More on The Ashes

I commented the other week on Tim Weiner's amazingly detailed book, Legacy of Ashes which is a history of the CIA. In more ways than we care to admit the CIA has been a bumbling group of wannabe spies who have got more people killed through ineptness and poor planning than any other way.

As I come to near the end of the book, I discover that little changed over the 60 years the Agency has been in existence. They make the same mistakes leading to the Gulf War as they did in other instances, such as Korea. Even when they have been right in their intelligence, though, the politicians in the White House or Congress have often been unwilling to see the truth and make it clear that they want the intelligence to prove their point. Hence when the CIA was saying that perhaps the Soviet Union may not have all the weapons we think they have, the virulent anti-Soviet approach of the politicians said, no, that intelligence is wrong because I believe it's wrong.

But perhaps for me the most telling part of the book is how the politicians in the executive branch went along with all the shady and even downright illegal aspects of it all. Every one, in one way or another gave the clandestine service the go-ahead to do things that are downright embarrassing to us. It doesn't matter whether it was Truman and Korea, Eisenhower and the U2 flights, Kennedy and a plot to overthrow Castro (not including the Bay of Pigs), Bobby Kennedy being THE clandestine supporter in the Kennedy administration, well, on and on it goes.

Jimmy Carter tended to want to raise it to a higher plane and use the CIA to further humanitarian ideals. But he was the same as the others, just for a different cause.

Which brings me to a startling and scary and even anti-American conclusion. Our Presidents and their people are not the liberators on white horses wearing white hats. They all, they all, have their hands covered with blood. They are all humans with clay feet who do things that are less than desirable. Some have done it in more ways than others, the results of some have been more disastrous than others. But no one is innocent, no, not one.

What will happen then with the next election. Well, in spite of hope and experience and age (I think that covers the Three) they will face choices that will lead them, I am convinced, down at least unethical and perhaps illegal paths. Any of them, no, all of them, would, as President, make choices which are seemingly for our best interests but not in the best interests of things like life and world peace.

There are all kinds of different and conflicting conclusions that any of us can draw from this depending on our own political direction and beliefs. But for me as I look at this it has given me a different view. Reading the book I am painfully aware of the human failings of all governments. To expect high ideals at all times is probably naive. But I must continue, as an American, to uphold those. I must recognize that at times the ways of government are not the ways of peace. I must accept, albeit with great sadness and fear, that simply by being a nation among nations we will be making pacts with The Devil.

But under it all can we, as a people continue to try to live the ideas we say we have? Can we make our country the kind of place where these ideals are lived? Can we show that freedom and democracy, even as imperfect as they are, can at least make some small difference? I hope so. I really do.