When is Intelligence Action War?

The CIA is conducting an unacknowledged war in Pakistan using drones to fire Hellfire missiles into suspected enemy strongholds. There have been many incidents of innocent people being killed by these attacks, including many women and children. The administration says they refuse to discuss the particulars of any intelligence actions, but the CIA’s activity in Pakistan is laughably the world’s worst kept secret. I’m all for keeping intelligence activities secret as long as strict governance of their activities are ensured and they remain legal. After all, our ability to know what our adversaries are doing gives us a tactical and strategic edge. But when our intelligence activities include deliberate acts of war within a country that is supposed to be our friend, the Agency seems to be way overstepping the authority granted to it for intelligence purposes.

Few people seem to realize that the CIA doesn’t fall under the direction of the Department of Defense. In fact, the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence who reports to the President. This presents an interesting situation. All the war activities in Afghanistan are under the direction of Secretary Gates, while all the war activities in Pakistan are under the direction of the Leon Penneta, the Director of the CIA. This relationship of having two different organizations executing parallel war efforts places the President smack in the middle as the only decision maker, and arbiter for disputes between the DoD and the CIA, as they conduct their respective wars in adjacent countries that have a very porous boarder.

General Petraus and UN Ambassador Rice have both described the situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as a borderless border- a region occupied by tribal peoples, many of whom are Taliban recruits, moving freely from one country to the other because the border is essentially nonexistent to them.

We forget that Great Britain created this border, along with just about every country in Southwest Asia, after World War 1. Britain was motivated to divide and separate malcontent tribal areas throughout this part of the world to ensure stability and control the people who would resist or attempt to rebel against their imperial rule. Two regions most directly affected by this policy are the Talibans along the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Kurds in the Turkey, Iran and Iraq region. Resentment of this suppression runs long and deep. Osama bin Ladin referred to it in his message to the world after 9/11 when he called 9/11 an attempt to retaliate for 80 years of imperial rule. We don’t have to agree with him, but that’s what he was motivated by. The Taliban are not being pushed from one country to another. They actually view the region as their own, and move as necessary to avoid attack by the Army on one side and the CIA on the other.

So the bad guys are currently in Pakistan. We don’t have authority or approval to occupy Pakistan with boots on the ground, so we’ve pressured Pakistan to permit us to fight a war from the air, under the direction of the CIA. Pakistan probably didn’t have any say in the matter; else they bite the hand that feeds them- weapons anyway.

But we are not Pakistan. We are the people of the United States and we have a right to know why the government is using the CIA to fight an unacknowledged war in Pakistan. Someday this may lead to boots on the ground, and we’ll be told this is another war of necessity, a good war. Bull. We shouldn’t have to wait until we’re stuck in the mud in Pakistan, beyond a point of no return, to have a say in what we’re doing there and why. Now is the time to get this new war out in the open and in front of the American people.

Here are a couple articles on the subject:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/03-9

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04drones.html?_r=1&hp