
A C.I.A. Grunt’s Tale of the Fog of Secret War - jonbaer
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/world/middleeast/a-cia-grunts-tale-of-the-fog-of-secret-war-douglas-laux.html
======
dforrestwilson1
So I served in the Marines from 2005-2010 and I worked in intelligence from
2010-2013. I speak Pashto and Arabic as well and would argue that people have
built up the cultural and religious bugaboos to excess. We still could win,
but the problem fundamentally is a lack of political will here to accept the
costs of making war.

Those costs being:

1\. Time - rotating green units in every 9-12 months and veteran units out is
a recipe for failure. They have to relearn everything and rebuild any trust
you build up with local leaders. The closest we got to that was 2 year
deployments of reservists, which was effective in Iraq.

2\. Casualties - holing up in a FOB for fear of KIAs does not help the locals.
Another example is Bergdahl. We spent countless hours and millions of dollars
looking for a single MIA private. Everything else went on the backburner for
months and it did cost lives, but it served as PR that we were doing something
to recover one screw-up in a war involving millions.

3\. Governance vs Headhunting - Drones are great at cheap effective kinetic
action, but worthless in police functions. We emphasize drones along with low-
quantity troop deployments, because murderbot losses do not matter and SF
casualties are bucketed as volunteers. I could go further into the detriments
of cannibalizing your best soldiers from line units, but that's a whole other
issue. To stabilize a country like Afghanistan you need to get violence down
to zero long enough for a generation to know what peace looks like. To do that
you need to prove that you are there to govern, that means deploying
troops/police in massive numbers and a court system that works. We spent too
much time seeking out werewolves to shoot silver bullets at, playing whack-a-
mole.

There is an intense focus by politicians on casualty numbers. We've been doing
it on the cheap, but cheap adds up if you don't win and the wars go on for
decades. I don't see that changing unfortunately.

~~~
todayiamme
Do we even need to win the war? This is a serious question. If the key
strategic objectives can be met without a conventional end state, is winning
the war itself necessary?

This may seem like a stupid question, but clearly there has to be some reason
why every decision maker within the system is incentivised to continue with
the current state of things. I wonder if they have come to the conclusion that
the long-term cost-to-benefit ratio of winning wars is too low to merit the
type of strategy and resources you're describing. Maybe they've just created a
new way to have a perpetual strategic presence without the typical costs of
one?

~~~
joe_the_user
What "key strategic objectives" are you talking about?

The elimination of Al Quaida in particular?

The US presiding over a series of failed states throughout the world where
they endless hunt for terrorists seems like an insane plan - but a plan which
seems to be shaping up as the objective of US policy.

