Imaging loosening the Ghostbusters on the troubled spirits of Langley, Virginia to exorcise them and eliminate their malign influence on the waking world?
Christopher Hitchens has advocated abolishing the CIA on more than one occasion. For example, in his December 2007 Slate piece headed, appropriately enough, Abolish the CIA, he declares that the agency's destruction of interrogation tapes "amounts to mutiny and treason." "Why", he asked:
have our intelligence agencies helped to give the lying Iranian theocracy the appearance of a clean bill, while simultaneously and publicly (and with barely concealed relish) embarrassing the president and crippling his policy? It is not just a hypothetical strike on Iran that is rendered near-impossible by this estimate, but also the likelihood of any concerted diplomatic or economic pressure, as well. The policy of getting the United Nations to adopt sanctions on the regime, which was about to garner the crucial votes, can now be regarded as clinically dead. A fine day's work by those who claim to guard us while we sleep.
One explanation is that, like Mark Twain's cat, which having sat on a hot stove would never afterward sit on a cold one, the CIA has adopted a policy of caution to make up for its "slam-dunk" embarrassment over Iraq. This is a superficially plausible hypothesis, which ignores the fact that for most of the duration of the Iraq debate, the CIA was all but openly hostile to any argument for regime-change in Baghdad. This hostility extended all the way from a frenzied attempt to discredit Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, to the Plame/Wilson imbroglio, and the agency's "referral" of Robert Novak's disclosure to the Department of Justice. Interagency hostility in Washington, D.C., between the CIA and the Department of Defense has never been so damaging to any administration, let alone to any administration in time of war, as it has been to this one.
And now we have further confirmation of the astonishing culture of lawlessness and insubordination that continues to prevail at the highest levels in Langley. At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence. This deserves to be described as what it is: mutiny and treason.
Of course, veteran Hitchwatchers may well think that our Contrarian's real reason for trashing the spooks is that he's a bitch for a much more mutinous and treasonous bunch of miscreants led by the likes of Condie and Wolfie and Rummy and Pearly and Uncle Dick Cheney and all, whose only real beef with the CIA is that they don't control it. And the further thought may occur that as bad as the organization has been, throughout the G.W Bush years, the CIA has been among the forces that have been guarding us while we sleep from the further predations of these demagogues who see pre-emptive war as the solution to every problem. With that thought in mind, let me offer you an alternative view from Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation, who also wants to abolish the CIA, but for a rather different set of reasons.
Not only are the CIA and the military the source of America’s foreign-policy woes, not only are their actions subjecting Americans to a perpetual threat of terrorist blowback, not only are they bankrupting our country financially with their ever-growing expenditures, not only have they shamed our country with their torture and sex abuse antics, but they also just happen to pose the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people, as the Founding Fathers and President Eisenhower suggested.
Consider the kind of people the CIA looks for and attracts: the type of person who loyally follows the orders of his superiors, no questions asked. These are the people in life who lack the courage and moral fortitude to say no when ordered to do something that’s morally or legally wrong. They are compliant, submissive, subservient, and sycophantic.
Even worse, they honestly think that they’re the good guys in society as they faithfully follow their superiors’ orders to break the law. When they encounter people in society who do possess the courage and moral fortitude to challenge government wrongdoing, they look upon them as bad people — people who hate their country, traitors.
The situation is really no different, in principle, in the military. In fact, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the military has been working with the CIA to develop the methods of torture that have been utilized. Familiar with the torture techniques of the Chinese communists during the Korean War, the military simply used those techniques as a foundation for the U.S. torture program. Let’s not forget that long before 9/11 the U.S. military’s infamous School of the Americas was teaching torture to Latin American military and intelligence officials who faithfully carrying out the orders of their brutal and tyrannical superiors.
In both the CIA and the military, loyalty to the president is paramount. While they take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution,” in their minds they fulfill that oath by faithfully carrying out the president’s orders.
It’s not a coincidence that the military and the CIA established their kidnap, torture, and sex abuse camps overseas. They wanted their operations to be totally free of interference from both the Supreme Court and the Congress, which they view as impediments to the president’s efforts to protect the nation. Again, all that matters to these people is the commander in chief and the will to carry out his orders.
Consider, for example, the invasion of Iraq. Everyone knows that President Bush never secured a congressional declaration of war, as the Constitution requires. Yet, the military faithfully carried out his order to invade and occupy that country, killing as many Iraqis as necessary in the process.
Yet, there was at least one military officer who said no. He was Lt. Eric Watada. He refused to deploy to Iraq on the ground that to do so would be legally and morally wrong.
How did the military view Watada? As a bad guy! They condemned him, reviled him, and criminally prosecuted him. In their minds, supporting and defending the Constitution means faithfully and obediently carrying out the orders of the commander in chief, something that Watada refused to do because to do so would be wrong.
The thought that Watada is the hero for having the courage, conviction, and moral fortitude to stand against unlawful orders is alien to the CIA/military mindset. The way they see it, the job of the CIA agent and the soldier is not to question why, but simply to carry out orders or die.
My ten cents worth, the US needs its spooks and its troops, so it should definitely hang onto both the CIA and the military, but guys of the calibre of Lt. Watada should be promoted and there should be a major shakeout of the sadistic sickos who wield such a malign influence. Cutting the ties currently binding the spooks to organized crime should be a priority, of course. And prosecuting everyone who was involved in torture either by giving, following or attempting to legitimize orders would be an excellent start.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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