US intel bubble needs a pin prick

Indeed, the modern gravy train runs through my hometown of Alexandria, Va., a silver dollar's toss away from the white marble statues of our founding fathers.

Keys to new BMWs are handed out as “signing bonuses” and US$50,000 flat fees go to headhunting firms who sell “Top Secret” experts on the free market, according to The Washington Post.

The gluttony should dismay Americans interested in a strong and efficient defense.

Even while the rest of the country suffers decline, these “experts” — including an estimated 265,000 top secret status carriers in the private sector — continue to live high on the hog.

To be sure, private intelligence agents do important work. They spy on the bad guys and think of better ways to kill them. They also advise America's top brass and plan for futuristic wars in different galaxies.

But Washington's mountain of “intelligence” re-spun from high-tech devices, analyzed, sliced and diced to fit a narrative of America at war with an enigmatic enemy also buries the good work of underpaid CIA linguists slogging it out in desolate posts abroad.

It is easy to forget amid the constant preparations for more war that America's real defense requires peace. As John Quincy Adams said in July 1821, America “has a spear and a shield: but the motto on her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace.”

In the case of the “War on Terror,” this also requires persuading 1.2 billion Muslims that America has their best interests in mind — mainly democratic change, human rights and good will.

While traveling and researching in far-flung places of the Islamic realm for a new book, I stumbled on several key quandaries that help radicalize young Muslims to take up arms against my own country.

Muslims ask: Why is there no peace deal in Israel and Palestine? Does President Obama really want to use his brains and muscle to stamp out a lasting two-state peace deal? Why are American troops still fighting in Afghanistan? And why in the world is Osama bin Laden still running around the mountains of Pakistan?

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