Middle East

Mini-Book Review — Jones – The Human Factor

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Jones, Ishmael, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, Encounter Books, 2008, 383 pp.

This book is the career memoir of a former Marine and stock broker who entered the “non-State Department” clandestine service of the CIA and was a deep cover case officer from the ’90s through the late ’00s. It covers the story of his training, deployment, and activities overseas focusing on radiological and biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the course of tours in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia, and finally a “combat tour” in Iraq. Serving overseas with his wife and children under the cover of a “software solutions expert,” he contacted disaffected or bribe-able scientists and business-people from rogue nations. By casting his inquiries as commercial and academic opportunities, he was able to gather a steady stream of intelligence on WMD programs in the Third World.

The central theme of the book, however, is how staff at the home office (from top to bottom) either intentionally or inadvertently got in the way of his doing an effective job. Most authors are the hero of their memoirs but Jones does an admirable job of giving his pride in his accomplishments a reasonable airing without masking the real value of his book. The CIA is a large modern business with a primary mandate to stay out of the newspapers and off TV. How it does so is a tale both depressing and all too familiar.

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Was Islamic Terrorism Caused by Square Dancing and Lady Gaga?

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In some quarters, it’s popular to blame the rise of Islamic terrorism on economic factors (poverty) and geopolitical factors (Israeli “settlements,” American troops in the Middle East.) Bret Stephens argues that a far more important driver of terrorism is rage at the freedom–and especially the sexuality–of Western women. At the link, Stephens cites the horrified reaction of Sayyid Qutb, who is considered the intellectual godfather of Al Qaeda, to his experiences during his visit to the U.S. in the late 1940s. Qutb was particularly repelled by what he called “the American Temptress.”

Stephens doesn’t mention it, but–Qutb formed his vision of the American Temptress while observing a square dance at a church social!

The point about the connection between sexual fear and hostility on the one hand, and Islamic terrorism on the other, is by no means new with Stephens, of course, but he describes the case well and uses it to explain why the growing fashion of casting Israel as the root cause of terrorism is a ridiculous one.

Link via psychiatrist Dr Sanity, who adds extensive commentary.

Two COINs for a Sunday Night

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Dominoes
Dominoes

Rufus Phillips

Rufus Phillips:

In 1954, as a young Army officer detailed to the CIA with little experience, Rufus Phillips became a member of what was then called the Saigon Military Mission – several years before America’s military involvement in Vietnam became a matter of public record. He worked directly under Col. Edward Lansdale, the Air Force officer working for the CIA who was responsible for managing the U.S. presence and advising the nascent South Vietnamese government of President Ngo Dinh Diem – trying, for example, to convince Diem to post realistic-looking election results. As the war progressed and America’s involvement deepened, Phillips led counterinsurgency efforts and won the CIA’s Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work; later, he became a consultant for the State Department and served as an adviser to Vice President Hubert Humphrey until the 1968 election.

Phillips wrote a book Why Vietnam Matters and gave a lecture and Q&A session on it at the Pritzker Military Library on 11.22.2008. Phillips was concerned with outlining the lessons he learned in Vietnam and how they applied to Iraq and Afghanistan. One interesting observation Phillips made is on the domino theory in response to an audience question. He argued that the domino theory was very much in play in the mid-1950s in Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. There was no organized native government at all so a few Commie insurgents showing up with a rifle was enough to constitute a government. This was less true in later years when those nations had developed some institutional strength, though it’s interesting that Laos and Cambodia followed South Vietnam in succumbing to Communist rule rather quickly…almost like dominoes.

There is a video of the lecture here and an MP3 here.

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Mini-Book Review — Smith — The Strong Horse

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Smith, Lee, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, Doubleday, 2010, 256 pp.

Strong Horse is a series of conversations, observations and recollections of the author’s experiences in the Middle East over the last decade … focusing on Cairo, Beirut, Israel and Damascus. Living in Brooklyn, Smith took the events of 9/11 as a personal challenge to study in the region. That led him to discussing the political and social culture of the Arab world with individuals as varied as Sufi scholars, Koranic recitators, Lebanese Druze warlords, and Cairo doormen … engaging as well with more famous names such as Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian Nobel Laureate in Literature), Edward Said, Omar Sharif, and Natan Sharansky.

As the title of the book suggests, Smith feels the conflicts of the Middle East are largely an internal clash of Arab civilizations and involve the “captive” peoples (Copts, Druze, Christians, Jews, Sufis, Shia, etc.) who must somehow survive with Sunni majorities and governments in the region. The spillover of violence into the West, while constant, is therefore largely a secondary effect. The key question, the author believes, is over “who’s the real Muslim?” Since that bloody debate, by definition, doesn’t extend to the infidels, violence in the non-Muslim world is usually some form of manipulation in benefit of domestic agendas. The evidence of the last decade suggests the Arabs reserve the lion’s share of their bile and violence for each other. Though they provide unrelenting warnings about the dangers of inciting further violence by Muslims (through American actions in Iraq and Afghanistan), such concerns never seem to translate into a lighter hand by authorities within the region. It is this observation which leads Smith to propose that “strong horse” politics was, is, and will be, a enduring principle in the Middle East … and widely supported by Arabs of every persuasion.

