Wanted: Dead Or...Oh, Never Mind...
CIA disbands its bin Laden Unit.
As a liberal, of course, I am soft on terrorism in that I actually think we should be focusing on the people who perpetrated 9/11. Dang, why do I hate America so much?
CIA disbands its bin Laden Unit.
As a liberal, of course, I am soft on terrorism in that I actually think we should be focusing on the people who perpetrated 9/11. Dang, why do I hate America so much?
posted by Winston Smith at
11:26 PM
4 Comments:
Bin Laden announced worldwide jihad with 9/11, kicking off what has become a landslide.
"Al-Qaeda" means "the base." Bin Laden wasn't the cause, just the symptom. Al-Qaeda itself has already disgraced and discredited itself in Iraq by slaughtering Muslim innocents. And bin Laden sits in a cave now, if he's even still alive.
Think Gavrilo Princip. Dead or alive, who cared? The least of the world's problems.
Jihad, however, in its only somewhat milder form, continues. See this through Islamist eyes: think John Brown, whose body lies a-mouldering in the grave. He went too far, but not by much.
When they hanged him for his crimes, it made no difference whatsoever to what came next. As a matter of fact, it precipitated it.
Yes, bin Laden is irrelevant. In fact, al Qaeda is irrelevant. In fact, Islamic extremism is irrelevant. In fact, terrorism is irrelevant... So long as victory is eventually achieved over the Democr...um...uh...
While I'm no fan of the administration's counterterrorism policy, I do have to stick up for the CIA on this one: according the NYT report on this a couple of days ago, the decision to shut down the bin Laden unit was made by Robert Grenier. Grenier was fired from his position as head of the Counterterrorism Center in February, reportedly because 1) he didn't get along with Goss's political apointees, and 2) he wasn't excited enough about using black sites, extraordinary rendition, "aggressive interrogation," and other such dubious methods. Given my personal predelictions, that disposes me to think he's competent, and according to press coverage, that's pretty much universally the feeling among the career CIA personnel. There was a push by various high-ups to try to get Hayden to re-hire him, as a way of restoring some of the credibility CIA bled off under Goss.
So again, while I greeted the decision to disband the bin Laden unit with quite a lot of skepticism, the fact that Grenier made the call disposes me to give it the benefit of the doubt. And it is justifiable as an allocation of limited assets, I'd think -- bin Laden appears to be hunkered down pretty good and I'm not sure how much intelligence we're able to get out of that area, which might not leave analysts (as opposed to humint guys) very much to do. Focusing on him exclusively, as opposed, say, to widening the shop's focus to all Islamist activities in that region, therefore might not be the best approach. Again, from the info publicly available, closing the unit seems like a bad idea to me, but this being intelligence, there's certainly a host of factors we don't know about, and defering to the judgment of a serious, committed expert in the field seems reasonable.
Good points, Mike.
You're right that this gives us reason to give the move the benefit of the doubt.
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