A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America

[ProudDad]

Of course, like so many Democratic objections to Bush policies, that was then and this is now. Yesterday, President Obama announced -- to very little controversy -- that he was nominating Gen. David Petraeus to become the next CIA Director. The Petraeus nomination raises all the same concerns as the Hayden nomination did, but even more so: Hayden, after all, had spent his career in military intelligence and Washington bureaucratic circles and thus was a more natural fit for the agency; by contrast, Petraues is a pure military officer and, most of all, a war fighting commander with little background in intelligence. But in the world of the Obama administration, Petraeus' militarized, warrior orientation is considered an asset for running the CIA, not a liability.

That's because the CIA, under Obama, is more militarized than ever, as devoted to operationally fighting wars as anything else, including analyzing and gathering intelligence.

...

The nomination of Petraeus doesn't change much; it merely reflects how Washington is run. That George Bush's favorite war-commanding General -- who advocated for and oversaw the Surge in Iraq -- is also Barack Obama's favorite war-commanding General, and that Obama is now appointing him to run a nominally civilian agency that has been converted into an "increasingly militarized" arm of the American war-fighting state, says all one needs to know about the fully bipartisan militarization of American policy. There's little functional difference between running America's multiple wars as a General and running them as CIA Director because American institutions in the National Security State are all devoted to the same overarching cause: Endless War.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/28/petraeus/index.html

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The National Security State(tm) and the Permanent War Economy(tm) of the Corporate States of Amerika(tm) rolls on...

[Tarheel_Dem]

1. Unrec for the author...(nt)

;)

[polichick]

2. Perhaps we'll be transitioning from occupations to small covert actions...

...which would at least result in less "collateral damage."

[hulka38]

3. Must K&R

because it's completely true.

[Citizen Worker]

4. CIA=Capitalism's Invisible Army