Posted on 07/14/2008 5:46:23 PM PDT by Barbarian6
Former CIA agent: "We do not face a global jihadist 'movement'"
Glenn L. Carle "was a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service for 23 years and retired in March 2007 as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats." In "Overstating Our Fears" in the Washington Post, July 13, he says this:
We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda.
In a circulating e-mail, LTC Joseph Myers, who has served at the Defense Intelligence Agency as the Chief of the South America Division and Senior Military Analyst for Colombia from 1997-2000, responds:
This helps explain to me why we have strategically failed in the current war to identify the enemy and understand and template his threat doctrine and why seven years into the "global war on terror," we don't have a global threat model for it.
It is because, apparently, key CIA leadership responsible for "global threat" analysis has concluded that we have no "global" threat:
"We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda."
So the underlying conditions of regional, ethnic and internecine struggles within the Muslim community are the problems we face. And the CIA theory for the war on terror is that we do not face a "global jihadist 'movement.'"
But what information does Mr. Carle marshal to defeat the oppositional theory that we are indeed facing a global jihad? None in this article.
Could his thesis and theory be tested by elaborating the al-Qaida doctrines, such as was done by [Jihad Watch's] Raymond Ibrahim in his book The al-Qaida Reader or by Stephen Coughlin, formerly of the Joint Staff J-2, and align al-Qaida's religious arguments against classic Islamic doctrines to show and prove that al-Qaida's doctrines are deformations and distortions of Islamic law and classical teaching?
Certainly Mr. Carle's model is simple and recognizable: regionalism and ethnicity, no need then to delve into ideology or religion, but sound intelligence analysis is not simply looking at and evaluating only the information that supports your conclusions.
Has the CIA conducted such a countervailing test and evaluation of their theory of the GWOT? They must have, by Mr. Carle's assertion. If no, then Mr Carle has no basis to make the claim he is making and undermines his argument that we are only confronting disgruntled bands of Muslims.
Secondly, Mr. Carle reveals a certain ignorance when he conflates the concept of "jihad" with those seeking to do violence to the US homeland. If he truly understood and has studied Islam, Islamic doctrines of warfare, Islamic law and jihad, then the diverse nature of jihad and sources of threat to the American homeland and national security would be clearer -- we do not face threats solely from those violent actors.
This is an example of letting policy drive your analysis. Since our policy is attack-focused and oriented on preventing attack threats, we circumvent the analysis of everything leading up to the attack event and do not trace it to its roots.
Thusly we short-circuit our intelligence preparation of the battlefield process. We do not analyze and template the "radicalization process" for what it reveals.
One thing for sure is in national security, if your theory of reality is wrong, then your courses of action to that point are going to be wrong too -- or at least imprecise and incomplete.
And he was the NIO for transnational threats. For me, I am glad Mr. Carle is retired. Positions like that require creative thinkers and analysts; what is written here reveals neither.
The CIA has been a notorious repository of leftist thinking for many years. Reagan felt he had to circumvent it for analysis. He could not have gone head to head with the USSR on CIA analysis and advice. It is the CIA that claimed from its beginning that the USSR was growing economically at twice the rate of thy USA and during each of 40 years that not only was that true but that the USSR’s economy was already about 50% of the USA’s. The CIA recruits out of Ivy League schools. It gets lots of IQ but it also gets an Ivy League outlook that is not further educable.
I sure wish he would have written a “book” a couple weeks prior to 09-11-01 warning us of the upcoming attack on the WTC.
Islam is a religion of headhunters, a stoneage mentality with tanks and working on nukes (they have some in Pakistan).
Is this the same CIA that had no clue about 911 until after it was over? The same CIA that hired Valarie? The same CIA that said there were WMD’s in Iraq? The same CIA that ran the bay of Pigs? The same CIA that...
I thought you supported our commander in chief.
“almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda
This is news? Of course they predate al-Qaeda. al-Qaeda means “the base” and it’s stated mission was to be the central clearing house and command center for all of those organizations, not to be a stand-alone organization. That’s what makes them more dangerous.
This guy influenced CIA policy? Ouch.
not no but hell no. try state.
not no but hell no. try state.
Why are there so many liberals in the CIA?
Disparate or not, these groups are still a threat ALL OVER THE GLOBE, so even though they may not be connected globally, they ARE a global threat. It is harder to ferret them out, but it has to be done, in order to find out which ones will be a direct threat to US.
btt
I’d like to recommend a website:
Prophet of Doom - Islam’s Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad’s Own Words
It has a free Online & Audio Book.
Left hand...meet...Right hand...now you two keep each other informed....OK?
History will show the CIA to be hostile to PResident Bush and to this country.
It needs to be disbanded. We already have the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Who needs people like Valerie Plame anyway. Turn Langley into prime office space or a mall. That would be a higher use of the property.
The State Dept. is another rat’s nest that needs cleaning out. And it has been since the 1930s.
Good point that bears repeating whenever liberals "misunderestimate" the terrorist threat. The Germanic tribes that overran the Roman Empire didn't necessarily constitute an "organized barbarian threat", but they got the job done, nevertheless. Sadly, it has become conventional wisdom that if a militant Islamist suicide bomber, kidnapper or assassin isn't carrying an Al Qaeda membership card, he/she isn't a real terrorist.
Since this guy is so smart, he should have got off his ass to help protect our country for the past 23 years.
"There are things we know we know, and that's helpful to know you know something. There are things we know we don't know. And that's really important to know, and not think you know them, when you don't. But the tricky ones are the ones - the unknown unknowns - the things we don't know we don't know. They're the ones that can get you in a bucket of trouble." ------- former US Sec Def Donald Rumsfeld
Never, never, never that to the all of us versus the few of them.
That is, we have things we do not know, and each of us has an special importance. In whole, we have much better intelligence than the CIA, and in whole we approach the elephant from many more different angles. And we communicate less hampered by institutionalized blindness than they.
More fundamentally, al-Queda was primarily a jihadist venture-capital firm.
Jihad groups from all over the world would make contact with al-Q for funding and training. If the al-Q leaders thought their business plan (proposed terrorist operation) made sense, then they would get funding
Osama's main role in al-Q wqas as liaison between the Operations people who needed funding, and the money men back in Saudi and Kuwait (the Golden Chain organization and the bin Laden clan)
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