Obama's National Security Advisor "Went Native" Years Ago

John Brennan, Obama National Security advisor, addressing an unidentified group

By Alan Caruba

There’s a YouTube video of John Brennan, the President’s national security advisor, praising Islam and the Arab culture to an unidentified group of Arabs that is so revealing it should be probable cause for his removal from office. At one point, he addresses them in fluent Arabic, a language acquired in his studies and CIA posts over the years.

When the British Empire spanned much of the globe there was a term for men who embraced the culture and nations to which they were assigned. They were deemed to have “gone native”, often wearing Arab garb and becoming apologists or advocates. Among the most famous was Lawrence of Arabia, but there were many others such as Lieutenant-General, Sir John Bagot Glub, called "Glub Pasha" and best known for leading and training Jordan’s Arab Legion from 1939 to 1956; the same Legion that took part in attacks on Israel after it declared independence in 1948.

In the video, Brennan waxes poetic about Arab culture. In 1977 Brennan had received a degree in political science from Fordham University. During his studies he had spent his junior year learning Arabic and taking Middle Eastern Studies courses at the American University in Cairo. He received a Master of Arts degree in government with a concentration in Middle East studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980.

His career in the Central Intelligence Agency was one in which he reached the highest rungs as an analyst, serving at one point as a daily intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton. In 1996, he was the CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when the Khobar Towers, a housing complex, was blown up by a truck bomb, killing nineteen U.S. servicemen billeted there. He would serve under CIA Director George Tenet as the director of its newly created Terrorist Threat Integration Center from 2003 to 2004. He would serve as director of the CIA’s National Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2005.

One might assume from such an impressive resume that Brennan was the ideal man to be appointed President Barack Hussein Obama’s chief counterintelligence advisor with the title of Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

One might assume that, but Brennan, from his earliest days in that post made a number of statements and authored a USA Today opinion editorial that revealed deeply felt sympathies for the very people who were and are attacking Americans at home and overseas. In his USA Today opinion, Brennan criticized “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering that only serve the goals of al Qaeda.”

Commenting on Brennan’s USA Today opinion, Jed Babbin, in an article for Human Events on February 11, 2010, wrote of Brennan and the Obama administration’s incomprehensible national security actions, “Consider their consistent record of bad decisions only one year into Obama’s presidency: to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; to move Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other al Qaeda varsity out of the military commissions system and try them in civilian criminal court; to war against the intelligence community; to put the White House in charge of interrogations of captured terrorists; and, most recently, the hasty decision to put the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in civilian custody thus preventing professional intelligence interrogators from having access to him.”

Babbin characterized Brennan’s USA Today article as “a string of fibs and misleading statements so easily disproved (that) it leaves observers wondering about Brennan’s sanity.”

Writing in the Washington Observer on May 26, 2010, Spencer Ackerman reported that “Brennan signaled as well that the administration is concerned that blowback from civilians killed by drones could turn tactical success into strategic failure.” Brennan said the U.S. had an obligation to destroy al Qaeda proactively, “but also has a responsibility not to overreact in the event of a successful attack.”

One wonders if he thought that President George W. Bush overreacted to the al Qaeda attack on 9/11. One can only assume he agreed with President Obama’s decision to send a SEAL team to assassinate Osama bin Ladin. In his defense of the decision to have Adulmatalleb read his Miranda rights, Brennan said, “Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lacks foundation.” This ignores the long history of trying people who commit acts of war against the United States the use of military courts.

The fact that Brennan is one of the chief advisors to President Obama explains a lot about the decisions Obama has made since taking office with regard to protecting the nation against al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. It explains Obama’s now famous “apology tour” of the Middle East that he took in 2009 and his conciliatory speech delivered at the University of Cairo.

Egypt has now moved outside the nation’s zone of influence and Iran openly mocks the Obama policies of using diplomacy and sanctions to stop their quest for nuclear weapons. Israel, despite Obama’s latest reassurances, was earlier told to stop building housing in its capitol city and to retreat to indefensible 1967 borders.

Inside the White House, Obama continues to be advised by a man whose sympathies, despite his long service in the CIA, appear to be with the Islamic enemies of the nation. It is no surprise that Brennan has maintained a very low profile since 2009-2010.

There have been many calls for Brennan’s resignation or firing, but he remains in Obama’s good graces. That, too, is no surprise.

Editor's note: This YouTube video's URL is
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VQbAhqHoAo&fb_source=message

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Fortune Tellers, Tarot Readers, and Me

By Alan Caruba

On the day Mubarak stepped down as Egypt’s president and the crowds in Tahrir Square were going bananas over the news, I paused to post a comment on my blog saying that Egyptians, ten years or less into the future, might look back at his thirty years of dictatorship as “the good old days.”

This rather casual approach to what is, in Vice President Biden’s words, is a “big f-ing deal”, so far as Egypt and the Middle East is concerned, gave me cause to reflect on how difficult it is to make any predictions about the future except in the most general way. Even then, the prospect for being wrong is constant.

