Unintelligent
Fraysters dissect the government's proposed reforms.
Fred Kaplan's harsh assessment of the intelligence-reform bill pending in Congress met with a mixture of apprehension, skepticism, and exasperation. Across the ideological spectrum there was little faith expressed in the government's latest pro forma effort to keep the country safe: the creation of yet another agency head. First off, some facts. EdgeVertigo does us the favor of reading the fine print: the bill raises the mandatory retirement age for FBI to 65 from 60. don't ask me what that has to do with intelligence. LannonMac expresses unease at the proposed consolidation of intelligence agencies: The arrangement since WWII has been that the FBI, Federal Marshals, ATF, DEA and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are responsible for the lion's share of internal security, principally law enforcement, but also some counterintelligence, while the CIA, Military Intelligence, NSA and other dedicated foreign intelligence agencies were responsible for spying on other nations. In fact the CIA is specifically prohibited (with several exceptions, like internal CIA counterintelligence, etc.) from carrying out spy operations in the United States. wolfkiller disagrees, citing not consolidation but " duplication of effort" and bureaucratic overlap as the primary problem with the reforms. Demosthenes bookends his frustration at the inadequacies of the Congressional bill with two pertinent quotations: Politics: the art of keeping as many balls as possible up in the air at one time—while protecting your own. NorinRadd thinks the supposed "science" of intelligence gathering is actually closer to abstract art: I once heard someone say that you can take any abstract painting, name it the Crucification, hang it on a gallery wall, and viewer after viewer will tell you how it depicts the crucification, some even pointing out the figures, cross, etc. On a more humorous & snarky note, RealMassLibertarian finds the term "Bush Intelligence Bill" somewhat of an oxymoron. AC … 6:30pm
the bill also creates the FBI and intelligence "reserve services". in "times of emergency", you can be "reemployed." back door operative/agent draft, anyone?
the bill increases the use of unmanned planes over the southwest to enforce immigration laws, and adds border patrol agents and investigators by the thousands. the bill criminalizes being a "coyote" through a "bringing in and harboring" provision. it is thus arguably a stealth hispanic illegal immigration bill.
the bill allows the bureau of engraving and printing to produce currency, postage stamps, and other "security documents" for other countries, if reimbursed for doing so. my theory is that this provision is intended to allow them to make the passports of the type we now require. we create a market and exploit it?...
the bill provides a sense of congress that we support the "future of pakistan" and while doing so extends waivers of certain anti-pakistan legislation regarding foreign assistance through 2006.
the bill offers a lot of blather about what american policy regarding afghanistan should be, which is arguably a violation of the constitutional allocation of foreign policy powers.
the bill says in the sense of congress that saudi arabian cooperation is not what it should be, again, arguably not its business, and then, after wasting power discussing what's none of its business, offers no concrete recommendations. blah blah blah.
the bill whines about the long term results of american support for dictatorships. you can do yur own hypocrisy check on this one.
the bill most amusingly provides that the policy of the US government should be to "increase training in multilateral diplomacy" and "negotiation." ditto provision for increased cooperation on terrorism. you can put your own punch line in there…
the bill encourages future legislation designed to streamline and speed the return of analog spectrum to the FCC. again, i don't have the foggiest what this is doing in the intell bill.
I know it makes sense to combine all of the intelligence agencies, it will be much more efficient, much more reliable and make it much more difficult for international terrorism to strike at America's heart, yet I still feel very uneasy about an all seeing, all knowing, all recording domestic intelligence agency spying on American citizens.
I have not had a chance to review the bill presently before Congress, but I hope that there are some very strong checks and balances included (though I doubt it), which will restrain and restrict the proposed intelligence agency's ability to spy on Americans.
--Sam Attlesey
Haven't we had enough of the turfism? I'm sick to dearth of it. We listened to Secretary designate Rice explain that nobody could have foreseen 9-11 and that the memos that clearly outlined such a course of action were never elevated to a visible enough level to have an impact. So, apparently the solution is to leave it in the hands of those whose primary concern is the protection of their own prerogatives. Under this compromise bill the new Intelligence director will be about as effective as Tom Ridge's color coded charts and duct tape warnings and about as ruefully remembered.
The point here is communication and accountability—that requires budget control and the ability to MAKE organizations do things they don't want to do, and more importantly consider things they don't want to consider—like memos titled "Bin Laden determined to attack within US" and paying attention to General's like Van Ripper who win war games with unconventional tactics (you might call them asymmetrical) against our battle plans and are then promptly ignored.
