On "Actionable Intelligence"

I will have to be very careful in this posting. It, unfortunately, will not include all that I know, would want to say or go into the sort of detail that is really needed. In other words, it won't be as complete, or coherent as I would have liked to make it. Can't be helped for a variety of reasons, including legal ones.

I hope my comments are not misunderstood. I have no direct inside knowledge of what happened exactly in Libya. I do not want to be an armchair quarterback needlessly criticizing people, some now dead, on decisions they made in a complex and high stress situation. That said, just from reading lots of open sources, my own long experience serving in some tough and nasty places, including in the Muslim world, and a few conversations with friends still at State or who have recently retired, it is clear that there was a major failure of judgement in Libya in regards to the security of our personnel there. The blame, unfortunately, starts with the late Ambassador, and heads right up the chain to the Secretary via the Deputy Secretary and the Undersecretary for Management, the Security Bureau (DS), and the Assistant Secretary for the Near East Bureau (NEA). As one navy officer with whom I served in the Pol-Mil Bureau at State told me, "We would never put a ship to sea in the condition of some of those embassies." Clearly, our operation in Libya was one of those. Heads should roll, including that of the Secretary. Yes, Secretary Clinton should leave or be fired.

In my 34 years at State, I dealt with tons of intelligence reports on a huge range of topics. There was always intel pouring in from some agency or another, some friendly foreign security service or another, journalists, and common folks re potential threats to US missions abroad. Most of it was garbage. Worthless. The sort of thing that would read, "Source reports indications of planning by unknown persons to execute an attack on US interests in the near future." And that would be a moderately good one; most reports were a lot more vague than that. It was hard to do much with that. As Charge of a large embassy in a Muslim country, I would have constant meetings, often several times a day, seven days a week, at all hours of the day, with our security folks to go over every scrap of intel and piece of random info that we had on threats to American facilities and citizens. We constantly would gather with our friends at the British, Australian, and Canadian missions who often had the same security concerns as we, and exchange the latest information. Most of the time it was tough to reach conclusions on actions beyond telling people to be "extra alert."

As I noted, most information was not very specific and not considered "actionable," to wit, that you could undertake a specific action at a time and place certain that would head off the threat. In addition, of course, we had a job to do other than just stay safe. One of the demands of leadership was making decisions balancing the need to "stay safe" with the need to get our job done. We, after all, were there to do our country's bidding, not just to stay safe. There was always tension between those two demands. There were many times when I would go to bed at three or four in the morning wondering if I had made the right decision; had I achieved the right balance between those demands? Was I about to get good people killed for no good reason? Had I made the right decision in not closing the embassy that day? Had I made the right decision approving a trip by our people to a certain locale in light of the threat info we had? On the occasion when I shut the embassy down, had I done the right thing or was I needlessly panicking?

The press has spent a lot of time speculating about marines. Not all embassies have them, and few consulates do. Contrary to what you see in Hollywood movies, a marine detachment at an embassy (MSG) is generally small: six to eight marines, at times a few more. Their job is to protect the most sensitive parts of the embassy. They are rarely expected to be the force that stops an assault on the outer walls. That is the responsibility of the host nation. I remember being inside an embassy on many occasions, with a howling mob of thousands of irate Muslims outside, hoping that the host country would fulfill that responsibility. If they did not, and things such as high walls, and barbed wire could not hold back the invaders, we had drilled, over and over and over, the things we all would do to protect classified materials and ourselves as best we could. Different embassies have different rules of engagement for the marines. In the ones I ran they had very clear instructions on the use of deadly force. They had weapons, and those were loaded.

