Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (No Series)

by Scheuer, Michael

  So completely forward-looking were the RMA’ers in the 1996-to-9/11 period that they helped to make sure that bin Laden stayed alive to kill Americans. When I was chief of CIA operations against bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the National Security Council’s (NSC) instructions were to pinpoint bin Laden’s location, either to permit an effort to capture him or to give the U.S. military the opportunity to try to kill him. This task the clandestine service accomplished repeatedly,44 but the NSC and DCI Tenet always wanted to be more certain of the intelligence before deciding to act. These demands for more and better corroboration are, parenthetically, yet more evidence of the policymakers’ Cold War hangover. Transnational terrorists, insurgents, narcotics traffickers, and WMD proliferators are by definition dispersed around the globe; they have few or no fixed targets against which to focus intelligence-collection operations, as well as no Soviet-like communication hubs, headquarters buildings, missile sites, airfields, barracks, arms-production factories, navies, or strategic bombers. Access to intelligence on transnational Islamist organizations, therefore, is likely to always be less complete and confidence-inspiring than was the intelligence we acquired against the USSR or any of today’s nation-states.

  Taking his cue from his timid NSC masters, Mr. Tenet decided that the trouble in targeting bin Laden was that the clandestine service was providing only what he described as “single-threaded intelligence,” meaning, I think, that it came from only one asset or set of assets.45 Well, that was not the case. The information about bin Laden’s location was being provided by an asset that had been working with the CIA and had a proven track record. In addition to having the asset’s eyes on bin Laden with some regularity, the information they reported was further corroborated by technical means.46 Thus, for an effort to collect data on the world’s most-wanted man, in a country run by an anti-U.S. regime, where the Executive Branch adamantly demanded the more difficult operation—capture not assassination47—and would not allow CIA officers to be deployed inside Afghanistan in support of an actual operation, the information was about as good as it could possibly be. Mr. Tenet repeatedly told CIA officers that he consistently described this reality to the NSC but that they always insisted on further corroboration—they needed “double-threaded intelligence.”

  This was, of course, nonsense, but orders are orders, and we began to look for ways to acquire “double-threaded intelligence”—that is, intelligence from a greater number of sources. At this point, we ran into the obtuseness of the RMA’s champions. The quickest and easiest way to acquire the second thread was to try to collect against the tactical-communications gear used by the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who provided security for bin Laden and his residences, offices, and in-country travel. I use the word easiest not because it was a simple or safe undertaking, but because at the time bin Laden’s security personnel were mostly using World War II–era communications gear, high-frequency (HF) radios, and push-to-talk radios or walkie-talkies. Because the forerunners of the National Security Agency (NSA) had been collecting against these types of electronic communications since the happy days of Wehrmacht-smashing, the bin Laden unit and CIA technical officers believed that this sort of collection would produce the required second thread. The NSA’s collection and reporting of signals intelligence (SIGINT) has the added benefit—much beloved by clandestine service officers—of possessing a far greater power to persuade policymakers than is warranted. At times policymakers will not believe the most reliable, ironclad, manifestly true human intelligence (HUMINT) report, but if they receive even the flimsiest piece of SIGINT to complement it, the HUMINT becomes close to divine revelation for the policymakers. In essence, if the NSA had collected SIGINT to corroborate the CIA’s close-to-definitive HUMINT on bin Laden’s location, an effort would have been made—unless Mr. Tenet and the NSC decided they needed a third thread—either to capture bin Laden or to have the U.S. military spread him in tiny pink bits over the desert landscape of southern Khandahar province.

  Alas, it proved impossible to collect the SIGINT that would have produced the NSC-demanded double-threaded intelligence. Why? Well, it was not because the NSA could not collect it; it was because the NSA would not collect it. In response to the CIA’s request for SIGINT collection against Hitler-era communications gear, the NSA grandees looked down their noses at the CIA and sniffed something akin to: “How quaintly passé you HUMINT fellows are! Haven’t you heard of the Revolution in Military Affairs? We simply do not do anything as old-fashioned as HF and push-to-talk collection. Our job is to support the Pentagon in defending America against the most technologically sophisticated threats from nation-states. We collect against satellites, encrypted computers and telephones, and underground fiber optic cables. We have no time for HF, for goodness sake.”

  Hearing this answer and tugging my forelock in deference to the SIGINT mandarins, I pointed out that they would be surprised by how little underground fiber-optic cable there was in Khandahar in the spring of 1998. All to no avail. NSA refused to collect against the Islamists’ obsolete equipment; DCI Tenet, as always, refused to use the extensive powers of his office to force the NSA to do the collection; and the NSC did not get the superfluous but, to their minds, requisite second thread of intelligence. Bin Laden? He kept his life because he was not using communications gear that the RMA’ers respected and would collect against. And yes, this is yet another episode that was detailed and documented for the 9/11 commissioners. Just do not look for it in their report.