When one looks back in history, the temptation is to say things like “Of course America was going to win World War Two”. That's pure 20-20 hindsight. America was very late to the party; the war in Europe had begun in 1939 and we didn’t get in until December 1941 when we were attacked  by Japan. Americans were hugely opposed to getting into another European conflict, nor eager to take on one in Asia. After Pearl Harbor, however, we could not wait to get into the field and kick some butt. Sort of like after 9/11, eh?

It is unlikely that those Iranian students back in 1979 had any idea that the Ayatollah Khomeini would return from his exile in France a month after it started and impose one of the cruelest regime imaginable. The Shah, of course, was no choir boy, but he did try to modernize Iran, not drag it back to the seventh century. Despite pronouncements by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, most Iranians have a great affection for America.

I doubt any one of the victorious parties who signed the Treaty of Versailles after World War One had any idea they were handing an unknown malcontent called Adolph Hitler the red meat he needed to (1) build the National Socialist party in Germany into one that (2) won a democratic election, (3) catapulted him into the Chancellor’s job, and imposed a totalitarian regime that (4) jailed all of its opponents and (5) enjoyed a lot of support among the common folk.

The same treaty divided up the Middle East when British and French diplomats, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot, took out a map, used colored crayons to create new nations, partition others, and set in motion everything we have been living with ever since 1919. Back then, President Woodrow Wilson wanted to create an international organization, the League of Nations, to ensure no new wars would occur. He was, of course, a liberal. By the 1930s Hitler and Japanese Emperor Hirohito had other plans.

A liberal like Wilson, Roosevelt set about to create the United Nations after World War Two and now we have a huge, corrupt, totally ineffective organization that hasn’t stopped a single war since it came into being in 1945. It was and is an exercise in futility and pure evil. Its interim first Secretary General was Alger Hiss, a Soviet spy who, like many others, held high level State Department posts in the FDR and Truman administrations.

Which, for no particular reason, brings me to the Central Intelligence Agency that I seriously doubt could predict tomorrow’s weather. Reportedly, the news of Mubarak’s decision to step down came to the current CIA Director, Leon Panetta, from CNN. This is on a par with the former CIA chief, George J. Tenet’s pronouncement to then-President George W. Bush that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Few were found after the invasion.

We keep being told that we only hear of the CIA’s failures and never of its successes. I am old enough to recall they were taken completely by surprise when both Pakistan and India achieved nuclear weapon parity. I can even recall the debacle of the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a happy surprise. In fact, I keep searching my memory for any reports of its successes. But of course they are a SECRET.

I would love to sit in on one of those daily CIA briefings for the President. I suspect I might find myself laughing out loud much of the time. Some of our spies gave their lives to protect us, but as patriotic they and the folks over at the National Security Agency are, predicting crises and events is not their forte, probably because they are unpredictable in any but the most general terms.

For example, largely unreported is the news that, since 2006, Pakistan has increased its nuclear arsenal to more than a hundred atomic bombs. It is one of the most unstable governments in the Middle East. The U.S. has given Pakistan billions despite the fact that a large portion of the country is controlled by the Taliban, it is generally anti-American, and it is bankrupt. More jihadists come out of Pakistan then anywhere else.

The Obama administration has banned the use of terms such as “jihad”, “Islamic terrorism”, and “radical Islam” in U.S. documents. This is a self-inflicted, ideological blindness on a galactic scale.

So it is left to imbeciles in the news media to tell us what is happening, why it is happening, and what is likely to happen.

That’s how we ended up with Walter Cronkite reporting from Saigon that Tet was a huge defeat for the American forces when it was, in fact, a huge victory or Dan Rather’s utterly false report about George W. Bush’s National Guard history. We end up with a rabid anti-Semite like Helen Thomas reporting from the White House since shortly after the Lincoln assassination (okay, she’s not that old).

Since the late 1980s, this mush-for-brains crowd has been telling us that global warming was real and we had to all switch to riding bicycles, driving electric cars, and whizzing around at a huge 60-miles-per-hour in so-called “high-speed” trains instead of taking a plane. When people start getting their genitals fondled by TSA agents in order to get on Amtrak, all travel in America will revert to automobiles and horses.

All of which leads me to believe that those in the White House, in the past and the present, have no more grasp of events than your dentist.

When I make a prediction—and it is very rare—it is almost always based on history and, in case you haven’t noticed, history is speeding up thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

I suspect ideology, uninformed speculation, ignorance and fear are the basis for most “strategery”. You will understand then why I lean toward the Latin admonition, “Si vi pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war.

Ronald Reagan reminded us, "Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong"

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Al Qaeda Kills Itself...with Some Help from the USA

By Alan Caruba

An article in the Washington Post reports that the Central Intelligence Agency believes that al Qaeda has been, for the most part, defeated.

Forgive me for not celebrating quite yet because, if memory serves me right, the trillion dollars we spend annually on intelligence gathering has not always produced the most sterling results.

