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Nation Is Paying a Price for White House Anger at CIA

May 27, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in The Valley News.]

In an informal speech in 2004, Paul Pillar, then CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, said that the White House had ignored CIA warnings that military intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout the Islamic world. The White House was furious. Robert Novak, commenting on the speech, wrote, “This leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other”.

The White House believes that there is a cabal of active and retired CIA officers who have done everything in their power to undermine the president, including an attempt to defeat him in the 2004 presidential election. Apparently, the president, vice president and Karl Rove all share this view of the CIA.

The White House is also said to be furious that a senior CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, was allowed to publish the book Imperial Hubris, which was cleared by the CIA while he was still employed there and was highly critical of White House Middle East policy.

Further, after the Iraq invasion, the White House received a number of special messages directed to the president from CIA’s chief of station in Baghdad, saying that the insurgency was going badly for us and would get worse because there were many, many Iraqis who hated us and who supported the insurgents. The president was said to respond angrily after he read one of the reports: “Who is this guy anyway? Is he some kind of defeatist wuss?”

Add to that a goodly number of op-ed pieces and speeches by CIA retirees unfavorable to the White House and its Middle East policies, and a picture emerges of a White House that regards the “CIA cabal” as a major instigator of negative comment on the administration’s foreign policy.

So, the president sent Porter Goss and his minions from the House Intelligence Committee to run the CIA. Given their insensitive, negative and ham-fisted approach, most of which has been aired extensively in the press, it’s clear that the White House placed no constraints on how Goss ran the CIA. It looked both from the inside and from the outside as if Goss was sent to Langley to punish the CIA rather than to reform, improve or redirect it.

The troubling point here is that the White House appears to have put its personal (and wrongly directed) anger above the good of the nation and well above the recommendations of the 9/ll Commission and the Commission on the Intelligence of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Before 9/11 ever happened, everyone who looked at America’s intelligence shortcomings said that “human intelligence” (HUMINT) – the collection of intelligence through recruited human sources – really needed fixing and that the CIA’s Operations Directorate therefore had to be strengthened.

Despite that analysis – and apparently out of personal pique – the White House seems to have set out to weaken the institution still further by having Goss, whom even the White House was said not to respect, keep the CIA in a constant state of turmoil. Recently departed senior CIA officials say they left the agency because of the nasty and vindictive top-down management style employed by Goss and his “gosslings”.

It is absolutely true that there are a number of active and retired CIA officers who, like many other Americans, have taken issue with the White House’s Middle East policy. Many of them have served there. Many focused professionally on that region for decades. Their knowledge of the history and realities of the region led them to view the administration’s radical new foreign policy of pre-emptive unilateralism in Iraq as ill advised at best and dangerous at worst. Only time will tell whether they were right or wrong, but they took those positions because they truly believed the White House policies were disastrous and that not saying so would be a disservice to their country.

The old CIA is now dead and will never be reconstituted. The assignment of Goss to Langley is now mercifully over. The president has proposed a very smart general, Michael Hayden of the Air Force, as his replacement. However, he is a technologically experienced general from the National Security Agency who has never had any experience with human intelligence operations.

The real issue here is what this administration wants and expects from what is left of the CIA. It is generally assumed that the remnants of the CIA – to be known as the National Clandestine Service – will provide human intelligence coverage of critical targets abroad. Given the miserable state of the current CIA, it will need infusions of money, people and, most important, savvy and experienced leadership. The president probably should have picked someone who really understands the human intelligence business.

The fact that he did not leads to all kinds of questions about what he really wants to accomplish and whether or not Hayden’s appointment is simply another example of the White House taking it out on the CIA.

Given the way the White House treats the world around it, it is no surprise that its attitude toward the CIA is punitive and retaliatory. It is sad that the disintegration of the CIA is rooted in petty vindictiveness. Actually, it is more than sad. As the 9/11 Commission made clear, having a capable CIA is the country’s only real hope in addressing the critical need to have human intelligence operations as a tool for fighting terrorism.

Haviland Smith, who retired from the CIA as a station chief in 1980, served in Europe and the Middle East as chief of counterterrorism and as an executive assistant in the CIA director’s office.

Posted in CIA |

CIA, R.I.P. Now what?

May 16, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Baltimore Sun.]

The CIA is finally dead.

It started with President Bill Clinton’s “peace dividend,” declared after the fall of the Soviet Union, which brought bipartisan underfunding and inattention to the CIA for over a decade.

It continued with recriminations from the Bush administration for its putative failures to predict 9/11 and White House anger at and retribution for what it believed to be the CIA’s lack of support for its foreign policies.

It is now ending with the 20-month disaster of Porter J. Goss, which clearly demonstrated the Bush administration’s desire to punish the CIA and reflected its proposition that the CIA is no longer needed.

