ISIS and the U.S. security state--the most disconcerting story you'll read this year

Today's NY Times' top story is not for the fainthearted. It implicitly reveals America's national-security community--from the CIA to the Pentagon to the NSA and State--as the most cash-glutted embarrassment in the history of intelligence gathering. On its surface the story features the bloody rise of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but its real villain is the blind, phlegmatic leviathan of U.S. bureaucratic snoopery.

When Hitler's atrocities began to unfold in the 1930s, catching us somewhat off guard, our obliviousness at least had an excuse. We had no professional intelligence gatherers at the time, no CIA, no heavily endowed National Security Agency or the like. Der Führer had nonetheless been immensely helpful in broadcasting, in Mein Kampf, his coming program of genocide and destruction; it's just that we paid little attention to the fanatic's stated intentions. After all, we had not yet sunk untold billions into ferreting out reality from rumor, and facts from propaganda. Although Roosevelt suspected a ghastly future, we largely operated from a defensive position of mystification.

All that changed postwar, or rather, it was supposed to change. We wouldn't be blindsided by our enemies again. The U.S. national security state took root and thrived, cultivated by mountains of cash and beehives of superspooks. Its history of failures ever since--from its boneheaded readings of Castro's Cuba to its having overlooked the impending collapse of a nearly half-century-old foe to its breathless blunders in Bush's Iraq--are indeed legend, but not quite history.

"With just a few thousand fighters," observes the NYT, ISIS's "lightning sweep into Mosul and farther south appeared to catch many Iraqi and American officials by surprise." Yet, like Hitler, ISIS "has published voluminously, even issuing annual reports, to document its progress in achieving its goals." Notes Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism scholar, "When you go back and read it, it’s all there." ISIS "invaded Syria from Mosul long before it invaded Mosul from Syria."

In short, its current success in Iraq appears to be more of a mop-up campaign than an unforeseeable blitzkrieg. Yet, stunningly, just two years ago Tony Blinken (then the vice president's national security adviser, now the president's deputy national security adviser) boasted--as ISIS "strengthened and United Nations data showed civilian casualties in Iraq on the rise"--that Iraq's turmoil was "at historic lows." Few, or perhaps no one, in America's vast security structure seemed to be reading ISIS's "annual reports," or even glancing at U.N. figures.

As a routine part of analogy-disclaimers, it should be emphasized that ISIS is no Nazi Germany. It should also be emphasized, as the NYT does, that this latest of Middle East implosions is--what else? of course--Bush-Cheney's doing. ISIS's "rise is directly connected to the American legacy in Iraq. The American prisons were fertile recruiting grounds for jihadist leaders, and virtual universities, where leaders would indoctrinate their recruits with hard-line ideologies."

Still, its "lightning sweep into Mosul and farther south appeared to catch many ... American officials by surprise." There ISIS was, annually publishing revised editions of Mein Kampf--the Sunni fanatics' "main goals: founding an Islamic state and slaughtering their enemies, mostly the Iraqi security forces and Shiites"--While the National Security State Slept, as Churchill would have put it.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

You'll have to excuse me if I see things somewhat differently. Could any intelligence service have predicted how fast a comical excuse for armed forces, the Iraqi army would collapse in the teeth of Hesse few thousand fighters? No. Not really. Historically their conscripted forces did so in the teeth of allied power. Not so some formations, specifically heir guards. But this is almost beside the point.

The more important point is this: can these few fanatics take control of Iraq and set up a state? Hell no. The US couldn't do it with vaster resources and these assholes won't be able to do it either. Witness their bank robbing instincts. That's got to really make friends and influence people. Vandals and pillagers don't really make effective civil servants. I expect that given time they will make themselves every bit as popular as the Taliban did before hey got run out of town in two weeks. It's a shame the whole Iraq thing distracted virtually all effort from following up the rather effective use of air power in that instance.
The ISIS won't be able to set up a state that is capable of delivering services to anybody. They'll just do what religious assholes do and spend their energy telling everyone how to live until they make themselves totally unwelcome.

[shsavage]

I hope you are correct in your assessment, Peter. ISIS/ISIL has been able to play the Sunni/Shia conflict to its advantage, and will do so as long as the Sunnis who either directly aided them or did not interfere with them continue to do so. And let's make no mistake, they had considerable aid from the indigenous Sunni population--the same ones who helped the U.S. during the "surge". Their aid will continue for as long as ISIS/ISIL can avoid committing atrocities against Sunnis. And the rest of the Sunni community does have experience in governing Iraq, acquired through their earlier alignment with Sadaam. Whether ISIS/ISIL has the sense to reign in their more extreme elements is going to be a major question for the near future.

[Charlieford]

I really wish George Kennan were here. That guy was smart.

When everyone was running around with their hair on fire thinking we'd need to start World War III and drive the Red Army out of Budapest (because, you know, freedom!), Kennan advised letting them all stew in their own juices till they saw the light. It would be cheaper and safer for all concerned. Eisenhower, if not Dulles, agreed, and even Churchill came around to Kennan's position. Imagine what the 1950s might have been like if they hadn't!

But now Kennan's gone, and we're lost--lost, I tell you! We have no idea at all what he might say about a group of maybe a couple thousand fanatics on the other side of the world who have a) no air force, b) no navy, and c) no chance in hell of achieving anything at all, because they're idiots.

It's a tragedy, really, that we can't have him here. Would he advise "roll-back"? A new crusade? Operation Marrakesh Garden? We can't know. We just can't know. It's sad, really.