- More than two years into the post-9/11 world, words are
fast becoming casualties. Several are in danger of being degraded to the
point where they are no longer useful for meaningful communication.
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- Intelligence, as in Central Intelligence Agency, is one.
Decades of spy movies gave the word the credibility of the tablets from
the mount. But it's nothing more than secret information and the act of
collecting it. Sometimes, it's garbage, sometimes it's gold.
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- To acquire value, operational or otherwise, intelligence
must be analyzed. Are the sources credible? Are they in a position to have
direct knowledge or are they passing on second-hand tips? Have they always
told the truth? Have their stories checked out before? Where data and first-hand
observation are concerned, what's the context?
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- The next time you read about something attributed to
intelligence sources, ask yourself whether it sounds as if those questions
have been asked ó or whether it's just a self-serving leak of partial
data, devoid of real significance.
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- The boundary between intelligence and propaganda was
seriously blurred when the United States and Britain used information about
Iraqi weapons programs as a pretext for invasion. We now know they embraced
primarily intelligence that dovetailed with the predetermined goal, including
a fabricated tale about the procurement of enriched uranium in Africa.
In some cases, the information was withheld from rigorous analysis, in
others the judgment of trained analysts was ignored. Either way, the principles
of intelligence handling were seriously abused.
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- Misunderstandings about intelligence and its value may
also underlie the Maher Arar affair ó in which, it is now clear,
Canada served up one of its citizens on a platter for deportation to Syria
and its torturers. Our super-snoopers are busy shrouding their hindquarters
by leaking Syrian intelligence about Mr. Arar. But even a novice analyst
would recognize the difficulty of assessing information that might have
been coerced.
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- Serious analysis would also recognize that Syria has
its own battles to fight with militant Muslim organizations. And that it's
eager to get itself removed from the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states.
To properly weigh Syrian intelligence, it would have to be tested to make
sure its purpose is not to extrajudicially eliminate one of its internal
enemies, or demonstrate its zeal to Washington.
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- Terrorism is another degraded word. Syria's is not the
only opportunistic government seeking to have its internal enemies lumped
in with al-Qaeda. Suddenly there are no insurgents or rebels or guerrillas
or partisans any more. They're all simply terrorists, no matter whether
terror attacks on civilian targets is their only tactic, or one of many.
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- All attacks on innocent civilians are reprehensible,
and some rebel struggles degenerate to the point where terrorism is about
all that is left. But terrorism is not the key characteristic of insurgency
in countries such as Colombia or Sri Lanka. To suggest otherwise is to
miss an essential fact about terrorism: It is fundamentally a tactic, rarely
a strategy and almost never a philosophy. To misunderstand its character
is to complicate significantly the battle against it.
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- War is a third victim of word abuse. Despite the rhetoric
of Bush administration propagandists, the war on terrorism is not a real
war, any more than the war on drugs. It's a comprehensive, militarized
police action, targeting an international criminal conspiracy. It became
a localized war in Afghanistan, where a government that was part of the
conspiracy was removed, and where postconquest military operations continue.
The invasion of Iraq was initially tangential to the counterterrorism campaign,
and it is likely to remain so unless al-Qaeda and its allies mount a concerted
challenge to the U.S. occupation there.
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- In real global wars, societies are mobilized for the
fight, either by default or by design. Everyone pays part of the price.
But despite the bluster of George W. Bush, the United States is not mobilized,
not even to the limited extent it was during the war in Vietnam. The campaigning
President seeks to avoid calling attention to the real sacrifices being
made by the U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq, and the reserve members being
called unexpectedly to service overseas. And it goes without saying that
Canada isn't even close to being on a wartime footing.
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- In fact, to call the campaign against al-Qaeda a war
dishonours the memory of the real war-fighters whose sacrifices we commemorated
yesterday. Not only did Canadians and their allies suffer and die in the
last century's global conflicts, they mobilized on a massive scale at home:
saving, rationing, retraining, supporting the war effort in every possible
way. Far from asking for similar contributions now, our leaders, and those
of our American friends, would prefer us to sit back and be silent as ham-fisted
gumshoes manhandle civil liberties and mishandle intelligence.
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- To fight a war you need a social consensus. It isn't
there. We don't even agree about the words.
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- © 2003 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
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- http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031112.
wknox12/BNStory/International/
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