The appearance of ISIS etc within the areas devastated by US intervention is
entirely logical. Both ISIS and Al Qaida were forces armed by the US with the
aim of destroying earlier enemies. It's depressing to even have to outline the
pattern here.

~~~
fivre
> The US presiding over a series of failed states throughout the world where
> they endless hunt for terrorists seems like an insane plan - but a plan
> which seems to be shaping up as the objective of US policy.

Interesting in context of the original comment: Russia is effectively doing
the same in the Caucasus and attempting to do so in Syria and Ukraine, albeit
as ineffectively as the US' attempts to do so in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US has long presided over successful, or at least stable (if not at all
laudable) states in the Middle East for some time, but is losing its ability
to do so, as those states lose their ability to maintain control over their
internal affairs and neighbors. Both actors' failure to establish or support
viable states in those regions have led to resentment, instability and
radicalization, manifesting in violence aimed at them (international
terrorism) and those states they've attempted to create or maintain (domestic
terrorism and/or civil warfare).

Neither has had any obviously obtainable military objective for some time--
while both are able to win conventional battles easily, winning conventional
battles no longer has much useful effect, as they are not fighting or
attempting control or defeat states, they are attempting to fight and defeat
and/or control populaces/nations, which is impossible unless you wish to enact
a genocide. Any goals of engendering stable, successful, independent nation-
states cannot be accomplished by military means, nor can Russia or the US
accomplish anything by waging a conventional war against states of equal
power.

------
616c
As someone who has spent a lot of time in the region, and learned Arabic to
fluency, sadly with the goal of ending up like Mr. Laux in mind, I am glad I
went to the Arab world as a student.

Having traveled all over, and working as an expat now for many years, it
became clear early on there is a whole very naive narritive justifying US
foreign policy in that part of the world. The moment you go to live there, it
stares in the face. I quickly gave up my hopes of serving in the US armed
forces or intelligence community after one year of study in Egypt. It only
took a few weeks really to do the damage. I can show you consistent examples
for almost all American students, many who wanted government work on USG
language scholarships, after such a short amount of time.

I still knew countless others, however, who continued in the line of duty, and
their racist and moronic comments about the Arab world, before, after, and
during service, despite expesnive US top-20 univerisity coursework in Arabic
and Arab history and culture flabbergasts me, every time. These people rose
through the ranks, and balked at the education they used to get there. Notice
Laux did not have that kind of education prior. I suspect that is why he burnt
out and knew to withdrawal from that life quickly. If he spoke Dari or Pashto,
and God forbid, read the local media, he would have burnt out even faster as
the stupidity would glare even brighter.

The one year ten times in a row comment gets me. As just-outside-the-inside
perimeter guy, living in one Arab capital 5+ years, it never ceases to amaze
me the greater political project of "taming the Arab world" goes at the civil,
political, and military level, soft and hard power alike at the hands of
outside nations. I assume it might be this way everywhere, but my interest in
professionally engaging in even non-government East-West cultural projects
ended quickly as I became jaded. I routinely think my interest in computing
and open source originates from my frustration with this problem, and our
hubris to not simply record things and focus on problems. We keep reinventing
based on impression, not on result, with new people and a rapid turnover rate.
No industry except global political terraforming would find that a useful
strategy.

As for the kicking the addiction and self-help jokes: wanna know where you
need to help yourself? Pick any Arab country. Great read, thanks for posting.

~~~
wtbob
> it became clear early on there is a whole very naive narritive _[sic]_
> justifying US foreign policy in that part of the world.

I think that was obvious at least when Mr. Bush was talking about how freedom
was the desire of every human heart, which is quite clearly naïve nonsense.
Simply put, the vast majority of mankind doesn't care about freedom, wouldn't
know what to do with it, and will misuse it when given it.

That fundamental misunderstanding caused his government to try to install
democracies, when it could have installed confessional republics instead.

~~~
kingkawn
Everyone cares about freedom. I think the problem with Bush and crew was their
belief that they were the gatekeepers of the only legitimate path toward it.

~~~
bgilroy26
The Bush administration's actions in the Gulf were based on a funny
contradiction:they were confident they could push further than Gulf War I
because it was so successful; the reason it was so successful in the first
place because they did not push further

~~~
cturner
There was some other important narrative: post-war Germany, post-war asia, and
the asian economic miracle.

After the second world war, a lot of asian countries were in ruins. Consider
Korea. Before the war, it was a servant of the Japanese empire. Then in the
50s the country got flattened by war, and split in two. The northern half
became an Orwellian nightmare. After all this, and under a US security
umbrella, the southern half transitioned into a first world economy in less
than forty years. Within easy artillery range of the nastiest country on the
planet. This is a miracle of our time. It's amazing.

Over the same period, Japan transformed from a brutal empire into a
Scandanavian country: innovation economy, doesn't like war, etc.

Similar story in Germany. Another strong western country and US ally.
Something similar with Taiwan.

So if the west had been able to affect that kind of positive change on those
countries, why not bring the same kind of change to the arab world?

Either we did something different, or something about these countries isn't
reacting the same way.

Ethnic divisions make things more complicated. Particularly as the middle
eastern dictators have been so good at poisoning the well by playing ethnic
groups off against one another. Typical Syrian Christians will hate Assad, but
also be terrified at the reprisals that wait for them if he collapses.

In post-war Europe, a lot of that was avoided because nobody powerful minded
relocating populations of ethnic Germans to Germany.

It might be better if we'd thought of the middle east as a really nasty
version of Yugoslavia, rather than another Asia.

An easier place to start might be to understand why Southern Sudan is failing.
This was an opportunity to build a new state from scratch. It has fewer of the
usual excuses. Largely Christian country but there is ethnic conflict. The new
state is not working. Why? Can we learn anything about that from how we
screwed up in the middle east?

