Posted on 09/30/2001 7:24:00 PM PDT by ThePythonicCow
More CIA Revelations - Political Correctness Kills
Christopher RuddyWhen former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the infamy of Sept 11 a "wake-up call from hell" he meant just that. His characterization demands repeating again, and again, because worse than Sept. 11 will happen unless we heed the call.
Monday, Oct. 1, 2001
I am not so sure the commissars of Political Correctness that so dominate our media, our government bureaucracies and other institutions, are willing to unshackle the will of the American people – and allow us to destroy the terrorists and the nations that back them.
President Bush has done a remarkable job – especially in light of the hand he inherited from the previous administration. It is also important to remember that a hidden problem for the Bush administration is that the U.S. government, including our Pentagon, CIA and other agencies, is still largely run by appointees of Clinton-Gore or the career military and bureaucrats Clinton-Gore promoted through the ranks.
The same people that left us vulnerable to the acts of Sept. 11 are now claiming they will solve our future problems.
I believe long term good will only come out of this catastrophe if we learn from the events of Sept. 11, hold accountable the people in our government who failed us, and make necessary reforms.
If we don’t do this, it is doubtful we will exist as a great nation ten years hence.
We should also heed the Roman statesman Cicero, who remarked that great nations are not destroyed from the barbarians outside. It is the civilized people who will destroy the nation from within.
The logic of this is simple: there will always be barbarians outside the gates. It is up to us to have the character and strength and the will to defend against them.
Before Sept. 11, P.C. thinking taught us that nothing we do matters; character didn’t count. It was the Age of Clinton. After Sept. 11, the overriding lesson is that everything we do counts - character does matter.
Even the liberal Boston Globe recognized this. Breaking from the P.C. crowd, it reported that Clinton’s sexcapades and scandals detracted from his ability to focus on hunting down Osama bin Laden. That story got almost zero national press coverage.
And the Globe and many media still haven’t talked much about what happened at the CIA.
Political Correctness Ruined the CIA
Our loyal readers will remember that NewsMax broke the story, within hours of the attacks, about how P.C. thinking by Clinton and Senator Toricelli had prevented the CIA and its many patriotic members from doing their job. The CIA was effectively banned from recruiting unsavory characters to penetrate terrorist cells.
But that was just a small part of how P.C. thinking has undermined America and the CIA.
During the past decade, the CIA has been twisted from an intelligence gathering organization with a mission to protect America and her citizens - and turned into a model of political correctness.
Under Clinton, the CIA was told to stop focusing on spying and start focusing on P.C. agenda items like global warming.
Worse, the CIA staff was to become a model of P.C. ideology.
One analyst retired in disgust after the agency had appointed a person to become a lead analyst for a particular country.
This person was qualified because she was black, a female, and had graduated from an Ivy League college with a high GPA. The CIA was not concerned that the young lady did not speak the language of the country she was to analyze, nor had she ever visited the country.
She did prove, however, the CIA was diverse.
Diversity Defined the CIA
As anyone who worked at the CIA can tell you, "diversity” was the buzzword that animated the agency during the Clinton years. Diversity was the mission and the goal.
A CIA operative close to the Mid-East told me that the agency was even placing women in countries like Islamic ones where the culture does not view women progressively.
While this policy demonstrated the agency’s commitment to diversity - it effectively cut its female operative out of any serious interaction with the host country’s political and military establishment.
P.C. thinking dominated all the activities of the agency. CIA employees were regularly hit with a barrage of Orwellian P.C. workshops and literature explaining how they needed to be, well, sensitive and open to diversity.
One analyst, still a CIA employee, told me about one CIA sensitivity training seminar he had to sit through. The presenter, an expert in diversity, gave a Powerpoint presentation on the benefits of diversity.
One slide showed an American Indian sitting on the ground making beads. The presenter explained: "American Indians have a long tradition working with beads. They are good with beads, and they have, in modern times become good working with wires.”
Another slide showed an African-American professional sitting at an office cubicle on the phone. The presenter explained: "African-Americans are particularly sensitive to being interrupted while on the phone. You should avoid doing this.”
As the analyst explained, "They were creating new stereotypes as the were complaining about old ones.” The CIA had become the Central Intelligence Agency for Diversity.
How sad. How dangerous.
No wonder with an annual budget of $60 billion there was no warning, no informant in a the Sept. 11 network that several experts say must have numbered 300 people working in several countries.
Commissars Won’t Heed Wake-Up Call
I could swallow the government’s failures of Sept. 11 if we heeded the wake-up call, exposed the problems of P.C. thinking at the CIA and elsewhere, and made reforms.
But the commissars of political correctness that control the major media will have none of it. Consider how there has been practically no criticism by the major networks of President Clinton’s stewardship of our national security agencies.
The same commissars that were, in the middle of this horrific crisis, attacking Pres. Bush, will not utter any criticism of Bill Clinton.
In fact, Clinton was actually being praised! NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Alan Greenspan’s wife, was on air spewing her venom for Bush, complaining that he was not, like Bill Clinton, a "Comforter in Chief.” You see, according to P.C. thinking, Bush’s desire to stay up in Air Force One to insure the continuity of government was less important than going to New York to cry, hold hands, and show how we "feel.”