  Coalition Love and Common Interests: The Cold War taught U.S. leaders to ignore the Founders’ warning against becoming involved in what Jefferson described as “entangling alliances.” After the Soviet threat emerged and solidified, the United States took charge of forming and then leading a galaxy of multilateral organizations meant to help protect the West politically, economically, and militarily, as well as to wisely create an environment in which U.S. economic interests would thrive. Among them were NATO, CENTO, the European Economic Community, SEATO, the UN, the Organization of American States, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. On and on the list grew until a point was reached where unilateralism was not only seldom used but also was routinely ridiculed and opposed by the Anglo-American-European governing elite.

  This interlocking web of multilateral military alliances, financial institutions, and political and humanitarian organizations moved slowly and timidly and stressed the necessity of unanimity before acting. Under the umbrella of Pax Atomica, the inbred and ever-deepening lethargy of these groups was frustrating but tolerable; the Soviet Union’s own set of alliances and international organizations were, if anything, even more sclerotic. The Cold War was the heyday for alliance-building, and as it turned out, U.S. leaders and policymakers were unable to kick the habit once Mr. Reagan dished the Bolsheviks.

  Through the 1996-to-9/11 period, Washington’s involvement in multilateral alliances and organizations did much to prevent it from moving quickly, unilaterally, and effectively to protect America by destroying her enemies. As noted, Washington’s response to Saddam’s attempt to kill the first president Bush was conditioned by its desire to avoid offending one or another of our European allies, a desire that trumped the chance to slaughter a significant segment of Iraq’s intelligence service. The al-Qaeda attacks in Riyadh in 1995, Dhahran in 1996, and on the USS Cole in 2000 were never responded to at all. And again, the military response to the East Africa bombings in August 1998 was designed more to avoid the condemnation of world opinion than to wreak havoc on al-Qaeda’s leadership and organization.

  America’s Cold War coalitions were, of course, not organizations that should have been immediately abandoned as the last Berlin Wall brick hit the ground. As with all human institutions that have long existed and achieved positive results, they should not be abandoned until it is clear that their usefulness is spent. That said, the fall of the USSR did remove the raison d’être for many of the alliances—especially NATO—while simultaneously creating
an international environment in which transnational threats prospered and proliferated. And although the cant-spreaders have preached that Islamist extremism is an equal threat to all “civilized nations,” that is a lie on its face. The most lethal attacks by al-Qaeda and its allies have been on U.S. interests, not on those of our allies in the alliance network. In addition, our NATO allies, save for the U.K. and Italy, have recognized this fact and much prefer to keep the United States on al-Qaeda’s bull’s-eye and so take counterterrorism actions only as needed to frustrate attacks in their own countries. One of the most important post-9/11 lessons that U.S. leaders have yet to learn is that al-Qaeda poses threats to many countries, but the United States currently is its main target, and most of our Cold War alliance partners like it that way.

  Thus, there is a strong element of Cold War hangover in Washington’s belief in the absolute need for alliance support or coalition-building when America is faced with the need to defend its national security. The Clinton administration was palsied by this hangover, forgoing numerous chances to capture or kill bin Laden out of fear of what our allies might say and responding to direct attacks on U.S. interests and citizens in an ineffective but politically correct military manner—when it responded at all. The Bush administration too ensured America’s eventual defeat in Afghanistan by taking more than a month to coalition-build before attacking the Taliban and al-Qaeda, allowing most of their fighters and military supplies to be dispersed and hidden. The history of U.S. foreign policy since 1991 teaches a clear lesson: maintaining rigid dependence on Cold War alliances and delaying military actions in favor of forming ad hoc coalitions kills Americans and let the enemy survive. But perhaps Americans should not feel too bad about their government’s self-inflicted failure to unilaterally eliminate their enemies because several just-war theorists think such delay is just peachy. “There were no immediate reprisals for the attacks of ‘Nine-Eleven,’” rejoiced two distinguished scholars of just war, “an extremely good sign that patience did rule the day—and plans were made for exactly how the U.S. would respond.” That bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and most al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters escaped because of Washington’s delay and are now waging an insurgency that is defeating America in Afghanistan is apparently a small price to pay for having played by the rules of just war.48

  Multiculturalism: Much as they fostered antinationalist organizations and just-war advocates, Western governments facilitated and abetted the growth and influence of the multiculturalists in the context of their ideological struggle with the Soviet Union. In that confrontation, Moscow controlled its bloc at the point of a gun and the prospect of a gulag, and the West controlled its by U.S. military power, shared philosophical inheritance, economic growth, and fear of the USSR. The Cold War’s hearts-and-minds contest therefore was played out in the Third World. The Soviets did their best, but for the most part Russian chauvinism shone through, and a shared Marxism-Leninism between Moscow and its clients was not enough to suppress the ill feelings it caused. The Russians were not all that keen about their allies in the Warsaw Pact, so nonwhite Afghans, Nigerians, Egyptians, and Indians were not likely to win either empathy or treatment as equals. For better or worse, the Soviets thought they had life right—economically, ethnically, socially, and politically—and did not think there was much to learn from others.

