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my war, you're one of them, you say that you're my... I'll bet you think this song is about you What gives you the right to fuck with our lives: C... gimme indie rock If there's a hell below, we're all going to go What gives you the right to fuck with our lives: C... the simple bare necessities -- that's how a bear c... just to see you torn apart, witness to your empty ... bloodied, blinded, shaken, left in the horror of y... left in the shambles, the smoke, the innocent vict... Wednesday, January 10, 2007
the news called it crack, I called it diet coke:
According to Hirsh & Hosenball, Lieutenant General Jerry "My God Is Bigger Than Yours" Boykin was the principal force behind the not-so-covert-anymore U.S. involvement in the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Bob Gates is going to get rid of the guy, for fear that Boykin's approach of involving the U.S. in all of these proxy wars is a recipe for disaster.
Critics of the covert program say that Gates and Cambone's replacement, Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, are concerned that too much collateral damage may work against U.S. interests. Giraldi says the U.S. Special Ops teams operate too often without accountability, not even notifying the local U.S. Embassy of their presence. In one case in East Africa a clandestine team was arrested by the host government and had to be bailed out by the ambassador, Giraldi says. Adds Arquilla, an advocate of dropping small teams into countries rather than launching air strikes: "There's a growing realization in the Pentagon that the more collateral damage is done, the worse is our position in the 'battle of the story'—in other words, every time we kill innocents our story is much less compelling and the clash of civilizations story is much more compelling."A wag might say Boykin is constantly Killing Pablo -- that is, fighting an unconventional war with the tactics of taking down a drug cartel. But to give Boykin the benefit of the doubt on something: the prospect of actually taking down al-Qaeda affiliates in far-flung locations really does demand stuff like this on occasion. That's not all it requires, and it's appropriate to factor in the likelihood of blowback or strategic futility -- as Petraeus's counterinsurgency manual says, sometimes it's wiser to actually do nothing -- but there really is a place for the application of Special Forces and AC-130s. The relevant consideration is whether Somalia was and is such a place, which prompted the questions that Matt and I were criticized for asking. It may be that Boykin was simply buck-wild -- God knows moving DOD into strategic intelligence is a dangerous and unnecessary game -- but he's not coming out of nowhere with this. --Spencer Ackerman
Very well prognosticated, Spencer. Boykin's been bounced, per Josh Marshall. |
