After a year in office two things are immediately clear about Obama: (a) he is not in full control of the American military; and (b) his White House is incapable of enforcing basic decorum in Community food fights. The greatest threat by the former is a putschist political movement at home in 2012 or after ‘defeat’. That possibility is only incipient. And still down the ladder of probabilities. That one can ponder implications soberly is alarming nonetheless. A secondary but criminally destructive permutation? The ongoing rote Neocon-military/industrial bum rush on a weak White House for more wars of aggression. They know how to build on AgitProp momentum. Meanwhile, Israel brazenly mocks Obama with contemptuous defiance on settlements.
2010 will see Obama unleash more violence. He thereby will advance the Realm’s self-serving goals and the American military’s intoxication with ‘Mission.’ No matter how he spins it. Drain the swamp, indeed.
Two inside baseball food fights within the Community and the WH are relatively minor but instructive. The first involves ODNI’s ongoing attempt to justify relevance by seeking operational line authority over in this case CIA and its DO. Panetta’s fighting this encroachment on different fronts since inauguration. Originally, recall Blair wanted to appoint station chiefs overseas and the few veterans at Langely left went nuts (as did the vast and very active alum coterie). It’s a reasonable request – more countries than one might guess actually have a primary relationship with another intelligence entity, from NSA to others. These other Community members historically have had to play high school telephone tag to communicate with a not infrequently less than conversant CIA Chief of Station. Why not cut out the middle man and allow the agencies primarily engaged in a particular nation be the liaison? It’s not like the Agency wouldn’t shuffle around the same mediocre official cover people anyway at the embassy below that level. Turf.
Now, Blair is rebuffed in ODNI’s attempt to gain greater control over the Agency’s paramilitary activities in Pakistan and ‘clandestine’ activities. Panetta, the newbies at Langley (and their contractors!) won’t have it. The dead Agency’s golem lurches onward. The Grand Conciliator in the WH ensured that Panetta keeps his perks. But he’s very stern that the rookies must cooperate. Anyone who read Goofus and Gallant in Highlights Magazine knows where that’s headed.
There are larger themes embedded between narrow bureaucratic interests. One is that the dead CIA, emasculated as it is, historically when it was alive and really CIA served as a bulwark against hyper-militarized fantasies parading as ‘estimates’. How ironic for the Red Diaper Baby and New Left crowd that their hated CIA was always the most *liberal* of the Community voices – (a) no missile gap; (b) no dominoes; (c) no successful Vietnam victory (Carver’s negotiations with MACV legendary); no Danny Graham/DIA massive secret Soviet ground based lasers; the whole Neocon Team B thing (blessed by gosh darn it, Bar) GHWB, etc., etc.
Did the Agency screw up? Of course. We’ve talked about it non-stop here since 2004/05. But arguably there is only one human in history who hasn’t. He either died on Calvary or she hosts a TV show from Chicago. It’s vogue now to revise the past and write books claiming ‘CIA is responsible for everything bad, including rap music’.
Before the CIA cut its throat, slit its gut open, shot itself in the foot, put its hand in a disposal *and then declared war on the White House*, its primary value was the proposition that the Nation could depend on a *viable* and *competent* civilian intelligence agency independent of the military.
A major cultural catastrophe during the Warlord’s calamitous reign was the tidal wave-like militarization of intelligence. Not just by Hayden driving the final spike through the Agency’s heart, etc. Coup de grace stuff. Long before in terms of whose voice dominated or more importantly circumvented the formal intelligence product cycle (ranging from out of left field absurdist Feith PPT brain farts to the battlefield awareness/strategic option planning). Even before it expired by unforgivable incompetence, CIA was overwhelmed, outmanned and crushed.