  For the United States and the West, on the other hand, the search for Third World hearts and minds was a genuine effort—at least to the extent that we wanted the Third Worlders to steer clear of Moscow—and while Western governments supplied funding, Western academic, humanitarian, and Christian missionary organizations took the lead. Somewhere along the line, however, a postmodern incarnation of Lewis Carroll ushered the United States and the West through the multicultural looking glass. Suddenly the silliest ideas were not only in vogue but accepted as eternal truths. All cultures are equal in quality and ability to peacefully coexist; nationalism and religion are not only dead but evils in their own right; there are no absolute values or virtues; enforcing immigration laws is racism; the West has much to learn from illiterate brutal native societies; and a host of other idiocies for which there is neither scientific, empirical, nor commonsense grounding but that came to be accepted as correct and indeed immutable tenets of Western politics. As long as the Cold War continued, this sort of nonsense was maddening but tolerable because the multiculturalists could be patted on the head, shown off as evidence of the Free World’s tolerance and open-mindedness, and left to conduct field investigations abroad and at home to ruin the ability of college students to employ logic and common sense.

  But no good thing lasts. The Cold War ended, history resumed, and wars, religion, ethnic animosities, tribalism, and nationalism came roaring back to dominate human affairs. And arm in arm as a team both at home and in Europe, multiculturalists and antinational organizations rendered U.S. self-defense excruciatingly difficult. In both Europe and America, borders remained open to allow in noble Third Worlders who had no chance whatsoever of fitting into their new societies, and indeed brought with them the practices of corruption and other forms of criminal behavior that were not only rife but culturally acceptable and economically necessary for survival in their homelands. Assimilation—that wonderful process that allowed twentieth-century America to become history’s only durable and equitable multicultural society—was disowned as a form of racism whose champions had the nerve to insist that Americans had the right and a duty to preserve the society that they had fought and bled for centuries to build. And strictly from an intelligence officer’s perspective, the European Community—that pluperfect type of godless, bureaucratic, and quasi-socialist society that the multiculturalists and antinationalists hope to create—produced a safe haven for proven Sunni Islamist extremists, terrorists, and insurgents. In their utopian lust to make the EC the temple of human rights, humane law enforcement, atheism, and multiculturalism, EC leaders refused to extradite convicted or wanted Sunni fighters back to their home countries if those countries had the death penalty. These Islamist enemies of Europe and the United States gladly accepted this mindless, Pollyanna-ish hospitality, took up residence, signed up for the dole, and quietly expanded their military, economic, proselytizing, and logistics networks. As always, Western leaders who operate on the belief that man is perfectible benefit only the enemies of the people they represent.

  PART II

  SIX YEARS OF WAR, 2001–2007

  For there has never been a protracted war from which the country benefited…Hence what is essential in war is victory, not prolonged operations.

  Sun Tzu

  Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.

  William T. Sherman, 1875

  The colonel says I may go if and if; and warning me of the hazards, etc., etc., shirking all responsibility. It is ridiculous in war to talk this way. If a thing ought to be done according to the lights we have, let us go and do it, leaving events to take care of themselves. This half-and-half policy; this do-less waiting for certainties before action, is contemptible.

  R. B. Hayes, 1862

  On October 7, 2001, the U.S. government launched its “Global War on Terror” with the invasion of Afghanistan, following it up eighteen months later with the invasion of Iraq. Both were dubbed “new types of war,” but they were new only in the sense that they differed radically from the conflicts that had occurred during the nearly half-century-long Cold War. Without exception, U.S. political leaders, Republican and Democratic, approached the wars with Cold War assumptions: America was the sole superpower, undefeatable, and was fighting on behalf of the civilized world; the wars would be localized, short, and minimally bloody; precision weapons would intimidate and eliminate a transnational enemy that was not a nation-state, small in number, lacking in popular support, and therefore not a life-and-death national security threat to the United States; most of the fighting and bleeding would be done by U.S. proxies; and liberated populations would joyousl
y welcome invasion, occupation, and the installation of secular democracy. Our bipartisan governing elite was wrong on every count.

  They were also ignorant of the malodorous foreign-policy baggage they brought with them to the wars in the Muslim world and, as important, of the fact that those policies had been used masterfully by Osama bin Laden to lay a trap for the United States among Muslims and marshal their support. Bin Laden’s frequently repeated six-point indictment of U.S. foreign policy—U.S. presence on the Arabian Peninsula; military presence in Muslim lands; unqualified support for Israel; support for Russia, China, and India against Muslims; theft of Muslim oil; and protection of Muslim tyrannies—was known by few American leaders and was largely dismissed, when read, as a madman’s irrational ravings.

  Thus, U.S. leaders launched their wars with burdens that were both terrific substantive handicaps and virtual unknowns to themselves and, especially, to American citizens. The arrogance, hubris, and risk aversion of America’s governing elite set the stage for self-imposed tragedies of unplanned-for length and Shakespearean proportions.