So we now have the skeleton of an organization that once contained the government’s pre-eminent intelligence analytical component plus its unequaled espionage, covert action, paramilitary, counterespionage and counterintelligence capabilities. What remains is the new National Clandestine Service (NCS) – the old Operations Directorate, or Clandestine Service, by a different name.

Analysis and the counterterrorism center have gone to the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, making him responsible for presidential briefings and thus diminishing the CIA’s role.

Espionage, paramilitary operations and covert action are expanding unilateral enterprises in the Pentagon, challenging even the CIA’s proposed new NCS role.

The FBI, which never has had organizational understanding of, or commitment to, counterespionage, counterterrorism or counterintelligence, continues as the lead organization on all those disciplines.

What appears to have been lost in rearranging the deck chairs after 9/11 is the unavoidable fact that the U.S. desperately needs a functioning human intelligence-collection component to conduct operations against its enemies abroad. Only the new NCS has the potential to provide this capability.

That the NCS does not have the personnel, experience or linguistic talents to successfully conduct on-the-ground spying is the fault of those in Congress and the White House who should have been supporting and funding this country’s intelligence operations from 1990 to 2006 but did not do so adequately.

Running intelligence operations abroad, which is based on breaking the laws of other countries, is tricky. It requires that the NCS be pre-eminent in running spies. For both the NCS and the Pentagon to be conducting uncoordinated spy operations in the same geographic area would be an invitation to disaster. In addition, the NCS, in order to maximize and protect its operations, needs to be in charge of liaisons with foreign intelligence services and responsible for overseas counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

Finally, NCS will need unfettered access to the best government analysts. It is the interplay between intelligence collector and analyst that moves any operation toward its optimal results.

The NCS as a spy operation will function better without responsibility for covert action, which is defined as operations intended to manipulate foreign groups or governments to take actions favorable to the United States. The ability to mount and run such operations was always viewed by CIA directors as a plus in the old Washington power game. It was a capability that many presidents could not and did not refuse.

But covert action operations in the Clandestine Service complicated its role as intelligence collector and diverted resources. It was always easier to place a pro-American, anti-Soviet article in the local press than it was to run a complicated recruitment operation against a Soviet official, and it got people promoted.

Since the CIA has been all but destroyed and because the spy activities it formerly undertook remain even more tactically critical today than during the Cold War, everything needs to be done to regain and improve the capabilities that existed before the dismemberment of the organization.

Clandestine operations need to be kept clear of the existing bureaucracies and remain under independent leadership. Human intelligence is not a job, it’s an art form. A bureaucratically managed spying effort working under some other bureaucratized government component such as the Pentagon or the director of national intelligence will never get the job done.

In that respect, it’s difficult to understand, assuming that the White House wants to bolster our human spy capability, why Gen. Michael V. Hayden, with only a technological background, would be nominated to head an organization in which experience in conducting human intelligence should be the first requirement for employment. This is a dangerous time for our country to have a CIA director with a steep learning curve.

Haviland Smith, who retired from the CIA as a station chief in 1980, served in Europe and the Middle East as chief of counterterrorism and as an executive assistant in the CIA director’s office.

Posted in CIA |

We’re Running Out of Options in Iraq

May 12, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, have suggested a new approach to the growing and deteriorating situation in Iraq. In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, they propose that America drop its current policy of working to install democracy in Iraq and adopt one that encourages the formation of a loose federation of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish states or republics with a capital in Baghdad.

There is little point in going over all the reasons why Bush administration policy is failing to achieve any of its goals in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. That has been done ad nauseum. We are where we are. Whether we should be there or not is really relevant only to historians.

Iraq is a creation of colonialism. There is nothing about it that stems from a natural political, tribal or religious experience or evolution. It is there because it suited someone else to create it, and it is highly unlikely that it will hold together except by dint of colonial or dictatorial force. It was not designed to function under any other circumstances.

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that every component part of the internal Iraqi struggle for power has supporters and opponents outside the country who are likely to intervene to protect their own interests.

Does this appear like an impossible situation? Absent some as-yet-unidentified power prepared to impose peace on Iraq, it is. The religious and ethnic realities that existed before our invasion of Iraq have not been and cannot be changed by the power of prayer (or even rational discourse).

The Biden-Gelb proposal suggests that a group of surrounding nations and interested parties – Iran, Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia – get together and accept responsibility for guiding the successful march of the warring Iraqi components toward peace. This group, in turn, would be “encouraged” by Western governments in its trek toward peace.

A force of regional “interested parties” cannot succeed because in its inclusiveness it brings with it all the issues that create and maintain instability inside Iraq, and all of that on a grander and far more dangerous scale.

