Spys Like U.S.

Rumsfeld's Secret Operations
-William M. Arkin

Tony Capaccio's Bloomberg story last week that the Pentagon is increasing the size of U.S. special operations forces by almost 25 percent is another sign of the unchecked growth of secret operations in the Bush administration.

According to a December 20 budget memorandum signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, 12,000 new positions will be added to Special Operations Command in the 2007-2011 five-year defense plan, augmenting an already expanded force of 51,000 Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and other commandos.

England calls for adding $7.4 billion to the five year SOCOM budget, a budget that has almost doubled since 9/11.

Donald Rumsfeld's "SOCization" of the U.S. military -- as some insiders call it -- is already responsible for short-sighted decisions that have led the current Iraq mess. What is more, the growth of secret and compartmented operations in the Defense Department -- not just special operations but also "information" operations and other intelligence organizations, goes forward without any real appraisal as to success or costs.

Welcome to the Rumsfeld doctrine of immediate victory. Far after the current Secretary of Defense is gone, America will be paying a price for these secret operations, and for the stiff arming of overt and conventional military missions at the altar of the "special." ...

Under the Rumsfeld doctrine of immediate victory, there is no question that the vanquishing of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the toppling of Saddam prevented another 9/11 at that moment. The use of light forces moving quickly scattered the enemy so that it could not organize and plan another spectacular attack on the United States, and so that it also could not breathe long enough to develop weapons of mass destruction.

That is the theory.

We all know what happened next, at least in the mid-term. In Afghanistan and Iraq, more and more conventional military forces have had to be brought in to repair the flaws associated with the doctrine of immediate victory. And though special operations continue to play a central role in those countries, terrorist networks have not only proliferated and grown, but they have also strengthened in parts of the world -- Pakistan, Syria, North Africa, Saudi Arabia -- where U.S. special operations, even clandestine special operations, have minimal effect...

The growth of special operations, like the growth of Pentagon domestic spying and warantless NSA surveillance, is another example of the propensity as well for the Bush administration to fight the war on terrorism through secret government. Whether one is for secrecy to protect American assets or not, without the light of day, we just can't know whether or not the pursuit is really most effective, how successful it has been, or how other alternatives would stack up.

We don't even know what the strategic military objectives are.

We do know what the strategeric objectives of this administration are.