| Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity. |
What the Harvard Victory School will make of its flagship MBA's latest mischievement is beyond guessing. Although there may be a certain element of "blowback" in the situation described, at the same time, for anybody at all to manage to take money OUT of the bushogenic quagmire seems a miracle of economics, a feat comparable to baking stones into raisin bread. Particularly when the money seems to have no particular connection with either petroleum or the Kiddie Krusade payrolls! Early critics of RoachMotelism foresaw that the creation of Peaceful Freedumbia might engender a new source of moral support for M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí and a source of recruits for The Base, but I don't recall anybody predicting that it might do all that for the bad guys and show a financial profit too.
This story sounds a little too quaint and curious to be true -- a bit too much like witchcraft, even -- and perhaps on the whole it isn't true, in the sense that these "sums" are probably not really so "substantial," not amounts that our economic OnePercenters and their HVS trainers would apply that adjective to spontaneously, were they discussing WalMart, or the hidden price of illegal immigration, or possibly even their own 1040's. When Major Leaker talked to The Los Angeles Times on the telephone, he seems not to have mentioned any definite figures, but let us examine his account of how this small-scale Rumsfeldian lootin' supposedly works so that we may gauge the profit potential for ourselves:
| "Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the reason people are contributing again, with money and private contributions coming back in from the Gulf," said [Maj. Leaker]. He added that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia also has become an effective criminal enterprise. "The insurgents have great businesses they run: stealing cars, kidnapping people, protection money," . . . the activity is so extensive that the "ransom-for-profit business in Iraq reminds me of Colombia and Mexico in the 1980s and '90s." |
(Are Columbia and Mexico vastly improved in 2007, then? Perhaps I slept through that news report.)
You'll notice that the LAT gentleman, Mr. Greg Miller, seems to have oversimplified things at the top of his narration. That certain OnePercenters in Sa‘údiyya should be heartened by the progress made in Peaceful Freedumbia and give more generously to The Base on that account is plausible enough, but it has nothing to do with the bread-from-stones miracle. I do not recall whether the critics of RoachMotelism specifically predicted this development also, yet they may have. Probably, however, they did not, since thinking economics first is more characteristic of Marxists and AEIdeologues and HVS MBA's than of mainstream anti-Bushevik thinkers, who are much more likely to mean moral support rather than financial support when they use the noun without further specification. Did the critics of RoachMotelism, or their predecessors, ever worry about exactly how Ho Chi Minh was to find the money needed to ensure that "the people united can never be defeated"? Maybe so, but that is not what we remember Indochina peaceniks for.
If Mr. Miller is a little confused, he is not alone. Major Leaker himself rather muddles together "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" and "the insurgents" and "the ransom-for-profit business in Iraq." If we assume that sub-Rumsfeldian lootin' is in fact a promising line for the neo-Iraqi entrepreneur to pursue at the moment, it would be odd if only one band of doctrinaires heard the knock of opportunity. In all probability, some loot for M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí, others loot in the path of terrorism / insurgency / guerilla / muqáwama conceived in terms unacceptable to The Base, and at least a few shabby non-idealists loot strictly for themselves, disgrace to the human race, or likely candidates for Republican Party membership, though such behavior makes them.
As always, Major Leaker's own position must be scrutinized, to such extent as scrutiny is possible. Clearly he cannot be in total sympathy with Boy and Party. If he were, he would keep his mouth shut about a matter which can only be an embarrassment to them. Notice that he speaks of "success in Iraq and Afghanistan" (i.e., success from the viewpoint of The Base or of globoterrorism more generally). Master Tony Snow would not describe the present correlation of forces quite like that. The Crawfordites still consider that they have a monopoly on Success and Victory, although perhaps, given a journalistic knee applied to the groin, they will allow that they have a certain number of "problems of success" as well. Per contra, Boy-'n'-Party loyalists are to consider that M. Bin Ládin and the rest are the exclusive proprietors of Failure and Defeat, even though there may be some postponements of defeat corresponding to the Kiddie Krusaders' problems of success.
Major Leaker dispenses with Party Chinese and says ""Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the reason people are contributing again, with money and private contributions coming back in from the Gulf" in American English, which is a kindness to the reader at least. It does not, however, locate him on the bureaucratic map or reveal what cause he is leaking in aid of this time. Neither does his mishmash of AQI and "insurgents" and what even a bipartisan commission would agree are plain vanilla criminals. A pious Bushevik would presumably have remembered that she is definitely at "war" with al-Qá‘ida, probably at "war" with all insurgency whatsoever inside Peaceful Freedumbia, but content to resign mere criminals to the wimpy Law Enforcement Paradigm.
I'm not quite sure about the middle ground there, admittedly. Perhaps they don't automatically cancel one's Party card for supposin' that it is up to poor M. al-Málikí to be at "war" with most neo-Iraqi guerilla / insurgency / muqáwama / terrorism. Or perhaps they do cancel it. I really dunno. In any case, Major Leaker thinks it more effective or more accurate or both to lump all the black hats together and revile them as criminals rather than as hostile "warriors," which seems sensible to me but is not strictly compatible with orthodox Bushevismus. It looks as if the good major must be some kind of Law Enforcement Paradigm wimp, in short. He is also in agreement with colloquial English, according to which it would be odd to label "great businesses they run: stealing cars, kidnapping people, protection money" anything other than "crime," and the perps thereof "criminals." Perhaps a normal (that is to say, a non-Party) Anglophone might call such businesses "organized crime," but the chances that he'd ever call them "hostile warfare" are pretty well zero.