The last thing the Turks want is an autonomous Kurdish entity on their southeast border. They assume, probably correctly, that this would destabilize their own country, presenting the millions of Turkish Kurds with an alternative to their current second-class status in Turkey.

The Iranian government would likely view southern Iraq, the oil-rich section of the country where their co-religionists predominate, as a desirable acquisition in a chaotic post-American-withdrawal world. In addition, Iran has not forgotten the war waged against it by Saddam’s Iraq.

The Sunnis and their outside protectors would be tempted to play the role of spoilers, as the Iraqi Sunnis will have lost not only their long-time disproportionate political power in Iraq, but also their claim to most of Iraq’s oil.

In simple terms, the Biden-Gelb plan comes up against the same set of hard, immutable realities that made our poorly thought out invasion of Iraq so prone to failure. It has a less than equal chance for success.

So, where does all this leave us? Only a dictator or a 21st-century imperial power can solve this issue. As was the case in Vietnam, this war can be won, but not on a timetable that is likely to be politically acceptable here at home.

Considering that most of the rest of the world regards the situation in Iraq to be the result of our own arrogance and destructive policies, there is little chance that we ever will be able to find or create an entity to take on our role in moving Iraq in the direction so naively championed by the Bush administration. With our half-hearted troop commitments, we have lost our chance to find a constructive solution on our own. What is far more likely is a slow slide into civil war (if we are not already there), which could easily lead to a broader religious, ethnic and political armed conflict in the region.

When the U.S. electorate shows insufficient support for this first application of the Bush administration’s policy of pre-emptive unilateralism, it will be time to seriously consider a “cut and run” strategy. This is what we ultimately did in Vietnam. At that point, the American people can look upon this episode as a lesson given by the Republicans and George Bush on the exercise of American power in foreign affairs!

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in Iraq |

Iraq Success Becomes Ever More Elusive

April 1, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

Three years after his invasion of Iraq, President Bush is well into his campaign to reestablish public support for his war in Iraq.  In his speeches and in his most recent press conference, he has been forceful and consistent in his stated conviction that everything is going well in Iraq and that we will win there.

For a number of reasons, there really isn’t much else he can do.  His nature does not make it easy for him to say that his plan for and execution of the Iraq war was anything more than ever so slightly flawed.  In the face of a string of obvious errors made after his declaration of victory, the president says that the required, minor course corrections have been made and we are now on track for victory.

Having solved all those problems, the Bush administration is left with the practical problem of getting out of Iraq. Whether or not the ongoing sectarian strife in Iraq constitutes “civil war”, the fact is that the basis for such conflict lies in age-old Iraqi animosities that have not changed for centuries and are highly unlikely to change simply because we want them to. Those Americans who want us out of Iraq today say that the presence of U.S. troops exacerbates the situation and that the situation will calm down once they are withdrawn. Others, Bush most emphatically included, believe that the simple presence of U.S. troops makes the outbreak of civil war less likely and that if we leave, Iraq will devolve into chaos. Who has the right crystal ball?

The final element in this situation is the likelihood that if Iraq slips into full civil war, that struggle will not be contained within Iraq.  Every fractious component in Iraq, Shia, Sunni, Kurd, secular and theocratic, has supporters outside the country.  If real civil war breaks out, it will be difficult if not impossible to keep those supporters out of the fray.  Thus, unchecked, civil war in Iraq could easily spread throughout the Middle East.

President Bush has essentially put all his eggs in one basket.  He says that success and our withdrawal from Iraq boil down to the creation of an efficient, trained and motivated Iraqi internal security apparatus – police and army – capable of controlling the country.  To do that, we have started training those cadres.  Because we understand the internal frictions that are an integral part of Iraq, we are making sure that all Iraq’s political, ethnic and religious elements are represented in these cadres.  That means that the police and army, by our own design, are made up of the same elements that are at the root of the broader national civil frictions.  What choice do we have?

The media have sporadically reported that individual groups in Iraq have purposefully set about to infiltrate the nascent army and police.  Often mentioned in this context is The Mahdi Army, the militia controlled by radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, which has never played a peaceful role in Iraq.  One can be quite sure that all the other competing elements in Iraq are making sure they get their share of those jobs.  How else can they adequately represent their own narrow interests!

Add to this the fact that Al-Qaida in Iraq will do everything it can to create havoc and encourage civil war by constant attacks on all the various religious, ethnic and political elements in the country designed to set one against the other and the situation becomes even more complicated and problematical.

