US Army Contemplates Redrawing Middle East Map
US Army Contemplates Redrawing Middle East Map to Stave Off Looming Global Meltdown
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Dissident Voice
September 1, 2006
In a little-noted article printed in early August in the Armed Forces Journal, a monthly magazine for officers and leaders in the United States military community, early retired Major Ralph Peters sets out the latest ideas in current US strategic thinking. And they are extremely disturbing.
Ethnically Cleansing the Entire Middle East
Maj. Peters, formerly assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence where he was responsible for future warfare, candidly outlines how the map of the Middle East should be fundamentally re-drawn, in a new imperial endeavor designed to correct past errors. “Without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East,†he observes, but then adds wryly: “Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works.â€
Thus, acknowledging that the sweeping reconfiguration of borders he proposes would necessarily involve massive ethnic cleansing and accompanying bloodshed on perhaps a genocidal scale, he insists that unless it is implemented, “we may take it as an article of faith that a portion of the bloodshed in the region will continue to be our own.†Among his proposals are the need to establish “an independent Kurdish state†to guarantee the long-denied right to Kurdish self-determination. But behind the humanitarian sentiments, Maj. Peters declares that: “A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.â€
He chastises the United States and its coalition partners for missing “a glorious chance†to fracture Iraq, which “should have been divided into three smaller states immediately.†This would leave “Iraq’s three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenecia reborn.†Meanwhile, the Shia south of old Iraq “would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf.†Jordan, a US-Israeli friend in the region, would “retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.†Iran too would “lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Baluchistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today’s Afghanistan.†Although this vast imperial program could be impossible to implement now, with time, “new and natural borders will emergeâ€, driven by “the inevitable attendant bloodshed.â€
As for the goals of this plan, Maj. Peters is equally candid. While including the necessary caveats about fighting “for security from terrorism, for the prospect of democracyâ€, he also mentions the third important issue — “and for access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itselfâ€.
The whole thing sounds disturbingly familiar, especially to those who have read the musings of then Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon.
Keeping the World Safe… for Our Economy
Despite trying to dress up his vision as an exercise in attempting to selflessly democratize the Middle East, in a contribution to the quarterly US Army War College journal Parameters almost a decade ago, he acknowledged with some jubilation that: “Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar — professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.†This minority will inevitably conflict with the vast majority of the world’s population. “For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is ‘nasty, brutish … and short-circuited.’†In “every country and region,†these masses who can neither “understand the new worldâ€, nor “profit from its uncertainties … will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States.†The coming clash, then, is not really about blood, faith, ethnicity, at all. It is about the gap between the haves and the have-nots. “We are entering a new American centuryâ€, he says, in a veiled reference to the Bush administration Project of the same name founded in the same year he was writing. In the new century, “we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.â€
In predicting the future course for the US Army, Maj. Peters argues that: “We will see countries and continents divide between rich and poor in a reversal of 20th-century economic trends.†In this context, he says, “we in the United States will continue to be perceived as the ultimate haves,†and therefore, “terrorism will be the most common form of violence,†along with “transnational criminality, civil strife, secessions, border conflicts, and conventional wars.†Meanwhile, “in defense of its interestsâ€, the US “will be required to intervene in some of these contests.†And then he sums it all up in one tidy paragraph:
“There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.”
So what’s prompted Maj. Peter’s decision to air his vision for the Middle East in the Armed Forces Journal at this time in the wake of the latest Middle East crisis? A number of critical developments.
Source: Imminent Global Crises Converge
According to an American source with high-level access to the US military, political and intelligence establishment, Western policymakers are in no doubt that the world faces the imminent convergence of multiple global crises. These crises threaten not only to undermine the basis of Western power in its current military and geopolitical configurations, but also to destabilize the entire foundations of industrial civilization.
The source said that the latest petroleum data indicates that “global oil production most likely peaked two years ago.†This is consistent with the findings of respected geologists such as leading oil depletion expert Dr. Colin Campbell, who in the late 90s predicted that world oil production would peak in the early 21st century. “We have come to the end of the first half of the Oil Age,†said Dr. Campbell, who has a doctorate in geology from the University of Oxford and more than 40 years of experience in the oil industry. Similarly, Kenneth Deffeyes, a geologist and professor emeritus at Princeton University, estimates the occurrence of the peak near the end of last year.
The source also said that leading US financial analysts privately believe that “a collapse of the global banking system is imminent by 2008.†Although the warning is consistent with the public findings of other experts, this is the first time that a more precise date has been estimated. In a prescient analysis drawing on highly placed financial sources, US historian Gabriel Kolko, professor emeritus at York University, concluded in late July that:
“All the factors which make for crashes — excessive leveraging, rising interest rates, etc. — exist… Contradictions now wrack the world’s financial system, and a growing consensus now exists between those who endorse it and those, like myself, who believe the status quo is both crisis-prone as well as immoral. If we are to believe the institutions and personalities who have been in the forefront of the defense of capitalism, and we should, it may very well be on the verge of serious crises.”
