"I Am The Motherfucker Who Found The House. Sir."

I saw Zero Dark Thirty last night at a movie theater near Times Square. The inside CIA work was intriguing to watch, although I had already read about it. The actual operation I had sucked the details out of in the 2-3 days right after it happened. That is the power of Open Intel. It is a technical term. Publicly available information counts for a lot these days. I predicted this movie. They are going to make a movie out of this, I said. They did. And a good one too.

So I did not come out having learned details about the operation I did not know. I came out feeling the movie was a statement on gender. Islamists are the most rabidly sexist people on earth today, perhaps. It is poetic justice then that Osama Bin Laden, the ultimate Islamist, was felled by a woman. The CIA can go on and on about teamwork, but this work was out of the box thinking, and the woman does get immense credit. She found the needle in a haystack.

The CIA is a man's world. DC is a man's world. Still. The movie shows.

That is not to discount the role of the guys who actually carried out the operation. Job well done. The action beats action movies. Actually the guys who carried out the job came across as the least sexist of all guys in the movie. Excellent analyst meet excellent operatives. Good match.

I am on record at this blog - in 2007, also earlier - saying Bin Laden is not in a cave, he is in some big city. I was thinking Karachi. I was wrong. But he was not in a cave.

You also come out really admiring the people who run the US government. And by that I mean bureaucrats, faceless bureaucrats who run the machinery, people who get demonized by small government ideologues. There are a lot of very qualified professionals doing very good work in there.

But it has been wrong of the CIA to refuse this woman her well deserved promotion. Some day she should be CIA Director.

The Bin Laden Operation
Bin Laden: Dead
Bin Laden Was In A Huge House
Did Pakistan Know Where Bin Laden Was?
Where Is Bin Laden?
Barack Said In 2007 He Would Do This
What Obama Said On Pakistan

Acting C.I.A. Director Criticizes ‘Zero Dark Thirty’
Review: 'Zero Dark Thirty' is utterly gripping
Review: 'Zero Dark Thirty' is massive, meticulous
'Zero Dark Thirty' review: Jessica Chastain shines in nail-biting thriller

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The Al Qaeda, Internet, Globalization

Image via Wikipedia

When a comment I leave at Fred Wilson's blog gets too long, to me that is indication I need to be writing a reply blog post, like just happened.

Fred Wilson: Nations And Networks

This post totally speaks to me. I think of the number 1.25 billion out of 6.7 billion people online the way Fred perhaps thinks about web services, his domain expertise. As someone who grew up in the Global South, I think of Internet Access - Internet as in broadband with full size keyboard - as the voting right for this century. This is the Internet Century.

Fred Wilson's Gift To Me

When I started reading this post, I was thinking of Brad's post (that I read when it came out) before I had finished the first sentence.

The Al Qaeda is not a state, it is not even an organization any more. The Al Qaeda embodies two big trends - the Internet and Globalization - the way not even Kiva does. Bush went after Saddam instead of Bin Laden because, well, if the medicine I have is for cough (the nation state as an enemy), I am going after cough viruses, the facts be damned, don't tell me the diagnosis is for AIDS.

Fred and I might not be the best people to talk of security issues, but there are plenty of cyber security issues. Maybe that is worth a post. For all its promises, the Internet is just the newest platform for the age old fight between good and evil.

Brad Burnham: Web Services As Governments
Scott Shane, New York Times: Wars Fought And Wars Googled

On the War On Terror, I do have very clear thoughts, unlike Fred. One, it is the same scale as the Cold War. Two, it will only conclude once all Arab countries have been turned into democracies. Three, there's the swamp part, and there is the mosquitoes part. I am not going to argue let the mosquitoes be, but I think draining the swamp is the real battle. The best way to introduce democracy to a country is the way we did it in Nepal in April 2006, through a mass movement. People who are not worried the mullahs in Iran might get pissed off if you impose sanctions talk like they are worried the mullahs might get pissed off if they give total support to the protesters in Iran. Beats me.

Iran: The World Has Wasted A Year

This tussle also reminds me of the capitalism-communism tussle, and you have to go all the way back to Lenin. When that dude did his 1917 thing, America had not seen FDR yet. FDR had to reinvent both democracy and capitalism to prepare the country for a fight with communism. A pre-FDR America could not have beat communism. Some synthesis happened.

Similarly the War On Terror will conclude through two types of transformations. One, all Arab countries end up being democracies. Two, America ends up a non-racist country. I know that is a loaded term for many people, but I am using it on purpose. A country where calling someone - Obama - a Muslim is passed on as calling him a name like happened in 2008 is still a racist country. If four Muslim young men in New Jersey were to talk violence in the privacy of their apartment, they are a cell, and will be thoroughly dealt with, but the Republican nominee competing against Harry Reid in Nevada is openly calling for violence, and I don't see law enforcement people getting excited about that. Is that a double standard or is that a double standard?

Time: Why Harry Reid's Chances Are Improving in Nevada

She has a permit to carry a concealed .44 Magnum and brags about bringing it to campaign events. But her passion also leads her to make troublesome statements: "The nation is arming," she said last month. "What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of their government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways. That's why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don't win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?"

I have lost count of how many times I have been subjected to a dirty look or an outright dirty Q&A by some law enforcement officer this past decade, and I am not even Arab. The day 9/11 happened, I was in a small town in Kentucky. The locals called the cops on ME!

Timothy McVeigh was a motherfucker before he was a terrorist. That makes you a motherfucker. That is the angle I like to come from. So much for racial profiling.



America had its 9/11, India had its 11/9. But that 11/9 would be 9/11 because in India they put the number for the month second. The Islamists' tussle is with democracy itself, and India is the biggest pot.

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