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‘The Great War Of Our Time’ Goes Inside The CIA, To A Point

‘The Great War Of Our Time’ Goes Inside The CIA, To A Point

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism — From Al Qa’ida to ISISby Michael Morell, with Bill Harlow; Twelve (384 pages, $28)
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In his book The Great War of Our Time, former CIA deputy Director Michael Morell explains the blunder that led to Saddam Hussein being deposed and sent him into hiding in a spider hole.

Hussein, Morell writes, had overestimated the U.S. intelligence-gathering capability.

The Iraqi dictator wanted to maintain the bluff that he had weapons of mass destruction to keep “his number one enemy,” Iran, at bay. His mistake was in assuming U.S. intelligence would realize he did not have WMDs and would “eventually lower the (economic) sanctions and, more important, not attack him.”

Among the other nuggets in Morell’s book, subtitled The CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism — From Al Qa’ida to ISIS, is this: Once captured, Hussein grew a beard because he thought it would help him flirt with the nurses. Again, a miscalculation.

For three decades, Morell worked at the CIA, rising to acting director before retiring in 2013; he is now a national-security correspondent for CBS News. He briefed Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He was, in CIA lingo, “read into” the top issues of the day, putting him inside “the circle of knowledge.”

The book was vetted by the CIA. Do not expect blockbuster secrets. Or a tough-minded analysis of the agency. Morell’s self-description is that he’s a “Midwestern straight-arrow.”

His analysis of the presidents is standard stuff. Bush was decisive if a bit impetuous. He quotes the commander-in-chief swearing during a briefing: “F*ck diplomacy. We are going to war.”

Obama, Morell said, is thoughtful and cordial but slow to make a decision: “…the president also had a way of making decisions that satisfied competing factions among his national security team.”

Morell is less enamored of former Vice President Dick Cheney, his aide Scooter Libby, former CIA Director Porter Goss and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. But even then, his criticism remains low-key.

Much of the book is designed to set the record straight on how pre-Iraq war intelligence got messed up and what happened the night of the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, when the U.S. ambassador and three U.S. personnel were killed and a U.S. diplomatic facility destroyed.

Point by point, Morell takes on the critics, particularly in regard to the accusation that the CIA and White House tried to spin the story with false “talking points” for political purposes. “No committee of Congress that has studied Benghazi,” he declares, “has come to this conclusion.”

Indeed, Morell insists, only one CIA judgment, made within 24 hours of the incident, has proved wrong: the conclusion that the attack was a protest that went violent, not a planned assault.

“CIA should stay out of the talking-point business,” Morell suggests, “especially on issues that are being seized upon for political purposes.”

Still, it is doubtful The Great War will silence those who question the CIA, Presidents Bush and Obama, and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Within days of the book being published, Morell took to Politico with an essay: “Debunking the Benghazi Myths: It’s Clear Pundits Don’t Understand Intelligence Work.”

On the question of how Osama bin Laden was able to escape from the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001, Morell writes that, “The forces that would have been necessary to box him in, to keep him from fleeing over the border into Pakistan, had simply not been there.”

Other accounts give a different version: that there were sufficient forces there, or close by, including Marines from Camp Pendleton who were at Kandahar, but that an order came from higher authority for the U.S. to back off and let the Afghans take over. If Morell knows anything about this, he’s not telling.

Morell joined the CIA out of college and never stopped being impressed by the organization and its people. CIA employees are “the finest public servants” he knows. CIA analysts are a “terrific group.” That CIA employees drove back to work after the 9/11 attacks was “stunningly patriotic.”

Even the Christmas party at CIA headquarters comes in for praise, particularly during the tenure of Leon Panetta: “If you are in the national security business, it is the place to be. People arrive early and stay late.”

His respect for his former employer aside, Morell admits that the agency was wrong to let then-Secretary of State Colin Powell go to the United Nations with assertions about Hussein and WMDs that were at most estimations, not slam-dunks: “…CIA and the broader intelligence community clearly failed him and the American public.”

In passing, Morell mentions tension between the CIA and the National Security Agency and between CIA station chiefs abroad and the analysts back at Langley, Va. More on that would have been welcome.

More insightful books on the CIA have been and will be written. But an insider’s view, even one with such a mild tone, is a good addition, particularly for those of us not in the “circle of knowledge.”

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Paradox Of Fundamentalism

The Paradox Of Fundamentalism

WASHINGTON — The rise of fundamentalism and religious ultra-orthodoxy has taken much of the West by surprise. But the shock is not limited to the world’s well-off democracies.

For most of the 20th century, secular and usually left-leaning advocates of national liberation in the Third World fought twin battles: against Western colonialism, and against what they saw as the “backward” and “passive” religious traditionalists among their own people.

Suddenly, those supposedly backward believers are no longer passive. They are fighting to reimpose the faiths of their forebears. And in its most extreme forms, the religious pushback is genuinely frightening. That the Islamic State is, in certain respects, even more extreme than al Qaeda justifies our alarm.

