The Military Needs Permanent Hit Squads
Posted on November 3, 2009 at 11:52 amI just assumed we already had these but then I’m conspiratorially-minded:
CIA director Leon Panetta got into hot water with Congress, after he revealed an agency program to hunt down and kill terrorists. A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough. Instead, the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates, and other enemies of the state.
America’s military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies already devote thousands of people and billions of dollars to tracking down top terrorists and insurgents. But even the most successful of these efforts — like going after Iraqi militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — have been “ad hoc” efforts, with units cobbled together from different corners of the government. Report author and retired Lt. Col. George Crawford instead would like to see a permanent group with clear authority, training, doctrine and technology to go after these dangerous individuals. These “manhunting teams would be standing formations, trained to pursue their designated quarry relentlessly for as long as required to accomplish the mission,” he writes.
Sometimes, that will mean operating “in uncooperative countries.” In those cases, the teams must be prepared “to act unilaterally, with no support or coordination with local authorities, in a manner similar to that employed by Israel’s Avner team in response to the Munich Olympics massacre.”
Comments
4 Responses to “The Military Needs Permanent Hit Squads”
They quit and went to work for Blackwater, so our government has to put out a contract now.
Sounds like a good plan to me.
Let’s do it.
Why, let’s do it?
I think everyone has seen a few too action movies.
Al Queda has spread and morphed into a different organization than it was eight years ago.
Kill the baddies now, and someone will take their places, and in shitholes like the Mid East where they love their martyrs, one assassination would probably result in 10, maybe 20 replacements.
On and on.
The only way to solve this problem is, to paraphrase Mao, to dry up the sea that the terrorist fish swim in.
Going after each individual fish is absolute folly.
And as far as Israel goes, I don’t think the post Munich operation code named Operation Wrath of God did that much to deter terrorism against Israel.
Sure, retribution is fun and can be satisfying as hell, but strategically, it’s not that effective.