Those charitable Sa‘údí OnePercenters can, I assume, be lumped in as criminals also, for even the Great Cardboard Kingdom surely can't be incompetent enough not to have issued an ukase or twenty against any of its subjects sending money to M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí. There may, however, be organs of muqáwama inside Peaceful Freedumbia that subjects of Riyád are not forbidden to assist financially. Or if not that, then neo-Iraqi organs of muqáwama that Sa‘údí OnePercenters may assist without running any risk of being prosecuted for actions that are technically illegal. I'd say "the matter bears looking into," except that looking into it may be quite impossible in the Great Cardboard Kingdom, where the "wink, wink, nod, nod" principle appears to supersede mere Western-style legalism. (No wonder the Crawfordites find the place simpático!)
Returning to Major Leaker, what clues to his identity does Mr. Miller provide?
| A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation. |
That's the first paragraph, and it sure sounds as if Langley Fedguv University is Major Leaker's alma mater to me, but let's run through the rest quickly,
| . . . U.S. officials . . . intelligence officials . . . a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official . . . One former high-ranking [central intelligence] agency official . . . U.S. intelligence and military officials . . . a former senior CIA official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing U.S. intelligence operations . . . Current and former U.S. intelligence officials involved in the surge . . . a senior U.S. intelligence official responsible for overseeing counter-terrorism operations . . . Several former CIA officials . . . one former CIA official . . . another former CIA official . . . . |
(I've omitted obvious allusions to the same undisclosed person or persons.)
If the Boy-'n'-Party cowpokers go apoplectic down at the ranch assumin' that every damn spook in the country must have attended this particular Leaker family reunion, they perhaps have reason. It slightly spoils the effect that Mr. Miller does have one identifiable source, but only slightly:
| In a written response to questions from The Times, the CIA said it "does not as a rule discuss publicly the details of clandestine operations," but acknowledged it had stepped up operations against Bin Laden and defended their effectiveness. "The surge [of spooks] has been modest in size, here and overseas, but has added new skills and fresh thinking to the fight against a resilient and adaptive foe," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in the statement. "It has paid off, generating more information about Al Qaeda and helping take terrorists off the street." (...) . . . [T]he CIA began sending dozens of additional case officers to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The impetus for the surge is unclear. Several former CIA officials said it was launched at the direction of former CIA Director Porter J. Goss, and that the White House had been pushing the agency to step up the effort to find Bin Laden. But the CIA disputed those accounts, saying in its written statement that "this initiative was and is driven solely by operational considerations." The effort, according to CIA spokesman Gimigliano, grew out of an assessment in mid-2005 in which "the agency itself identified changes in the operational landscape against Al Qaeda." |
Well, well, "solely by operational considerations," was it, then, and not at all because "the White House had been pushing"? Golly!
Mr. Gimigliano thinks that he can now slight the Boy-'n'-Party crew, and even attach his name to discouraging words about 'em, with perfect impunity. Undoubtedly there will come a time when Crawford is not -- Father Zeus hasten that day's blessèd advent! -- but Mr. G.'s watch may be running slightly fast.
It's no secret, of course, that the bureaucratic spooks do not much care for the Big Management Party cowboys and never did. Or that this ill-will was mutual even before the aggression of March 2003. Even before the Pentagon/WTC attacks, for that matter.
This reciprocal antagonism is very natural. In the eyes of a Harvard Victory School MBA, the most exalted of spooks, James Bond himself, even, can never be anythin' more than a hired hand, one more easily replaceable employee, only a fungibility, never a necessity. The practice of genuine Big Management is far over the head of pygmies like that, obviously, and evermore shall be so.
This is not how the Bani Langley see themselves, although they do make certain verbal concessions in that general direction at times. Uncle Sam's "intelligence community" exhibits a definite tendency to lapse into the fathomless Murdochian insincerity of "We report, you decide" along with its standard mental reservation, "But of course you guys are only so many flaming jerks if you don't decide it the way we reported it." In their hearts they firmly hold out at Langley that Knowledge ought to be Power, and they let their true opinion show perhaps a bit more than is in their own best interest, or rather, than would be most effective in getting the militant GOP stumblebums to do something sensible for a change.
Decent political grown-ups should not allow their warranted disgust with Republican Party extremism and Big Management to cause them to side with the Bani Langley lock, stock and barrel in this quarrel. We are to reflect that someday we shall regain control of the Executive Branch and that it will then be more comfortable and convenient if we do not have to explain that we never actually promised that the Knowledge of the spooks is to be the sole criterion by which we donkeys exercise our Uncle Sam's hyperpower. We don't really mean that, so we shouldn't promise it; we should not even allow ourselves to look as if we had promised Americans anything like that. There must be no cheap and Crawford-worthy narcissistic contempt for knowledge and intelligence, obviously, no more petulant and bratty willfulness, no more reckless hormone-basin'.
Beyond promising America that minimum, however, let us keep all our options open, O donkeys! Any standard dictionary can inform the uninformed that a Democrat is not somebody whose favorite political slogan is "All power to the experts!"
No comments:
Post a Comment