~~~
icebraining
_" Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein’s
government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very
volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in
Iraq, you could easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the
Syrians would like to have, the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would
like to claim. Fought over for eight years. In the north, you’ve got the
Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with Kurds in Turkey, then you
threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire if you go that
far and try to take over Iraq."_

\-- Dick Cheney, 1994
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w75ctsv2oPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w75ctsv2oPU))

------
cstross
This gave me so many flashbacks to the various histories of the Vietnam war
that I've read.

One key insight from John Ranelagh's histories of the CIA (pre-9/11): the CIA
was always famously crap at HUMINT. Reason: you don't get promoted for
freezing your butt off on a mountaintop in Afghanistan, you get promoted for
attending lots of meetings with managers in Maryland. The institutional set-up
of the CIA was tilted heavily towards analysis and reporting by consensus. It
was originally intended to be a _Central_ Intelligence Agency, tasked from the
late 1940s onwards with acting as a giant fusion center for intel from all the
US government's external agencies and feeding it up the chain to the NSC:
analysis and committees are its life-blood, and the spies were always a side-
project, much as INFOSEC is a side-project to the NSA (whose primary focus is
on ELINT and SIGINT).

When the CIA began expanding again after 9/11, it looks like it carried its
previous institutional culture forward -- and didn't really know how to use
the grunts in the field effectively and retain their hard-won insights. Almost
as if the OSS had never existed ...

~~~
jacobolus
For other readers: HUMINT = human intelligence, human observers embedded
somewhere. ELINT = electronic intelligence, e.g. radar systems. COMINT =
communications intelligence, spying on human communication systems. SIGINT =
signals intelligence, including both ELINT and COMINT. INFOSEC = information
security, defending information from outside attackers.

It seems to me that post-WWII, the US diplomatic apparatus and military (also
including USAID, etc.) have also been pretty crap at human intelligence, at
least judging from the outcomes of the policies they end up pursuing. I’m
having trouble thinking up examples where the US intervened anywhere with good
timing or good sense, whereas it’s easy to list dozens of terrible failures.

Edit, this —

 _“Mr. Laux said he was struck by how little the military seemed to know about
Afghanistan after so many years in the country, and that many C.I.A. officers
had developed little more insight. Soldiers and spies served short tours of
duty — with much of that time spent just becoming familiar with their
surroundings — and then turned their jobs over to new arrivals forced to make
the same mistakes as their predecessors.”_

— sounds pretty similar to the normal practice in anthropology and other
social sciences in academia, too. Scholars have a couple years during grad
school and occasional 1-year sabbaticals to do field work, but spend the rest
of their careers teaching and writing papers based on their out-of-date and
usually misinformed remembrances.

Also similar for a large proportion of journalists, who have only been in some
particular place for a limited time before they’re expected to explain its
intricacies in a few hundred words at a time.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
HUMINT after WWII apparently relied on existing spy networks - mostly Germans
who were out of a job. They fed their masters anything that sounded good, to
keep being paid. Result: they spun up the East and West continually, creating
a thing called the "Cold War".

~~~
cstross
Partially true, but that's not the whole story. Speaking as a non-American,
I'd attribute another chunk of it to the fact that most USAns don't travel
outside their own continent (where they've got Canada and Mexico and the
Carribean islands with which to engage with "the rest of the world" if so
inclined). With the partial exceptions of Mexico (the war on drugs) and Cuba
(the war on Fidel Castro's beard), there's not much call for spying in those
countries; the pool of US citizens with some degree of acculturation to truly
foreign societies is comparatively small compared to those folks who live in
places where you can drive 100 miles and cross two borders and three language
barriers.

~~~
tsunamifury
You can say the same of any large country, don't forget the US is the third
largest. It's vastness statistically means most of the population will be
insulated.

I don't necessarily think the EU small country circle jerk of superiority is
always applicable... And in many ways is as narrow minded and silly as the
ideas the article accuses the CIA of

------
nxzero
Funny thing is New York Times (as in the printed edition of the paper) was a
primary source of intell for the CIA, which was pretty telling. Most of there
other intell comes from paying people stupid amounts of cash, as the story
mentioned, and most the intell is worthless.

------
EliRivers
_" The American people should know that his former colleagues continue to do
extraordinary work despite his departure, and do so without the need for
public recognition" said the spokesman, Ryan Trapani._

Classic passive-aggressive. Ignore the real issues raised, find a way to
indicate that there's something wrong with the source without outright saying
so. Ryan Trapani's credibility; zero.

