American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History

This book was a very good read – it offered unique insight into the mind of a soldier fighting in the Middle East – and Chris Kyle (the author), has a great way of talking colloquially to the audience, making it feel like he is telling you his story personally. He has some interesting stories about the war in Iraq, the way things operate and what the soldiers are doing on a daily basis. It’s hard to know if his experience is the ‘typical’ experience, considering he was a SEAL, and that he constantly mentions that one of the main reasons he has so many kills is that he is ‘lucky’, in the sense that he was involved in many attacks, battles, etc.

From his book, you understand that he is very patriotic. He truly believes that he is killing these people to protect his country. And he has no problems with this. He separates himself from the targets, calling the insurgents ‘savages’. Another interesting aspect was that he says he is a Christian, with his order of importance being “God, country, family”. This is a hotly debated issue in Christianity, along the lines of ‘just war theory’, whether going to war and killing is ever acceptable or allowed as a Christian. Kyle clearly believes that it is okay, and seems to think that America is on mission for God – killing all the evil insurgents. I’m not sure how I feel about this – the Bible clearly calls us to love others, and Jesus died for all of us, including Iraqis. However, it also talks about the government being put in place by God, as well as the difference between murder and killing, the focus being on the intentions – the posture of your heart. But that’s a debate for another day.

I thought one of the most interesting things that Kyle talks about is the strict Rules of Engagement (ROE). They had very strict rules on when they could and could not shoot enemies, and Kyle talks about how seriously these rules were followed. He said that every kill is tracked, and there is extensive paperwork to make sure every kill is legal and following the ROE. I had no idea that this was the case.

Interestingly, there are parts of the book written by his wife. She is incredibly honest, giving insight into what it’s like to be married to a soldier. It’s also very sad and heartbreaking. She clearly feels abandoned at times, and who wouldn’t when their husband leaves two days after you give birth to a child? She states that her order of importance is “God, family, country”, which obviously clashes with what her husband believes. The uplifting part is that they tough through it all – through him doing 4 tours in Iraq before finally retiring and coming home for good. Kyle left the military in 2009, and started his own company, Craft International, which focused on tactical training for military and police officers. He also worked extensively with veterans. Tragically, in February 2013, he was killed at a gun range in Texas by a young veteran with PTSD.

A movie, based on his autobiography, was just released (starring Bradley Cooper). I went to see it and I thought that they actually did a fairly good job of depicting his views and ideas. The events aren’t all accurate – you can tell that they mixed together (and made up) certain things to create a storyline that flowed. But the general feeling of the movie is pretty accurate to his book and they actually show a lot of his interactions at home, depicting the struggle that soldiers have when they leave the battlefield. The movie also tells you what happened to Kyle – showing him smiling and saying goodbye to his family before heading out to meet someone on the range, and then words flashing on the screen telling you that he was killed that day. It’s pretty sobering. I think what struck me the most was that Kyle was killed by one of the very men that he would do anything to protect. Rather than being killed by an Iraqi soldier, he was killed by an American soldier. He survived 4 tours in Iraq, only to be killed at home. Overall, both the book and the movie tell the story of a man who was so sure that his country was “good”, that he was willing to die for it – that’s pretty powerful.

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State

This book was a very interesting insight into the story of Edward Snowden because it was written by Glenn Greenwald – the author who first met with Snowden, got the files, and published the first articles, as well as the video where Snowden identifies himself. He starts off by saying that the motive for mass surveillance is always the same – suppressing dissent and mandating compliance. Converting the internet into a system of surveillance turns it into a tool of repression, threatening to produce the most extreme and oppressive weapon of state intrusion that human history has ever seen.

Snowden was 29 years old at the time of their first meeting in 2013 – I had no idea that he was that young – and seemed aware of all the consequences of his actions. Obama’s administration has prosecuted more government leakers under the Espionage act of 1917 (seven) – than all previous administrations in U.S. history combined…in fact more than double that total. The documents Snowden gave Greenwald left no doubt that the NSA was equally involved in economic espionage, diplomatic spying and suspicionless surveillance aimed at entire populations. Every day, the NSA works to identify electronic communications that are not being collected and stored and then develops new technologies and methods to rectify the deficiency. The agency regards itself as needing no specific justification to collect any particular electronic communication, nor any grounds for regarding its targets with suspicion. They forced Verizon to give it access to all calls made inside the U.S. and from the U.S. to other countries. They also gathered data from the servers of all the big technology companies (Apple, Google, Skype, etc.) and lied to congress about everything. All the companies denied involvement and knowledge of the program known as PRISM, however it appears as if they all cooperated (perhaps reluctantly).