The source also commented on the danger posed by rapid climate change. Although most conventional estimates suggest that global climate catastrophe is not due before another 30 odd years, he argued that the multiplication of several “tipping-points†suggested that a series of devastating climatic events could be “triggered within the next 10 to 15 years.†Once again, this is consistent with the findings of other experts, most recently a joint task-force report by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Center for American Progress in the US, and the Australia Institute, which said in January last year that if the average world temperature rises “two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolutionâ€, it would trigger an irreversible chain of climatic disasters. In its report, the task force says:
“The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea level more than 10 meters over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planet’s forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon.”
The source also revealed that US generals had repeatedly war-gamed a prospective conflict with Iran, but consistently found that the simulations predicted “an absolute nuclear disasterâ€, from which no clear winner would emerge. The scenarios gamed were so dismal, he said, that the generals briefed administration officials to avoid such a war at all costs. However, the source said that the Bush administration is ignoring the fears of the US military. [The war in Iraq, which has stretched US ground forces tothe limit, is preventing this lunacy for the time being. -SG]
In this context, it would seem that the musings of Maj. Peters issue less from a concerted confidence in US power, than from a sense of growing desperation and unease as the political, financial and energy architecture of the global system is increasingly fragmenting under the weight of its own inherent instability. Despite the seeming gloominess of the situation, however, there is clearly fundamental dissent about the current trajectory of American and Western policy at the highest levels of power. The source remarked that “humanity is on the verge of a precipice, and either we’ll all just drop off the edge, or we’ll evolve. I’m not sure what that new human being might look like, but it will clearly have to involve a completely new set of ideas and values, a new way of looking at the world that respects life and nature.â€
* * * * *
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry. He teaches courses in International Relations at the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, where he is doing his PhD studying imperialism and genocide. Since 9/11, he has authored three other books revealing the realpolitik behind the rhetoric of the War on Terror: The War on Freedom, Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq and The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. In summer 2005, he testified as an expert witness in US Congress about his research on international terrorism.
DeAnander:
he acknowledged with some jubilation that: “Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar — professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.â€
classic sociopathy, borderline psychopathy — actually well over the border if we consider his enthusiasm for mass murder in the same light as we would for Son of Sam et alia.
the fact that this raving lunatic can continue to occupy any job more responsible than sweeping floors is in itself an irrefutable indictment of the whole corrupt and insane system.
perhaps the most bitter and terrible thing about these times, the dreadful prospects we face on all sides, is that none of this was necessary and almost all of it is the result of the fantasies and ego-trips of unbalanced men. the ravaging of a planet, the extermination of species and civilisations, all for nothing more important than delusions of grandeur on the part of deeply and strangely damaged minds.
5 September 2006, 4:56 pmJosiah:
The idea of a “new human being” is ironic in this context, because Peters seems to exist in a time warp. There are a lot of echoes of the recent and, probably, ancient Western military-strategic past here, starting with the rhetoric about self-determination for regional (Turkish, Iranian, etc.) minorities, which was used by Britain and France after WWI (Sykes-Picot, the Balfour Declaration, etc.) to get us into this mess in the first place. Peters seems to be actually emboldened by the artificial, colonial origins of the modern state system of the Middle East, as indicated by sentences like “For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan.” (!!!) As if one more round of Western state-creation are just what the Muslim world really needs.
I gotta say, though, I have a hard time believing that very many planners in Washington intelligence and military circles are entertaining ideas this bold in 2006, even if they did in 2002. Forget morality–it isn’t logistically possible at this point for the U.S. to extend the Afghan-Iraq occupation model onto other states in the near future, even if “proxy” actions involving Israel and other clients will no doubt continue. Even from the imperialist’s viewpoint, the current model just isn’t working.
5 September 2006, 11:28 pmeoinmonkey:
I read this the other day and wanted to pass it on.
“My only reservation about the close ties between the SOF and the SAS was that the American unit contained a number of born-again Christians. This even led to a number of the more impressionable members of the SAS returning from the US having been born again.
I would not dispute the right of anyone to adhere to their own religious convictions, but many of the fundamentalist Christians in the SOF seemed unwilling to show a similar tolerance to others.
I do not believe it is possible to follow an effective hearts and minds policy while despising the religion, culture and beliefs of the people one is operating among, but my reservations about the SOF’s hard-core Christians went deeper than that.
They had a dangerous tendency to see the SOF’s role as part of a holy war as intense as any Muslim jihad. They appeared to view the large part of the world that did not subscribe to their beliefs as uniformly hostile territory. If its peoples could not be persuaded to see the one true path, they were to be subjugated or destroyed.
While deploring that attitude, it also offered the SAS opportunities to strengthen British ties with regimes alienated by this implacable American approach.”
