If you want to know why the CIA has been as useless as it
has when it comes to understanding what it is given billions of dollars to
understand and decipher before briefing the decision makers at the Executive,
you should read what two former CIA employees have written. You will want to
create a new category, perhaps call it “criminal ignorance,” and charge them
with it.
The two are Henry A. Crumpton and Allison Melia who wrote
“'Mirror Imaging' and America's Dangerous Middle East Illusions,” an article
that also came under the subtitle: “Tehran and Riyadh don't operate under
Western assumptions: Religion is their political ideology,” published on May 4,
2016 in the Wall Street Journal. Note that in saying Tehran
and Riyadh ,
they refer to the seats of all Islam: the Shia faction and the Sunni faction.
The point of the article is that America
never understood the Middle East because it
has always insisted on viewing the people of the region as if looking in the mirror
and seeing itself. No, say the two authors, the people of the Middle East –
especially the Muslims – are nothing like America . They are very different.
Okay, you say to yourself, how does America see the people of the Middle
East , and by implication, itself? Also if the situation needs to
be corrected, how should that be done? Well, for one thing, America sees
Middle Eastern Muslims as a people who hate freedom. This is a refrain that has
been repeated over and over throughout the decades, and no one can refute it.
By implication, according to our writers, this is how America sees
itself as well.
Now that it has been established America hates freedom, the
correction should come in the form of the American people being taught to love
freedom. Well then, maybe the two former CIA geniuses could be given the task
of going on a teaching tour, and showing the American people how to love
freedom. If that works, the geniuses can then try their approach in the Middle East . Wish them luck but if they fail, they must
be charged with criminal ignorance and dealt with accordingly.
Meanwhile, you go through the article to see how they could
have been so wrong and yet held the positions that they did at the CIA. The
first thing you read is this: “Intelligence officers are taught to avoid
'mirror imaging.' That is, assuming your adversary shares your analytic
reference points and thinks the way you do.” Further down, you read this: “we
attempt to reconcile their views with our own”.
What this means is that the two characters were taught not
to see foreigners the way they see themselves but they failed to understand the
lesson. Thus, while believing they were doing the wrong thing, their colleagues
at the CIA saw the difference between the American and the Muslim cultures, and
worked to “reconcile” them. It was necessary to do that because the two sides
had to find an accommodation that would allow the allies to work together, and
the foes to avoid friction, and possibly deadly clashes.
What comes out of all this is that Crunpton and Melia were
not even looking at a mirror. They were looking through the kind of lens that
turns an image upside down, and thought they were seeing themselves. They were,
in fact, looking through the propaganda lens of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim
machine, and were seeing the Middle East not
as it was but as the propaganda was describing them.
It was inevitable therefore; that the two writers come to
the conclusion the way to deal with Saudi Arabia
and Iran ,
was not to seek an accommodation that takes into account the differences
between the cultures, but through a deliberate confrontation.
To that end, Crunpton and Melia posited a number of false
assumptions, all having to do with the economics of the petroleum industry, the
trade in weapons systems and the social mores of Saudi
Arabia and Iran . When done with the
assumptions, they recommended this: “The U.S. should redouble its effort to
counter Iranian terrorism – with deadly force if necessary”. This is so very
Jewish!
And that's what tells you the lens through which the two
writers are looking, is the lens of the Jewish propaganda machine. You see, my
friend, the only terrorist entity on the planet today is Israel . It
exists because it is sustained by America . Every act of terror committed
by Israel
is called a defense, and every act of defense committed by others is called
terror. This is a narrative that worked for the Jews like a charm in America .
To make the American legislators believe in that drivel and
give Israel what it wants, the Jewish propaganda machine created the
upside-down lens and used it every time that the Middle East came up for
discussion. That's when the lens is installed into place, forcing the
discussion to be carried out upside down.