Dissident Voice: Death Squad Democracy

[lady lib]

Death Squad Democracy
by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
March 21, 2006


“As successive imperialist powers have shown, the bottom line in combating the hopes and dreams of ordinary people is to resort to spreading terror through the application of extreme violence.”
-- Max Fuller, “For Iraq, the ‘Salvador Option’ Becomes Reality”


The notion that Iraq is now consumed by civil war depends on a number of assumptions that are inherently false. First of all, it assumes that the Pentagon is ignoring the fundamental principle that underscores all wars: “Know your enemy.” In this case, there’s no doubt about who the enemy is: it is the 87% of the Iraqi people who want to see an immediate end to the American occupation. Therefore, the greatest threat to American objectives of permanent bases and occupation is the camaraderie that manifests itself in the form of Arab solidarity or Iraqi nationalism.

To this end, the Pentagon, through its surrogates in the media, has created a “self-fulfilling” narrative that civil war is already under way. Most of the war coverage now makes it appear as though the violence is generated from ethnic tensions and sectarian hatred. But is it? Some of the more astute observers have noticed that other parts of the propaganda war, (like references to the “imaginary” al-Zarqawi) have completely vanished from the newspapers, as government spin-doctors are now devoting 100% of their time to promoting their latest product line: civil war.

<snip>

In a larger sense, the “alleged” sectarian violence is consistent with what we have seen in previous CIA-run operations in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Negroponte are alumna of those conflicts (which, according to Cheney, succeeded quite admirably) so it’s probable that they would apply what they have learned about counterinsurgency to the ongoing war in Iraq. The El Salvador experiment proved that the masses can eventually be terrorized into compliance.

Isn’t that what is taking place in Iraq?

In Iraq, terror is being used as a substitute for security, because the United States has no intention of providing the manpower or funding needed to maintain order.

Continues at
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar06/Whitney21.htm

[leveymg]

1. It is likely that they will apply here what they've learned there,

if they remain in power for another three years. Fortunately, that seems unlikely.

[lady lib]

2. To a certain extent they already have.

“In Iraq, the war comes in two phases. The first phase is complete: the destruction of the existing state, which did not comply with the interests of British and American capital. The second phase consists of building a new state tied to those interests and smashing every dissenting sector of society. Openly, this involves the same sort of shock therapy that has done so such damage in swathes of the Third World and Eastern Europe. Covertly, it means intimidating, kidnapping, and murdering opposition voices.”

Our "shock therapy" of course was 9/11 and (7/7 in Britain). As far as "intimidating, kidnapping, and murdering opposition voices" goes, we've definitely got the intimidating part well down (see my post from Counterpunch), and as far as murdering goes, well accidents and mysterious deaths just have a way of occurring with the Bush crime family. Don't they?

[leveymg]

3. Would like to see you post from CounterPunch

Link please? Thanks

[lady lib]

4. Here you go.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=198607&mesg_id=198607

Or, link directly to the article at
http://www.counterpunch.org/martin03182006.html

Thanks for asking. I forgot to include it. :)

[leveymg]

5. I'm pretty familiar with the pattern in NC

I worked for a law firm that was involved with preparing the civil suit against the FBI and the GPD for their complicity in the 1979 Greensboro Massacre. Unfortunately, this sort of intimidation and counter-insurgency stuff is nothing new, as it follows a pattern set in the 1950s and 1960s when the Bureau's agents provocateur inside the Klan engineered some of the worst violence against civil rights workers.

They always pull out the same play book.

[lady lib]

6. And on a related note I just found this:

The recent killing of an unarmed Virginia doctor has raised concerns about what some say is an explosion in the use of military-style police Swat teams in the United States.

Armed with assault rifles, stun grenades - even armoured personnel carriers - units once used only in highly volatile situations are increasingly being deployed on more routine police missions.
<snip>
Dr Kraska believes there has been an explosion of units in smaller towns and cities, where training and operational standards may not be as high as large cities - a growth he attributes to "the hysteria" of the country's war on drugs.

"I get several calls a month from people asking about local incidents - wrong address raids, excessive use of force, wrongful shootings - this stuff is happening all the time," he adds.
<snip>
"The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4803570.stm

[leveymg]

7. These things are bound to happen in the Transvaal and Londonderry

We learned all about Counterinsurgency doctrine from the Brits. They perfected it, we screwed it up. Not even the Pheonix Program and Condor - pure applied social science and assassination -- worked for us.

The problem is, Empire is inconsistent with American core beliefs and customs of inheritance. Few of the people who are willing to do what's necessary to make it work are competent or ruthless enough to pull it off. The British Empire worked because the rule that the eldest sons of the aristocrats inherited the entire estate. The younger brothers had to go out as entrepreurs working for the Crown to conquer and administer the colonies. Bound by common class and educational ties and outlooks, they were remarkably good at it.

What worries me is what happens when the private homeland security contractors and foreign CI experts join forces in their mutual entrepreurial interest to keep the domestic terrorism threat going.