This situation points to the one flaw in President Bush’s final plan to extricate US troops from Iraq:  The security forces that he views as the key to Iraqi stability and to our withdrawal, are as factional and potentially fractious as the country at large.  It’s far from clear who commands the loyalty of those forces, the central government, which squabbles and shows little propensity to govern, or those actively hostile ethnic, religious and political elements that make up the country?  Just what will they do if a full-blown civil war really does break out?  History would say they probably will go back to their political, ethnic and religious roots, rather than the national government

The costs to America of this Iraq invasion and its aftermath have been monumental.  We have paid and continue to pay at an extraordinary rate in human casualties, national resources, internal political strife and international prestige and we are doing so based on what can only be called a gigantic gamble.

There has to be a reason for a rational country to undertake a venture like Iraq.  In the national interest, the plusses have to outweigh the minuses.  Yet, three years later, all the original causi belli have evaporated and we are left with this gigantic gamble. – for what?  We are certainly not improving our stance with radical Muslim terrorism.  Whatever happens in Iraq, will it outweigh what has been sacrificed?

The situation does not look promising.  Lacking sufficient original cause and relying on yet another questionable thesis – the oxymoron of a functioning Iraqi security force – the Bush administration faces extremely long odds. Only the most desperate gambler would put himself in such a position.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in Lebanon and Iran and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.  He lives In Williston, Vermont.

Posted in Iraq |

How Smart Is Our Wish For Democracy?

February 16, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

For years, United Nations policy for the underdeveloped world has been to support “self-determination” – the notion that all people should be able to determine the kind of government they wish to live under. It’s hard to argue with that.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration’s policy of promoting democracy creates potential conflicts with the principle of self-determination. When we say we want to see the rise of democracy in the world, we cannot achieve that without free elections. Those free elections provide previously disenfranchised citizens with the mechanism for self-determination, which doesn’t always produce democracy.

The United States has not always been enamored of either self-determination or democracy. It has often preferred the stability that comes with entrenched, anti-democratic governments friendly to the United States over the unknown or unacceptable proclivities of the forces aligned against them. Think of what happened to Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran the 1950s, Salvador Allende in Chile in the 1970s and various other leaders around the world who enjoyed popular support but were deposed with U.S. support.

This approach was approved by many European nations eager for world stability. Leaders of those nations apparently have not changed their minds; European countries have shown little appetite for President Bush’s drive to democratize the world. For them, the logical outcome of such a policy can be seen in the results of the recent free and democratic elections in Palestine, where self-determination has not led to a democracy of our liking.

U.S. policy in the Muslim world today creates as many problems as it solves. When the White House began to call for democracy in the Middle East, it displayed little understanding of the history of the region, but instead based its policy on the rather idealistic premise that all people yearn for democracy – that is, democracy as we know and understand it.

The dominance of Islam, which is essentially anti-democratic, has not supported the evolution of the kinds of personal attitudes and institutions that would naturally support successful transition to democratic governance. That has put the White House in the position of pushing democracy in a region where democracy is something of an anathema.

Are we going to continue to promote democracy through free elections in a region that may prove immune to it? Are we going to support regime change only if the results are “democratic” and to our liking, or are we going to accept whatever comes out of the process? Finally, how are we going to mollify the European preference for stability over democracy?

The second part of this problem lies in whether or not we are going to be even-handed in our push for democracy. Are we going to push for regime change wherever people are oppressed, or are we going overlook repressive but friendly states and limit our focus to hostile countries?

f you look at the Muslim world today, there are no evolved and stable democracies. Turkey wants to be part of Europe. Who knows what will happen in Afghanistan and Iraq? Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Persian Gulf states and the Arab states in North Africa are not now practicing self-determination. They fit the category of entrenched, anti-democratic governments friendly to or dependent on the United States. While we push for democracy in currently or formerly hostile countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, we are much less zealous about the crusade in important states where we think stability is our primary goal, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan and Egypt.

One of the U.S. policies that motivates al-Qaida and its allies against us is our continued support for these anti-democratic states. Clearly, what al-Qaida really seeks is the kind of self-determination where a newly “democratized” population votes out its old enemies as well as the friends of America and votes in the Muslim theocracy that radical Islamists really want. Democratic elections in much of the Muslim world are far more likely to produce that kind of result than the “democracy” we seek and of which we approve.

So, we push for regime change in some places and not in others – a perfect example of “realpolitik”, or foreign policy based on political expediency rather than ideals or ethics. America cannot hope to improve its standing in the Muslim world if it is idealistically pushing democracy in Iran, Syria and Libya while actively supporting anti-democratic governments such as those in Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

This hypocritical inconsistency can only bolster the morale and motivation and improve the standing of al-Qaida and its radical Muslim allies. That will make our struggle with terrorists all the more difficult. Our current policy is not serving our national interests.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Lebanon and Iran. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in foreign policy |

Sharon’s Incapacitation Underlines Danger of U.S. Passivity

January 17, 2006 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

Americans sometimes seem oblivious to the extent to which developments in the Middle East affect their own lives.

