My Interview on Al-Jazeera English TV, Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011

I was interviewed on Al-Jazeera English TV on October 1, 2011 about U.S. foreign policy making and implementation in Pakistan and Afghanistan. (I received the video clip only a few days ago, which is why I'm putting it on the blog now instead of much earlier.)

The lead-in by the interviewer was the killing of a high-ranking Al-Qa'ida-linked commander in Pakistan by a U.S. missile strike — undoubtedly fired from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) — and whether this, as well as the arrest of a senior Haqqani network leader, would “help” the Obama administration or have no impact. I answered that it would give a very short-term boost but their impact would fade very quickly — and it would have no impact on Obama’s re-election chances, which would be determined by the state of the economy in a year.

I emphasized in the interview that the Obama administration’s policies were not so different, in many ways, from the previous Bush administration’s policies, and I hopefully explained the reasons for this. I also tried to give some insights into how U.S. foreign policy decisions are made in the real world, which involve imperfect and conflicting information and where the choices are usually not between good, better, and best but between bad, worse, and worst. In the case of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the choices are usually between worse and worst. Right-wing and left-wing ideologues take note.

My Interview on Al-Jazeera English TV, Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011

I was interviewed by Al-Jazeera English TV this past Sunday, September 4, 2011, about 9/11 and the U.S. intelligence community. The call came late on Sunday afternoon on the Labor Day three-day weekend so I'm sure I wasn't the first person they called. Be that as it may, I discussed the reasons why the 9/11 attack took the intelligence community by surprise, some of the reforms that have been implemented in the past 10 years, and whether the United States is consequently "safer" than it was 10 years ago.

Bearing in mind that the entire interview lasted 3 minutes, I emphasized that even if the intelligence agencies had been sharing information with each other and even if they had been connecting the dots ― they still would not have anticipated the 9/11 attacks. This was due to ― first of all ― a failure of imagination, as pointed out in the 9/11 Commission report. It was also because of preconceptions and perceptions, and because of bureaucratic and cultural inertia.

The interviewer threw me a curveball at the end of the interview when he asked me if the U.S. was less free as a result of the increased surveillance of Americans because of the intelligence “reforms.” He did have a point but I ended the interview by pointing out that part of the problem was bureaucratic ― and anyone who has worked in a large bureaucracy should know that the U.S. intelligence “community” is far from being a monolithic, agile, omnipotent entity (despite the fevered imaginings and conspiracy theories of both the left and the right on the political spectrum). Another part of the problem is that Congress has not done anything about one of the most important reforms called for by the 9/11 Commission ― to reform itself.

Ten years ago there were approximately 85 Congressional committees and subcommittees that had some oversight function for homeland security. The Commission report emphasized that this state of affairs actually undermined the security of the United States and it decreased ― not increased ― oversight. It recommended that this be reduced to something like a dozen committees and subcommittees at the most. Instead, in one of its few bipartisan efforts in the past 10 years, Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has increased the number of committees to around 92 at last count.

I feel so much safer. NOT!

My interview is introduced by a report by an Al-Jazeera reporter on 9/11 and the U.S. intelligence community, with an emphasis on questioning whether the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has really helped to reform the intelligence community. I referred to that report several times during my interview.