to be probed, on a regular basis, by women who think they’re the ones to make him stray from the righteous path.  And these women will, of course, be in competition with one another, so jealousy and cat fights (including ones via e-mail) will soon follow.

So far I’m explaining, partially at least, the behavior of some of the people involved -- but not all.  And this is where it gets interesting.  For starters, what’s the FBI doing investigating the CIA?  Haven’t they been briefed on the pecking order?  Don’t they realize that the CIA could send in a team of mercenaries and take out FBI headquarters in about ten minutes?  Are these people crazy?

Well… maybe.  But it’s also true -- or so I believe -- that the office of CIA director has become a largely political position, and all the real power in that organization is wielded by the “lifers” -- the unelected, unappointed, anonymous types who have dug deep into the organization.  And in a situation like that, if the lifers don’t like your style, they have ways of getting you to leave -- by persuasion or, if need be, by force.  So when the FBI started knocking on the door, rather than pulling rank I’ll bet the underlings made a deal to hang Petraeus out to dry.  But still -- it was a daring move by the FBI.  I mean, imagine some government agency in Nazi Germany outing the chief of the Gestapo.  Touchy business, to say the least.

So clearly, #1, just being head of the CIA was not enough to protect the general.  But that has less to do with a decline of CIA power than with a lack of Petraeus power.  On any given day, the FBI wouldn’t touch the CIA with a ten-foot pole… and in this case as well, I’m sure that plenty of people were “coordinated with” before things got serious.  If the gang at Langley had told the guys from downtown to cool it, they would have cooled it.

So if Petraeus was hung out to dry, why? -- assuming that the insiders didn’t feel they owed him any loyalty, and he could easily be replaced with another figurehead, and life would go on as always.  But what was the FBI’s interest in hanging him high?  To hurt the CIA?  That’s always possible when it comes to rival intel agencies; everybody wants to be the baddest of the bad.  But, again, they should have known that it wouldn’t work -- that it would cause barely a ripple.  So clearly, Petraeus must have done something that someone didn’t like.

But before we start speculating on that, we need to discuss a few other characters in the cast, the foremost being President Obama.  The line so far is that he knew nothing, and no one should have expected him to know anything.  (Compare, if you will, Nixon vis-a-vis Watergate, or Reagan vis-à-vis Iran Contra.  In each case, their enemies expected them to be omniscient and didn’t accept any other possibility.)  Now… either Obama really and truly knew nothing, as he claims -- or he knew plenty.  If he knew nothing, it only supports my model whereby the president is nothing more than a department store dummy, who has no real “need to know” anything, since he has no real power.  But if he did know, then he had to have given the attack dogs the go-ahead to chase Petraeus up a tree, and then the question returns to “why”?

At this point, we have to entertain a brief diversion called “what liberals think of the military”.  Number one, they hate it.  And they hate guns, and uniforms, and masculinity, and testosterone, and any and all traditional male/warrior traits.  And they especially hate the military when there’s a Republican president, for obvious reasons.  But when there’s a Democrat president, well… then things change a bit.  They become more “nuanced”.  Then the liberals discover that they can use the military for their various schemes -- especially the “wag the dog”-type operations that were so popular in Clinton’s time.  But when a Democrat president is handed a war, or a cluster of wars, on a silver platter, the way Obama was, it becomes an even more different story.  Then there is a flexing of almost-vestigial muscles, and liberals discover that, by gosh, they can fight wars too.  Or send other people to fight them, whatever.

But things get a bit awkward when a Democrat inherits a military “hero” -- like Petraeus -- from a Republican administration.  They have to do something with him, but it’s awkward; he sticks in their craw.  Better to have someone who came up through the ranks in a properly politically-vetted environment – which means, for the Democrats, a totally political animal for whom military victory is an outmoded idea.  So the challenge is to get rid of the offending person without making it look like a blatant case of clash of personalities or philosophy.  And what better means than to use some tacky sexual episode, which will always appeal to Republicans -- guaranteed!  Republicans are nothing if not Puritanical and neurotic about sex.  When they have it (which is rare) they feel guilty and dirty somehow -- totally unlike Democrats, who swim in seas of flesh at every opportunity.  (Didja ever notice that if a sex scandal involves a Republican, there’s always something kind of weird and kinky about it, whereas if it’s a Democrat, it’s just good, clean fun?  At least that‘s what the media always claim.)

But again -- all this trouble just because Petraeus had a bit of residual contamination from the Bush administration?  No sale.  It must have had something to do with his performance (or non-performance) of duty -- and it’s not as if the CIA has been made of Teflon of late.  It’s hard to hide an agency that has its own army with operations in scores of countries around the world; word has to leak out eventually.  And even if he was basically a figurehead, the general had to have had something to do with their current menu of mayhem -- think drone strikes on weddings, schools, picnics, etc.  Or -- maybe the problem is that he was trying to bring the CIA to heel somehow; that would certainly be a fatal error.  Benghazi was certainly a spectacular failure, but surely…

Hold on a minute.  The administration line on Benghazi is not unlike the line on Petraeus -- Obama didn’t know anything, no one knew anything, but they came out with explanations that had nothing to do with reality.  Doesn’t it all have the same flavor -- one of total chaos or incompetence?  But sometimes the appearance of incompetence can be used to hide an agenda that is working perfectly well -- but looking incompetent is preferable to having to reveal what is really going on.  So… what was Benghazi really all about?  It was clearly a CIA operation that got, first, detected and second, neutralized by insurgent forces.  Whose fault was that?  Those kinds of operations are going on all the time; why did this one get singled out?  Is there any chance that it was exposed in some way, and that the attack was, at least in part, a false-flag operation, not unlike 9-11?  By this I mean that it was really done by insurgents, but they were aided and abetted in some way, and for some reason, by others.  And why would that happen?  Anyone notice that, within days of the Benghazi incident, we were sending troops into West Africa in order to, supposedly, chase down those responsible? Oh, you didn't see that story? Not surprising, since it was out for about five minutes before it was suppressed. But take a look at a map of Africa. Between Libya and West Africa is a whole lot of nothing – namely the Sahara Desert. Not exactly the kind of place “terrorists” would be galivanting back and forth across on a daily basis. So no, Benghazi was just an excuse for our getting involved in who knows how many new wars, this time in Africa as opposed to the Middle East. (Obama: “Home at last.”)

So what this implies is that the Benghazi victims may have been set up as sacrificial lambs – through “benign neglect” at the very least. And if so, what would a CIA director's role in all of that have been? Would he have been in on it, or opposed (and yet overridden by others)? Was the conflict, in any case, between him and his subordinates or between him and people elsewhere, e.g. the State Department? Let's face it, there ain't too many people higher up in the pecking order in Washington, D.C. than the head of the CIA – at least on paper. So for someone to be able to bust him down to private for real or imagined offenses... well, that someone has to be even higher up (either on paper or in reality).

So the most immediate question for Congress, should they choose to get involved (since they have nothing better to do), would be – what did Petraeus do wrong, or what did he do right, to reap the wrath of somebody in the administration... and no, developing a zipper problem is not the answer.  And yes, I know that he has made a public confession along those lines -- but when you see that, you can pretty much assume that it was either that or taking the blame for something even worse.  In other words, he was given a choice -- either look like a harmless fool or be nailed as a war criminal, or something.  The tawdry affair thus becomes a cover story; marvelous are the ways of Washington, especially when a criminal cartel is in charge.  And fact that the CIA itself is apparently starting their own investigation provides a clue as to how well he got along with his underlings in Langley, so I suspect that he stepped on some toes there and elsewhere as well. The question remains – whose, and for what reason? It's gonna be interesting.