WP: Book review: ‘The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth’ By Mark Mazzetti

[Redskins Diehard]

On May 1, 2011, CIA Director Leon Panetta was in command of the single most important U.S. military operation since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: the Navy SEAL Team 6 assault on a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was suspected to be hiding. The SEALs were sneaking into Pakistan without the permission of its government on a covert “deniable” mission in a country that was supposedly allied to the United States. Because U.S. law forbids the military to do this kind of work, the SEALs were turned over to the control of the CIA and were “sheep-dipped” to become, in effect, spies under Panetta’s nominal control. Yet isn’t the CIA’s real job to steal other countries’ secrets, rather than to carry out targeted killings?

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Since the 9/11 attacks, a dramatic shift has occurred in the way the United States deploys its military and intelligence forces. In his new book, “The Way of the Knife,” Mark Mazzetti documents the militarization of the CIA and the stepped-up intelligence focus of Special Operations forces. As Mazzetti observes in his deeply reported and crisply written account, over the past decade “the CIA’s top priority was no longer gathering intelligence on foreign governments and their countries, but man hunting.” The bin Laden operation was far from the only deadly mission that Panetta presided over.

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The benefits of the way of the knife are obvious: Few Americans are put at risk, and the costs are relatively low in a time of budgetary constraints. But as Mazzetti points out, this type of knife fighting is not as surgical as some of its proponents think, for it “creates enemies just as it has obliterated them.” It also has “lowered the bar for waging war, and it is now easier for the United States to carry out killing operations at the ends of the earth than at any other time in its history.”

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John Brennan, the new director of the CIA, who oversaw the drone program during his four-year tenure at the White House as President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, can draw on his many decades of intelligence experience to help reinforce the CIA’s traditional role of learning the secrets of others. For instance, one question the CIA needs to answer is: What precisely is going on in Syria right now? That’s the kind of intelligence policymakers need as the Obama administration contemplates how to prepare for the country’s future without Bashar al-Assad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-way-of-the-knife-the-cia-a-secret-army-and-a-war-at-the-ends-of-the-earth-by-mark-mazzetti/2013/04/05/88e07306-9af8-11e2-9a79-eb5280c81c63_story.html?hpid=z6

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It appears that this book points out some of the concerns that I have with the current strategy. I have fundamental moral concerns with the extent to which we are executing the "Drone Program". It also points out that maybe we are too focused on killing the people that comprise AQ today.(I am 100% in favor of the mission to kill Bin Laden)

[FanboyOf91]

The benefits of the way of the knife are obvious: Few Americans are put at risk, and the costs are relatively low in a time of budgetary constraints. But as Mazzetti points out, this type of knife fighting is not as surgical as some of its proponents think, for it “creates enemies just as it has obliterated them.” It also has “lowered the bar for waging war, and it is now easier for the United States to carry out killing operations at the ends of the earth than at any other time in its history.”

4 times more blowback for half the price?