“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
Thus spoke Thomas Jefferson who died nearly 200 years ago (April 13th, 1743 – July 4th, 1826).
But some essays that have passed my eyes in the last few days have profoundly disturbed me. Because they illustrate, well to me anyway, the parlous state of wisdom in today’s world. Or better put, the parlous state of truth and integrity in today’s world.
The first essay was the latest one from Tom Engelhardt over at TomDispatch. Normally I republish TomDispatch essays in full, with permission I hasten to add, because they seem such a fine commentary of where we are as a ‘modern’ society. I used the word ‘we’ in the context of a global ‘we’.
But the latest essay was so disheartening that I couldn’t bring myself to republish it in full. Plus, if I am to be brutally honest (in line with the theme of today’s blog post!) I didn’t want to ‘make waves’ as a non-US citizen albeit a valid US resident (Green Card holder). I want to live freely and openly in the USA for the rest of my natural days!
Then in the last twenty-four hours up popped the latest essay from George Monbiot and I was struck by the harmony, the terrible harmony, between Tom and George.
See if you agree with me.
Tom Engelhardt published on Tuesday a TomGram about American Intelligence. It was called Failure Is Success – How American Intelligence Works in the Twenty-First Century.
Here’s a flavour of Tom’s essay.
What are the odds? You put about $68 billion annually into a maze of 17 major intelligence outfits. You build them glorious headquarters. You create a global surveillance state for the ages. You listen in on your citizenry and gather their communications in staggering quantities. Your employees even morph into avatars and enter video-game landscapes, lest any Americans betray a penchant for evil deeds while in entertainment mode. You collect information on visits to porn sites just in case, one day, blackmail might be useful. You pass around naked photos of them just for… well, the salacious hell of it. Your employees even use aspects of the system you’ve created to stalk former lovers and, within your arcane world, that act of “spycraft” gains its own name: LOVEINT.
You listen in on foreign leaders and politicians across the planet. You bring on board hundreds of thousands of crony corporate employees, creating the sinews of an intelligence-corporate complex of the first order. You break into the “backdoors” of the data centers of major Internet outfits to collect user accounts. You create new outfits within outfits, including an ever-expanding secret military and intelligence crew embedded inside the military itself (and not counted among those 17 agencies). Your leaders lie to Congress and the American people without, as far as we can tell, a flicker of self-doubt. Your acts are subject to secret courts, which only hear your versions of events and regularly rubberstamp them — and whose judgments and substantial body of lawmaking are far too secret for Americans to know about.
Then a few paragraphs later, Tom holds up his mirror:
Whatever the case, while taxpayer dollars flowed into your coffers, no one considered it a problem that the country lacked 17 overlapping outfits bent on preventing approximately 400,000 deaths by firearms in the same years; nor 17 interlocked agencies dedicated to safety on our roads, where more than 450,000 Americans have died since 9/11. (An American, it has been calculated, is 1,904 times more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist attack.) Almost all the money and effort have instead been focused on the microscopic number of terrorist plots — some spurred on by FBI plants — that have occurred on American soil in that period. On the conviction that Americans must be shielded from them above all else and on the fear that 9/11 bred in this country, you’ve built an intelligence structure unlike any other on the planet when it comes to size, reach, and labyrinthine complexity.
It’s quite an achievement, especially when you consider its one downside: it has a terrible record of getting anything right in a timely way. Never have so many had access to so much information about our world and yet been so unprepared for whatever happens in it.
Tough words indeed!
But it gets worse.
Let’s focus for a moment, however, on a case where more is known. I’m thinking of the development that only recently riveted the Obama administration and sent it tumbling into America’s third Iraq war, causing literal hysteria in Washington. Since June, the most successful terror group in history has emerged full blown in Syria and Iraq, amid a surge in jihadi recruitment across the Greater Middle East and Africa. The Islamic State (IS), an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which sprang to life during the U.S. occupation of that country, has set up a mini-state, a “caliphate,” in the heart of the Middle East. Part of the territory it captured was, of course, in the very country the U.S. garrisoned and occupied for eight years, in which it had assumedly developed countless sources of information and recruited agents of all sorts. And yet, by all accounts, when IS’s militants suddenly swept across northern Iraq, the CIA in particular found itself high and dry.