The Obama White House is hiding its manifest incompetence and failures of judgement behind the excuse of lack of "actionable intel."  The White House claims there was no "advance warning" of an attack in Libya and presumably Egypt. This, of course, is nonsense. As noted before, there rarely is highly detailed advance warning of a specific event; when you have that sort of rare quality intel you often can do something to avoid the incident in the first place. If, for example, you know of an assassination attempt on the Ambassador at point X on date Y, at a minimum you make sure the Ambassador is not there then. In one case in which I was heavily involved, we had exceptionally good intel that the bad guys were building a giant truck bomb to use in a public event in which we would be participating; we were able, working with specially vetted local forces and the always great Aussies, to interrupt that construction effort and put away a nice number of evil doers. Most of the time, however, you need to rely on good people interpreting incomplete and often contradictory information in light of ongoing events--local and global--and the current operating environment. It is an art, not a science, and it relies on something which seemed missing in the Libya case, i.e., common sense.

Common sense remains the single most important component in making decisions about security. If the resources did not exist for whatever reason to have a properly set up and secured facility in Benghazi, why was it there? That is a question for the people at State management and for the Secretary. Who approved placing such a weakly defended facility in a highly unstable location? What was the purpose and usefulness of the facility weighed against the risks of having it there? Some bad calls seem to have been made.

A valuable piece of intel seemed to have been ignored: the calendar. Did nobody have access to a calendar? They are readily available. In the missions where I served we always had a keen awareness of the date and the love of terrorists for key dates. Certainly the date 9/11 should have rung some bells. Were people not aware of outside events that could have an impact in Libya? What was the urgent nature of the business that required the Ambassador to be in a remote, hard-to-defend location on 9/11, at a time when any newspaper reader could see the tensions building all over the Muslim world?  Canada, for example, had just shut down its Tehran mission and ordered Iranian diplomats in Canada to leave. Why? What was up? I do not want to be unfair but I fail to understand why the Ambassador was in Benghazi on 9/11.

When I was at State, the atmosphere under the Obama misadministration was even more unreal than usual. The fawning over Obama and Hillary Clinton knew no bounds. The press releases and the internal conversations seemed to reflect the nattering of a cult rather than sober deliberations. We would have "serious" people tell us, "The world loves President Obama." There was a feeling that somehow we were at a magical turning point in the history of humanity. Doubt what I am saying? Really? See the incredibly idiotic statement made by White House spokesman Carney on September 14:

"This is a fairly volatile situation, and it is in response not to U.S. policy, not to, obviously, the administration, not to the American people. It is in response to a video – a film – that we have judged to be reprehensive and disgusting. That in no way justifies any violent reaction to it. But this is not a case of protests directed at the United States, writ large, or at U.S. policy. This is in response to a video that is offensive  . . . to Muslims."

We see here a perfect summing up of the philosophy that dominates in this misadministration. We are not to blame, nothing is our fault, nothing we have done could possibly have anything to do with anything negative that is happening. We are good and loved. It is all somebody else's fault, so, of course, we can't be expected to be ready to react. The only thing missing from Carney's statement is overtly to blame it all on Bush. Those sorts of blinders make it impossible to make good judgements. The price for that, as we saw in Libya, is death.

Muslims and Mormons and the Left

OK, we all have heard about some obscure video that apparently insulted Islam and set off a world-wide orgy of violence and murder. Our Secretary of State, at the Andrews air base ceremony for the four Americans slain by Muslim radicals, repeated the line that somehow this video was responsible, not the pathologies of Arab culture, not the totalitarian bent of the Islamist creed, not the manipulation of ignorant fools by malevolent creatures, no, none of that--it's all about the insult to the Islamic faith contained in some video nobody has seen but everybody--even an Embassy under attack--must condemn.

OK. Got it. This administration and its echo chamber press are against insulting religion. No works of "art" should be permitted that insult religion. We need a loophole in the first amendment. Got it.

So when outraged mobs of Mormons storm and gut the theaters running the Broadway play "Book of Mormon," we can expect Obama and Clinton and the Hollywood glitterati to side with the mob?

Just wondering about the size of that loophole in the first amendment.

