Intelligence Agencies and Just War on Terrorism Essay

America and its allies face Ð ° world that has become more and more dangerous with its weapons of mass destruction and Ð ° shadowy world of terrorists more than willing to use them. The wisdom of the past does not have the prescience or universal insight to deal with this new threat. America and its allies must change direction if they wish to respond to the challenge in an effective manner, even if it means employing policies that seemed dubious in the past. The state is called to protect its citizens in Ð ° Machiavellian world, filled with depravity and compromise. The church is called to submit to the superior wisdom of those who have the special intelligence, experience and expertise to handle the current crisis. Our forefathers came from Europe to settle in Ð ° wilderness that was not always hospitable. Death was imminent, and survival was uppermost on all their minds. The settlement in Jamestown, after the death of Powhatan, suffered an unprovoked attack at the hands of the Native Americans in 1622, in which some 375 settlers were massacred. The immediate response was to make Ð ° perfidious treaty with the natives and then starve them by burning their crops late that summer. It was Ð ° matter of survival. It was either ‘us or them’. (Amit 2003 127) â€Å"The same policy was followed by the Puritans of Massachusetts when the Pequot Indians, Ð ° most war-like people, presented an imminent threat in the mind of these settlers. Rather than wait around to die, they proceeded to attack them first, killing in one horrific conflagration of Ð ° Pequot fort some 4oo men, women and children. The exact motives behind the massacre remain unclear, but no doubt survival was uppermost in their minds. Today the situation that confronts the American people is not so different. It is similar to that of their ancestors in many ways and direr in regard to the number of lives at stake. one can debate whether the times have ‘waxed worse and worse’, but it is beyond question that the times have proved ‘more and more critical’ with their weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the ever-increasing number of potential users. The nation of Israel felt this threat in 1981 when it conducted Ð ° pre-emptive strike against an Iraqi nuclear reactor. The United States roundly condemned the action at the time, but with the threat now facing them from this and other rogue nations Ð ° new policy has emerged. The nefarious intentions of the Iraqi regime are apparent to most observers. It appears as if this regime plans to continue the production of WMD and deliver these weapons themselves or distribute them through the shadowy world of terrorist networks to designated targets in this clandestine manner. The signs of the times are all around us. Iraq already has violated over fifty UN resolutions to date. The UN inspectors revealed that Saddam was vigorously working on Ð ° stockpile of WMD—chemical, biological and nuclear, and by the mid-9os he began to deny them access to his supply. He already has used these weapons against his own people and waves of foot soldiers in his war with Iran. He has pledged on Ð ° number of occasions to bring destruction upon the United States, and even planned the assassination of its former president, George Bush. He has subsidized and continues to support terrorist groups throughout the region, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad according to seized Palestinian documents. His relation to terrorism is Ð ° matter of grave concern. â€Å"(Rahul 2002 37-44) It provides Ð ° special channel to deliver and promote his wicked designs, Bin Laden has called it Ð ° ‘religious duty’ for his minions to obtain and use WMD against the infidels, but he knows that his terrorist network needs help. It is only in the movies that Dr No is able to create the facilities to manufacture and deliver WMD. In the real world of terrorism, the capacity to make and utilize these weapons requires the help of Ð ° government. Aum Shinrikyo, Ð ° Japanese cult, tried to kill thousands of commuters with Ð ° potent nerve agent but managed to kill only Ð ° dozen after spending somewhere around thirty million dollars. The loss of these lives was tragic but much less than expected and displayed the complexity of operations using these agents. The cult was not able to produce the chemical (sarin) in sufficient purity and resorted to using Ð ° most primitive delivery system—carrying it on Ð ° train and piercing bags of it with tips of umbrellas. Ð  government working with Ð ° terrorist organization would produce Ð ° more lethal combination. 3 In light of this threat, it appears as if the only long-term solution is to eliminate the regime in Baghdad. Some would argue that there is no need to rush into war. But one wonders how realistic this option is in view of the track record of the regime. Is it realistic to believe that Iraq would comply with inspectors? It did not the first time around, not in toto, would the UN impose the necessary sanctions and penalties if it did not? Or would it ignore certain closed doors and cave in as it did before to Iraqi demands? And even if unmolested, would the inspectors catch the regime in its lies, knowing that it is likely to play Ð ° shell game and was given four years to hide its weapons? (Bruce 2003 44) Donne’s fatalistic maxim succinctly defines the essential context that modern intelligence services function within, and the variables determining their relative fortunes. Their experiences suggest that they are very human institutions largely shaped by the vagaries of circumstances beyond their control, not to mention misfortune and luck. As refined information used by the state to further national goals and policies, intelligence is directed, collected, analyzed and disseminated (the ‘intelligence cycle’) within the milieu of international politics. Intelligence work must therefore function within the ‘anarchical society’ of Great Powers. 