The CIA was the mastermind behind
uncountable assignments that fell governments, assassinated heads of states,
ran drug-smuggling cartels, caused the governments of small countries to
collapse, derailed polio vaccination programs by using them as cover for covert
operations, killed so many people observers estimate the total death toll of
the US funded wars to be larger than the Nazis’ death toll combined, and in
general caused mayhem and murder through 50 years of the last century, and a
decade of this one.
The time has come to end this institution.
The reason is simple. The world has changed
in the last 60 years. These sorts of tactics that worked in an era where
secrecy was possible, are now actively visible, and dangerous, to the state
utilizing these methods of covert warfare. These methods are dangerous because
everyone can view them, and be cognizant of them, within the span of an hour,
in this connected world. Countries all over the world have access to quick
information through the web, and the notion of democracy has spread. The idea
of a secret agency operating contrary to the covenant of human rights that all
states have signed on to is simply not good foreign policy.
The Americans are still thinking they can
keep this boat afloat a bit longer—but to do so would be a great foreign policy
mistake. And this is why. Already there’s been a shift in economic power, as
China comes into its own. This was nowhere as evident as this past year, when
it was instrumental not just in setting up an infrastructure bank for the
BRICS, but also in supporting large and small countries with economic support.
This economic clout would have been unheard of even a decade ago, where Western
countries were the exclusive agents to hand out monetary handouts. With the
loss of America’s moral standing, the world looks for new leadership. Almost
without appearing to, China has filled this void.
With China’s rise has come a corresponding
understanding amongst nations in Asia and Africa that we need to work together
to beat the common enemies—poverty, unemployment, and environmental disaster.
Until and unless countries in Asia and Africa reach a certain standard of
living, their rising demographics and uneducated population will be a threat to
the environment of an increasingly crowded planet. Only with a certain degree
of economic security do people slow the reproductive growth—and that means Asia
and Africa have to focus now on infrastructure, employment, industrial and
technological growth, and to establish academic and cultural institutions the West takes for granted.
China’s economy is now the number one
economy—this is inevitable, and natural, because it also has the largest
population on the planet. Despite shrill accusations from human rights
organizations, China has refrained from torture, mayhem and murder in other
countries, activities to which the USA openly allocates more than half of its
government’s budget. With its restraint has come cautious approval from
traditional opponents, who now view it favorably. It has earned its moral
leadership.
China has changed since the Fifties. The
USA hasn’t.
The US continues to make covert and overt
war, in line with foreign policy thinking of the Fifties. It also continues to
secretly persecute critics and domestic opponents, and sometimes simply
bystanders who were there at the wrong place at the wrong time, with new
biological, genetic and nano-technologies; harass and kill people in far off
countries with drones; and in general keep upgrading technologies to continue
what used to be great strategy and warfare sixty years ago. This is simply not
such a good idea at present, however, because a) persecution and secret torture
will be discovered eventually b) somebody will have to be accountable for it
and c) the world is recoiling in moral horror and pulling back from a state
which they can see doesn’t operate within any known barriers of international
law.
There are two roads now open to the USA.
One is take the road of business as usual. Which is the road lawmakers are taking at the moment,
in the aftermath of the Torture Report. They have revealed their “stain on
history.” They have confessed. In the act of this confession, the crime is
expiated. This is enough for the USA, but it is not enough for the world, which
wants to know why the USA doesn’t have to follow the norms of international
law, in which torturers who operate outside of the boundaries of legality have
to face the apparatus of justice. Nor does this explain how 50 countries in the
world allowed the USA to illegally run secret prisons within their sovereign
borders—investigations will have to follow, along with culpable individuals and
institutions required to appear before their legal systems.
The second road open to the USA is to
completely take the lid off the 600 billion dollar military-industrial complex
that is running parallel to the government. Who are these 100,000 people with security clearances
working on a Global War on Terror? What are they doing that is so important
there are more of them than Federal employees of the US Government? Why does 56
billion have to be ‘black budget’, and what are these black budgets hiding?
What kind of torture programs have they designed with their mosquito drones,
and their killer robots? What kind of biological warfare and chemical warfare
have they already put in motion? What kind of brain-mapping activities are they
doing, and for what purpose? What are the new brain-to-computer technologies
being developed, and in what way are they being mobilized on people without
their consent? How many people are they keeping awake at night with sleep
deprivation technology? What kinds of white noise are they laser-beaming into
the auditory channels of their own urban populations to keep them terrified?
Knowing the operational strategies of the
military-industrial complex, and knowing that they have had no regards for the
boundaries of sovereign nations, it must be obvious to US lawmakers and
Congress that their parallel “Dark State” is working on a range of technologies
that they will have no compunction on using on people. There cannot be any
excuse for “not knowing.” Ethics, of course, is a word that is so foreign to
this cancerous parallel state that has attached itself to the government of the
United States that it is almost useless to bring it up here—but we will bring
up international law, to which the USA is still bound. Much of what is
happening in these secret agencies, of which 17 are known, and of which the
rest are not known, will one day be revealed, in much the same manner as the
torture.
The USA’s covert warfare may be more
repulsive than the actions of the fascist governments of the 20th
century. We don’t yet have the words to describe all the new technological
warfare in operation. They may not yet be viewed as “torture.” But one day they
will be explained through the lens of humanity’s capacity to understand ethics
and morality, sooner or later.
Once those activities surface to the
public, the USA will become a pariah state, a status it has taken such stern
pleasure in imposing on states like Cuba and North Korea. Already the world has
recoiled in moral horror. And with it has come a contraction of economic ties,
business relationships, and goodwill. Countries have disentangled their
currencies from the USA’s. This is going to continue, not lessen, in the coming
years. The USA should listen to this advice, and pull back from what has been a
heedless course towards its own destruction. The Superpower era has ended. As
the USA slides down in all indicators of a developed nation, including
education, childhood poverty, health, it is pretty clear that the parallel
state has destroyed the USA from within.
Holding on to this parallel state, and
giving it legitimacy to operate in the dark with black budgets, will further
erode the USA’s last remaining shred of standing in the international stage.
Shutting down the CIA can be the first step towards the US’s commitment to
restore trust in the global community.
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