According to statements from al-Qaida, the three main issues that sustain the struggle against the West and America are: America’s tacit and active support of repressive Muslim regimes; the stationing of infidel (American) troops on holy Muslim soil in Saudi Arabia; and the Arab-Israeli conflict. These elements also fuel broader Arab and Muslim distrust of the United States. Absent a fair and even-handed resolution of these issues, the threat of Muslim extremist terrorism against the United States will persist, and it is highly unlikely that there will be peace either there or here.

The two most important players in the Israel-Palestine drama in the recent past have been Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon. Arafat, who died a little more than a year ago, presided over decades of Palestine violence that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. Sharon, who suffered a massive stroke last week, was an architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and bore some responsibility for the massacres of civilians in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps. They both had blood on their hands. The other thing that they had in common was the ability to lead their own people.

Arafat never shut down the violence against Israelis perpetrated by Islamic Jihad and Hamas, two extremist Palestinians groups. His apologists said he couldn’t do so. Detractors said he chose not to. Nevertheless, he was indisputably Palestine’s leader. Even though Arafat presided over the corruption of the Palestinian movement, he was the only Palestinian leader capable of exercising some control over the diverse elements in the movement. Today, with Arafat gone, the Palestinian movement is fragmenting. Even Fatah, the leading party in the movement, is coming unstuck. Mahmoud Abbas, the current Fatah leader, has not even been able to exert control over his own party, let alone over others in the Palestinian Authority such as Hamas, who oppose his stated goal of a two-state solution: Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace.

Sharon split from the Likud Party over the issue of withdrawing from all Israeli settlements in Gaza and a few in the West Bank. His supporters said it was a precursor to a peace settlement. His detractors said it was a cynical move to obviate the need to terminate additional West Bank settlements. In any case, current polls indicate that Israelis still favor him over other leaders, such as Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud. If, as is likely, Sharon is unable to return to power after his latest stroke, who will lead Israel?

Recent history indicates that as long as there are incessant attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the majority of Israelis understandably will favor a hard line approach to the Palestinians. Sharon would seem to be the only leader capable of containing his country’s extremist elements.

It looks very much as if future leadership in both Israel and Palestine will be unwilling or unable to seek a peaceful solution to their current impasse. If that proves to be true, then those on both sides who do not want a political solution will gain the upper hand. In Palestine, those who would like to “drive Israel into the sea” will probably arrogate more power to themselves and if that happens, the same views will become far more acceptable in other Arab countries. In Israel, those who promote further Israeli settlement of the “biblical lands” (the West Bank) are likely to gain power.

Neither of these possible outcomes favors American national interests in the Middle East. As long as this situation between Palestine and Israel continues to be marked primarily by provocation and hostility from both sides, any real solution is unlikely to be possible.

It is in the American national interest to find a peaceful and just solution to the Middle East impasse. Any such solution would displease extremists on both sides, but without it, the struggle is likely to persist. As long as it does and the real issues in the conflict are not addressed, instability will reign in the Middle East, and that will foster worldwide Muslim extremist hostility toward the West in general and the United States in particular. The way things are going today, it seems pure fantasy to think that, without leaders such as Arafat and Sharon, the Arabs and the Israelis are going to work out this problem on their own.

The question we must ask ourselves is whether we can afford to continue our hands-off policy. It has been the rare U.S. administration that has gone on record with concrete plans to find a solution. This reluctance results from the assumed political danger of openly pushing a policy that would more than likely end the Israeli settler movement as the quid pro quo for the end of Arab violence. The settler movement has strong support in the American-Jewish community and has recently gained additional support from many fundamentalist American Christians. So we are faced with a true Hobson’s choice: sit back and deal with radical Muslim terror without addressing some of its most critical origins, or intercede in a matter where there is much uncertainty.

It is an unfortunate fact that the United States is the only country in the world that still has the resources and the credibility to intercede on this issue with any hope of ending the decades-old violence. The constructive use of power and influence is never easy. Perhaps it’s time for President Bush to create his own legacy and win a Nobel Peace Prize in the bargain.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Lebanon and Iran. He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in Israel/Palestine |

White House War Aims Remain Unclear

November 27, 2005 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

For anyone paying close attention to events in Iraq, Vice President Cheney’s speech on November 21st to the American Enterprise Institute was not only alarming, but also very troubling.  It is troubling in the sense that Cheney continues to illustrate the inescapable fact that the Administration’s policy in Iraq is motivated by as yet unclear and unarticulated goals and that he continues to use unsupportable analysis and scare tactics as part of the Administration’s campaign to keep us interminably in Iraq.