I like the idea of a Director that makes the Department of Defense consider its actions at a macro level and justify them in light of cross checks—I like it because Rumsfeld's record is, simply put, poor and doesn't justify the degree of faith the administration places in him. The Department of Defense needs to be tied in to all available intelligence sources, accountable for justifying its theories and those intelligence sources need to be expanded and less centered around the budgets and single note tracks that military branches tend to follow based upon their disciplines.
An overall Intelligence Director is a response to a spectacular intelligence failure that requires correction, a broader perspective and accountability. I want one neck to grab the next time they fail to protect us, and living in the city twice proven vulnerable to terrorism (and universally voted as 'most likely to be annihilated by terrorists with a dirty bomb'). I demand that sole source accountability and control be a part of that equation. It's obvious the buck isn't stopping with the President, or the secretary of Defense, and the dilution of this position further diffuses the responsibility to a degree that nobody is accountable or responsible for making sure that the next Mohammed Atta never gets off the ground.
This is, in the classic sense of the word. A 'whitewash'—a coat of white paint thinned with water to temporarily cover the dirt.
The 9-11 commission has reached uncomfortable conclusions. I'm not stating that the compromise bill is entirely bad—it implements some of the reforms and its better than nothing but the version prior to this compromise version was stronger and better in that the current budget restrictions hamstring the new director before he takes office. Centralization of intelligence authority has pros or cons, and that's a debate worth having, but this compromise that is neither fish nor fowl circumvents the real conversation we need to be having and the actions we need to be taking. There are many people out there who support this administration over security concerns—burying intelligence reforms and keeping us locked in the same structures that have resulted in past failures is not corrective action.
And the next time people are wondering 'how this could happen' or 'if it could have been prevented' remember this triumph of gutted intelligence reform—of the gut over intelligence—and remember whose prerogatives are being protected, how much budget control and the scope of their vision and interests and at what cost that comes.
The best protection for the people is not necessarily to believe everything people tell them
--Demosthenes
Our intelligence system, intended to be grounded in logical conclusions drawn form imperfect factual sets of information, is too often not driven by a desire to know answers, but by a desire to support foregone decisions. It becomes an exercise in rationalization…
Moreover, when you are not listening to what is being said ("Bin Ladin Determined to Attack" for example), but instead projecting your own notions about what you expect to hear or want to hear, people get killed.
Thur sday, Dec. 9, 2004
Much as Susan Sontag derided the replacement of politics by psychotherapy in her post-September 11thNew Yorker essay, Chris Suellentrop's critique of MoveOn.org as a do-nothing "feel-good" group for liberals provoked an equally strong reaction on the Fray. chaosboy takes an even harsher tack, describing MoveOn.org as representative of "liberal dems" who are "whiny, angry, unrealistic and incapable of being productive or either averse or foreign to success." Rubicon1 issues this counteranalysis and challenge: Mr. Suellentrop is claiming that moveon hasn't been effective, which is easy to do, as the Dems have taken an asswhipping lately. However, the red/blue split is fairly close and it may have been worse without liberal grassroots organizations like Moveon. With Moveon, Al Franken, Michael Moore and Air America, at least the left is finally waking up and getting in the game (Falwell recently said we should carpet bomb Iraq and the media didn't bat an eye). I don't hear anyone saying the GOP would get more moderate swing voters if they unloaded Rush and Falwell, but Dems are quick to blame Moore, and apparently now, Moveon. What is the purpose of the article? To discourage donations to Moveon? Mr. Seullentrop: I dare you to write a followup article with more effective alternatives to get liberal candidates elected (er, but that would be more difficult than just whining). Expatriate_Z disputes the contention that MoveOn.org is lacking in concrete political victories with a list of the organization's accomplishments here. Fingerpuppet also rises to MoveOn.org's defense: It's easy to disdain liberal causes in general now after the recent electoral losses. But this is largely a function of our society being less concerned with right and wrong than with who wins and who loses. The way things are commonly perceived, victory determines merit, and might makes right… Being politically active often seems like an ineffectual waste of time at first, until the tide starts to change. I give a lot of credit to those who go out to work for something they believe in when the chips are down, when they're scorned by society and their cause seems hopeless. But without them, probably, most of the meaningful progress in society would never be accomplished. AdamMorgan likens MoveOn.org's function to a sort of liberal DNA that can be passed from one generation to the next: One important function (from a biological perspective) of a society or a large group is to pass on traditions. Like genes, information in traditions helps the next generation adapt to one's environment more efficiently. So, although moveon.org has been largely unsuccessfully in