{"id":59646,"date":"2015-05-06T07:29:27","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T11:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=59646"},"modified":"2015-05-05T13:42:05","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T17:42:05","slug":"former-cia-deputy-director-the-arab-spring-was-a-boon-to-islamic-extremists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=59646","title":{"rendered":"Former CIA Deputy Director: \u201cThe Arab Spring Was a Boon to Islamic Extremists”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that he\u2019s no longer in office, it appears that the former Deputy Director of the CIA – Michael \u00adMorell \u2013 has decided to make some money as an author.\u00a0 He\u2019s written a book about his career called The Great War of Our Time<\/span>.\u00a0 As you might guess from the title, it focuses largely on post-9\/11 events.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what he had to say about the \u201cArab Spring\u201d. It explains quite a bit, actually.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought and told policy-makers that this outburst of popular revolt would damage al-Qaeda by undermining the group\u2019s narrative. [Instead], the Arab Spring was a boon to Islamic extremists across both the Middle East and North Africa. From a counterterrorism perspective, the Arab Spring had turned to winter.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, that explains \u2013 at least in part \u2013 why we sat on our hands and watched while longstanding allies went down the tubes.\u00a0 But it doesn\u2019t explain why we \u201cscrewed the pooch\u201d so badly on that call.<\/p>\n

I understand quite well that intel is not an exact science. But historically, whenever an authoritarian regime has collapsed, a temporary power vacuum is created. If there\u2019s not someone immediately around to pick up the pieces, things get chaotic.<\/p>\n

Terrorist organizations do rather well in chaotic situations.\u00a0 So I kinda wonder why we didn’t foresee the real possibility that the Arab Spring might create a chaotic situation that al Qaeda and its ideological brethren could exploit.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was as simple as a case of \u201ctelling the boss what he wanted to hear\u201d. After all, when the boss makes it clear they only want to hear news with which they agree . . . well, that\u2019s what they\u2019ll get, true or not.<\/p>\n

That kinda seems to me to have been the case some 35+ years ago in Iran.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s what happened here too.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post has a reasonably good article<\/a><\/em> about the guy\u2019s book, and briefly covers a few other things he talks about in it as well. If you have a few spare minutes, the article might be worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that he\u2019s no longer in office, it appears that the former Deputy Director of the … Former CIA Deputy Director: \u201cThe Arab Spring Was a Boon to Islamic Extremists”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,46,9,238],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-barack-obama","category-foreign-policy","category-government-incompetence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}