Cheney says clearly in his speech, “The terrorists want to end American and Western influence in the Middle East. Their goal in that region is to gain control of a country so they have a base from which to launch attacks and to wage war against governments that do not meet their demands”.

This is a perfect example of  long employed Administration rhetoric – the use of the word “terrorist” in a non-specific, all-encompassing and alarmist fashion.  The fact is that there are two main kinds of “terrorist” in Iraq, Zarqawi’s “Al Qaida in Iraq” and the Sunnis who are running the Iraqi insurgency.

The only thing these two organizations have in common is their desire to see American troops gone from Iraq.  Theirs is a marriage of convenience motivated not by any kind of love, but by a single common interest and we Americans are that interest.  As long as we are there on the ground, there will be a tolerance of each group for the other.  Apart from that, they have nothing in common.

The Sunni “terrorists” in the insurgency are, as the Secretary of Defense has said, “dead-enders” whose sole goal is to get American troops out of their country. They are holdovers from the pre-invasion Baathi regime, which makes them nationalist, secular and focused primarily on the welfare of their own country as they see it.  They are practitioners of the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) – roadside bombs – that are aimed at American troops.

On the other hand, “Al Qaida in Iraq” is made up primarily of Al Qaida members and recruits who are totally disinterested in Iraq and the real long-term goals of the Iraqi people.  In direct contrast to the “dead-enders”, they are in their own terms, internationalist and theist.  They represent the radical Muslim holy war against the secular West.  They are In Iraq primarily to cause as much trouble for the Americans as possible and to do it by creating as much internal Iraqi ethnic and religious strife as they can.  They are the suicide bombers whose goal in bombing a mosque is to turn Shia against Sunni.  Only through promoting this kind of devisiveness can they hope to be able to foment and maintain Iraqi instability.

These two groups are clearly not compatible in the long run.  What they have in common is short term at best – get America out.  In the long run, “Al Qaida in Iraq” has to see these “dead enders” for what they are, secular nationalists who represent, in their own way, just as much of a threat to radical Muslim goals as the Americans do.

Whether the Administration wishes to admit it or not, American troops on the ground in Iraq are the glue that keeps these two groups together, keeps them from turning on each other.  In the absence of our troops, it is infinitely more likely that they will turn on each other than that they will join arms in a larger jihad against America and the secular West.   Anyone paying attention in Iraq will see that struggle as the far more logical outcome of American withdrawal.

In a broader sense, American withdrawal will probably precipitate other ages-old grudge matches between Shia and Sunni, Kurd and Arab. Since the British forced it on the world, Iraq has never been a State in the truest sense of the word.   It was, rather, a British convenience.  Because those religious and ethnic frictions have always been present in Iraq, there is simply no way to avoid them short of voluntary cooperation between the parties or the imposition of order from above, neither one of which can be accomplished by American troops.

For those paying attention to Iraq realities, the disturbing factor here is why the Administration is taking this position on Iraq.  Because the logic is so flawed, it appears that it represents an attempt to justify the continued presence of American troops on the ground in Iraq, not as a policy designed to forward any goals that have been articulated by this Administration to the American people.  To “see it through” to victory, whatever that may mean, is simply not good enough.  That leaves America wondering what those goals really are.

Haviland is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.

Posted in foreign policy, Iraq |

Four Years After 9/11, U.S. Is Still Unprepared for Attack.

September 10, 2005 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

In the 2004 election, George Bush sold us on the premise that he, better than John Kerry, could protect us from another attack.  We will never know if that is true, however, under his guidance, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, completely rearranged all those elements of the Federal government that had anything to do with security of our homeland, conducted hours and hours of congressional and other hearings and invaded Iraq – all on the premise that it would make us safer at home.  In that regard, a 2005 Gallup poll says that 60% of Americans believe that we are now more vulnerable to terrorism.

We are now four years past the horrors of 9/11.   This country has changed incredibly in that period of time.  Since the stated purpose of all these changes has been to forestall a repeat of 9/11 and, failing that, to respond effectively to any given incident, the question we must now ask ourselves is how effective our disaster response has been.

In the broader sense, Katrina has exposed how unprepared this country is to deal with the aftermath of another 9/ll.   All the whoopla, politicking, showboating, rearranging of the government – everything that was done to “protect” us from the next terrorist attack (which most certainly will come) – has been exposed by our experience with the aftermath of Katrina as totally inadequate for the needs of the population.     One of the most important functions of government is to protect its citizens from things from which they are unable to protect themselves.  Clearly, government as constituted in America in 2005 has not.