White House Clarifies: President Obama Went to Vegas, Thought it was Egypt

Responding to a potentially embarrassing mix-up revealed by FOX News, White House spokesman Jim Carney told journalists that recent criticism by Republicans over the President's trip to Las Vegas as the Middle East explodes "is unfair and a politicization of the presidential campaign. There should not be this sort of criticism of a sitting US president."  Carney noted that, "President Obama had quite clearly told the pilot of Air Force One that he wanted to go Egypt to see what was happening, to take personal charge, and assure the Muslim Brotherhood that we are allies, and will do everything in our power to find and punish those who made the disgusting video that has so rightly incensed the followers of the Religion of Peace."

Carney, however, noted that despite the President's clear instructions to fly to Egypt, the Air Force pilot got confused and flew the president to Las Vegas, as there is a "pyramid there, too, as well as that half lion, half Michael Jackson thing . . . the Sphinx, I think it is called." The President, Carney noted, has ordered Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to dismiss the pilot and the crew of Air Force One for this "unjustified and unjustifiable mistake." In addition, Attorney General Holder has been asked to investigate any "Republicans, journalists, bloggers, pundits, or Tea Partiers who try to make a political issue out of this at this sensitive time."

Come on, guys, it is hard to tell if it's Vegas or Giza . Give the man a break, he is campaigning in all 57 states, after all.

We Are Not at War . . . Just Under Attack

We should be at war; instead, we are under attack.

Let's start with the basics. Our collaboration with the Europeans to knock off Qaddafi was a major mistake--a disaster, in fact, and a disaster that Obama now owns. The Europeans have been wrong about everything in foreign affairs for at least the past 250 years; they were wrong on Libya and yet they got our inept, naive President, and his inept, naive Secretary of State to do their bidding. That was a big mistake, and something that this little blog warned about on March 18, 2011:

"The US, of course, will have to take over the whole operation when it becomes patently clear that neither the British nor the French have the capabilities needed. That, therefore, means the whole mess will be ours:  the UN will back off; the Arab League will be nowhere to be seen; and the EU will be snickering behind our backs with not a word of thanks for having secured their oil supplies.  And the Libyans? All of them, pro- and anti-Qaddafi, will be angry with us and our intervention.
There is no gain for the U.S. to get involved, and no valid reason to get involved, so, of course, we will get involved."

We are now paying for the stupidity of removing the nasty, desert drag queen who long ago ceased as a threat to America and, in fact, was an ally (I have personal knowledge of this) in tracking down Al Qaeda terrorists. It was an even bigger mistake, one on the scale of Carter and the Shah, to help push President Mubarak out of power, welcome the Muslim Brotherhood, and pressure the Egyptian military into accepting the MB. We can see the results on our TV sets, in the idiotic behavior of our diplomats in Cairo (and I know a lot of them, including the Ambassador)--and in the media's never-ending quest to protect Obama and his foolishness, and give him a pass.

The reason we see deranged or at least nasty and unpleasant dictators in the Arab world is that Arab societies are deranged, nasty and unpleasant--thanks largely to the brand of Islam practiced in those societies which is particularly deranged, nasty, and unpleasant. In the Arab world you can have a brutal authoritarian who tries to restrain the even more brutal religious fanatics, or you can have religious fanatics who lash out at anyone who does not see the world as they do. It is for this reason, for example, that I do not join in the enthusiasm for helping the Syrian rebels against the brutal pencil-necked Assad family. What do you think will replace the thug Assad, who is at least a moderately rational actor and responds somewhat to pressure from the Russians and others? Notice that the Israelis are quite conflicted about the rebellion in Syria; they don't say much about it. Just as I could not understand in the 1980s what interest we had in bringing an end to the Iran-Iraq war, I see no particular reason to get involved in Syria. No result will be a good one . . . literally.

The problem is not one regime or another. The problem is not creating yet another Arab state in "Palestine." The problem is not our insensitivity. The problem is Arab Islam. The deep, deep pathologies of Arab Islamic societies are out for all to see . . . yet again. And our great, overpaid liberal mass media with all their highly "educated" anchors and pundits, what are they covering? They are attacking Governor Romney for daring to say that we should never apologize for our core beliefs. The media and many at State, including the increasingly unhinged Hillary Clinton, claim that the unrest we now see in the Arab world, unrest which takes the form of attacking US embassies and murdering our people, is due to some obscure video made in July by some obscure person who has yet to be fully identified. Perhaps, then, it was in anticipation of this film that Osama bin-Ladin had his crazies fly planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center? Wouldn't be a surprise for the media to allege that . . .