The NSA is the largest intelligence agency in the world, with the majority of its surveillance work conducted through the five eyes alliance (Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.). It is a military branch of the Pentagon, and was originally mandated to focus on activities outside of the U.S. The NSA frequently collects far more content that is routinely useful to analysts – more than 20 billion communication events each day. There are 3 different types of foreign relationships: (1) with the five eyes, the U.S. spies with these countries, but rarely on them, unless requested to by those countries’ own officials, (2) countries the NSA works with for specific surveillance projects while also spying on them extensively, (3) countries on which the U.S. routinely spies but with whom it virtually never cooperates. Its closest ally is the British GCHQ, however Canada is also a very active partner and an energetic surveillance force in its own right (CSEC=Communications Services Establishment Canada). The five eyes relationship is so close that member governments place the NSA’s desires above the privacy of their own citizens.

Greenwald explains that there are 2 types of information: content and metadata. Content refers to actually listening to people’s phone calls or reading their emails and online chats, while metadata refers to amassing data about those communications, such as who emailed whom, when it was sent, the location of the person sending it, etc. but not what the email actually says. And while the NSA claims that the collection of large quantities of data is necessary to stop terrorism, it is actually using this data for economic and political purposes as well. The U.S. used the NSA to eavesdrop on the planning strategies of other countries during trade and economic talks, gaining an enormous advantage for American industry. It has also spied on international organization such as the United Nations, to gain diplomatic advantage. The NSA routinely receives or intercepts routers, servers and other computer network devices being exported from the U.S. before they are delivered to international customers. The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools. All of this is because the U.S. wants to maintain its grip on the world.

Greenwald says that authorities faced with unrest generally have 2 options: to placate the population with symbolic concessions or fortify their control to minimize the harm it can do to their interests. He believes that the west seems to go with option 2. I don’t really understand his characterization of the options – seemingly another option would be to actually listen to the people and change things? He says that collective coercion and control is both the intent and effect of state surveillance. Those who are being watched affirm their endorsement of prevailing social norms as they attempt to actively manage their reputations. The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who ‘have done something wrong’ should provide little comfort since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing. The true measure of a society’s freedom is how it treats its dissidents and other marginalized groups, not how it treats good loyalists.

As for the people who say that the collection of this data stops terrorists, Greenwald has several rebuttals. The Justice Department failed to cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack. The metadata program was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional court orders. It has no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism. The best (worst?) example of this is that for 9/11, the government was in possession of the necessary intelligence but had failed to understand or act on it. This is one of the problems with collecting so much data – you can’t possibly sort through it all to figure out what is relevant.

As well, the NSA’s efforts to override the encryption methods protecting common internet transactions – such as banking, medical records and commerce – have left these systems open to infiltration by hackers and other hostile entities. The risk of any American dying in a terrorist attack is considerably less than the chance of being struck by lightning. After these documents were released, the government was calling for Greenwald to be arrested and charged – for doing his job. The worst part was that other journalists started to agree with this. Greenwald says that Snowden denied doing any interviews because he didn’t want to take away from the story, yet the media called him a fame-seeking narcissist.

Obedience to authority is implicitly deemed the natural state, whereas disobedience is portrayed as crazy, paranoid, mentally ill, etc. However, both observing and breaking the rules involves moral choices. In the face of severe injustice, a refusal to dissent is the sign of a character flaw or moral failure. The reflexive demonization of whistle blowers is one way that the establishment media in the U.S. protects the interests of those who wield power. The only leaks that the Washington media condemns are those that contain information officials would prefer to hide. There is a double standard applied to publishing classified information. A lot of people leak things, it’s only considered bad when it doesn’t support the government and its narrative. Opinions are problematic only when they deviate from the acceptable range of Washington orthodoxy.

Greenwald says that the British government stormed in and made the Guardian (newspaper that Greenwald works for), destroy all the hard drives with information from Snowden. As well, Greenwald’s partner was traveling and they held him in the UK airport for 9 hours, under supposed ‘terrorism’ charges. The government has shown itself as abusive and repressive, which means the only proper response is to exert more pressure and demand greater transparency and accountability.

He finishes off by talking about the changes that have started, thanks to Snowden’s revelations. 2 members of congress jointly introduced a bill to defund the NSA metadata collection program (a member of the liberal party and a member of the tea party). House members stood up to vehemently denounce the NSA program, scoffing at the idea that collecting data on the calls of every single American is necessary to stop terrorism. The bill failed by a small margin (205-217). The UN general assembly unanimously voted in favour of a resolution affirming that online privacy is a fundamental human right (introduced by Germany and Brazil). There are international efforts – led by Germany and Brazil – to build new internet infrastructure, so that most network traffic no longer has to transit the U.S.

Lastly, he emphasizes that the alternative to mass surveillance is not the complete elimination of surveillance. It’s not one or the other. An alternative to mass surveillance is targeted surveillance, where the NSA only targets people they believe to be a threat. I think this is a reasonable suggestion.

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power & Endless War

This book by James Risen is essentially a series of stories about events and people that most of us have never heard of. He uses these events and people to weave a story about three things – greed, power and endless war.