Ultra-orthodoxy in more benign forms is also on the rise in democratic countries with long traditions of religious tolerance. Marx derided religion as an opiate that was destined to fade away. What happened to make faith one of the most dynamic forces in the world?

The political philosopher Michael Walzer has spent an exemplary life grappling with the intellectual mysteries at the crossroads of modernity, religion, democracy and justice. His latest book, The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions, examines the history and trajectory of national liberation movements in Israel, India, and Algeria. It could hardly be better timed. It asks why the secular revolutionaries, far from marginalizing religion to the private sphere through what they saw as “consciousness raising,” actually produced a backlash, calling forth often radical forms of religious assertion.

National liberation, he writes, “is a secularizing, modernizing, and developmental creed.” Its champions seek not only to free their countries from colonization but also to free their own people from what they see as the burdens of old religious understandings.

The people are not always eager to go along. “Raising consciousness is a persuasive enterprise,” Walzer writes, “but it quickly turns into a cultural war between the liberators and what we can call the traditionalists.”

Many who rose against colonial rule were themselves shaped by ideas first propagated in the lands of their colonial masters — France in the case of Algeria, Britain in India and Israel. The new leaders were simultaneously opposed to Western imperialism and avid westernizers within their own societies.

“I am the last Englishman to rule in India,” Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of Indian independence, told John Kenneth Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador to India in the Kennedy years. Indeed, Nehru was a product of some of Britain’s finest upper-class institutions — the Harrow school; Trinity College, Cambridge; and the Inns of Court.

Thus, while secularizing leaders were generally on the left, they were often viewed by the traditionalist, religious masses as elitists. Religious revivals that followed independence, Walzer writes, “were fueled by the resentment that ordinary people, pursuing their customary ways, felt toward those secularizing and modernizing elites, with their foreign ideas, their patronizing attitudes, and their big projects.”

One of the many virtues of Walzer’s subtlety is that he helps us understand that while the ideologies of today’s fundamentalists and ultra-orthodox are rooted in ancient or medieval ideas, these movements are, in a peculiar way, thoroughly modern. Their resistance to secularization “soon becomes ideological and therefore also new: fundamentalism and ultra-orthodoxy are both modernist reactions to attempts at modernist transformation.”

Reactionary religious politics was, in part, a response to the governing failures of secular ideologues who had been inspired by various forms of nationalism and socialism. But even where secularists succeeded in building working societies (Israel and India), their ideologies lacked the deep cultural roots capable of inspiring the same level of loyalty religious commitments can command. And so, over time, Walzer writes, young people “drifted away, moving toward the excitements of global pop culture or toward the fervency of religious revival.”

Walzer is too good a philosopher to write a simple handbook for a liberal revival. Instead, he outlines a useful long-term project: Liberationists should continue to press for religious reform, but they also need to reform themselves by engaging seriously with the religious traditions of the people they propose to liberate.

This means challenging religious reactionaries for their support of various forms of oppression, notably the subjugation of women, and maintaining a strong defense of democracy and free expression. But it also means engaging traditions from the inside, taking into account their contributions and ending the cycle of pure acceptance or pure rejection of religious insight.

In battling extreme religious orthodoxy, liberal secularists will be more successful if they embrace a certain wariness of their own orthodoxies.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.

Photo: Aphrodite via Flickr

Syria’s Assad Says He’s ‘Not Worried’ Despite Battlefield Setbacks

Syria’s Assad Says He’s ‘Not Worried’ Despite Battlefield Setbacks

By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

ISTANBUL — Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday he was “not worried” about battlefield setbacks and exhorted supporters to avoid succumbing to “frustration” as the Syrian conflict rages on without an end in sight.

“In wars, there are wins and losses,” Assad said, while not explicitly conceding any recent rebel victories.

“But this doesn’t prevent us from warning people that the beginning of frustration leads to defeat,” the Syrian president declared at a ceremony in Damascus marking Martyrs Day, a national holiday.

The comments reported in the state-run media were Assad’s first public declarations since al-Qaida-linked rebels in March and April seized a number of towns in Syria’s northwest, including the provincial capital of Idlib and the strategic town of Jisr al-Shughur.

The remarks seemed designed to reassure supporters at a difficult moment. Despite Assad’s confident tone, the comments indicate some degree of concern within ruling circles in Damascus and a need to bolster public confidence.

In his address, Assad noted that a war could involve “thousands of battles,” with many “wins and losses, and ups and downs, but the important thing is for faith in the inevitability of victory to remain unchanging.”

The recent opposition gains have triggered international media speculation that Assad’s government may be wavering after more than four years of war. The overstretched Syrian army is fighting on multiple fronts and has suffered heavy losses, though the government maintains firm control of the capital, the Mediterranean coast, and major cities such as Homs and Hama.

Opposition forces — including the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front and Islamic State, the al-Qaida breakaway faction — also hold large stretches of Syria.