Wasn’t this the same agency that provided “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Isn’t this the same agency that leaks politically sensitive information to the press to undermine administrations with which it is at odds? Isn’t this the same agency that ate up and spit out Porter Goss when he was sent there to get it under control for such misbehavior? Isn’t this the former employer of Valerie Plame whose husband, Joe Wilson, attacked the decision to invade Iraq?

Et cetera!

This is not to suggest that having a CIA isn’t a good idea in a dangerous world, but the agency has in recent years become too involved in domestic politics, thus leading me to believe that its most recent announcement about al Qaeda, while good news, may also have a subtext.

I, frankly, would be happier if the CIA returned to destabilizing unfriendly governments. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez comes to mind or Iran’s Mamoud Amadinejad, but we’re told that the CIA doesn’t do that any more. It is useful to remember they were both elected to office. The ruin that such people inevitably cause is usually sufficient to bring about their overthrow at some point. The lesson is that it takes time, but Americans are an impatient lot.

The likelihood that al Qaeda is in big trouble is attributable to its policy of killing as many fellow Muslims as possible in order to make way for a new caliphate with Osama bin Laden as the new mahdi. He is reportedly in charge of a small hut in Waziristan somewhere in the northwestern frontier region of Afghanistan, an area whose local chamber of commerce has failed miserably to turn into a tourist destination.

Several times in the past Islam has gone forth to bring the blessings of Muhammad to the world with its armies. It was repulsed in Europe, the seat of Western Civilization, Now it depends on a handful of faithful whose job is to blow up themselves and others to achieve this. This latter technique has not gone unnoticed in the Middle East, as well as in places like Madrid, London, and Bali. Surely paradise is running out of virgins by now.

When al Qaeda destroyed the Twin Towers and attacked the Pentagon on 9/11, the Bush administration sent some CIA folk, along with some military, to chase them and the Taliban out of Afghanistan with some success. Since we were in the vicinity, the decision was made to topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a dictator. Libya's dictator took note, gave up its nuclear program, and has been less of a problem of late.

History is experienced by those who live it day to day and the loss of military personnel is always painful, the waste of money is always predictable. Wars of transformation are always messy. However, the CIA is quite accurate in saying that al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated. Its methods managed to achieve the impossible, the cooperation of Sunnis and Shias with one another.

In much the same way Truman’s decision to drive the North Koreans back beyond the 38th parallel has long since been vindicated by a thriving, democratic South Korea, I suspect that in fifty years or so Americans will look back at the Iraq invasion and occupation as a success as well. Like Truman, Bush will leave office with the lowest popularity ratings, but being President isn’t always about being popular. It is about being right.

The CIA has probably been wrong as many times as it has been right. A fresh batch of spies and analysts has largely replaced the old guard. I hope and believe it is right about al Qaeda.

The CIA Screws Bush...Again!

By Alan Caruba

If you want to understand what's going on with the latest National Intelligence Estimate, first read "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA" by Rowan Scarborough (Regnery Publishing).

"The intelligence community, sometimes anonymously, sometimes not, would make allegations of Bush Administration wrongdoing. The charges were leaked to the press. Months later, the Senate Intelligence Committee or another body would find no evidence to back up the leaks. But by then, the damage to the public's perception of the war had been done."(P. 95)

Who damaged the CIA? Under President Clinton, "He shrank the CIA's analytical and operations branches by at least 30 percent. Stations in Latin America and Asia closed or downsized. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, had only three CIA officers by the mid-1990s. The entire roster of case officers was reduced from 1,600 to 1,200, and there were only 400 collection management officers at American embassies to turn reports from case officers into cables back to Langley." (P. 114)

Is Iran a nuclear threat? "A nuclear-armed Iran, with its long-range ballistic missiles and fanatical leaders, could lead to a Middle East Armageddon. If the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was true to its word and tried to eliminate Israel, it would mean nuclear war. Classified DIA documents I obtained showed that Israel maintained an arsenal of eighty-two nuclear warheads." (P. 177)

So, excuse me, but it seems, given the CIA's record of trying to undermine the credibility of the Bush Administration since it took office, that the release of the latest ESTIMATE looks suspiciously like yet another CIA end-run to embarrass Bush.

Since the public will never be permitted to see the facts on which the estimate is based, there is no way to determine if the analysis is valid or not. One thing we know, they were out to lunch when 9/11 occurred. Meanwhile, the Israelis, whose intelligence capabilities are among the world's most highly regarded, are convinced the Iranians are working toward building nuclear weapons.

The CIA's track record to date appears to be alarmingly poor when it comes to fundamental tasks such as finding out where Osama bin Laden is. Around CIA headquarters the joke was "Osama Been Forgotten."

"By the winter of 2003, the CIA's PR war on Bush had broadened. A group of current and former intelligence officers formed an anti-Bush organization called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity." (P. 100)

An effort by Bush to put the place right by appointing Porter Goss as its director failed when a gaggle of CIA insiders made life for him and his aides so miserable he resigned within a fairly short time.

So I'm thinking this whole affair, giddily reported by a mainstream media that delights in making Bush look like a liar, a fool, or both, smells of dirty politics CIA-style.