We've turned local police forces - the ones we created "to serve and protect" into militarized brutes that view citizens as terrorists-until-proven-otherwise, so why not hand over to our supposed spy agency all the murderous dirty work we don't want citizens finding out about? Our citizens, that is; foreign citizens get to see it up close and personally.
Robert Wright, in an obvious effort to use
Petraeusgate to draw attention to a boring subject that has nothing to
do with sex, says the real scandal here isn't Petraeus leaving the CIA, it's the fact the he arrived there in the first place:
When, in the fall of 2011, David Petraeus moved from commanding the
Afghanistan war effort to commanding the CIA, it was a disturbingly
natural transition. I say "natural" because the CIA conducts drone
strikes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and is involved in other
military operations there, so Petraeus, in his new role, was continuing
to fight the Afghanistan war. I say "disturbingly" because this overlap
of Pentagon and CIA missions is the result of a creeping militarization
of the CIA that may be undermining America's national security.
The militarization of the CIA raises various questions. For example,
if the CIA is psychologically invested in a particular form of
warfare—and derives part of its budget from that kind of warfare—can it
be trusted to impartially assess the consequences, both positive and
negative, direct and indirect?
And then there's the transparency question. [A piece in the Washington Post]
noted concerns among some activists that "the CIA now functions as a
military force beyond the accountability that the United States has
historically demanded of its armed services. The CIA doesn't officially
acknowledge the drone program, let alone provide public explanation
about who shoots and who dies, and by what rules." Indeed, only a few
months ago, in compliance with the War Powers Resolution, the Obama
administration reported (vaguely) on targeted killings in Somalia and
Yemen that had been conducted by the military, but not on those
conducted by the CIA.
....The circumstances of Petraeus's departure from the CIA are a
little alarming; you'd rather your chief spy not be reckless. But the
circumstances of his arrival at the CIA a year ago were more troubling.
Yet no alarm was sounded that was anywhere near as loud as the hubbub
surrounding Petraeus now. That's scandalous.
As near as I can tell, drone warfare was largely handed over to the
CIA precisely in order to avoid normal military accountability. That
really is scandalous, but it attracted only fleeting notice. It's
probably too much to hope that the Petraeus scandal will cause anyone to
rethink this, but rethink it we should. Wright has more at the link.
I don't give a flying fuck what Petraeus fucks. I care a very great deal who he orders killed. Shame on our pathetic excuse for national media that I get far too much information about the former, and next to none about the latter.
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