For a young Somali, piracy's a glamorous profession, the local equivalent of being a Manhattan hedge-fund manager a few years back: His risk is minimal, the rewards are huge - and there's no punishment for pillaging other people's wealth.
If there's no serious penalty for lucrative bad behavior, the bad behavior will spread. That's the story of Somalia's Skull and Bones club.
Coping with pirates is also simple. We make it hard by agonizing over the "human rights" of these seagoing terrorists. This week, as a powerful US warship loomed over a bobbing lifeboat, FBI negotiators begged for understanding from thugs who had attacked a ship flying our flag.
The correct approach would have been to lower boats with armed sailors and take the Somalis, dead or alive.
Historically, civilized nations understood how to handle pirates: When captured, pirates were hanged. When found, their bases were destroyed. That worked. But threatening to put one pirate in a thousand in a posh European cell where he gets free visits from a prostitute isn't much of a deterrent when a single successful raid on a ship can bring in millions of dollars.
Yeah, "citizens of the world" will cry that "You can't just hang pirates!" Sure you can. It's easy. If you're short of rope, wire will do. The only serious question arises once the noose is around the pirate's throat: Should we drop him over the side and let the rope snap his neck, or raise him up on a spar and let him suffocate slowly?
#3
Traditionally, when a pirate ship was captured, it was rigged to slowly sink, then the pirates were hung aboard it, hopefully to be found by their fellows.
This served several purposes. First of all, it kept your own decks clean, as it were. Second, the hanged pirates would serve as a message to other pirates. And third, the pirate ship would be unrecoverable by other pirates, so would sink one way or another.
#2
Somali piracy may be a manageable problem (or it may not), but piracy and terrorism can and does quickly outstrip the resources available to control it.
As long as the Somali pirates are seen to succeed we risk seeing, Eritrean piracy, Yemeni piracy, Sudanese piracy, Nigerian piracy, etc.
The we definitely have an unmanageable problem (with current containment tactics).
"Little ships, big ocean. Maybe, perhaps, possibly".... etc. Hand the mission off to the Coast Guard? Basketball College language Barry will be proud of.
#6
"If there was any kind of effort to move ashore, if I was making any recommendations, it would be to ensure it's a multi-lateral approach sanctioned by the UN.
Apparently Mr. Patch is another typical self- declared expert looking for relevance. UN Resolution 1851, passed in December of 2008, already authorizes foreign states to "take all necessary measures that are appropriate in Somalia" to suppress "acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea." It specifically permits land based operations.
It is a good thing the CIA is now out of the overseas prison business. Black sites, waterboarding and renditions were never really the CIA's strong suit. Classical espionage, the CIA's bread and butter, has nothing to do with coercion. And that is not to mention that the prisons have stigmatized the CIA with the worst abuses of the Bush White House. In any case, it is the military that should be holding and handling prisoners of war, not the CIA. (Read Inside the CIA's Secret Prisons Program.)
The prison work has also been a serious drain on CIA resources. In Thursday's announcement, CIA Director Leon Panetta said that in closing the prisons, the agency would save $4 million per year on contractors. What he didn't mention was that hundreds of CIA staffers were involved in overseeing the prisons. The tail to tooth ratio in the CIA is no different from any other government agency.
Closing the prisons will put an end to a major distraction. But it shouldn't stop there. If Panetta can get away with it at the White House, he needs now to slash the CIA stations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- by at least half. The stories I hear from Baghdad and Kabul all run in the same direction: people falling over each other chasing a few sources, all frustrated that they are not allowed to get out more because of the very real risk of kidnapping or assassination.
And it is not as if either Iraq or Afghanistan is helping to train a new generation of officers. Sallying forth from Baghdad's Green Zone in a heavily armored SUV, surrounded by phalanx of contractors carrying M-4's, and picking up a source on a dark street corner is not classical espionage. As one CIA officer put it, "People coming back from Baghdad and Kabul have to unlearn everything they learn there."
There's also the problem that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are ripping apart families. A CIA officer posted in a war zone for three or four successive one-year tours risks coming home to face divorce -- or the alternative of leaving the CIA. It's a shame because the CIA right now is actually attracting the best and the brightest, possibly the best recruits since its founding in 1947.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not unlike Vietnam, which in the '60s and '70s was a distraction from spying on the main enemy, the Soviet Union. Vietnam was a voracious maw that never stopped sucking in people and resources. And no matter how much the CIA threw into it, it never tipped the scales. It took the CIA at least a decade to put Vietnam behind it.
The CIA needs to get back to what it does best, find and turn that Pakistani intelligence officer who knows where Osama bin Laden is today. Or turn that Iranian nuclear scientist who can tell us how close Iran is to having a bomb. Neither was ever going to be found in the prisons in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know
Not sure what to make of this piece. Mr. Baer has credentials. It's also Time and the only CIA agent they ever liked was Valerie Plame -- and her only when she was useful to them. It might not be the best use of resources for the CIA to herd and guard prisoners, but we're going to have to have a place to jug people whom we don't want out loose killing Americans. If not the CIA, who? If not Bagram, where? The article almost reads as another excuse for Waging Law.
