Every German schoolroom should display a stuffed Dutchman as a horrible example to youth, wrote the poet Heinrich Heine in 1831. For Americans, the horrible example to youth at the taxidermist shop is Western Europe. Last month the US re-elected a president despised by enormous European majorities. Europeans hate and fear the United States, but Americans barely can summon the energy to ignore Europe, which they have written off as a decadent and soon-to-disappear civilization.
In the major newspapers of the US east coast, to be sure, Europeans continue to read about their sad little concerns. What "red state" Americans hear, by contrast, is that Europe is dying, like the now-vanished "evil empire" of Soviet communism. I have been viewing a video titled The Siege of Western Civilization (Storm King Press, www.stormkingpress.com, US$19.95) in which a former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official, Herbert Meyer, advises Americans on what they may do to avoid Europe's dreadful fate. Meyer's Siege video better reflects America's mood than the international pages of The New York Times.
When the administration of president Ronald Reagan determined that Soviet communism could be crushed, not merely contained, I observed recently, CIA director William J Casey "routinely ignored the legions of Russian-studies PhDs, reaching out instead to irregulars who could give him the insights he required" (How America can win the intelligence war, June 15). Herbert Meyer led the irregulars who broke with the established CIA view to argue that the Soviet economy was at the edge of breakdown.
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ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, said CIA officials had given him "carte blanche" to attack President Bush anonymously last summer in publicity interviews for his book Imperial Hubris. Specifically, Scheuer said, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow had told him "We're giving you carte blanche" to do whatever interviews he wanted, as long as the criticism in those interviews was directed toward Bush, not the CIA. Scheuer didn't follow the rules. He took on senior CIA officials in his publicity interviews. As a result, he said, he was "muzzled."
Last week Harlow stepped forward to challenge Scheuer's claim. "His assertion that I gave him 'carte blanche' to attack the president is absurd," Harlow told me in an email. And he continued:
Even [Scheuer] seems to have recognized that, since he was subsequently quoted in the Washington Post on November 2[5] as saying I told him in July to stop his incessant media commentary saying, "This is affecting the president, you're getting involved in the election. The agency is being interpreted as not being evenhanded" and also saying (quite accurately for once) that I told him some of his comments quoted in the media were "inappropriate for a currently serving intelligence officer."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/06/2004 4:08:04 AM ||
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Some believed, naively, that the media would actually read some of Scheuerâs wacky rantings (e.g. "American soldiers are paid to die" or his laudatory comments about [Osama bin Laden]) and dismiss him as a crank.
If CIA officials believed this, they should be fired for being completely ignorant fools. The US press loves anti-American cranks.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
12/06/2004 9:11 Comments ||
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Goss should prosecute him, or at least make his life a living hell, and make sure all the approvers are gone. This should not be tolerated and an example should be made for the encouragement of others.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/06/2004 9:20 Comments ||
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Weren't these guys the ones tasked with bin Laden? If so, it's becoming very clear where we can place much of the blame for the CIA failures in that regard.
#6
Much of the CIA's problem can be laid at the feet of allowing the agency to be dominated by graduates of Yale and Harvard. It is the same "schoolboy" attitude that destroyed British Intelligence during the Cold War. The great irony is that these Ivy League schools have long since surrendered their elite status to other institutions. Today, Yale and Harvard graduates in the CIA are much like West Point graduates are in the Army: looked at as untrustworthy, prone to poor management skills, disrespectful of their peers and subordinates, and less capable of performing their jobs than ROTC graduates from some state university. They are wrecklessly ambitious and superb at hosting cocktail parties and kissing up, and utterly devoid of loyalty.
#7
Most of my experience with Acad grads is not good,most had(like most Ivy Leaque grads)an elitiest(re:snobs)"You don't know shit" attitude.They had no concept of the value of"field experience.Case in point:While on Tac site duty(ROK,Hawk missle battery,1974)we were at state 3 readines,the fog was so thick you could not see 10 feet.Every thing was absolutly soaking,dripping wet.I was 52b30(generator mech),the newest generator we had was built in 1952,4 years before I was born.The main power circuit breakers kept kicking out,Buttur bar 2nd Luie was on my ass.After hours of listening to him,and trying to get him to understand there was nothing I could do about the weather.It finally took a WO4 to get him off my ass.I do not have much tolerance for University educated know nothings with little or no real world experience.
#9
Big difference between snobs and elitists. Snobs will despise you, and ignore your opinions and experience as worthless/meaningless if you are not part of their "in group." Elitists, on the other hand, don't care where you come from or who you are, but have no patiences with those who have not achieved (made themselves part of the elite) in whatever field they value. Thus, Ivy Leaguers and West Pointers will ignore the Master Sergeant or the Tech Specialist because they didn't go to the right school. The Elitist will ignore the school boys, but pay strict attention to the Sergeant and the Specialist, because such people actually know what they are talking about. Elitists tend to be better bosses, but demanding taskmasters.