One of the stories he talks about is the huge misuse of money by the American government during the war. In 2003, pallets of $100 bills were driven from the Federal Reserve in New Jersey, and then put on a cargo plane and taken to Iraq where they…disappeared. $12-$14 billion in cash and another $5.8 billion in electronic funds transfers are unaccounted for, largely because there were no clear orders on how to use the money. An investigation led to the discovery that $2 billion was stolen and secretly transported to Lebanon, but the government seemingly has no intention of getting it back, even going as far as to block the lead investigator from entering Lebanon to go see the warehouse where they believed it was being kept. U.S. forces also found $4 million in $100 bills in Saddam’s palace, which belonged to the Iraqi Central Bank, but the U.S. simply kept it and gave it to military commanders to use as they saw fit. A large chunk of money was also stolen by soldiers and contractors working in Iraq. Between 2004 and 2008, there were at least 35 convictions in the U.S. and more than $17 million in fines, forfeitures and restitution payments made in fraud cases in connection with the American reconstruction of Iraq (and that’s just the people they caught…). The U.S. also used money from the Development Fund of Iraq, which was money from the sales of Iraqi oil, meaning it belonged to the people of Iraq. This would have been fine if they had actually used the money to rebuild Iraq, but clearly money was incredibly poorly managed.

Another story was about how quickly the government threw money at people, without making sure they could provide what they promised. He tells the story of a conman named Dennis Montgomery who convinced the CIA & the Pentagon that his technology could help them catch Al Qaeda – but it was all fake. He even got Bush to ground several planes around Christmas 2003, and they even discussed shooting down passenger planes. Some of the planes grounded were from France and they demanded to see the technology, quickly identifying it as a hoax. The CIA didn’t tell anyone about this incident and no one was reprimanded, meaning that Montgomery continued to get contracts from Special Ops and the Pentagon for years after this happened. For me, this just indicates how much secrecy surrounds these organizations and the negative effects that it can have.

He also talks about General Atomics, the privately held company that is the maker of the predator drones. They are the beneficiaries of one of the largest transfers of wealth from public to private hands in American history, having received $1.8 billion in government contracts in 2012 alone. It has made the owners, Neal and Linden Blue (brothers), oligarchs of 9/11. He says that government spending on homeland security has been so excessive that the only way it could be considered cost effective would be if it funded programs that prevented 1,667 terrorists attack each year (4 every day). I’m not sure where he gets this number – presumably he is putting a value on the lives of American citizens? The Blue brothers originally bought General Atomics for $50 million, which is quite the deal. Interestingly, General Atomics started off as a subsidiary of General Dynamics before being sold off. They have also been allowed to begin selling unarmed predators to other nations, even in the Middle East. Demonstrating the high use of drones, the author says that the air force is now training more personnel to operate drones than to actually fly manned aircraft.

He then goes on to talk about KBR, an offshoot of Halliburton, which is the contracting firm that made the most money from the war on terror, surviving many scandals and controversies, with some thinking it was ‘too big to fail’. At the height of the war, they had 50,000 people working in Iraq. They had giant open burn pits outside of every base to dispose of waste, even though they were supposed to use other methods. Many soldiers came back with lung problems such as asthma, bronchitis, etc. all caused by the burn pits. Another soldier was electrocuted (and died) while taking a shower in his quarters in Iraq, which was due to the fact that KBR had improperly wired and grounded the area. His mother pushed for answers after his death and discovered that at least 18 American military personnel were electrocuted during the war in Iraq, and another soldier had reported that he was electrocuted in that same shower a few weeks earlier, but the problem was never addressed. Overall, KBR received $39.5 billion in contracts during the war. Anyone who stood against them, like one auditor who tried to get them to show paperwork for their expenses, was quickly removed from their position.

The last piece he talks about is the effect that endless war has. Going into the war, psychologists knew that torture can’t be used to collect accurate intelligence, that it was used for compliance – to break people. However the APA (American Psychological Association) went along with the torture, ‘supervising’ the interrogations and changing its ethics code to allow more questionable behaviour. The soldiers that were ordered to torture prisoners were also severally damaged, with most of them suffering from severe PTSD. After the public found out, the government didn’t reprimand any superiors, but tried to use the soldiers as scapegoats and brought charges against them. He also talks about how after 9/11, the 5,500 mile long border with Canada was considered a vulnerability that had to be sealed off, even though there was no evidence that the Canadian border had become a real threat. The level of resources devoted to fighting terrorism still remains out of proportion to the actual threat level posed by terrorism.

One senator said that ‘it’s almost like there are 2 sets of laws, one the public can read, and one the government has developed in secret’. While some people at the NSA and in oversight committees tried to stop the data collection programs as soon as they found out it was targeting Americans, they were quickly pushed out and ignored. The New York Times even found out about the NSA surveillance but held the story for over a year at the request of the government – long enough for Bush to get re-elected. Lastly, the author finishes off by mentioning that the new focus is cybersecurity, and that the NSA is now one of the world’s leaders in the use of offensive cyberattacks. No longer focused on the military-industrial complex, the U.S. has shifted to a cyber-industrial complex and a homeland security-industrial complex.

“War must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs” –Jeh Johnson.