CIA Hates Peace Talks

Long War: In Libya, the big push by the Free Libya Army on the eastern front of Brega has bogged down because Gaddafi's army is executing a skillful strategic retreat. As the bad guys are pushed out of Brega, they sow massive minefields in their wake. When the rebels are fully engaged in a laborious effort to dig up these minefields, they suddenly encounter Gaddafi forces disguised as rebels, which is to say bad guys dressed in mismatched civilian clothes driving ragged pickup trucks with homemade rocket launchers. The disguise is so good the rebels can't tell if they are being relieved from their own side or about to be attacked by the bad guys. Then, at the last minute, the disguised bad guys open fire and lay waste to the rebel mine clearing team.

The news out of Yemen is better and in a way similar to the first reports of the rebel offensive in Brega. Here is the similarity: A huge army of anti-Al-Qaeda tribesmen has appeared out of nowhere to attack the bad guys in the southern Yemeni province of Abyan. The difference between the two offensives (One in Libya, the other in Yemen) is that Gaddafi was prepared and ready to deal with the attack while AQAP has been caught flat-footed. And Al-Qaeda is on the retreat in Yemen.

Big armies emerging from the desert out of nowhere speaks to CIA involvement. Recent events in Afghanistan and Pakistan also bear CIA fingerprints but are even harder to interpret. Last weekend we learned that some organization in Afghanistan killed President Karzai's brother. Seemingly a new CIA strongman (Gen. Raziq) was waiting in the wings. During Wali Karzai's funeral there was another attack and several other allies of Pres. Karzai were killed and injured. Gen. Raziq was at the funeral and gave a press conference afterwards, castigating the Taliban for its dastardly deeds. Raziq was unhurt.

Then a day later yet another assassination occurred. This time Pres. Karzai's chief negotiator for the peace talks with the Taliban was killed. With a lot of head scratching, analysts are saying the Taliban must not want to negotiate with President Karzai anymore and rather than simply breaking off the talks, they killed Karzai's representative. If you were Mullah Omar you would want peace talks, you would want to turn the spineless Karzai into a Taliban puppet and return to power without a fight. The CIA, however, has demonstrated in the past that it is willing to kill (with drone strikes) to scuttle peace talks. As a general principle, it is much better to kill bad guys without drone strikes. The best way to kill bad guys is to make it look like other bad guys are killing bad guys.

As far as peace talks, think about how the Vietnam War ended. After years of negotiations, an elaborate peace treaty was hammered out between America and North Vietnam. America then pulled out of Vietnam, pretending that it had not been defeated because of this absurd peace treaty. North Vietnam did not honor its peace treaty commitments but America did. America was played as a fool. The CIA does not want this to happen again.

In any case, we have a change of leadership in Langley. General Petraeus is supposed to take over in September. But he probably has been in charge for a while. Also, Petraeus says he will not make big changes. Instead, he told the media that he is going to sit back for several months and absorb the CIA culture and learn how to become a team player. This is not what he did when he took command of NATO forces in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan he started kicking ass from day one.