"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
Michael G. Vickers is not familiar with this quote from Albert Einstein or he would not have accepted the job as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities (monikers to obfuscate the mind of ordinary citizens). The citizen not privy to classified affairs has the right to ask one question: "With all your military training, resources and your international expertise, what were you doing before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed decided to showcase his talents upon the New York audience?"
"Untouchables" use "plausible deniability" when its time to accept responsibility. As a Senior Vice President of Strategic Studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, Vicker's role as an expert was to advise President Bush's war cabinet on Iraqi strategy persuading Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that the U.S. can be successful in Iraq by using a much smaller force. In his 2004 Op-ed for USA TODAY, he wrote that the size of the U.S. force in Iraq is "not too small, but too large. Far worse, it is essentially blind and too aggressive." That theory proved erroneous, but Obama reappointed him for the job nonetheless.
Blind? It is Michael Vickers who is blind, deaf and dumb. Back in 1980, as chief military strategist for Operation Cyclone, he demonstrated deferential treatment towards Islamic radicals rather than cooperate with the Afghani/Russian forces in quelling the Islamic resurgence. His strategy proved that American youth would die in place of the Russian. As a military officer and CIA operative from 1973 until 1986, Michael Vickers wasn't aware of the Iranian Revolution, the stomping and burning of the American flag or the Hostage Crisis. He ignored the Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks, Sadat's assassination, the emergence of Hamas, Hezbollah and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Achille Lauro, Robert Dean Stethem, the massacre at Leonardo Da Vinci airport, Lockerbie, the takeover of the Kaba by the radical Shia, Abu Nidal, the PLO, PLF and George Habash, the Black September Group, Palestine Islamic Jihad and the other slew of bombings, hijackings and assassinations throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Michael Vickers was training and supplying arms to the Mujahedeen -all fighting in the name of Allah. He was unaware of a global consortium of terror that was ripening to confront the "Great Satan." Bin Laden was provided funding and training so that Vicker's could fight his proxy war with the Russians. Meanwhile, American citizens continued to be targets.
Michael Vickers did not bother to read Oriana Fallaci's interview with Khomeini. When asked on why he was banning music, Khomeini replied that it was a "corruptor of youth". When asked if Bach, Mozart or Beethoven were also on this list, his reply to Oriana "Never heard of them." It should have been a red flag for Vickers and anyone with a minimum of common sense.
Michael G. Vickers would better serve the country if he returned to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment and formulate future strategy concerning the Fulda Gap. As a relic of the Cold War culture, he demonstrated fallacy in judgement and unwillingness to engage matters beyond the confines of a cultural box. He preferred to side instead with religious fanatics, enemies of democracy and proponents of barbarism, illiteracy, misogyny and despotism. He sided with those who possess the view that only one Book, the Koran, has all the answers.
As a high level official and Special Operations Commander, he now is a zealous proponent of the "targeted use of Special Forces to fight terrorism wherever it appears." It took Vickers 25 years to figure it out. Too little too late.
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