Bush understood what the sophisticates at State, in the universities, and the media did not: we are in a titanic, multi-generational conflict with the forces of Islamic jihadism. He spoke the hard truths and was reviled for it. I think that Governor Romney understands that truth, too. As a successful businessman and an astute student of the economy, he certainly understands that what gives the jihadis some heft and punch is oil money. That money allows them to pressure others more moderate, such as Indonesia, and to pay for the war on the West. The single greatest blow we could strike at the Islamic crazies is to break our dependence on foreign oil. The word "frack" strikes terror in these regimes. Without the oil, and the dollars and euros it generates, the Arab and Muslim world will be largely ignored by the civilized world. Our technology and our own vast energy resources are our greatest weapons against the Arab despots, the Iranian Imams, and their allies such as the authoritarians Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa.

The worst thing we can do is what we are now doing. This feckless policy of one-sided engagement and self-abasement, of willingness to dismiss the crazies' public utterances, and the insistence on emphasizing the positive, will only get our citizens murdered here and abroad, our diplomats dragged through the streets, our embassies burned, and our flag used as a door mat. Weakness by us inspires craziness in them. Ambassador Stevens, whom I knew slightly, thought he was safe with and loved by the people he helped "free" from Qaddafi; he saw himself as a new Lawrence of Arabia, and instead ended up as a new Charles George "Chinese" Gordon of Khartoum.

We are under attack, when we should be at war. While we build our own energy sources our dazzling ability to employ the instruments of war must be maintained and used as needed. The crazies will never love us, so they might as well fear us.

Thoughts on Islam and the West

I am writing something else on the current state of play in our never-ending struggle with Islam, but in the mean time I  re-run something I wrote on May 9, 2011, shortly after the killing of Osama. I think it holds up today, although some of my friends at State were appalled by it.  

"The SEAL raid on Osama's 'palace' in Abbottabad has a meaning well beyond the welcome elimination of a murderous weasel who killed thousands of innocents by his direct actions, and tens-of-thousands indirectly. I see his death as I would that of a serial murderer: does capital punishment necessarily produce a lower crime rate? No, but that particular person won't kill again, and, more important, it shows that some people commit certain acts that are so beyond the pale, that society cannot and will not tolerate them at all. Osama had forfeited his right to live. Society, acting in this case through an American SEAL, had the right and the obligation to terminate Osama's stay among us. That brilliant raid should be a lesson for Muslims on the perils of following the path laid out by Jihadi murderers. It should also be a lesson for the West: we can defeat the Jihadis as long as we realize it is a long process, requiring patience, and sacrifice--and if we can continue to produce the men who carried out that raid.

Islamic civilization is a rotten house. Constant outside pressure either will collapse it, or force its miserable occupants to begin a serious effort at reforming and rebuilding it.  Islam holds sway among some of the world's potentially richest and most advanced countries, but that, in fact, are among the poorest and most retrograde on the planet.  Islam as practiced is a failed ideology: it leads to slavery, stupidity, and poverty on a mass scale.  The greatest victims of Islam are the Muslims forced to live under its tyrannical, mind-numbing, and brutal rule.

Islamic civilization produces nothing. Yes, yes, what about algebra? Ok, Ok, it hasn't produced anything in modern times besides ignorance, death, despair, and poverty.  It is the MSNBC of religious faiths, but, admittedly, with higher ratings.

I have lived and worked in many Muslim countries over the course of my long career, and have never failed to be amazed by the damage Islam does to its practitioners or, better said, to its victims. It makes people stupid, intolerant, and violent. I found repeatedly that there was an inherent contradiction between being a good Muslim and being a good person.  I met lots of good Muslims, and lots of good persons:  there was VERY little intersection between the two groups. Islam requires breaking a person down and making him or her into a robot; it discourages and openly represses independent thought; and fosters a constant feeling of paranoia of and hatred for the outside world: non-Muslims should be allowed to exist only to the extent that they can be taken advantage of, and then converted or discarded.