For Smith, Arab antagonism to Americans and Westerners is fundamental, being as they are neither Muslim nor, more importantly, Arab. The various Arab tribes and sects who feud endlessly amongst themselves do not permit any profound reconciliation with the Other, either across the religious and ethnic boundaries or within them. Muslim willingness to leverage Western allies against other Muslim powers is built right into Islamic history, as outlined with methodical effort in Efraim Karsh’s Islamic Imperialism: A History, reviewed earlier on chicagoboyz here.

The author’s conclusion after his travels and conversations over the last decade is that “overthrow, domination, and eventual collapse” is a political pattern long established amongst the Arab tribes, largely reinforced (not introduced) by Islam, recognized for over half a millennium by Arab historians, and it shows little or no sign of change in the 21st century. The strong horse is the model for successful political change in the region. It was not chosen as a metaphor by Osama Bin Laden on a whim. And it resonates deeply within Arab culture. It is the aspiration of all participants in the political process in the Middle East, in Smith’s belief … and any discussion of peace (as opposed to interim truce) is a form of cultural betrayal. And punished accordingly. Despite the fact that this cultural habit reiterates destructive cycles without end, it cannot be relinquished without giving up a fundamental cultural narrative. The toxic results are self-evident to modern Arabs but if Smith is to be believed, they are caught in a situation where all they can do is “double down” on the model of political change that has served them very poorly in the past. Struggling to cope with the impact of two centuries of Western technology and culture, the Arab hope is that an Arab Strong Horse will arise. The reality is that it is the United States, and inadvertently Israel, that have found themselves in the role of Strong Horse in the Middle East. The burden of the role is that all parties in the region look to gain favor and/or manipulate the destruction of their domestic and regional competitors by playing games with the Strong Horse. As Smith quotes in passing, Arabs are better at feuding than warring. At the point at which they are able to escalate conflict to war, inevitably it is their culture and self-regard that pays the price. What was true of Napoleon in Egypt is now true of America in the Middle East.

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“Lebanon’s legacy in Afghanistan”

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From a brilliant column by Caroline Glick:

Then there is the message he sent the Afghans. Just as Barak and Olmert discouraged the Lebanese from cooperating with IDF operations against Hizbullah when they declared that the IDF would not remain in Lebanon, so by announcing a timeline for withdrawal at the same time he announced his force build-up, Obama told the Afghan people that they have no reason to collaborate with US and NATO forces on the ground.
 
For Obama personally, this is a win-win situation. If McChrystal is able to make headway, Obama will take the credit. If not, Obama will blame McChrystal, and the Afghans, and NATO, and the Republicans, and George W. Bush for his failure. Then he will withdraw all US forces from the country, and watch as a disinterested observer as the Taliban retake control of Afghanistan – all to the rousing applause of his anti-war political base.
 
On the other hand, for the American people and for the free world as a whole, this is a lose-lose situation. The sound and light show strategy Obama announced will enable al-Qaida and the Taliban to grow stronger as they wait out the American withdrawal. Likewise, just as Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon emboldened the Palestinians to initiate their terror war in September 2000, so the US retreat from Afghanistan will embolden terror forces and their state sponsors the world over to attack US and Western targets.
 
IN ISRAEL, the refusal of successive governments to fight our jihadist enemies to victory served to demoralize the public by making it believe that the IDF is incapable of truly protecting the country. The path that Obama has now embarked upon in Afghanistan will likely have the same impact on many Americans. This posture of weakness and helplessness will be sharply contrasted with the emboldened stance of America’s enemies.
 
From the time the Netanyahu government took office in late March until its recent moves to cut a shockingly dangerous deal with Hamas and prohibit Jewish building in Judea and Samaria, there was a sense that Israel had turned a corner. The public rejected the Barak-Olmert legacy of defeat and elected Netanyahu to change the course of the country. Depressingly, today it is less apparent that Netanyahu has in fact abandoned their legacy of defeat.
 
What is absolutely certain, however, is that until both Israel and the US change course and defeat our enemies, we will not be safe. Moreover, we must recognize the infuriating fact that even if both countries decide to defeat their enemies, their embrace of victory will come too late for the soldiers killed in futile and pointless battles and for civilians murdered in terror attacks that could have been prevented.

This is worth reading in full.

I fear that both the USA and Israel will pay a terrible price for the despair-inducing plague of bad leadership that afflicts both countries.