~~~
nxzero
Given he's likely making 200k+ a year from the government for restating what
he's told to say says enough to me about how credible he might be as a source.

------
nxzero
Worth noting that there are subsets of the CIA that are not just secret
compartments, but actively lie to the rest of the CIA, which is telling.

~~~
bsamuels
[citation needed]

~~~
nxzero
Sure, it's publicly known; related keyword is "eyewash" \- just Google it with
"CIA" and your find info on it from a number of sources, including the
Washington Post.

------
voltagex_
[http://www.amazon.com/Left-Boom-Officer-Penetrated-Al-
Qaeda/...](http://www.amazon.com/Left-Boom-Officer-Penetrated-Al-
Qaeda/dp/125008136X) is the book, but it's unclear if Macmillan will be
allowing a Kindle edition

------
chillaxtian
> "The C.I.A. initially declined to comment when it was asked earlier this
> week about Mr. Laux’s book. On Friday afternoon, a spokesman said in a
> statement that maybe “with age and greater maturity” Mr. Laux might at one
> point have a different perspective on his time at the agency"

~~~
wtbob
I'll give him credit for carrying out his oath and getting his book reviewed,
as well as for not blabbing about the classified portions. That alone marks
him as a hell of a lot more mature than the numerous folks one reads of in the
papers who speak despite not being authorised to, who take it upon themselves
to release classified information, or who are careless with information which
may cause damage to the security of our nation.

edit: s/careful/careless. Whoops!

~~~
davorb
> That alone marks him as a hell of a lot more mature than the numerous folks
> one reads of in the papers who speak despite not being authorised to, who
> take it upon themselves to release classified information, or who are
> careless with information which may cause damage to the security of our
> nation.

You know, there is a reason people went to the press -- it's because when they
followed the official route they were ignored, threatened and had the full
force of the US government turned against them. I suggest you read up on
people like William Binney and Thomas Drake, before you so lightly dismiss
people who have lost their careers and more, fighting for your freedom.

[http://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-
the-w...](http://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-the-
whistleblowers-who-tried-to-lift-the-veil)

> Binney says he and two other NSA colleagues who also quit tried sounding the
> alarm with congressional committees. But because they did not have documents
> to prove their charges, nobody believed them. Snowden, he says, did not
> repeat that mistake.

> "He recognized right away, it was very clear to me, that if he wanted
> anybody to believe him, he'd have to take a lot of documentation with him —
> which is what he did," Binney says.

~~~
wtbob
> You know, there is a reason people went to the press -- it's because when
> they followed the official route they were ignored, threatened and had the
> full force of the US government turned against them.

They were not ignored; their concerns were founded in an incorrect
understanding of the Constitution and the law. They didn't follow the official
route, which is to file a complaint with an inspector complaint. The
government did nothing to them until they broke their oaths and the law.

There's a better quote in there:

> "Snowden could've come to me," says George Ellard, the NSA's inspector
> general. "In fact, he would have been given some protections."

It applies equally to Drake & Binney. Anyone has the ability to go to an
inspector general and raise issues of misconduct. What folks _don 't_ have the
right to do is invent their own Constitution and laws. Another good quote is:

> "Perhaps it's the case that we could've shown, we could've explained to Mr.
> Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do," Ellard
> said.

But we're already far off the topic; this isn't the thread to discuss how
Binney, Drake & Snowden shared a fatally flawed misunderstanding of what is &
is not licit under the prevailing interpretation of the Constitution.

I'm just honestly glad that this young man actually fulfilled his oath. That
really shouldn't be remarkable, but these days it is.

~~~
meric
It should be noted these people who swear oaths have a greater responsibility
to the constitution and the nation as a whole than to the individual
organisations within government.

