Not important? Think again
May 22, 2004
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Blowback from the Blowhards (2)
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Creating facts on the ground
The only thing certain about the consequences of war is that the consequences are uncertain. Launching the War Against Terror was always a huge risk for the war party. It was, I think, Donald Rumsfeld who, speaking about the difficulty of solving problems, opined that intractable problems were best dealt with by changing their terms of reference. In other words, if you cannot solve a problem, create a bigger one.
He has practiced what he preaches. He and the blowhards of the Defense Policy Board refused to give the American military the troops that they needed to invade Iraq successfully. It appears clear to us that the reason for this was haste. They needed to commit the US to invasion before the domestic audience really had a chance to react. The justification for the Iraq operation was riddled with inconsistencies that would never have (and have not) stood up to scrutiny. The way to avoid scrutiny was to create facts on the ground. Once committed, America would find it difficult to pull back.
So the war was launched with insufficient forces to actually occupy the country and rebuild it successfully. This is based on the assumption, however, that the objective of the war was actually to rebuild Iraq in the image of democracy. That assumption, which a majority of observers and analysts still appear to accept, is a pretty tattered rag. There does not appear to be any justification for it in our eyes. Far from bringing democracy to Iraq, the US has brought the sword and nothing but the sword. There are plenty of troops all right, but they are not regulars. They are, rather, mercenaries operating under the banner of companies such as Dyncorp, CACI International, Titan, Blackwater and others, whose terms of reference are targeted assassination, torture, and mindful brutality. Mindless mass murder is left to the regulars, who use massive and utterly disproportionate firepower against the resistance as a matter of course, turning every armed encounter into a reprisal as scores of civilians are killed.
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âPer se, in that sense, no.â
Thus the testimony of Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld protÃgà and head of the intelligence operation responsible for the horror and Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere in what is rapidly becoming known as the âAmerican gulagâ is of more than passing interest. Anyone who can answer a direct question with the unforgettable, âper se, in that sense, noâ is clearly not troubled by concepts such as objective fact. That such a person is running the intelligence operations that are supposed to be determining the facts is very disturbing, as the articles from the Nation linked below suggest.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040531&s=vest
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040531&s=vest2
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Is losing winning?
To focus on the fact that the war is not winnable, which it surely is not, is to assume that winning for the war party means winning the war. For most people, winning the war presumably means leaving Iraq in better shape it was, a peaceful and secure ally for the United States for generations to come. Nothing could be a less likely outcome and further from the true objective, which is and has been staring us in the face for years. The objective of the war is to utterly destroy Iraq as a viable political economy. The principal beneficiary of such a policy is not the United States, but Israel, which has agitated for years for just such an outcome. There really is no other explanation for more than a decade of brutal sanctions, followed by invasion and sack. Methodical, systematic and widespread torture is not a means of gathering intelligence but rather a tactic of terror. Societies are not terrorised into democracy, rather the opposite.
The model for Iraq has been practiced to perfection in country after country: Indonesia, Guatemala, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, Uruguay, El Salvador, Vietnam, and so on over a period of more than fifty years. To treat Iraq as an aberration is to wilfully close oneâs eyes to the facts. The Iraqi operation is not an aberration, it is the norm. It is no coincidence that Israel collaborated with the United States in the repression of labour movements and political dissent in many of the countries on this incomplete list. If spreading democracy is what is desired, then Jack Beattyâs conclusion in the following article published in The Atlantic Online is right on target: The road to peace lies through Jerusalem, not Baghdad.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp2004-05-19.htm
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The road to war
And finally, this small piece of research from SRA shows the incidence of the use of the world âholocaustâ over the years. Our researchers used the web to search for the number of times the word was returned for a given calendar time period for documents accessible form the Google search engine. The results are interesting. Use took off at the same time that Richard Perle and the Israeli think tank Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies released their paper, A Clean Break: A new strategy for securing the realm in 1996. Is this a coincidence? We doubt it. The road to war is paved with propaganda.
Copyright Sanders Research Associates Ltd. 2004-2010
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