I don’t mean to minimize the concern over intelligence reform in this country. However, the kind of intelligence most desperately needed is the philosophical kind. For our government officials in the Pentagon, the CIA, and elsewhere, philosophical intelligence refers to the understanding that freedom is morally good and that the United States has the right to do whatever it takes to ensure the maintenance of freedom in our country. This sort of attitude must come from the very top leadership — namely, from the President himself — or else all the intelligence reform in the world will never save us.
It’s not primarily a matter of bringing freedom to Iraq or wherever else we’re gathering intelligence. We can’t bring freedom to the Iraqis; they have to want it, and only if they want it will they benefit from our help. If they don’t want it (and the Muslim fundamentalists surely do not), or if they don’t know how to want it (meaning that they don’t know how to reason, think and build a capitalistic society), then our help will be worthless to them. In such a case, the best the United States can hope for is to knock off dangerous dictators who will provide aid to terrorist groups like al Qaeda. Knocking off Saddam Hussein was certainly a good thing, but the greater dangers are still to be confronted: primarily, Iran.
Good, competent intelligence is worthless and meaningless without an underlying philosophical intelligence to secure it. I’m less concerned about whether we have a new Cabinet department for intelligence and more concerned that our government leaders put the interests of the United States first. The disaster of 9/11 had less to do with specific intelligence failures and more to do with a lack of philosophical understanding about the dangers faced in this country. The Reagan Administration trained Osama bin Laden in the interest of fighting Communism in Afghanistan, without facing the reality that someday this training would turn against us. The Clinton Administration ignored terrorist attack after terrorist attack overseas — doing literally nothing to retaliate, in many cases — and evaded the reality that sooner or later this terrorism would reach our own shores. This philosophical evasion represents the real cause of 9/11, much more than any specific failing identified by the advocates of intelligence reform.
