zenpundit.com

BLOGGING FUEL

Blogging was light yesterday as I had social engagements that included getting together with physicist-blogger-educational innovator Dr. Von who had a very interesting rap on the potential resilience of networks under attack and the expendability of supposedly irreplaceable nodes. I’m hoping he blogs on this topic soon as my recall as to his key points are hampered by the flow of Guinness and Captain Morgan going on at the time.

I have a couple of book reviews in the works, one of which I will try to post later today.

I’m also disturbed to read that Nathan at Registan is having severe difficulties with a boss who appears to be trying to convert the non-profit organization they both work for into a vehicle for Scientology indoctrination. If anyone has the legal expertise to give Nathan advice for this situation or an inclination to hit his tip jar, I’m sure it will be much appreciated. I’m no attorney but it sounds like the potential for a humdinger of a lawsuit exists. ( Hat tip Coming Anarchy)

RECOMMENDED READING

John Robb at Global Guerillas describes “Internet Seminars for Guerillas“.

riting on the wall ( with a new look) on the Iranian election.

Colonel Austin Bay, back from Afghanistan, on ” Why the Long War Must be Won“.

That’s it.

THE NATIONAL SECURITY SERVICE

Most of you no doubt caight the major story today of President Bush accepting a recommendation of the Robb-Silberman Report to create a new National Security Service within the FBI and the Justice Department. Variously described as a new service and an autonomous division, the NSS has three bureaucratic masters – the Attorney-General, The National Intelligence Director and the Director of the FBI.

My analysis:

• This represents an institutional culture shock for the FBI on two grounds. First, forcing the elevation of Intelligence and Counterintelligence into a top tier priority for the Bureau which has long looked with disdain at such tasks. Secondly, the Bureau’s iron wall that resisted White House control by such formidible politicians as FDR, LBJ,Nixon and Clinton has been bureaucratically breached by George W. Bush. To sum up the siginificance in an image, J. Edgar Hoover is rolling in his grave as the ghost of Richard Nixon dances upon it.
• Counterintelligence, historically the weakest area for the USG in the IC, has become a significant focus, at least on paper, with the addition of the NSS to the recently established National Counterintelligence Executive ( the relation between the two remains unclear though both report to the DNI). This bodes well because never before in history has the strategic counterintelligence environment been more diverse and the challenges so complex. An environment further aggravated by the recent intelligence reforms themselves that are starting to decompartmentalize some aspects of intel flow:
• “The arrival of interconnected networks and computer databases has exponentially raised the damage a hostile mole can do to the intelligence community. In the past, a hostile mole could steal the papers on his desk; now he can steal his own work and everyone else’s that is in the various database to which he has access. To paraphrase Paul Redmond, one of the CIA’s counterintelligence gurus: “It is an actuarial certainty that there is a hostile mole operating within the intelligence community at any given time.” The next mole is going to clean the intelligence community out because of interconnectivity. There are some computer security steps that can be taken, but bluntly, they are hard to do, expensive, and do not work well. This is a cost and an unforeseen consequence of interconnectivity within the intelligence community. It is a matter of when, not if. If the policymakers are not warned early and often, then the intelligence community leadership will deserve the outraged criticism it will receive.”
• Interestingly, the old National Security Office of the Department of Justice – now merged into the NSS – shared responsibility with the White House Counsel’s office for drafting and/or reviewing the legalities of National Security Directives ( NSPD/NSDD/PDD) issued through the National Security Council. These directives are Executive Orders, often classified, carrying the weight of law though they must be within compliance with the pertinent legislation and Court rulings. Essentially, the power of interpretation of presidential authority has moved away from the Attorney-General and closer to the White House.
• Short term, this would seem to be a win for John Negroponte and a big loss for Robert Mueller but institutionally, given the very long term of service for an FBI Director, I find it doubtful that the office of the NDI will be able to retain control over a NSS that will initially draw heavily upon FBI personnel whose career loyalties are to the Bureau ( perhaps we will see Negroponte bringing in DIA and CIA CI people to leaven the mass of G-Men). The triumvirate system of managing the NSS is a half-assed bureaucratic compromise that can never work in practice except as temporary window dressing.

DEATH OF A LATE BLOOMING SQUARE PEG

The Neurolearning blog honors the passing of the great popular historian of the Civil War, Shelby Foote who came to his craft in an unlikely way.

” Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”

R.I.P. Mr. Foote.

WELL ORGANIZED DEFEATISM

Marc Schulman posted today posted MoveOn.org’s ” Talking Points” for writing letters to the editor to papers across the country advocating a time-table pull-out of troops from Iraq in the wake of Bush’s speech. The key one is here because it gives away the game:

“We need a real exit plan with a real timeline providing real accountability for our leaders. We need to turn control of the training of Iraqi forces and the rebuilding of Iraq to the international community. And we must renounce permanent military bases in Iraq because that angers the Iraqi people.”

First, there are a number of good reasons for some kind of potential troop reduction. Resting and rebuilding overstretched and overstressed units. Movement to another deployment to carry on the war in a different theater in the GWOT. Shifting roles for U.S. military personnel within Iraq vis-a-vis Iraqi forces as Iraqi units increase their operational comptency. These would all be examples of reasons to alter troop levels. It’s a safe bet that none of these reasons are foremost in the minds of those who wrote MoveOn.org’s talking points.

I won’t bother with critiquing the self-evidently asinine “We need to turn control of the training of Iraqi forces and the rebuilding of Iraq to the international community.” That’s a throw-away line to reassure the nervous within MoveOn.org’s email list that there’s another form international 911 than the United States military to help the Iraqis. There isn’t an ” international community” with the military resources to undertake such a task, even if they had the will.

Telegraphing our ” exit strategy” with a public timetable is not designed to ” hold our leaders accountable”but to enable the insurgency’s strategic planning. It is designed to demoralize the Iraqi government soldiers and policemen who will then begin looking ahead to the day the U.S. pulls out and encourage their collaboration with insurgency. It is designed to create an inflexible and artificial constraint on the ability of American commanders and the Iraqi government to respond to the insurgency.

Strategically and tactically it represents some supremely wrongheaded advice from people who have a political vested interest in seeing bad things happen and who will take no responsibility for events once their advice is followed. If you pull troops out you can just pull them out, a ” timetable” doesn’t add value, it increases problems that make actually pulling out troops more difficult and costly.

I wager MoveOn.org’s leadership worries a great deal more about a stabilized and democratizing Iraq with a few American military bases in 2008 than an Iraq sliding in to chaos and civil war.