Obama's Oxymorons

"You Americans are Crazy"-Ahmed Shah Massoud

In "Legacy of Ashes, a History of the CIA," Tim Weiner exposes how through an astonishing combination of arrogance, incompetence and criminal deceit American intelligence agencies have been masterful at creating enemies and wreaking chaos.

In one chapter Weiner describes how CIA station-chiefs in Latin America would regularly harrass their local hires, appropriate govt. funds and run "counternarcotics" operations which saw millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs funneled to Miami streets. Known torturers and criminals were frequently discovered on secret CIA payrolls. But perhaps no intelligence blunder will ever rival the mayhem that has been foisted upon half the world as a result of America's boneheaded actions in Afghanistan.

In their zeal to destroy the Soviet Union, during the Carter and Reagan presidencies the CIA and other US intelligence agencies made a Faustian bargain with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) along with Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department, and a myriad of Afghan warlords to help the Islamists desperate to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.

Afraid that overt U.S. action might lead to a superpower clash and WW III the CIA conspired to remain the invisible puppet master and placed responsibility for the covert operation in Pakistan’s hands. Even the most cursory knowledge of that country's unstable beginnings and fractious politics should have made it clear this was a truly bad idea. The rest, as they say, is history.

Obama seems to share the neocon delusion that even now that the entire region has been destabilized the genie can somehow be put back in its bottle and the riled-up hornets pacified by force. As the increasing eruptions of murder and violence in Pakistan attest I strongly suggest he ignore the oxymorons called America's "military intelligence" and think again.