Hitchens: Dump the Central Intelligence Agency

Update and Bump: Ed Morrissey proposes a solution:

It's time to reconceive intelligence in a post-Cold War world. Given that it serves to defend our nation, it should fall under military command. That may not be the most elegant solution, but clearly the supposed benefits of civilian management have not made themselves apparent in either accuracy or efficiency. The laws that govern military intelligence and covert operations would therefore extend to all of our efforts, and failures to abide by those laws would have secure methods of correction.

I don't know if that would be the best solution, I'm still stuck on trying to tear down the CIA with a wrecking ball. On one hand, there is already an intelligence gathering arm in the military already. On the other hand, who's to say that the same inefficiencies and politics that have sprung up with the CIA wouldn't happen if the military's role were expanded?

Christopher Hitchens unloads over at Slate:

And now we have further confirmation of the astonishing culture of lawlessness and insubordination that continues to prevail at the highest levels in Langley. At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence. This deserves to be described as what it is: mutiny and treason.

Someone's head should roll for this:

Despite a string of exposures going back all the way to the Church Commission, the CIA cannot rid itself of the impression that it has the right to subvert the democratic process both abroad and at home. Its criminality and arrogance could perhaps have been partially excused if it had ever got anything right, but, from predicting the indefinite survival of the Soviet Union to denying that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait, our spymasters have a Clouseau-like record, one that they have earned yet again with their exculpation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

That's what really gets me. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on our intelligence apparatus and it seems like they are always wrong. This is bad.

This whole Great War on Terror reeks. Not because terrorists who want to harm us shouldn't be dispatched as quickly as possible, but because the Faustian bargain that has been made means we have given up our soul.

Ed Morrissey: Terrorism is a tactic

Over in the Captains Quarters, Ed Morrissey makes the point that many neo-conservatives and the Bush administration have been ignoring since 9/11:

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter -- and the State Department finally has discovered this truth. In a long-overdue act, State has forgiven the "terrorism" of the Hmong and Montagnards who fought so bravely beside us in Southeast Asia, allowing them to enter the country and allowing those already here to become legal residents.

I've stopped by CQ off and on over the past few years, and I don't know if I recall him ever making a statement so, well, um, Michael Moore-ish. His post does address something further down that I don't think gets talked about enough:

...We have used "war on terror" as a label because it allows us to avoid the more accurate -- and more provocative -- descriptor of a war against radical Islamist terrorists. Using that phrase clearly identifies our enemies, but we have avoided it to keep those enemies from twisting it into a war on Islam for their own propaganda purposes.

Unfortunately, this declaration of war against a tactic leads to a lot of conclusions, many of them self-defeating. It calls into question what terrorism means, how it's defined, and under what circumstances it becomes terrorism.

What Morrissey didn't add in his critique is how we define victory in a war against a tactic. The truth is, there is no way to win the GWOT. Just like murder, kidnapping, extortion or any other tactic, it's always going to be around. There is a way to counter radical Islamic terrorists, but that's material for another post.

So why not just be more clear on who our enemy is? The explanation given by Morrissey is inadequate because it doesn't address our own internal propaganda purposes. Look at the rights that we have given up in the name of fighting the GWOT. The Patriot Act has allowed warrantless searches, and the elimination of habeaus corpus to become a norm. Has there even been a discussion about even amending the Constitution to reflect that norm? Not at all. But that's OK, it's all in the name of fighting terror.

All of the amendments that make up the Bill of Rights are equal, and should be respected equally. Assaults on the 4th and the 5th amendment should be met with the same resistance as attacks on the 1st and 2nd or the other 6. Terrorists hate us because of our freedoms Bush says, well our government is working on that.