I'd like to see the CIA find that Iranian nuclear scientist, too. The claim that this is what the CIA does best is belied by their recent history. Then again, they never brag about their successes.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
I am not a number. I am a USDOJ client...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/12/2009 2:05 Comments ||
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#2
If not the CIA, who? (Democratic National Committee) If not Bagram, where? (Whitehouse Lawn for Easter Egg Roll) The article almost reads as another excuse for Waging Law. (All we are saying... is give peace a chance)
#3
Breaks my heart to hear the Klingon(s) bemoan the dirty, knuckle dragging, quasi-military mission that THEY, the all knowing INTELLIGENCE EXPERTS insisted on undertaking....in the name of "clandestine intelligence collection."
The Agency has been at odds with DoD for decades regarding this type of activity. Oh yes, it's all spelled out very properly in Director of Central Intelligence Directives (DCID), but they've looking down their noses at the services and done everything they could to restrict and inhibit service operations and successes. It's all about turf and funding you see. With DoD clan-HIMINT all but vaporized by their efforts, they now must now ask law school grads Suzzie and Johnny to run source operations in combat theaters of operations THEMSELVES! Chickens home to roost. Piss on the bastards! You ask for it, you're the "experts"...you GOT IT! Now go make it phueching happen and stop bitching!
"Leave me for the moment -- you can beat me again later," a 17-year-old girl begs between sobs in a video airing on Pakistan's private television networks and circulating on the Internet. But the local Taliban commander continues to flog her without mercy as a group of village men watch in silence. These images were described in a recent New York Times dispatch, which noted that the alleged transgressions of the girl could not be definitively established. The range of possible violations of the Taliban's version of Islamic law -- from stepping outside her house without a male escort to having an illicit affair -- is appallingly vast. The video, apparently shot on a cellphone and given to a human rights activist, is not surprising in itself. The brutal subjugation of poor, uneducated women in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan is widely if incompletely known in the West. But the brief, blurry images are revealing.
The recent U.S. strategic review, as well as learned tomes and countless op-ed columns, depict the struggle in the desolate Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier as being rooted in fierce nationalism, the region's ancient warrior culture, the failures of nation-building and the rebirth of jihadist terrorism. But this video reminds us of another driving force too often neglected or minimized in the analysis and commentary: the desire of Pakistani and Afghan men to be left in peace to deal with their womenfolk as they see fit. There may be no more important recruiting tool for the Taliban and other Islamic extremist organizations. This is why the video should be required viewing for U.S. officials who are urging President Obama to seek accommodation with the Taliban to help secure a graduated U.S. exit from Afghanistan and confidently boasting that 70 percent of the Taliban are "reconcilable."
The Pakistan video is unlikely to change their minds. They have good arguments about pursuing achievable U.S. goals in a time frame that is acceptable to the American public. But it will force them to look at the consequences of that kind of realism. Moreover, the scene shot in the Swat Valley -- a region the Pakistani government turned over to the Taliban in February rather than continue fighting there -- offers its own cultural commentary on Obama's attempts to reach out to the Muslim world. In his speech last week in Turkey, he declared that the United States is not "at war with Islam."
The president is right -- as far as he goes. The struggle against al-Qaeda and its associates is not a war of religions with a monolithic Christianity fighting a unified Islam. But it is a religious war in significance and origin. Fanatical Islamic sects have framed their battle in holy terms and seek to destroy their faith's mainstream values. It is not a war on Islam but a war within Islam. Who wins has enormous consequences for the world. That was the missing element in Obama's otherwise admirable speech, which was delivered in one of the most tolerant, sophisticated Muslim countries on Earth. The savage misogyny and feudal fury of the Swat Valley are alien to modern, urban Turkey -- as they are to Indonesia, where Obama spent part of his childhood. The countries and personal experiences he focuses on are Islamic, certainly. But they are not Islam as a whole.
All religions are absorbing the shocks of globalization. But none has felt more besieged than Islam as the flow of people, goods and instant communications across borders perturb or limit its deep reach into gender relations and family structures. And none has produced as violent a backlash from some of its adherents. It is difficult for policymakers and generals to account for such cultural factors in strategic reviews. We all rush past the obvious -- until a video from Swat makes it unavoidable.
The realists are right about this: The United States and its NATO partners cannot "win" the war inside Islam. Perhaps all they can accomplish is to buy time for mainstream Islamic forces in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere to organize an effective response to the existential threat in their midst. That will be a costly, and essentially thankless, task for the United States. But it may yet be the least disastrous course to follow. "Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religious-specific, values," Barack Obama said in a 2006 speech that warned Americans against religious intolerance. It's a pity he didn't include that thought in his Ankara outreach.
#1
All religions are absorbing the shocks of globalization.
Yeah, that's why the Pope is mobilizing his crusading divisions to oppose abortion. Sorry, read some history and you'll come to the conclusion that one religion has stood out for its consistent preference for violence.
And I see little evidence that there's any conflict within Islam. It looks more like there's jihadis and those who'd rather stay at home, winter jihadis, if you will. But I sure don't see a lot of anti-jihadi Mohammedans running around opposing the efforts of the jihadis.
We're going to fool around with these clowns until they go too far, as the Germans did, or until they burn themselves out, like the communists did. Otherwise there would be no need for the media. And we have to protect those jobs.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By Jim Hoagland
