Priya Satia: Brilliant insights that led us astray in Iraq
[The writer is assistant professor of history at Stanford University and author of Spies in Arabia.]
Psychologists have been studying the hunches that alert US soldiers in Iraq to danger. They have found that the much-cited “gut instinct” is a kind of hyperempirical ability: through long experience, the soldier is able to process sensory observations emotionally before he or she is conscious of what the brain has registered.
It is reassuring to know that US soldiers in Iraq have such mental skills at their disposal. But it is worth recalling that the danger they face is the result of hunches with a much weaker basis in reality – intelligence failures now commonly seen as the product of “groupthink” in the US intelligence establishment.
The hunch has, in fact, a long history with respect to western intervention in Iraq. In the early 20th century, it was the centrepiece of British intelligence and military strategy in the region. Charged with securing the route to India on the eve of the first world war, agents struggled with the task of gathering information in a famously mysterious land. To the romantically inclined sorts who sought out the work, Iraq delightfully defied all empirical assessment. Arabia, they concluded, revealed itself only to those of a peculiar sensibility. They determined, as one put it, to “see, hear, feel, outside the senses” – as, they imagined, Arabs did.
This was, after all, the place for miraculous knowledge – a land of prophets, agents noted. They resolved to “merge ... in the Oriental ... absorb his ideas, see with his eyes, and hear with his ears, to the fullest extent possible to one bred in British traditions.” The setting of ancient tales of espionage from the Bible and the Odyssey, Arabia was to them a spy-space in its very essence; it evoked the emerging genre of spy fiction, whose heroes revealed a similar partiality for intuitive deduction.
That regular, “western” intelligence tactics would not work in the Middle East became an official maxim. Setting aside “book knowledge”, agents “‘sensed’ the essence of a matter”. Experts such as Gertrude Bell, David Hogarth, T. E. Lawrence and Mark Sykes claimed a special kind of understanding; in fact, they had probably simply learnt how to read the land. Their intuitive insight was precisely the sort of hyperempirical ability that guides today’s soldiers.
Today psychologists know that in certain circumstances the soldier’s ability to sense danger can degenerate into paranoia or paralysis. But during the first world war, British agents who understood their talent as a kind of psychic ability had no such sense of its limits. They gained unprecedented influence over policy and military tactics in the region. Sure enough, the intoxication of power transformed their hypersensitivity into something more delusional. Take, for instance, their wildly optimistic predictions of a massive Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire and their strange failure to anticipate the Iraqi rebellion against British forces. Not to mention their certainty, based on gut instinct, that Iraqi violence was the work of foreign conspirators rather than any sort of protest against British rule.
The similarity with today’s official line is no coincidence. Through co-operation during the second world war, US intelligence agencies quickly learnt the business of autocratically divining Middle Eastern reality. Two years after the British were driven out of Iraq in 1958, the CIA attempted to assassinate the Iraqi president. In 1963 it assisted the coup that brought the Ba’athist party to power. ...
Read entire article at Financial Times (UK)
Psychologists have been studying the hunches that alert US soldiers in Iraq to danger. They have found that the much-cited “gut instinct” is a kind of hyperempirical ability: through long experience, the soldier is able to process sensory observations emotionally before he or she is conscious of what the brain has registered.
It is reassuring to know that US soldiers in Iraq have such mental skills at their disposal. But it is worth recalling that the danger they face is the result of hunches with a much weaker basis in reality – intelligence failures now commonly seen as the product of “groupthink” in the US intelligence establishment.
The hunch has, in fact, a long history with respect to western intervention in Iraq. In the early 20th century, it was the centrepiece of British intelligence and military strategy in the region. Charged with securing the route to India on the eve of the first world war, agents struggled with the task of gathering information in a famously mysterious land. To the romantically inclined sorts who sought out the work, Iraq delightfully defied all empirical assessment. Arabia, they concluded, revealed itself only to those of a peculiar sensibility. They determined, as one put it, to “see, hear, feel, outside the senses” – as, they imagined, Arabs did.
This was, after all, the place for miraculous knowledge – a land of prophets, agents noted. They resolved to “merge ... in the Oriental ... absorb his ideas, see with his eyes, and hear with his ears, to the fullest extent possible to one bred in British traditions.” The setting of ancient tales of espionage from the Bible and the Odyssey, Arabia was to them a spy-space in its very essence; it evoked the emerging genre of spy fiction, whose heroes revealed a similar partiality for intuitive deduction.
That regular, “western” intelligence tactics would not work in the Middle East became an official maxim. Setting aside “book knowledge”, agents “‘sensed’ the essence of a matter”. Experts such as Gertrude Bell, David Hogarth, T. E. Lawrence and Mark Sykes claimed a special kind of understanding; in fact, they had probably simply learnt how to read the land. Their intuitive insight was precisely the sort of hyperempirical ability that guides today’s soldiers.
Today psychologists know that in certain circumstances the soldier’s ability to sense danger can degenerate into paranoia or paralysis. But during the first world war, British agents who understood their talent as a kind of psychic ability had no such sense of its limits. They gained unprecedented influence over policy and military tactics in the region. Sure enough, the intoxication of power transformed their hypersensitivity into something more delusional. Take, for instance, their wildly optimistic predictions of a massive Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire and their strange failure to anticipate the Iraqi rebellion against British forces. Not to mention their certainty, based on gut instinct, that Iraqi violence was the work of foreign conspirators rather than any sort of protest against British rule.
The similarity with today’s official line is no coincidence. Through co-operation during the second world war, US intelligence agencies quickly learnt the business of autocratically divining Middle Eastern reality. Two years after the British were driven out of Iraq in 1958, the CIA attempted to assassinate the Iraqi president. In 1963 it assisted the coup that brought the Ba’athist party to power. ...