The CIA should be accountable for its actions, just like any other government agency. My understanding from, for example, theatlantic.com , theatlantic.com , and theatlantic.com .
is that the CIA is more incompetent than anything else. Note that the first two are credited to (former) CIA insiders. I think the CIA was too successful with covert operations for too long, and that plain intelligence has been too often a neglected stepchild. I think if the CIA wants to be part of the solution, it has to get its act together. The fact that after 20 odd years of random operations there, nobody at the CIA can speak Afghan languages is disturbing.
As for the oft repeated "Blame America first" complaint, it's a short step from that to the old "love it or leave it" line. We can't control what other people think of us, but we have a responsibility, as citizens in a democracy, to understand what our government is doing now, and has done in the past. American actions affect many things in the world, and policy makers in the past seem to have too often been playing a chess game where they were incapable of looking more than one move ahead. Material advantage isn't everything. |
