Saturday Morning Drone Mini-Post.
To go with your morning coffee, black pudding, eggs, bacon and sausage. (Plus copy of Financial Times, and your TV set to the premiership matchups for the day).
Over at the Danger Room, Spencer Ackerman has an exclusive statement from UN Special Rappoteur Ben Emmerson on the John Brennan nomination. The precis version of Emmerson’s is summed up best by this line:
“Obama has had one term in which to try to impose presidential, democratic authority over this program,” Emmerson says. “The decision to put Brennan as director of the CIA is a decision to stamp presidential authority over the agency, and to bring it firmly under control.”
Which sounds remarkably like the logic offered by a more humble commentator on the subject.
I recommend reading the full thing, then following up by Jack Goldsmith’s critique at Lawfare. Goldsmith like Abu Muqawama’s piece earlier in the year about the CIA’s role in targeted killings throws some cold water on the notion that the problem is solved simply by taking the CIA out of the drone strike business and moving it into JSOC.
Overall these and other national security law debates (such as Chesney’s note on adding judicial review, or Andrew Kent’s take on due process on the battlefield) focus more on the issue at hand than the majority of the noise emanating from the recent memo release. They’re all worth a read and this is a good time as any to do so..
I’m with Goldsmith. This is the most unified and disciplined executive branch since Bush 1. Nobody ‘goes rogue’ in this administration; anything that happens is with the full knowledge, and usually the leadership, of the White House.
Emmerson made some hay last year by going on the record on how awful a Romney Administration would be – which may have been true, but it was not his place to make such comments. Indicates to me there’s some background affection for the Obama administration on the part of Emmerson.Report
I remember when the USA first went into Afghanistan. I said at the time we should never call these guys anything but criminals in public: charge them with air piracy, murder and the like. We should scrupulously avoid making them look like a legitimate enemy. Keeping the rhetorical focus on their criminal aspects, get various Muslim clerics to issue fataawa against them and the governments which harboured them. If I had been managing the PR war, I would have put Bush out there at the Lincoln Memorial with a thousand Muslims, especially the families of Muslim victims (there were dozens of them in the Twin Towers) and had Bush yell at the top of his lungs “They have murdered OUR MUSLIMS in contradiction of your own Prophet’s commandments. Whatever justification you might have, Al-Qaeda cannot say this is jihaad”
An intelligence war is a war for hearts and minds. It’s not just a one way street. When the CIA went into Laos and recruited the Hmong, there were two aspects to that effort. The Hmong had been persecuted by the Vietnamese for centuries and arguably the CIA was only exploiting that hatred. But the CIA made friends there and gained the trust of a people who were barely out of the Bronze Age.
The worst aspect of the Drone War is how we’ve seemed to turn this into a one-way street. It’s a PR disaster. Pretty much anyone who’s examined this problem understands those drones don’t drop missiles on people without information from local operators.
Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.
Knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions can only be obtained from other men.
And this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from drones. Until CIA gets back to its original mission, obtaining knowledge from other men, it doesn’t matter how good the resolution on the drone cameras might be. The I in CIA means Intelligence. Intelligence wins wars. Technology doesn’t.Report
Reminds me of this.Report
You pretty much described non of my Saturday.
Also, what is so special about the Financial Times? Is it for people who are too snobby for the New York Times or the Guardian?
Again, I wonder what people’s preferred news media says about them. Not in a politically ideological way but more in a cultural way. Does reading the Financial Times signify being or wanting to be part of a different cultural mileau than people who read the New York Times or Guardian? Does the FT attract people with a different educational background and jobs?Report
Read the paper for the culture you want, not the culture you have.Report
Who reads the papers? Some familiarity with UK papers required…Report
So you are you saying that Nob owns part of the UK or aspires to be one of the people who owns the UK.
Nob, can you appoint me artistic director of the Royal Court?Report
…WTF is black pudding, really?Report
IIRC it’s made from sheep’s blood or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_puddingReport
So basically a form of boudin incorporating blood. Eh, I like boudin…Report
It tastes better than it sounds and it doesn’t look like you might imagine.Report