Recent reports have indicated that Islamist rebel factions, including Nusra Front, have regrouped and received renewed financial and military aid from outside allies, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar. The three nations have been major supporters of the armed effort to oust Assad.

But the Syrian president dismissed conjecture about his government faltering as part of an orchestrated “propaganda campaign” meant to stir doubts among the population. Similar reports that his leadership was nearing collapse after the war erupted in 2011 proved to be illusory, Assad noted, citing an even more tenuous period for his rule.

“I’m not worried over this, because as the first propaganda campaign…at the beginning of the crisis failed, this campaign will fail,” said Assad in his comments at a school honoring “martyrs” lost in the current conflict.

He also vowed that Syrian forces would rescue pro-government forces trapped in a hospital in the northern town of Jisr al-Shughur, now in rebel hands.

The comments appeared aimed largely at Assad’s core backers, including minorities, business leaders, security personnel and others who have remained loyal through the punishing war that has left more than 200,000 dead, destroyed large swaths of the country, and forced millions to flee Syria. Many supporters fear that an overthrow of Assad’s secular government would result in sectarian cleansing and a hard-core Islamist regime in Damascus.

Opposition representatives who routinely label Assad as delusional dismissed his latest comments as indicative of his lack of a grasp of the mounting military losses, economic setbacks, and popular discontent undermining his rule.

“Assad is completely out of touch with reality,” said George Sabra, an exiled opposition figure contacted by telephone in France. “Either he does not know the reality, or he truly is out of the picture….He is not ruling the country, but is merely imprisoned in it.”

Assad’s speech comes a day after a key ally, Hassan Nasrallah, who heads Lebanon-based Hezbollah, also labeled as “futile” and “baseless” a “wave of rumors” suggesting that Assad’s rule was foundering.

Nasrallah vowed that Hezbollah and its patron, Iran, would stand by the Syrian government despite the “psychological war” against Syria. Military and financial aid from Hezbollah and Iran have been crucial in maintaining Assad’s rule in Syria.

“The Syrian state and army are strong and they can change the course of the battle,” Nasrallah declared Tuesday.

Photo: watchsmart via Flickr

Widow Of U.S. Hostage Lashes Out At Obama Policy Toward Captives

Widow Of U.S. Hostage Lashes Out At Obama Policy Toward Captives

By Hannah Allam, McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The wife of an American hostage who was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in Pakistan blames his al-Qaida captors for the death, but she also lashed out Thursday at what she called “inconsistent and disappointing” assistance from the Obama administration during an ordeal of more than three years.

The criticism from the wife of 73-year-old development expert Warren Weinstein, who along with Italian hostage Giovanni Lo Porto was killed in a U.S. strike on an al-Qaida compound in January, adds to a chorus of protests from families who claim the U.S. government could have done more in its efforts to bring captive Americans home before they were killed in captivity.

The families say the U.S. government is long overdue a central coordinator for hostage recovery so that opportunities don’t fall through the cracks of a diffuse interagency process.

“We hope that my husband’s death and the others who have faced similar tragedies in recent months will finally prompt the U.S. government to take its responsibilities seriously and establish a coordinated and consistent approach to supporting hostages and their families,” Weinstein’s wife, Elaine, said in a statement.

An internal review is underway to update the Obama administration’s hostage policies, though the most controversial piece — the longtime U.S. refusal to pay ransoms — is not under consideration for change, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.

Several families of hostages have criticized the administration’s handling of the cases.

The mother of American journalist James Foley, the first U.S. hostage beheaded by the Islamic State group, has been among the most vocal of the relatives calling for better communication with families and a more streamlined approach to interagency cooperation.

The family of Austin Tice, a freelance journalist and contributor to McClatchy who was seized in Syria in 2012, also has spoken out with demands for three main changes: communicating more closely with victims’ families, approaching each case individually, and seizing opportunities for a quick, safe return. One major criticism of the Tices is that there’s no one person overseeing the return of hostages, something the family has said “we crucially need to change.”

Some relatives of hostages also seek to overturn the longstanding U.S. ban on paying ransoms or making similar concessions to hostage takers, but U.S. officials have said that the policy will remain in place because it’s effective as a deterrent to targeting Americans. Critics of the ban disagree, noting that the Islamic State group freed several European hostages after receiving ransom payments while American and British hostages, whose governments refuse to negotiate, were killed.

Harf, the State Department spokeswoman, said that not all the feedback from the families has been negative, though she didn’t dispute the many calls for a revamped hostage policy.

“These families have gone through the worst thing they will ever have to go through, and I think you hear a lot of different statements from them. We’ve heard people talk about how supportive the U.S. government has been,” Harf said at the State Department briefing. “But we know this is an incredibly challenging issue. That’s why we’re doing a review of how we deal with all of these issues.”

(Anita Kumar in Washington and McClatchy special correspondent Tom Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.)

(c)2015 McClatchy Washington Bureau, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: ©afp.com / Mandel Ngan