their stated goals, I think it can be argued that what they're developing, or trying to develop, are a set of traditions by which liberals can, once again, successfully use to win elections… TheNewSnobbery thinks Suellentrop's measuring stick for MoveOn.org's victories is unfair, and compares the group to a "digital church": Suellentrop gives a .org the booby prize for not stopping the impeachment that created the impetus for its own creation? The internet is many things, but (and I can't tell you how often I have to explain this) it is not magical and cannot travel back in time. Continuing with our string of analogies, baltimore-aureole thinks a closer analogy might be eBay politics. the great success of eBay is that it elevates the unexceptional item to collectable status. people constantly remark that they had no idea that a battered "batman & robin" lunchbox from the 1960's had ANY value at all, and are overjoyed that some idiot on eBay paid them $35 for it. the guy who paid $35 (who probably resembles "comic book guy" on the simpsons) similarly feels that $35 was a screaming bargain). this is because the few people who value damaged school lunchboxes are congregating on eBay and bidding them in a frenzy of "collectableism"… the concentration of like minded, close-minded people at activist websites - whether these sites are left or right of center - simply provides a mis-impression of the viability of those ideas, and thus causes the ideas to "sell" (via donations) for more then they may really be worth. ScottStock yawns at our discussion and has decided to MoveOn himself, declaring internet politics "sooo last year." For further study of MoveOn.org's psychotherapy-laden lexicon ("painful," "heartbroken," "revelation," "dark"), read this post-election letter from MoveOn.org to its members. AC … 10:02pm
So, perhaps, the struggle of moveon.org is the same struggle that Democrats have, to find a new set of traditions that Democratic politicians can successfully use to define who they are…
As for everything else on Suellentrop's naughty list -- the Iraq war (blame the press, thanks), the impeachment of a supremely unpopular and incompetent California Dem, slavery, Pearl Harbor -- I don't see how any fundraising group is supposed to do those things.
How is moveon any different than a digital church where like minded citizens get together to pass the plate around and bitch about how bad things have gotten. According to at least a hundred thousand essays I've read in the last 2 months, that strategy has worked pretty well for the Republicans. Their hysterical money raisers just seem effective because Bush won.
Which has to be the most facile argument you can make. The swiftboat vets put "hysterical" ads on TV and shifted the debate. Moveon did the same. Now that the election is over, do we simply declare SVFT the tactical winners and Moveon's strategy defunct? Either raising money and putting ads on TV is useful or it isn't, but it isn't fair to deride the Dem faithful as a bunch of circle jerkers without at least acknowledging that the insular, circle-jerking world of Republicans seems to have been perfectly effective.
the concept that dean is the only person who can "save america" has about as many adherents as those who believe cartoon lunchboxes deserve a place of honor in their homes and are of interest to others who visit said homes.
i now await opprobation from MoveOn contributors and lunch box collectors for my temerity in finding any fault with their world views.
Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004
It's beginning to look a lot like … the Holiday Season: recycled's guide to finding the fir tree of your dreams may or may not be responsible for sparking a polemic in BOTF against the steady secularization of Christmas in America. Otherwise said, have we taken the X out of X-mas?
StormyWeather rails against the "Secular Progressive Assault on Christmas":
We have seen a rash of attacks against Christian Values and Christmas of late. These include:
1. Attempts to ban the singing of Christmas Carols in Schools.
2. Trying to forbid even the mention of or reference to Jesus or God in school or in public celebrations.
3. Attacks on the Boy Scouts because of their position on Gays and God.
4. Repeated attempts by the Far Left to paint people of faith as some kind of whacko nuts.
5. Attempts to force Cities and Counties to remove all "religious symbols" from city and county Logos.
The latest and most outrageous example comes from Denver, where the Organizers of the Annual Christmas Parade refused to allow any mention of Christ. A Float, depicting the Birth of Christ was BANNED from the Parade. Ooops .. one correction. The also refused to refer to it as the Christmas parade .. calling it the Festival of Lights.
However, a Float dedicated to Dead Homosexual Indians was allowed.
Fortunately, here in Long Beach, where apparently saner minds prevail, we held our annual Christmas Parade this past weekend. (Documented proof available upon request for a slight fee.)
To the list of politically correct euphemisms, Schadenfreude adds this one.
His rant against the "rightwing" aside, zarquieka feels that the Christmas holiday has skewed our sense of Jesus's religious importance:
Jesus Christ was taken out of christmas long ago. In fact, Jesus Christ was never in christmas! Christmas has always been about lies: Santa Claus, decorated trees, gifts, food, and the christmas story, etc. Religious rightwing christians have been just as guilty as the non-christians in worshiping material things, instead of, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ! …
It is what Jesus Christ did in God's plan of salvation that has greater importance to man and not christmas. Thats what God intended for man to worship.
Adam Christian is co-editor of the Fray.