The IC seems not to have predicted the group’s rapid growth or spread; nor, though there was at least some prior knowledge of the decline of the Iraqi army, did anyone imagine that such an American created, trained, and armed force would so summarily collapse. Unforeseen was the way its officers would desert their troops who would, in turn, shed their uniforms and flee Iraq’s major northern cities, abandoning all their American equipment to Islamic State militants.
Nor could the intelligence community even settle on a basic figure for how many of those militants there were. In fact, in part because IS assiduously uses couriers for its messaging instead of cell phones and emails, until a chance arrest of a key militant in June, the CIA and the rest of the IC evidently knew next to nothing about the group or its leadership, had no serious assessment of its strength and goals, nor any expectation that it would sweep through and take most of Sunni Iraq. And that should be passing strange. After all, it now turns out that much of the future leadership of IS had spent time together in the U.S. military’s Camp Bucca prison just years earlier.
All you have to do is follow the surprised comments of various top administration officials, including the president, as ISIS made its mark and declared its caliphate, to grasp just how ill-prepared 17 agencies and $68 billion can leave you when your world turns upside down.
Leaving Tom to offer the following sorry conclusions:
Clearly, having a labyrinth of 17 overlapping, paramilitarized, deeply secretive agencies doing versions of the same thing is the definition of counterproductive madness. Not surprisingly, the one thing the U.S. intelligence community has resembled in these years is the U.S. military, which since 9/11 has failed to win a war or accomplish more or less anything it set out to do.
On the other hand, all of the above assumes that the purpose of the IC is primarily to produce successful “intelligence” that leaves the White House a step ahead of the rest of the world. What if, however, it’s actually a system organized on the basis of failure? What if any work-product disaster is for the IC another kind of win.
Perhaps it’s worth thinking of those overlapping agencies as a fiendishly clever Rube Goldberg-style machine organized around the principle that failure is the greatest success of all. After all, in the system as it presently exists, every failure of intelligence is just another indication that more security, more secrecy, more surveillance, more spies, more drones are needed; only when you fail, that is, do you get more money for further expansion.
Keep in mind that the twenty-first-century version of intelligence began amid a catastrophic failure: much crucial information about the 9/11 hijackers and hijackings was ignored or simply lost in the labyrinth. That failure, of course, led to one of the great intelligence expansions, or even explosions, in history. (And mind you, no figure in authority in the national security world was axed, demoted, or penalized in any way for 9/11 and a number of them were later given awards and promoted.) However they may fail, when it comes to their budgets, their power, their reach, their secrecy, their careers, and their staying power, they have succeeded impressively.
You could, of course, say that the world is simply a hard place to know and the future, with its eternal surprises, is one territory that no country, no military, no set of intelligence agencies can occupy, no matter how much they invest in doing so. An inability to predict the lay of tomorrow’s land may, in a way, be par for the course. If so, however, remind me: Why exactly are we supporting 17 versions of intelligence gathering to the tune of at least $68 billion a year?
So over to George Monbiot. Yesterday, he published an essay in the UK’s Guardian newspaper entitled: Bomb Everyone. I am going to republish this in full, with the kind permission of George.
ooOOoo
Bomb Everyone
Humanitarian arguments, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 1st October 2014
Let’s bomb the Muslim world – all of it – to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at blowing up Islamic State, when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed?
How about blasting the Shia militias in Iraq? One of them selected 40 people from the streets of Baghdad in June and murdered them for being Sunnis(1). Another massacred 68 people at a mosque in August(2). They now talk openly of “cleansing” and “erasure”(3), once Islamic State has been defeated. As a senior Shia politician warns, “we are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida.”(4)
What humanitarian principle instructs you to stop there? In Gaza this year, 2,100 Palestinians were massacred: including people taking shelter in schools and hospitals. Surely these atrocities demand an air war against Israel? And what’s the moral basis for refusing to liquidate Iran? Mohsen Amir-Aslani was hanged there last week for making “innovations in the religion” (suggesting that the story of Jonah in the Qu’ran was symbolic rather than literal)(5). Surely that should inspire humanitarian action from above? Pakistan is crying out for friendly bombs: an elderly British man, Mohammed Asghar, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, is, like other blasphemers, awaiting execution there after claiming to be a holy prophet(6). One of his prison guards has already shot him in the back.
Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded 59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery and witchcraft(7). It has long presented a far greater threat to the west than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban … and other terrorist groups.”(8) In July, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”(9) Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis(10,11). Why take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?
The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week(12), if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and West Asia. By this means you could end all human suffering, liberating the people of these regions from the vale of tears in which they live.
Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely-Muslim countries(13), in each case citing a moral imperative. The result, as you can see in Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia and Syria, has been the eradication of jihadi groups, of conflict, chaos, murder, oppression and torture. Evil has been driven from the face of the earth by the destroying angels of the west.
Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”(14). But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what it wants(15).
Already Obama’s bombings have brought Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, a rival militia affiliated to Al Qaeda, together(16). More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began(17). They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.
And if the bombing succeeds? If – and it’s a big if – it manages to tilt the balance against Isis, what then? Then we’ll start hearing once more about Shia death squads and the moral imperative to destroy them too – and any civilians who happen to get in the way. The targets change; the policy doesn’t. Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.
While the bombs fall, our states befriend and defend other networks of death. The US government still refuses – despite Obama’s promise – to release the 28 redacted pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, which document Saudi Arabian complicity in the attack on America(18). In the UK, in 2004 the Serious Fraud Office began investigating allegations of massive bribes paid by the British weapons company BAE to Saudi ministers and middlemen. Just as the crucial evidence was about to be released, Tony Blair intervened to stop the investigation(19). The biggest alleged beneficiary was Prince Bandar, mentioned above. The Serious Fraud Office was investigating a claim that, with the approval of the British government, he received £1bn in secret payments from BAE(20).
And still it goes on. Last week’s Private Eye, drawing on a dossier of recordings and emails, alleges that a British company has paid £300m in bribes to facilitate weapons sales to the Saudi National Guard(21). When a whistleblower in the company reported these payments to the British ministry of defence, instead of taking action it alerted his bosses. He had to flee the country to avoid being thrown into a Saudi jail. Smirking, lying, two-faced bastards – this scarcely begins to touch it.
There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our governments could play a minor role: supporting the development of effective states that don’t rely on murder and militias, building civic institutions that don’t depend on terror, helping to create safe passage and aid for people at risk. Oh, and ceasing to protect and sponsor and arm selected networks of death. Whenever our armed forces have bombed or invaded Muslims nations, they have made life worse for those who live there. The regions in which our governments have intervened most are those which suffer most from terrorism and war. That is neither coincidental nor surprising.
Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs like fairy dust.
References:
1. http://www.theguardian.com/guardianweekly/story/0,,1818778,00.html
2. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/22/shia-attack-sunni-mosque-iraq
3. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isis
4. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isis
5. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/iran-executes-man-heresy-mohsen-amir-aslani
7. http://www.amnesty.se/upload/apps/webactions/urgentaction/2014/09/23/52302414.pdf
8. http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/242073
10. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-saudi-arabia-iraq-syria-bandar/373181/
15. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/26/west-isis-crusade-britain-iraq-syria
16. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/28/isis-al-qaida-air-strikes-syria
17. http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.616730
18. http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/
19. http://www.theguardian.com/world/bae
20. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/05/bae-saudi-yamamah-deal-background
21. Richard Brooks and Andrew Bousfield, 19th September 2014. Shady Arabia and the Desert Fix. Private Eye.
ooOOoo
Two journalists reporting from two very different countries separated by thousands of miles.
Yet together they illustrate the very low regard for truth, for truth and integrity I should add, held by two major western Governments. That old saying of never underestimate the power of unintended consequences is hammering inside my head.
What very strange times we live in just now.
