I was among the first Marines to use a computer for work. At that time we carefully separated those devices that monitored vital systems or stored sensitive information from those with access to the internet. We did this because we were concerned the Russians and others would use the internet to tamper with the infrastructures supporting defense operations or to steal valuable information pertaining to them.
All internet activity was monitored by a department cleared to handle secret information, in case they were to stumble upon someone sharing secrets online or foreign operatives accessing them. Unless you had clearance, and a need to know, you didn’t know that department existed. I didn’t learn about them until I reached the Naval War College Marine Detachment in 1998 to begin training for a career in intelligence.
My desired profession would place me and a team of signal intelligence personnel in territories we wished to know better. We would intercept communications or interrupt weapons systems that might detect or target our operations. While training I became good friends with an intelligence officer who helped the Pentagon uncover information that was used to take Bosnia and Herzegovina from those responsible for ethnic cleansing.
He had used the internet to establish contact with a number of informants in the area. As far as I know that was the first time intelligence was gathered in that manner. Concerned about Middle Eastern extremism, I wondered what part it would play in either our attempt to thwart the terrorist attacks they planned or their attempt to sway onlookers.
I’d trained in terrorism countermeasures with Embassy Marines and Secret Service officers, becoming familiar with the tactics terrorists used to attack facilities supporting our diplomatic missions there or to down the aircraft that transported those who worked it. You may not know this, but the attacks you witnessed on September 11, 2001 were preceded by a series of attacks that allowed those responsible to learn what was necessary to create the spectacle you saw that day.
We often wondered who was behind that effort, not the masterminds behind the attacks themselves but the powers behind them. Early on many suspected Saudi Arabia was. They’d defend the rights of its citizens to travel to Afghanistan for training at the militant camps established by Osama bin Laden and which were supported by suspected Pakistani intelligence operatives. We knew they were determined to draw us into conflict there because they said as much.
Our mission was to avoid that conflict by preventing those groups from carrying out the terrorist attacks they’d use to force the issue. Even though I knew a number of multinational corporations also wanted in, it never occurred to me that the wealthy Egyptians, Pakistanis, and Saudis who funded them did so because they hoped to profit from the exploitation of Afghanistan’s resources or the construction that would take place as it was industrialized. Then I saw the sophisticated campaign urging us to invade.
Profit was always an ulterior motive for that war. We were exposed to an argument that combined fear of terrorism with hope for a prosperous outcome to move us away from effective security practices and towards conflict. Everyone, from the president on down was exposed to this for years before the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred. A lot of money was spent on media that was designed to move us in that direction. We just didn’t realize we were being moved by the multinational corporations who wanted to profit from war.
Russia’s hostilities towards Ukraine are similarly motivated. John McCain, a graduate of the Naval War College, once called Russia “A gas station run by a Mafia that is masquerading as a country.” It’s subtle, but in that statement McCain is careful to point out that Russia is driven by that industry. Russia is not extracting and refining those resources, they get oil and gas giants to do that in exchange for a share of the profits. They are the mafia that acquires the resources that industry relies upon.
In fact, Exxon Mobil was fined for agreeing to extract resources from Ukrainian territory captured by Russia a few years ago. It signed that agreement in 2014 in violation of U.S. sanctions and defended its decision to do so. Actions like these are not uncommon, either where Russia’s hostility towards Ukraine are concerned or where our hostilities in the Middle East are concerned. It’s as Marine General Smedley Butler said, “War is a racket.”
John McCain called Russia a mafia because he knew they were doing the dirty work for an industry that has lost its way. What we didn’t realize as we began monitoring internet activity in the early ’90s is that it would play a part in desensitizing us to these things; that the American point of view itself would be altered until their actions no longer provoked outrage. We’d learn to value profit more than a peaceful existence. I wish we’d seen that coming.
Smedley Butler had a solution. It’s a pretty simple one but difficult to enforce:
“We must take the profit out of war,” he’d say, “limit our military forces to home defense purposes.” Smedley was America’s most decorated fighter. He served in at least 10 conflicts, including World War I, earning two Medal of Honor awards in the process. And when he was done he thwarted an attempt to overthrow our government from within, revealing to Congress a coup American industrialists asked him lead against it in 1934.
Jamie Beaulieu
Farmington, Maine