#11
I think the distinction's between arrogance based on expertise, which is earned and is relevant to the tasks at hand, and arrogance based on social background, which many people still (falsely) correlate with Ivy League degrees. These days most Ivy Leaguers are not silver spoon types but rabid overachievers in certain areas favored by admissions directors: grade-grubbing and volunteerism mainly.
The CIA needs more asian-americans who actually speak farsi, pashtun, arabic, mandarin etc and know those regions intimately from their upbringing and family ties. Where they went to school is secondary.
#12
Thus, Ivy Leaguers and West Pointers will ignore the Master Sergeant or the Tech Specialist because they didn't go to the right school.
Can't speak for conditions in 1974, raptor. But today, while I don't doubt there are some West Point grads who may fit this description, I've got to say that the current crop (who came in just before or after 9/11) by and large don't -- at least so far as I can tell and so far as I can influence them.
My own classes have heard me stress more than once that it is their NCOs that will make or break a young officer and that if they are lucky, they will get good NCOs who will teach them the ropes. I'm not above giving my students the real details of some of the WWII recruits and career NCOs in my own family, such as my uncle / godfather:
one of the light infantry deployed in a pitifully thin line at Bastogne, without artillery, in below freezing weather just after XMAS. Absorbed the thrust of the elite German Nordwind attackers. Regiment had 40% casualties. Uncle ended up with a Silver Star, 2 Bronze Stars and 3 Purple Hearts in a few weeks of action. Took out 3 German pillboxes by himself when his squads were decimated by heavy fire. He was a very junior soldier at the time.
Yes, a war hero. (a real one, ahem) My cadets know -- or ought to know -- that they will be lucky to have the privilege to lead soldiers like Uncle Tatch. (nickname)
One thing West Pointers are taught is to push to accomplish what can be accomplished. Our cadets carry a very heavy academic, military and physical fitness load and there are no acceptable excuses for failing to accomplish any part of it. It may be that in peacetime, some of that attitude comes across as insensitive arrogance, especially in young officers who don't have enough real-world experience to know what is and what is not possible to achieve.
I wasn't around in the 70s so can't begin to compare the Point then to what we teach and require now. The academic side has changed a lot, can't speak to the military side. But I'll point out my husband was an OCS grad rather than USAF academy grad, and he fits in well as a West Point faculty now that he's retired out of uniform. There are a number of active duty faculty in my department who aren't grads here, too, and they bring a different view point. So do the prior-enlisted among the cadets.
Last Wednesday, Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota and co-chairman of the U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq, called on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resign in a commentary published in The Wall Street Journal. While Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China quickly rallied to Mr. Annan's defence, there can be no doubt that the senator is correct: Mr. Annan has to go.
As Mr. Coleman argues, "the most extensive fraud in the history of the United Nations occurred on [Mr. Annan's] watch." Over the decade-long run of the oil-for-food program, the UN and several member states looked on as Saddam Hussein siphoned off at least 20% of its $100-billion revenues for his personal use. Hundreds of millions went to rebuilding the Iraqi army; more was paid out in kickbacks to Western politicians, governments, political parties, journalists and UN officials who looked the other way. Tens of millions funded terrorist training and operations around the world, particularly among Palestinians. The grandiose, sprawling palaces U.S. troops discovered when they liberated Baghdad and other Iraqi cities were constructed by Saddam and his family with the proceeds from oil sales meant to pay for food and medicines for ordinary Iraqis. Critics of the American- and British-backed sanctions against Iraq that were in place from the early 1990s until the 2003 invasion claimed they were responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis per year through malnutrition and disease. But we now know it was Saddam's lust for gold plumbing fixtures and weapons that caused the lion's share of Iraqi hardship.
snip
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/06/2004 9:40:55 AM ||
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Kofi should go--Kofi should stay. Who cares which way? If the goons and hoods national representatives keep Kofi, our funding dries up. If someone else comes in, they will not have the authority to make the needed changes. The UN is too rotted out to fix. It is the dead skunk in the middle of the road, stinking to high heaven. (With apologies to Loudon Wainwright III)
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/06/2004 11:24 Comments ||
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via Drudge - developing, as they say
NYT PAGE ONE SPLASH TUESDAY: Classified cable sent by the CIA's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon... Developing...
Doing anything they can to take W down. Goss? Clean house!
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2004 10:21:23 PM ||
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Maybe this is great news. Since when has the CIA been correct about Iraq?
Recent news that the Shia are consolidating on a block of candidates and will take the election seriously sounds to me like a silver lining.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