The sooner the concepts of truth and integrity are adopted by those with the power, money and influence, the sooner this world will turn away from what looks eminently like future self-destruction.
Let’s turn to dogs for some examples of beautiful ways of living.
Learning from Dogs 
I speak objectively from the point of view of observing nature and running a business. If an animal or a business behaved in the manner that the US Government runs its agencies, the animal would die, the business would go bankrupt. The US Government runs a system of agencies from intelligence gathering to policing that is inefficient and ineffective; duplicating function and action; wasteful; taking actions that do not meet goals, such as a spy using taxpayer resources to chase their lover. As an administrator I would put the entire system under review, define the goals, then start merging and simplifying the system. I could probably cut the costs in half, and a lot of Government officials would lose as their jobs become unnecessary.
Regarding the bombing campaign against ISIS, it is necessary and has my full support. Knowing how ISIS behaves I have no reason to doubt the truth of the stories that ISIS has been burying children and women alive; that ISIS is involved in genocide and in the mass destruction of everyone and everything that is counter to their narrow worldview; and that they will bring their brand of terror to every nation on this planet that is counter to their worldview; that it is useful that all the extremist elements in the West have left for ISIS like wasps to honey, and it is useful they never come back alive to wreck destruction on innocent people. Heraclitus says “Strife is Justice”, and in this situation, the total elimination of ISIS is justified and necessary to prevent the outcomes that I have listed.
Good news is that the ineffective and inefficient administrative system that the US Government has deployed such as 17 intelligence agencies will not persist because the US Government is running out of money. It may take many years, but the sort of money the US Government is spending against income and a rising debt, which other nations or public bodies such as China won’t continue to underwrite will force it to make improvements such as merging and abolishing agencies and activities.
Other hidden challenges for the US Government, its agencies and companies is loss of trust; everyone is now seeking alternatives to the dominance of US financial and technology industries to safeguard their information and industries from being snooped on, undermined and restricted. Russia has now deployed its own payment systems to Visa; alternative financial powerhouses have emerged such as BRICS working together; cloud computing is the USA has been devastated as non-USA customers stop using them.
The integrity and truth of information is a particular interest of mine. Heraclitus has a lot to say on the subject. The only truth that is worth knowing is what nature manifests, as for instance a dog, which Heraclitus calls the Common. The integrity of a thing is what Heraclitus refers to as its Logos, a pattern that makes a thing what it is. If I fall onto a beehive I will be stung, because it is in the nature of a bee to defend its nest; the bee’s nature is described as its Logos, that which directs and organises the bee relative to the strifeful events in its environment.
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Wow! Alex what an incredible reply from you. Your passion for what you believe just poured out of my tiny tablet screen as I sit up in bed (it’s 5:45 am) reading your words. Thank you.
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You are welcome 🙂
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Tom said “Never have so many had access to so much information about our world and yet been so unprepared for whatever happens in it.”………
Maybe that;s because we are not really looking after the world Paul.. We are no longer ‘In Tune’ with our Mother Earth, And have run our lives in business, Material Goods, Dollars and Sterling, Yen and the Euro.. Putting Things on pedestals that govern how we measure our standard of living.. We spy on others thinking they will steel ideas, We go to war to plunder the riches of Mother Earth claiming them our own.. We Rape the Land gouging scars and leaving trails of pollution, we poison the oceans and waterways.. The skies, and ourselves with the junk we eat..
Governments in my own opinion are puppets dancing to others tunes Paul.. 9/11 is still causing controversy, because anyone with a brain can see that it wasn’t just two planes that brought 3 buildings down don’t forget the 3rd which just dropped..
War also just doesn’t Happen,, It takes years in the planning.. And just as we are winding one down in Afghanistan.Both of our nations get embroiled in another.. Oh Paul I get sick of the whole charade of the Games being played in Government who are hand in glove with one another..
You should pay a visit to my page http://wp.me/P16xW7-16j and watch a film entitled Scared Sacred.. it opens your eyes! 🙂
Thank you for sharing these view points Paul and thank you for allowing me to air mine.. 🙂
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