How We Do Drone On

The United States has painted a bright red, white and blue target on its head. With a litany of failed mega-military exploits – from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan – we have truly pissed off unbelievable numbers of doctrinaire crazies who would like nothing more than to injure, incapacitate and ultimately defeat the Great Satan they call America. The problem for the United States is that having all those overseas bases and military operations creates massive targets for terrorists out to prove their manhood (womanhood is possible too) to focus on. There are so many militants, from Taliban and al Qaeda to leftist guerrillas in South American mountains, who truly despise us. Homeland Security is there for the ones who slip through. And when we operate strongly in other countries to keep them from reaching our shores… well…

Pakistanis really don’t like us as we infiltrate their country, dropping in Navy Seals to neutralize terrorists (like taking out OBL – Osama bin Laden) or maneuvering missile-carrying drones to off high-ranking Taliban operatives seeking sanctuary in the Western Tribal Districts. Even though those same Taliban are murdering Pakistanis in their own country – most recently medical workers (all women) attempting to immunize children against polio, teachers (also women) and even a vociferous teenaged girl who championed the right of young girls and women to receive an education – locals still resent our intrusion into their airspace to kill these evil clowns. Notwithstanding that Pakistan seems to be standing idly by letting the Taliban kill with little retribution, as internal factions alternatively protect and then lambast the Taliban, locals simply don’t like a foreign power ignoring their boundaries. The Taliban are justifying some of their actions as necessary to eliminate spies. They point out that the source of finding OBL was a medical doctor, so all medical types are now suspect. Oh, and most Pakistanis hate the Taliban… just not as much as they hate us.

We are forced to bribe Pakistan under the guise of foreign and military aid; if we don’t there is always the hidden threat that Pakistan will spread its nukes around the radical Islamic world. So we write those thankless checks. But there is another group within our government that also provides its silent services to protect American assets and military forces all over the world… and to attempt to counter terrorist efforts without requiring a massive military response. They are part of a greater governmental intelligence network, and their work seems to generate waves of controversy everywhere they go. They are the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA was formed in 1947, an off-shoot from the Office of Strategic Services (of WWII fame). There were the main intelligence-gathering force in the United States until 2004, when the  Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevent Act reorganized American intelligence operations (16 agencies) to report to a newly-formed cabinet-level presidential appointee, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). They’ve been forced by presidents past to find facts that did not exist – while still struggling to present a truth that was ignored by higher-ups – and were told to employ “non-torturous” techniques like waterboarding by their elected superiors. They’re mostly good soldiers with their own bureaucratic issues.

No one knows what the CIA’s annual budget is, but folks are guessing (the actual numbers are classified) that the entire U.S. intelligence budget, which would cover the 16 agencies known as the United States Intelligence Community (of which the CIA is a very big part) is somewhere between $50 and $80 billion in total, depending in large part where you put military intelligence operations. Most of these agencies report directly to the DNI, and particularly difficult covert assignments almost always require Presidential approval.

Most of the CIA’s work is pouring over foreign newspapers, culling through piles of satellite photos, filtering through electronic communications by the billions and basically doing the boring grunt-work that generates the bulk of useable information. There are also spies and tactical operatives on the ground, some CIA operatives who made it inside the nests of our enemies, others recruited locally to betray their own countries. And still, the CIA deploys lethal drones and designated assassination teams to take out the enemies of the United States, all without the clear transparency of judicial sanction in each instance. In a democracy founded on due process, this is a very difficult focus of government to justify.

It’s dirty work, no doubt about it, but if we didn’t have the CIA, exactly how would we deal with the multiplicity of threats that surround us? The CIA doesn’t make the policy; that’s for the President and the Congress to do. If we have a beef with what they are doing, almost inevitably it is because their higher-level bosses are ordering them to act. But in a world where the United States is spending 41% of the world’s total military budget at a time when fiscal restraint needs to envelop that bad military-industrial complex habit, the CIA represents a more fiscally sound approach to dealing with those who are dedicated to our destruction. We need a moral oversight, from Congressional committees to the President himself, but we also need this branch of government… until we stop making so many enemies with our global military exploits.

Yet the CIA is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. A thousand brilliant intelligence successes – most quietly unpublicized implemented by unnamed CIA operatives – are often undone by one failure that makes the headlines or attracts the attention of an aspiring politician looking for an issue to build on. Nobody seems to like covert operations, even when they save American lives, but in the world we have created for ourselves, they are a necessary part of how we can protect ourselves in a hostile world. As Wikipedia has noted: “The CIA was founded in part for intelligence-gathering as a means to prevent a declaration of war based on erroneous conceptions.” If such efforts can stop us from our routine “shoot first and ask questions later” attitude, how many lives can that save? Isn’t that alone worth the cost of supporting our intelligence community?

I’m Peter Dekom, and no matter how we try and avoid the nasty issues the revolve around our choices, we really do need someone behind the scenes taking care of us.