A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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October 10, 2007Take Regime Change From The CIAIf I were President, I'd take responsibility for regime change away from the CIA, since they've bungled it for half a century, possibly even to the extent of creating the circumstances for 9/11. I believe CIA make all these strategic mistakes because they think of regime change as an extension of their wet work gathering information. It's expectable that they'd deal with alot of nasty people in the course of data-gathering. Their regime change approach is...dealing with alot of nasty people. But that's all wrong for regime changing work. Reasons are given in the two above-linked articles. In a sense, I'd give it to the Special Forces, since they're the most successful recent exponents of democratic regime change (Afghanistan, 2002). This goes along with my thinking about how the military is changing long-term. We're seeing the effective action being done by smaller and smaller numbers of people in quasi-covert action. Afghanistan was just a preview of this. High firepower is more and more available to support fewer and fewer people. Nanotechnology could make it literally feasible for one person to take action to defeat a country or group by depositing nano in the right spot. I'd create a new DoD department, The Department of Special Forces, and add responsibility for regime change, Afghanistan-like applications of vast firepower to help small numbers of people, hacking, and other high-tech kinds of applications. Whenever US policy causes us to want regime change, I'd turn to them instead of CIA. Posted by Jon Kay at October 10, 2007 11:33 PMComments
If regime was taken from the CIA there would be no need for the "company." The US could conduct intelligence gathering through satellite alone. The CIA oftens is saddled with the mistakes and missteps of the executive branch of government. I believe the CIA should be reformed to mirror the changes in the world and that there are several layers of bureaucratic deadwood that should be let go. If the US didn't have the CIA it would soon find necessary the reason for having it. Danny L. McDaniel I think most of the work the CIA does now is analysis, and that's not going away. Now, sometimes I do think that the structure of information availability has changed enough that maybe it no longer makes sense to have a centralized bureaucracy. Afterall, the White House does its own analysis (NSA/NSC), various DoD bureaucracies do their own targeted to their needs etc. What REALLY needs to go away is the new NID. He serves no purpose other than adding a confusing layer of bureaucracy, fall guy and collecting a check. The National Security Director already does what he does, much better. |
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