DNI Blair as military man will depart his perch in due time. His selection is inspired now. Most of the Nation’s intelligence entities are military-related. He has a unique chance (that the feckless an ineffective dilettante civilian Negroponte never had) to use his personal authority to drill down, break silos into matrices, and gain control of budgets. Blair knows how to work the system. Control the budget, and their balls and hearts and minds will follow. The ultimate D.C. axiom. So far we have heard mixed to guardedly positive comments in this regard. If letting Panetta justify his shaky internal stature at the House of Neophytes (nee CIA) by this playground truce is a necessary *temporary* tactical price to be paid while Blair pursues larger reform it’s worth it.
We prefer the nation return to the principle of civilian control over intelligence. Military control of intelligence promises a harvest of sorrow. That means ODNI needs to succeed (unless it is pulled down and destroyed by the various Community entities fanatical about the earlier status quo). Blair’s consolidation drive is the best chance to make the DNI more than a bureaucratic joke. His successors, should ODNI make it, should be civilians with sufficient gravitas. The Agency [sic] then deservedly becomes an important but secondary entity. Everyone but them knows today it’s already true. The DO its primary institutional focus – subject to DNI tasking, command and control like any other constituent asset. Some rump form of CIA analytical function can exist. But the DI long forfeited the right or institutional capability to claim prima inter pares. The NIC already reports to the DNI anyway. DS&T can whither.
As an aside, we should think of a new name for the DO besides the now comical ‘National Clandestine Service’. The ads on cable during wrestling shows are jarringly hilarious. First, the Warlord made everything a ‘National’ this or that. Somewhere we’re sure there’s a ‘National Center for Study of Tomatoes’. And what is the DO national, compared to what? The Boise Idaho Sheriff’s Department Directorate of Plans? Perhaps you, Dear Reader, deserve a ‘National’ title, too?
Leon won most of this throw in a long game. If the WH is backing Blair’s consolidation drive then it’s a small chit. If the WH just played expedient political compromise (Rahm and Leon, etc.) then Agency [sic] pretensions have undermined Community reform. The Agency [sic] is Banquo’s Sherman Kent’s ghost walking. If the WH was smart and kind, they’d put it out of its misery.
After all, they shoot dead myths, don’ they? But then this WH is neither kind nor smart.
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On a related front, the fairly complicated Obama effort to confront insane levels of over-classification is out. Intentions seem good – reminiscent of Clinton’s attempt which the bureaucracy strangled in its crib. Obama’s new ‘National Declassification Center’ (did we not say these people are drunk, festooning ‘National on rolls of toilet paper, supra?) we suspect will be slow rolled into irrelevance. We say that as both someone who has used the National Archives for research and from the perspective of resisting bureaucracies.
The presidential order reads like some of the over lawyered closings from Hell back in the day when Michael Douglas’ cell phone the size of an encyclopedia in Wall Street was uber status. One can only imagine how much spirit was hurled into this bureaucratic Passchendaele. Oh, the humanity.
Removing the Community veto over de-classification created by the Warlord Addington et al. is good on paper. A good bureaucracy still knows how to circumvent that. It’s nice to see Obama’s people caught on to the we-declassified-it-but-then-reclassified it game. Obama’s notions of ‘training’ at constituent government agencies to assist de-classification is a joke. We are laughing typing this envisioning how such a session would unfold. There’s black comedic gold here. The directives to agency heads to ‘conform’ with the de-classification guidelines will be of meager value. Most useful is the tightening on standards for classification longer than 25 years.
All in all, we saw the Clinton people try this his first term. The Nation remembers watching various Community and related entities twist around the presidential order like junior high kids shrieking with delight when the junior high dance cover band breaks out a Hannah Montana tune. Still, Obama et al. tried. The language shows someone remembered what happened. Who knows? Fingers crossed that some improvement might happen.
Elbow pads says
You are so interesting! I don’t suppose I’ve truly read through anything like that before.
So nice to discover another person with a few original thoughts on this issue.
Seriously.. thanks for starting this up. This web site is one thing that is needed
on the internet, someone with some originality!