Things have been so bad on the Gulf Coast that one has to wonder if there ever really was a plan for dealing with this kind of disaster.  We know that a catastrophic hurricane been predicted for some time.  The New Orleans Times Picayune ran a series in 2002 which almost perfectly laid out the scenario that came to pass.  Most experts agreed.  Why did no one figure out that there were thousands in New Orleans who simply did not have the wherewithal to evacuate?  We have been told that many problems were created because of a lack of effective communications.  With the foreknowledge that cell phones would not work under the Times Picayune scenario, why did none of our planners consider satellite phones? If flooding was a certainty, why were there no plans for a massive use of boats and helicopters?  Right away, that is – not days after the fact.

There have been clear problems in coordination between Local, State and Federal governments.  Regardless of what the President says to mitigate the Federal complicity in this ongoing catastrophe, we have to believe that as a nation we are capable of doing much better.   In the context of terrorism, it doesn’t matter how well the response ends.   What really matters when terrorists hit is how quickly and effectively the response begins and how many lives are spared.

Apparently thousands of people on the Gulf Coast have perished, some of whom, it is alleged, could have been saved by a better organized, earlier, more effective response.   Additionally, it is said that there are probably many people still in their attics or hidden elsewhere who, in the absence of a timely and thorough search effort, are equally likely to die.  In short, it is predicted that thousands will have perished by the time a body count is completed, many of them needlessly.

Unlike 9/11, this can’t be attributed to an intelligence failure.  For Katrina, we had the best possible intelligence provided by satellite photography, hurricane fly-throughs and climatological and meteorological input and analysis.  The analysts even got the impact point right.  More importantly, they gave us a week’s warning that something really bad was going to happen.  Despite that clear, scientific finding, our collective government blew it.

What will happen with the next terrorist attack on America?  With the exception of the Irish Republican Army (a relatively benevolent terrorist group) in its battle with the UK, terrorists are generally not given to announcing their mayhem in advance.  Even with advanced warning on Katrina, we really blew it.  As critical as the prevention of terrorist attacks is, the issue underlined by the Katrina experience is, what is our government going to do to mitigate the aftermath of the next terrorist disaster?

If this pathetic performance on Katrina is an indicator of what four years of planning and billions of dollars have done for us, we are in a world of hurt. Just wait till the really bad guys get after us again.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served, inter alia, in Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff in Langley.  He lives in Williston, Vt.

Posted in intelligence, terrorism |

Politics dictates withdrawal from Iraq

August 13, 2005 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

As the Iraqi insurgency has grown and U.S. casualties have risen, we have heard the president and his representatives say over and over again that we will stay in Iraq until the situation is stabilized and “democracy” is assured. In that light, Iraqi realities will dictate when this will happen, but we will hang in until the bitter end however long it takes. We will not be intimidated by “terrorists.”

How times change! We are now watching a White House that apparently has decided to withdraw American troops and the timetable has nothing to do with the objective conditions in Iraq. It has to do only with the election schedule in the United States.

In what appears to be a steady deterioration in the situation in Iraq, the Bush administration has done almost nothing to calm the concerns of the American

electorate on a wide variety of Iraq-related issues. To have done that would have been an implicit admission that it had made mistakes, something it is not inclined to do.  The civilian Pentagon leadership has been almost completely non-forthcoming on the issue of the training of Iraqi troops. We have no real idea how many have been “trained” or even what “trained” means. In short, we have nothing but the often-contradictory statements of the uniformed military and the administration on where this critical process stands.

The same is true of the size of the insurrection arrayed against us. How is it resupplied, who supports it and how do replacements arrive on the scene?  We are often told by the civilian leadership that we are getting the insurgency under control while military field commanders give a much different picture of where it stands, pointing to the increasing adaptability, creativity, cunning and effectiveness of their enemies.  No one in the administration is telling us why there have been such difficulties in the writing of the Iraqi constitution. There is a lot of good analysis in the media, but nothing from the administration. Is Iraq really on the brink of civil war? Are the Kurds ready to accept anything other than relative autonomy within the framework of a loose federation?  Will they prevail in their reported demands for hegemony over the oil wells in Kurdish Iraq? Are the Shia slowly radicalizing and turning against the British and the Americans? If so, why is that and how does that affect the chances of an American-friendly constitution? Or, is it true that the new Iraqi constitution will be based on the Koran and the Shariya? If that’s true, how does the administration see that as coming even remotely close to its original goals for Iraq? To what extent are the Syrians complicit in the Bathi-based insurrection and in the support of foreign fighters (the only real terrorists in Iraq)? Do we have enough troops on the ground adjacent to the Syrian border in Anbar Province to be able to pacify and eliminate this threat? Apparently we do not, but we never hear a word from the administration on this issue.

In short, according to the administration and despite the fact that this work is “hard,” everything is moving along in the right direction.  Interestingly enough, the only issue on which the administration has gone on record over and over again, has been on the absolute imperative that the Iraqis “stay on schedule” in the many areas where Iraqi efforts are Involved.