1 Equally significant is the extent to which intelligence functionaries serve at the mercy of their policy masters. The intelligence officers themselves, in their various professional incarnations, are the ‘desperate men’ in this formulation, striving as they do to carry out their risky and/or problematic duties in the face of inertia and outright opposition on the part of rivals, enemies, and occasionally their own countrymen. It is unlikely that any intelligence service in history has ever completely escaped subjugation to such restrictive bondage. â€Å"As mentioned in the previous chapter, the war on al Qaeda should be Ð ° deliberate broad-front attack. It is already that in practice, but the rationale for sustaining this approach is less established and troubles are certain because such Ð ° strategy requires relating the efforts of multiple agencies, subagencies, and even nations, and it sometimes necessitates rapid action. This would seem to require two enhancements of capability which may at first seem contradictory, but they are complementary and equally important. â€Å"(Paul 2002 31) These facts hold particularly true for the office of Strategic Services mission in London, America’s critical liaison and operational intelligence outpost during the Second World War. Expanding to Ð ° peak of 2,800 personnel in 1944, OSS/London was originally established in October 1941 with the arrival of Ð ° single representative, followed by Ð ° staff nucleus the day after America’s entry into the war. Eventually consisting of contingents from the four major OSS branches-Research and Analysis, Secret Intelligence, Special operations, and X-2 (counter-intelligence)-the mission served as Ð ° focal point for Anglo-American intelligence relations in the decisive theatre in the war against Germany. The London mission was at the heart of OSS relations with British intelligence, and as such it personified the essence of that connection in the Allied war effort. The Allied invasion of Europe ensured that OSS/London, more than any other OSS outpost, would have the greatest opportunity to perform Ð ° decisive role in the intelligence war. Other OSS missions would also make important contributions, notably in Cairo, Algiers and Italy; but these were ultimately secondary theatres, while in the Pacific and Asia, OSS never acquired the sound relationship with the military necessary for intelligence operations. London was at the heart of the Allied war effort, and at the heart of the Anglo-American alliance itself. While intelligence exchanges with the Soviet Union have been documented by Bradley F. Smith, London was the ‘big league’ in Allied intelligence during the war. Many significant matters were accordingly played-out there, offering detailed examples of intelligence services in action. The experiences of OSS in London therefore illuminate the process by which America was introduced to the various components of intelligence and clandestine work, and how well American intelligence performed in its own right. As the presumed precursor to the post-war US Central Intelligence Agency, OSS further invites study in order to understand the antecedents of America’s Cold War intelligence service. The significant Anglo-American context of the evolution of modern American intelligence moreover suggests that the Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’ had an intelligence component that was manifested most strongly and clearly in OSS/London. (Bruce 2oo3 75) The mission thus provides Ð ° case study of how US intelligence matured and became institutionalized within the context of the larger Anglo-American political-military alliance. This analysis accordingly examines an aspect of that alliance and of intelligence history in particular, that has not yet been explored in any comprehensive detail. It is part of Ð ° current historiographical review of the significance of intelligence services in military and international affairs. It specifically examines OSS/London within the context of Anglo-American relations, as well as the evolution of both modern American, and Allied, intelligence during the Second World War. The general research approach blends what has been termed the American and British ‘schools’ of intelligence scholarship. The more historical nature of British intelligence studies has been noted by Kenneth G. Robertson, while Roy Godson’s ‘Intelligence: an American View’, in Robertson’s British and American Approaches to Intelligence, distinguishes between this historical methodology and the more conceptual or theoretical nature of American studies (for example, Sherman Kent’s Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy). British diplomatic historian D. C. Watt has therefore identified these approaches as two distinct schools of intelligence study, though Ð ° recent noteworthy British contribution to the theoretical school is Michael Herman’s Intelligence Power in Peace and War, which surveys the interrelationship between post-war structures, tasks, and effectiveness. This study for its part demonstrates the influences of both schools by linking theoretical concepts to the role of intelligence ties within the larger wartime Anglo-American alliance. (Neville 2004 45)