Look at this…..two posts in the same week.
Okay…so….I’m not trying to be demeaning in any way, shape or form. An old friend of mine used to say “you only know what you know”, and as simple as that statement is, it says quite a bit. It occurs to me that a lot of the people who read these posts really have very little idea what goes on within the military and intelligence communities when we’re working abroad. You only know what you know.
So…if you’re wondering why your military friends are a little more pissed off than you’d think they would be right now…well, this is for you.
To probably 90% of the American population “intelligence gathering” has become a high-tech business. We have spy drones, satellite imagery, computers that intercept and interpret foreign phone calls and people who work in little rooms dimly lit by the glow of huge computer monitors snooping through the internet to find where all the bad guys are, right? Well….that is part of it. That’s the part that gets all the press and plays out well on the movie screens. That’s what you see the most of, and as we discussed…You only know what you know.
The truth of the matter is our most valuable intelligence information comes from face to face contact with people on the ground in whatever environment we’re working in. A drone image may tell us that they have a pallet of explosives, but a guy on the ground can tell us where they plan on using the contents of that pallet. Let me say it in a way it may make more sense. You can learn where someone is going to eat dinner by intercepting a phone call, but you learn his favorite appetizer and how he likes his steak cooked from the waitress. Make sense? Face to face contact with a trusted source is where you get the “meat and potatoes” of your intelligence.
That’s a lot of food references in one paragraph….I must be hungry. But I digress….
The people who volunteer information to us are risking their lives. It’s just that simple. If they get caught they’re considered traitors, and if captured they’re subsequently killed or imprisoned. They give us that information because they want a better life for their children. They want the bad guys eradicated more than we do….the bad guys are ruining their homeland. In return for that information we promise to do everything in our power to ensure their safety and the safety of their families. That’s the deal. I know it sounds like I read this out of 1960’s spy novel, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Now…communications with these patriots (and that’s what they are…patriots) is a little complicated. They can’t be seen talking to us and more often than not, we don’t speak the same language. Someone has to facilitate a safe time and place for this information to change hands and then someone has to interpret the languages for both parties. SO…the facilitator and the interpreter are now in danger also. They’re relying on us to ensure their safety as well.
There has to be a lot of trust between all the players involved. Trust…with a capital “T”. That’s a key word….we’ll come back to that.
I need you to keep in mind that every little bit of intelligence we gather in the field saves American lives. So we’re scrambling to get every nugget of information we can scrape up….that means in a year’s time we’ve got a lot of people counting on us to ensure the bad guys don’t get their hands on them. In the current situation, multiply that number by 20 years. This is why you’re seeing so many Afghans on the runway trying to get out of the country. There are probably double what you see on the news in outlying areas that can’t even get to Kabul to try to get on a plane right now. These people risked their lives in an attempt to turn their country into something similar to the country that we tend to take for granted. We asked them to risk their lives so we could save American lives. For their efforts, we made promises. They believed those promises. They only know what they know…we’re the good guys…you put your faith in the good guys…they trusted us.
In the last few paragraphs I may have told you nothing that you haven’t already considered. If I bored you with my rhetoric, I’ll apologize…..but I was setting the stage for the point I’m trying to make. (yeah…there’s more)
Those people falling from those planes wanted out of Afghanistan pretty damn bad, and I’ll guarantee you it wasn’t just because they didn’t want to see all the women in burqas again. You’ve got to be pretty damn desperate to try to wing walk a C-17. Desperate like your life depended on that plane ride. Those images are on every network around the world and scattered all over the internet…everyone has eyes on this shit. Seeing the debacle in Kabul right now, how anxious do you think foreign nationals around the globe are going to be to work with us in the future? Who in their right mind would make an arrangement with a U.S. representative after seeing the shit-show the Afghans who stepped up to help us are going through right now? Remember that word I said we’d come back to? Who’s going to trust us after this?
Ya know….the weapons and training, the facilities and money….all the material and intangible assets the Taliban has gained in the last week due to our lack of foresight in the situation is nothing less than a travesty. However…far more valuable than all of those things wrapped up in a nice little bow…is our honor. We’re losing the trust factor we had in the international community. Again…Who’s going to trust us after this? Who’s going to be willing to risk their life to help us?
Remember….the most viable intelligence we get comes from human sources and the amount of usable information we collect is inversely proportional to the number of flag draped coffins we see roll off transport planes. The impact this goat rodeo is going to have on our intelligence gathering capabilities is going to be felt for decades….and that hit to our capabilities will be directly proportional to the number of flag draped coffins we see.
In real time, everyone is seeing the gut-wrenching scenes at the airstrip in Kabul as the humanitarian nightmare that it is. Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m here to tell you….the fallout from this is going to impact every military operation in which our country engages for the rest of our lives. You won’t see it. You won’t hear about it. But it’s going to happen.
So…now you know a little of what I know.
And y’all wonder why I don’t sleep much…