Langley Has Its Crap Together

Long War: The Obama Administration is alarmed that the forces winning the war in Syria are linked to Al-Qaeda. Gasp! In response it wants to give more non-lethal aid to the moderate (non-Al-Qaeda) fighters within the rebel movement. Maybe the moderate fighters will get portable toasters ovens, which will bolster their spirits and make them fight better. I'm not sure what's really going on within the Administration but Qatari Intelligence and the CIA seem to have the situation well in hand and are happy with the job Al-Qaeda is doing for them. The spooks seem confident that the Frankenstein monster they have created can be controlled. And they are probably right.

Here's the thing with war: You have to win. It never works to worry too much about the messy aftermath of a war if these worries prevent you from winning. Win the &^%$ war and then try to clean up the mess afterwards, that's what works.

As the Syrian War has progressed the bad guys (Assad's Alawite religious sect) have hardened and become fanatical. They are damn good. They are tough to beat. the Al-Qaeda warriors in the conflict are even better. They are feeding Assad a non-stop diet of strategic suicde bombers in downtown Damascus. The only way to win this war is with superhuman Al-Qaeda warriors.

Is the CIA making the right choice? The only way to know is to take the global temperature of the CIA. Which is to say, how is Langley doing across the entire Long War. Is it screwed up? Is it hitting on all eight cylinders everywhere else besides Syria? If we can ascertain that it is doing a kick-ass job overall, then we can also say it is doing a good job in Syria. We have to make this calculation because there is no way for us to know what Syrian Al-Qaeda fighters are really like. How the hell can know that, sitting on our fat butts here at home while drinking fancy imported beer?

So overall how does it look? Yesterday the French Foreign Legion killed 30 AQIM fighters including one of the top three AQIM leaders. Public accounts tell us that the Legion is getting intellience from the CIA, that isn't a guess, that is a fact. So Langley has moles in AQIM and used them to take out a top leader and his bodyguards. So Langley has its crap together.