I didn’t realize the CIA hired people as stupid as Emile Nakhleh.
Sure they do. The problem is that such supremely self-congratulatory "experts" always seem to avoid responsibility for the disastrous outcomes of policies with which they were intimately involved. Somehow, with their credentials, such as they are, intact. Academics are not, unfortunately, an outcome-based field.
This stuff is familiar to anyone studying the nature of the enemy in, for example, World War II, wherein looked at closely enough, no one was responsible for the atrocities. Certainly not the German people as a whole, not the Wehrmacht, most of whom knew little of what was going on, not the Waffen SS, many of whom were only soldiers, not the Gestapo, who were only an intelligence organization...it gets more ridiculous at each level and frankly, less interesting, and far less relevant. Leveling Germany solved the problem.
And so with this field - one can astound one's audience with scholarly erudition concerning Sayyid ibn Qutb and the roots of radical Wahhibism, Salifism, etc, etc, ad infinitum, without encountering the broad fact that the people murdering other people in the name of Islam are, in fact, Muslims, encouraged, supported, and celebrated vigorously by other Muslims. One can nuance one's way out of ascribing any responsibility anywhere, which the author has done, and cough indignantly at those of a cruder viewpoint that encompasses murdering the bastards right back.
And that is always the problem with writing policy around academic erudition. The latter may not matter. And it doesn't in this case, in my view. The difficulty with treating a broad terrorist movement as a series of individual crimes is that the forest is lost in view of the trees; that the level of proof needed to convict a single individual of murdering a schoolyard full of kids or a private club full of patrons may find grounds for forgiveness - a plea of insanity, for example - that are equally irrelevant to the pattern of crimes under consideration. The problem is not that, it's jihad, an activity directed not by individual psychosis, but as a collective effort under state level direction. Any strategist concerned more with ferreting out the roots of motivation than he is with how they are being orchestrated is missing the point entirely.
It's a war. The people prosecuting it know it's a war. The victims know it's a war. The people who sympathize with the murderers know it's a war. We gain nothing but misery by shielding our eyes from the fact that it's a war.
The CIA hires whomever advances THEIR agenda. Psychopathic Muslim terrorist who wipes with his hand and thinks the world is flat and kills Jews for fun? No problem! Agree to assassinate Assad and overthrow Syria? Buddy, you’re on the team and if you have anything on the ball, you’ll work directly with US Special Forces. Regular US Air Force cash, weapons, and ammo drops.
Administration crossover makes no difference. Administrations are 4 years, 8 max. CIA and State careers are 30 years with immediate placement in the ‘private sector’ for another 10 to 20 doing the same general thing.
Nakleh isn’t stupid, he is a CIA asset.