Criticism of Clinton is taboo precisely because the major media know that criticism of him is criticism of them. They supported him and the bizarre P.C. thinking that has possessed them and brought us to the point of Sept. 11.
So instead, of heeding the "wake up call” – the PC commissars in the media are continuing to play old tricks.
Within hours of the attacks, I heard P.C. anchors and commentators spinning that these events proved America does not need missile defense. Don’t they care that the very same countries behind the terrorists are feverishly building and developing long-range missiles capable of hitting many American cities at once?
No, the commissars never lose an opportunity to spin.
My thoughts were of the day in July, 1956 when I stepped off an Air Force C-121 onto the 115+ degree tarmac of Wheelus Air Base in Tripoli, Libya. That day ushered in a very meaningful eighteen month crash course on the middle east. Within a few weeks I was watching our radar chart the progress of the British and French air attack on the Suez Canal. If I remember correctly, they came down from the northwest, over Crete, and proceeded on an easterly heading over the northern Mediterranean. We did not know at the time what or who they were, or what their destination was. They had kept their plans secret from the US until they arrived over the target. It was then when I realized the solidarity of Muslim countries. We had to seal off our Air Base, (note that Air Force Base was not used) from the hoardes of infuriated Arabs who saw us as implicit in the attack against Egypt.
Then, as now, and only twelve years after WWII, The most powerful country on earth was not willing to call a spade a spade. To use the word "Force" might offend someone. Nevermind that Rommel and Patton had fought all over the Libyan Desert slightly more than a decade before, and that Italian Facists had ruled Libya, we needed to keep a low profile lest we offend a country that had sixteen medical doctors in it. Honest, that is what we were told. After a few weeks of classical Arabic language training, I was able to converse(barely) with the Arab population. It was my observation that a deep hatred existed, not far below the surface of most Arabs, for anyone who was not of their culture or religion. It is now 45 years later. Little has changed.
The lines at the gates stretched for a dozen blocks, it took 3 or 4 hours for on duty personnel to creep in. Officers in uniforms with the proper stickers, haircuts, and ID all got the minute engine, chassis, and trunk inspection.
The entire military establishment froze, work and training was cancelled. What the Japanese during WW2 could never do, OBL did do: bring the US military to a state of paralysis.
It is His plan and it is not for us to question or attempt to alter.Perhaps it is part of his plan that we do question and alter.
That's what scares me more than all the loaded planes I see passing overhead.Yup - right on.
There are a billion Moslems in the world. 19 of them is just about as statistically relevant to their ethnic group as a percentage as the 2 or 3 involved in the Oklahoma City bombing.How frightfully poorly you understand us. You dismiss our call to arms against the radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorists on the grounds that it is just a misguided example of racial profiling.
If in a time past, Jesse James had stormed into your cabin and killed your sister, and then your neighbors rode out in a posse to "hang the James brothers" would you cry out for them to stop their misguided attacks on white men?
All we do, both that is powerful and weak, can be done to the benefit of evil or good. We have a moral obligation as humans to know the difference, and to act powerfully, and by necessary means, for good.
hidden problem for the Bush administration is that the
U.S. government, including our Pentagon, CIA and
other agencies, is still largely run by appointees of
Clinton-Gore or the career military and bureaucrats
Clinton-Gore promoted through the ranks.
That is one of my greatest concerns. Between the Intelligence
communitiy, defense and the State Department lots of
PC types have buried themselves like tics into,
middle level and high level positions. Patriots may be more rare
then this administration can deal with. Old hands are slipping away.
Would you recommend that we call a spade a spade, go in and do what we have to do, as best we can, and if the Moslems rise up in a great hatred of the Evil Eagle, so be it?
Or would you that we consider it essential to avoid pissing off the people of Islam too much, essential to keep them nominally on our side, even it means leaving Osama to live on, as we did with Sadam.
I was in the Air Force too, but in Thailand, tracking satellites. Nothing especially relevant here. And since then I have not had the experience you've had in the government.
It was my great pleasure to hear President Bush address the joint session of congress. When he said, "Whether we bring Bin Laden to justice, or justice to Bin Laden, justice will be done," I was overcome by the simplicity of that statement. What about you?
Whether we bring Bin Laden to justice, or justice to Bin Laden, justice will be doneYes, that was a great line. It affectively answered those who complained that Bush's earlier use of the word "justice" displayed misguided weakness. The critics were thinking of "justice" as in a court of law. Whereas Bush made it clear he was thinking of "justice" like a Texan.
The critics should have remembered one of their earlier complaints against Bush - the number of executed convicts in Texas while Bush was governor. Then perhaps they would understand what he can mean by the word "justice."
Though I post this link, I do not find it that helpful. Rather, I am currently reading The Liberal Mind by Kenneth Minogue, which I am finding to be a better explanation of such misguided thought patterns.
Oh, come on! Anyone with half a brain knows that McViegh was not alone, and was simply a foot-soldier being manipulated by middle-eastern terrorists! Or are you that naive to think he did it all alone. Hell, had he talked, he knew they'd kill the rest of his family!
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