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Conservative Schizophrenia Part I: The CIA
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Disclaimer:
David P. Price, PhD is responsible for this content, which is not edited by the Wilson County News or wilsoncountynews.com. |
September 24, 2009 | 1 comment
Last time we discussed hypocrisy in the Democratic Party. Failure to include tort reform in the Health Care Plan is totally understandable. Trial lawyers are major contributors and otherwise most upper echelon Democrats are themselves lawyers and are putting their interests ahead of the public.
But as a fiscal conservative, I am genuinely puzzled by Republican hypocrisy with respect to the CIA. Most notably, attempting to justify torture?
The modern conservative movement began with Ronald Reagan, and the main focus was defeat of the Soviet Union. So why would we want our CIA to function like the KGB?
The visceral answer is national defense, which is a genuine conservative issue. But the CIA is not part of our armed forces. It is, in fact, a government agency. With apologies to the undercover operatives who risk their lives; there are many more bureaucrats who function in the manner we are accustomed to.
In my book, The (induced) Ignorance of Power, we discuss how once government agencies are created, they most often take on a dynamic quite different than their charter. Their first allegiance is not to the public, but to the agency. Their purpose becomes not to serve the public, but to expand the budget, power and jurisdiction of the agency.
The example we use in the book is the EPA, which has created its own paramilitary force. Indeed, it is relatively common for the EPA to send in squads of agents in military uniforms carrying submachine guns and shotguns to intimidate businesses. It would seem more efficient to use the Marshall’s Service or local law enforcement when a genuine need for force is anticipated. But government agencies like to demonstrate their own power.
The problem is that whenever an agency becomes distracted from its actual mission, the service to the public becomes degraded. With respect to the EPA, a particularly disgraceful situation was largely ignored for nearly 30 yrs. Population growth along our coasts outpaced wastewater treatment systems, and raw sewage was frequently discharged along our beaches. You can’t just send in storm troopers to shut down a municipal sewage plant, so very little was done.
The CIA, of course, has its own paramilitary forces; special forces type operatives, helicopters and Predator Drones with Hellfire missiles. During the Vietnam War, the CIA was inserting its operatives into Laos and Cambodia and was even operating its own air force (Air America). But while all of that was great sport, the CIA failed to engage in its primary mission . . . intelligence.
Intelligence means gathering information, but it also means analysis. Intellectuals were shouting from the rooftops that Vietnam was nothing but a civil war in an inconsequential country, and had absolutely no strategic value. But rather than listen, the CIA (the FBI and the Defense Dept.) surveilled the intellectuals and labeled them as subversives. Rather than engage in its actual charter, intelligence, the CIA participated in the war, and 58,000 young men died for no reason.
Fast forward to today, when the Rand Corporation and other Middle East experts were publishing that; 1. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and that 2. Sadaam was the type of dictator Ossama was wanting to overthrow; there was little chance they would cooperate. Rather than engage in any real analysis, the CIA simply went along with George Bush’s monumentally flawed ideas on counter-terrorism, and once again thousands of young Americans were killed or maimed for no good reason (while our real enemy regrouped in Afghanistan).
The fact is, that while the CIA is a powerful agency with all sorts of weaponry, it has been a spectacular failure with respect to its actual mission. It didn’t even predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a single intellectual, Zbignew Burzynski did . . . in a book (The Grand Failure)! Prior to that the CIA failed to predict the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, nor the Iranian Revolution, nor Sadaam’s invasion of Kuwait!
Apologists might say all that is hindsight. As foresight, I will tell you if we do not prosecute those responsible for violating the international prohibition as well as our own laws on torture, we will exponentially increase the motive for extremists to attack us. We will have another 9/11 event. This is not a liberal or conservative issue. It is a matter of human psychology and the fundamental American principles of rule of law and justice.
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Gitta Rohpe
Hangtown, TX
October 28, 2009 11:54am
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