Coming up we have the imminent deadline for the completion of the constitution, an October referendum and a December election.  Whose schedule is this, anyway? It certainly isn’t the Iraqis’, since they could easily use a decade or more to sort through the intractable religious and ethnic problems that are part of the process of trying to bring their “country” together in political agreement.

Clearly, the schedule is ours and just as clearly, it is arranged, like all other important decisions in America, on the basis of the perceived internal political needs of the party in power. What we are watching here is the administration preparing the country for pulling out of Iraq. This pullout will not be on the basis of what is needed in Iraq, but on the basis of what is needed politically in America. The schedule is clearly geared to the midterm elections in November 2006.  What has happened to the administration’s resolve to stick it out until “democracy is assured”?

Equally clearly, the administration has read a growing American consensus that we must disengage from an Iraq war that more and more Americans (now 57 percent) believe has done nothing to protect us from terrorism. The administration will have to be able to show the electorate that we are well on the way to getting out whether we are really winning or not. It will pull us out so it will not be made additionally vulnerable in the elections by a continuation of the current status quo in Iraq. How cynical is that and how can that conceivably be seen as in the interest of “Iraqi democracy”? This administration has junked past claims of weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi support of terrorism; why not toss helping the Iraqis and “building democracy” onto the trash heap as well?

Posted in Iraq |

Iraq Withdrawal isn’t an Option, Change in Policy is a Must

June 5, 2005 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

Falling poll numbers for the president and Congress and growing discontent with the Iraq war have breathed new life into what was recently a moribund anti-war movement. This will certainly bring joy to those who oppose all wars on moral grounds, but American pragmatists might better look more deeply into the potential outcomes of an early and precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq.

The arguments for and against the invasion of Iraq have been made. The invaders won, despite considerable evidence that argued, apparently correctly, against that invasion. But only history will ultimately show whether the decision to invade was folly or genius.

The fact is that we did invade and, right or wrong, we are now stuck with the reality of having dropped the plate at Pottery Barn. The only thing that is truly important for America right now is to sort out our future Iraq policy on the basis of today’s facts — and on the national interests of our country.

Iraq probably was never meant to be a country and has never been inherently stable. It is populated by people who share little in common. Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites have coexisted with minimal peace only because it was forced on them by a strong, ruthless and murderous central government.

Even more important, those disparate constituencies have supporters elsewhere in the region. The Saudis and other Sunni governments support the Sunnis; the Iranians support the Shiites; and millions of fellow Kurds in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Central Asia support the Kurds. None of the region’s undemocratic countries is likely to welcome a truly representative Iraqi democracy into their midst. Further, even democratic Turkey has major reservations about the creation of any kind of autonomous Kurdish Iraq, fearing its potential influence over a widely discontented Turkish Kurdish population. Iraqi Shiites have Iran as their main ally, and Iran is no friend of our Middle East policies. It is almost certainly not in the self-interest of those undemocratic regimes to support self-determination in Iraq.

Through our invasion, America has taken over the mantle of power from the Saddam Hussein regime. It is probable that age-old hostilities among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds have not emerged more violently only because we are there in the position of enforcer. To test that probability by pulling out would be folly.

What do we want for Iraq, and what can we reasonably hope for? The only realistic answer is simple: We want stability because instability would most likely involve far too many other nations in the region. Iraq will probably not emerge as a recognizable democracy, but if we do it right, stability there will flow from self-determination.

We want to leave an Iraq that is stable on its own terms rather than ours ó not necessarily in deference to Iraqi sensibilities, but in recognition of our own self-interest. Perhaps this can be achieved through an Iraq government that is a federation. Such a government would grant autonomy to the three major groups, but would not be fragmented to the point where the central government was in danger of losing control over its territory, bringing civil war, regional unrest and even more terrorists than we are creating with our current policies. None of this may work, but we have to try.

For any new policy to work, the Bush administration needs to start out by acknowledging that things are not going well, by making the case that changes must be made and by explaining why Americans need to support that change. Once Americans understand and sign on, we will need to enlist the support of other nations and entities such as NATO in the training of Iraqi police and military personnel. Finally, we need to say clearly that we have no plans to establish U.S. bases, reserve oil rights or make any other sort of claim on Iraq.

Of course, the ultimate question is whether the Bush administration is up to the task, politically or psychologically. After all, it does not have a good record of admitting it was ever wrong about much of anything.

This is a time for patience. Our 2003 invasion is history. We need to develop a plan for establishing stability in Iraq and stick with it. A precipitous withdrawal would likely be a disaster, not only in Iraq, but throughout the Middle East, causing far more problems for us in the long run.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Beirut and Tehran and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.

Posted in foreign policy, Iraq |

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