Marloes says
Leuke artikel!
Comment says
Scheur on c-span this morning making embarassing arguments so as to sink any interesting idea he might have.
tile says
http://www.fpri.org/orbis/5401/kraska.navalwar2015.pdf
Plausibility score? The fantasy world of limited nuclear conflict. Laughable, but good for business obviously; and the compulsive need on the part of the senior brass to maintain a sense of relevance as the tech framework slips from under them. I think from a purely technical perspective, there is no place for anything sizable on the surface of the water, in the absence of air cover. 21st century maritime supremacy has nothing to do with traditional ships; it is a land-based air war (satellites, and hypersonic aircraft); secondarily an under-surface sensor war. Pretending otherwise = pure theater.
Here is a hypothesis: China announces that they will disband their navy, scrap all of its ships and aircraft. Simultaneously, they announce something like the Doomsday machine of Dr. Strangelove, wherein it is specified quite clearly the conditions that would trigger a range of retaliatory ballistic ‘limited’ nuclear strikes against an adversary — these would include interference with trade routes and sea lanes. Cheaper, and essentially identical deterrent value.
Implied thesis: an alien intelligence unit viewing earth through a telescope in 2015 concludes that navies are an atavistic fetish of the various ruling classes.
Comment says
Charles Johnson still trying to dig himself out of the hole he dug for himself and others – Overrating Pat’s influence and getting Buckley’s book slightly wrong. If we recall reading about it – Buckley pulled some punches. But the point is – Johnson blows a plausible case – though we did not watch the whole thing:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/24971?in=40:26&out=46:05
Comment says
In the lead up to and during the Iraq war, whenever he wanted to show some right wing psychosis , Lew Lapham quoted this guy verbatim. This dude definatelt has an inner storm in his mind’s eye:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/03/fox-news-guest-strip-sear_n_409545.html
Comment says
Btw – it’s sort of instructive that Bush Sr. felt he had to faciliate and pretend to believe in Team B when he knew better. Politics always trumps.
Comment says
IMO it seems just about impossible for Obama to do more in tne middle east without putting much of his domestic agenda in jeopardy – with little upside risk. Bush pere had just about the most ideal circumstance and situation to hold off then illegal settlements and back then the numbers were much smaller. Even then it caused Bush pere many problems and the most he got out of it was a cosmetic change in party in Israel leadership the following year. But we suspect he may have regreted going out on a limb in such a way that Clinton was able to use to his advantage. Clinton sort of played a shell game and it was effective politically but it did not really advance any interest – Ultimately it will be political reality that sets the stage for an accomodation. There is no real Congressional support for Obama to force any bold direct moves = The best he (or anyone) can do is to advance the process by indirection and not got involved in more wars than the ones we are already stuck in.
anxiousmodernman says
The Secretaries of State, Defense, and Energy, and the Director of National Intelligence shall provide the Archivist of the United States with sufficient guidance to complete this task. The Archivist shall make public a report on the status of the backlog every 6 months.
Where’s this “open government” RSS feed?
Also, I have a question that’s been nagging me for a long time. Why do Lockeed, Northrup Grumman, et al advertise their weapon systems in the Metro? I still don’t get it, even when they’re around around the Pentagon. I understand the “We’re working for you, feel good about it” angle, like when they show Army guys giving thumbs up, yelling, marching in some vague desert. But why advertisements for specific platforms? Like Buy our Destroyer, or Buy our Mid Air Refueling Platform. The whole thing seems strange to me. Who is the audience? I guess it doesn’t really cost them much.
It wasn’t specifically military, but the Panasonic “ToughBook” laptop ads were the best, because it’s basically consumer tech, but they had an ad for every type of gov’t activity. In Gallery Place they had Marines next to an artillery piece on one ad, and then next to it they had a picture of DoJ or something and the caption was something like “One coffee spill can ruin your whole day – ToughBook.” That one always makes me chuckle.