Tuesday....International.....Intelligence Agencies

Intelligence agencies have a method they rely upon but that method itself is always under scrutiny. They use models and develop scenarios. Their intelligence gathering is categorized, they refer to history for past failures and successes, and predictions they may come up with are subject to change up to the last minute. It's an imperfect system but has served us well, overall, over the past three-quarters of a century even though examples of disastrous failures can be pointed to. There is one aspect of the intelligence community that bothers me and one aspect for the future that concerns me. There have been too many times that we (the public) have been kept in the dark, even deceived, for our betterment. When you start building a hole like this, it only gets bigger and bigger as time goes on. My primary concerns today are political involvement in the decisions made (always a concern but there are major warning signs in this area today) and the extent of the beaurocratic chaos from everyone protecting their own terf. There will always be problems in the gathering of intelligence and the following analysis of it but to inject political concerns into the final decisions made is a death knell to our nation's security. Most religions, no matter what "god" is worshipped, are powerful enough in themselves, due to psychological processes alone, to produce hate. Whatever the proportion is of terrorists in Islam, they kill for different reasons. Most of them, I believe, do so because they are haters. They hate. Maybe subconsciously some hate themselves (this is the same disposition that causes many other crimes in the everyday life of America,), maybe some hate what they are not? Many terrorists come from comfortable backgrounds and they probably need something that transcends the fleeting satisfaction of riches alone (some 60s radicals are examples of this.) I wrote in a previous blog from December 20th 2008 titled The Enemy At Home, that I concur with Dinesh D'souza's theory that we are hated because of the culture that we export, but that hatred still has to be dealt with because our culture is not going to change any time soon. My point here is that when you have multitudes who are of this mind, who hate, negotiations are going to be futile. We can negotiate with the leader of a Palestinian organization but he still has to deal with those in his organization who hate, who can and usually do, confound peace processes and who wield power well beyond their numbers. Most young people sent on suicide missions, are sent by men much older than they are. What this should tell them is that the ones giving the orders and providing the weapons have lived a long time without ever having done what they are gloriously describing to those being initiated. Reasoning in these instances might see results in changing minds but one still would have to deal with those in positions of power, who just hate. This is the war on terror, yet our government agencies are no longer even allowed to describe it as a war. The recent terrorist attempt to destroy an airliner is only the tip of the iceberg in the potentialities of terror that we may face. Certainly we have to reach out to the peoples around the world, and we have and do (see http://www.spiritofamerica.net/ for an extraordinary effort), but hate has no use for any such evidences. It has been my opinion throughout this blog that the great strength of President Bush was in his confronting this hate with the full force of the American military. It was precisely because many did not see the essence nor the determination of those who hate that he was so opposed; and it is precisely because of Barack Obama's relegating this war being waged against us, with negotiations, and naive you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours type of negotiations that he was elected. We have to realize the source of most of this terrorism if we are to confront it and prevent it. I'll recommend a book here by Brigitte Gabriel Because They Hate (isbn 0312358377) and her web site http://www.americancongressfortruth.com/ There has to be a secretive nature to our intelligence agencies but those agencies still have to have congressional oversight which begs the question of who sits on those congressional committees, and does politics inhibit the truthfulness of the agencies? The year 2010 may be a watershed year, should we make it that long, in the November elections. We need to scrutinize those we send to Washington more than ever. We cannot afford any more states sending individuals such as Al Franken (and many others) to Congress. Ultimately, the responsibility for our security will wind up at the feet of the American people. Are we going to vote our own pocketbooks or our national economy, our own particular ideology or truth the best we can discern it, and most of all are we going to humble ourselves before the God who gave us individual and national existence and has secured us, despite our vast inconsistencies, till this very day?