Islamic civilization, ironically, can only be saved by constant and sharp defeat at the hands of the hated infidels.  The Islamists must be defeated in their war against Israel; their war against India; their war against Russia; and, of course, their war against the West and our friends. We must understand their totalitarian ideology and defeat it again, and again, and again. As long as we do not see our belief in freedom and liberty as requiring our suicide, we can and will defeat them, just as the SEALs did in Abbottabad.  Only then will it be possible for "good" Muslims who also  want to be "good" people, assuming they exist, to stand up and tell the Jihadis to take a hike.

Islam needs a major reformation and enlightenment, and if its practitioners are not willing or able to do it, then the SEALs will do it for them. That's the choice facing Muslims. That's the choice so starkly shown by events in Abbottabad."

Narrative Fail: The Libs on Libya and Egypt

The libs have been carefully putting out the story that the attacks on our diplomats in Libya and Egypt while, of course, "unjustified"--perish any other thought!--are, in fact, "justified" by the apparently to-be-expected "outrage" by Muslims over some mysterious video made in July by some "right-wing" nobody who "insulted" the Muslim faith.  My friends at State and elsewhere are telling me that, in fact, it is becoming more apparent that the attacks were planned in advance to occur--hard to believe!--on September 11.  Any excuse would do, but the attacks were to take place on September 11.

The libs also have been quick to jump on Governor Romney for issuing a statement critical of the bizarre statement issued by our Embassy in Cairo. The libs note that the Governor issued his statement "before all the facts were in." What hogwash! He issued his statement responding to the Embassy's statement that read:

"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."

Remember this idiotic statement was issued and then reaffirmed even AFTER the mob had commenced its attack on the diplomatic compound. It criticized not those attacking the Embassy but unnamed persons "who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others." Secretary Clinton followed up with her own statement which repeated the criticism of those who would criticize a religious faith. It was only after the outrage in the US began to pour in, including the very sharp statement by the Governor, that the Obama White House did what it does best: throw its supporters and servants under the bus. The White House disassociated itself from the Embassy and the State Department statements as though neither Embassies not the Secretary of State have anything to do with the administration.  Those statements, by the way, are cleared at many levels in the Department and at the NSC.

We have journalists, as seen at Governor Romney's September 12 press conference, criticizing Romney for criticizing the President's foreign policy, "politics stops at the water's edge." I guess nobody ever criticized George Bush? John Kerry and candidate Obama never said anything critical of the Bush foreign policy? Besides what the Governor was criticizing was the outrageous (that word) philosophy present in the State Department statements.

I suppose that in keeping with the philosophy of not using free speech to insult the religious beliefs of others, we would all have been justified in storming the DNC in Charlotte when the delegates rejected God. Would devote people be justified in burning Bill Maher's house to the ground and murdering his show's staff? Would Christians in the US be justified in burning down Muslim mosques in retaliation for the burning of Coptic churches in Egypt and the mass murder of Christians by Muslims in Nigeria?  Just wondering . . .    

Murder in Libya

The US Ambassador and three and possibly four other members of our diplomatic staff in Libya were murdered by an "outraged" mob of Muslims.  Our Embassy in Cairo is also under attack. We can expect attacks on other of our facilities throughout the Muslim world.

This is the result of Obama's great foreign policy success in promoting the "Arab Spring," in bowing to Saudi princes, in trying to deny that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, in gutting our military, in actively seeking our defeat in Iraq, in actively seeking our defeat in Afghanistan, in actively seeking to undermine Israel, and in actively seeking to minimize the threat posed by Iran. The one thing that the Muslim mobs know how to detect is fear and weakness. They have detected that in President Obama, the Democratic Party, and the hapless Hillary Clinton.

Americans need to wake up to the fact that Obama is dangerous for America. Meanwhile, our people get murdered by those whom we have helped.