(2004-06-28) Cia Iraq Critique

An anonymous CIA officer is anonymously publishing a book criticizing the War On Iraq as a horrible strategy for Dealing With Terrorism. Most of the Islam-ic world believes they know exactly what we're up to, and that's to deny the Palestinians a country, to make sure that oil flows at prices that may seem outrageous to the American consumer, but are not market prices in the Islamist's eyes, supporting Russia against Chechnya. I think very coolly Osama Bin Laden has focused them on substance rather than rhetoric. And his rhetoric is only powerful because that is the case. He's focused them on U.S. policies.... I don't think they hate everything that they - that we stand for. In fact, the same polls that show the depths of their hatred of our policies show a very strong affection for the traditional American sense of fair play, the idea of Rule Of Law, the ability of people to educate their children. I think the mistake is made on our part to assume that they hate all those things. What they hate is the policy and the repercussions of that policy, whether it's in Israel or on the Arabian Peninsula. It's not a hatred of us as a society, it's a hatred of our policies."... Probably 40,000 Taliban fighters went home with their guns in Afghanistan; probably 400,000 Iraqis went home with their guns in Iraq, all to fight another day. We seem to have a little bit of trouble distinguishing between winning a war and winning a battle... The point I would make is AlQaeda is not a terrorist group. It's more akin to an insurgent organization. It pays tremendous attention to succession, to leadership succession. Were all of those people that were killed or captured important? Absolutely. Did it hurt the organization? Of course it did. But there were successors waiting in the wings; there were understudies. The organization goes on. (hmm, if they're more of an "organization", does that make it easier to target them?)

Update: this is ImperialHubris ISBN:1574888498

Jul21 update: John Robb points to radio program and summarizes points.