Spies, Unlike Us

Okay, you want something more topical?

Owing to my looooooooong airport layover today, I made a great deal of headway reading Caesar's Gallic War Commentaries, a spectacular blend of egotism, more egotism, and really interesting stuff on military strategy and tactics from someone who knows what he writes (in addition, fans of HBO will note that Caesar's commentaries - Book V, Chapter XLIV - inform us that Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus were real people!).

What caught my eye today was the relatively unglamorous phrase "per exploratores" (or some variant) that kept popping up throughout. Basically, this means "by using spies/scouts." Caesar's always doing this to obtain intelligence, which he then lays out for the reader in the same fashion he probably digested it while campaigning. In fact, he begins the whole work with a short discussion of the tri-partite division of Gaul and what relations the different tribes have to each other. Indeed, prior to his invasion of Britain, Caesar sends ahead scouting parties and then proceeds to tell us all about those tribes and their relations.

I couldn't help but think our own human intelligence suffers in comparison. Sure, we can spy on somebody from outer space and trace their phone calls, but these actions strike me as primarily defensive moves to hinder our enemies' initiative. The same with torture (I'm sorry, Mr. Orwell, I mean 'coercive interrogation'). We can obtain spot information in small bursts, but nothing comprehensive.

Where are our exploratores? Why is our human intelligence so laughably bad? If Caesar had been plotting the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, he would have co-opted natives and sent them to learn absolutely everything about those lands and the people. The strengths and weaknesses of each 'tribe' would have been comprehended. Their motivations would have been understood (i.e., the Pashtun do this because the Tajiks did that once, etc.), as well as important customs and the like. Then, when we took decisive action, we'd know exactly which outcomes we could expect.

I'm not going to belabor the point on this, but we all know what has happened instead - we fired talented Arabic linguists and put little effort into pre-war planning. As much as we'd like it to be the case, though, the Bush Administration is not alone in this (Remember in the late 90s when Clinton just bombed things?). With the advent of our ultra-modern weapons, I think war has ceased somewhat to be a serious, thoughtful matter. It's so easy to shoot a missile, why bother getting all messy by putting people on the ground and thinking about nitty-gritty policy?

We should learn a lesson from Caesar. His conquest of Gaul and preliminary invasion of Britain, based on sound human intelligence, brought those lands into the Roman orbit for five centuries. Using knowledge of the situation on the ground, he knew whom to cultivate and whom to eliminate. When the war was decided, hostilities ended. We, on the other hand, who often trust our high-tech weapons will do our thinking for us, deal with ceaseless insurgencies and guerilla actions.