-Ken Connor; Ghost Force, the secret history of the SAS.
6 September 2006, 12:37 am.:
“A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.â€
This may open another US friendly pipeline option from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean.
6 September 2006, 3:40 am..:
“Iran, a state with madcap boundaries, would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Baluchistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today’s Afghanistan — a region with a historical and linguistic affinity for Persia. Iran would, in effect, become an ethnic Persian state again, with the most difficult question being whether or not it should keep the port of Bandar Abbas or surrender it to the Arab Shia State.
What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren (the point of this exercise is not to draw maps as we would like them but as local populations would prefer them). Pakistan, another unnatural state, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining “natural” Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.”
I have always felt a direct confrontation with Iran woud be disastrous during the SASO phase; imagine human waves of fanatic Basij, swarming coalition forces with suicide bombings. I prefer a more indirect route that mirrors this article; foment insurrection with the pulsing attacks using the PKK and MEK, trying to foment ethnic strife between the Persians and minority Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchis. I would then shift to a non-violent urban guerrilla strategy and instigate heavy handed reprisals from the Iranian government. If failing to fracture the state, it would at least undermine the current regimes power.
6 September 2006, 4:42 amneilcaff:
“non violent guerilla stratgy” er these things don’t just fall from the sky on command. It takes some sort of political organisation that has built up the trust of the people in the areas they operate, which takes years. Such organisations may or may not exist in Iran but they sure don’t act on the command of CENTCOM. Given the power of Persian nationalism any group seen to be acting in the interests of the US would quickly be completely isolated.
6 September 2006, 9:57 amThe PKK are a Kurdish guerilla group that operate in Turkey and Iraq, not Iran.
The MEK is now a weired cult like group that enjoy zero public support in Iran because they collaborated with the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq war.
If the US funded provocatuers did start some kind of terroristic adventure among Iran’s minorities (which I doubt they would be able to achieve) it would most certainly not weaken the Iranian state. Iran is not Nicuragua. All it would achieve is to strengthen the most reactionary sections of the Iranian state, the secret security services, just as Al’Qaeda’s actions in New York did in America.
Charles Brown:
ARMY TO USE GENEVA RULES FOR DETAINEES
New manual eliminates secret tactics and separate standards for
questioning captives.
By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2006
WASHINGTON — Bowing to critics of its tough interrogation policies,
the Pentagon is issuing a new Army field manual that provides Geneva
Convention protections for all detainees and eliminates a secret list
of interrogation tactics.
The manual, set for release today, also reverses an earlier decision
to maintain two interrogation standards — one for traditional
prisoners of war and another for “unlawful combatants” captured
during a conflict but not affiliated with a nation’s military force.
It will ban the use of such controversial methods as forcing
prisoners to endure long periods of solitary confinement, using
military dogs to threaten prisoners, putting hoods over inmates’
heads and strapping detainees to boards and dunking them in water to
simulate drowning, defense officials said.
The manual and its related policy directives — the legal framework
for interrogations — originally were to be released in the spring.
But when State Department officials and Republican senators on the
Armed Services Committee raised objections, they were pulled back.
The Pentagon’s decision to drop the objectionable provisions appears
to mark a victory for advocates of closer U.S. adherence to the
protections of the Geneva Convention, an international agreement on
the treatment of prisoners and others during wartime. Human rights
groups said they planned to study the manual carefully to see what
parts of the international treaty it included and what it left out.
“If the new field manual embraces the Geneva Convention, it is an
important return to the rule of law,” said Jumana Musa, an advocacy
director for Amnesty International. “It is an important public
statement.”
The Army completed a version of the document over a year ago. But the
manual grew in importance when Congress approved an amendment to a
defense budget bill that banned torture and established the guide as
the standard for treatment of detainees in all U.S. military
facilities. The amendment was offered by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.),
who was tortured while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Under the new guidelines, prisoners of war — defined as members of
uniformed militaries captured on a battlefield — may receive certain
extra considerations as mandated by the Geneva Convention, such as
being allowed to retain their personal effects and to refuse to
answer detailed questions. But ceding to congressional demands, the
manual establishes a single baseline standard of care and treatment
for all detainees, regardless of their status.
“All detainees will be treated consistent with Common Article 3 of
the Geneva Convention,” said a military official who was not allowed
to discuss the manual before it was made public and spoke only on
condition of anonymity.
Common Article 3 — found in each of the four Geneva pacts approved in
1949 — prohibits torture and cruel treatment. Unlike other parts of
the Geneva agreements, it covers all detainees, whether they are
unlawful combatants or traditional prisoners of war.
After the abuse of detainees at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison came to
light in 2004, some Defense Department lawyers pushed to incorporate
the protections of Common Article 3 into the field manual. But senior
political appointees argued that doing so would tie the hands of U.S.
troops by outlawing long periods of confinement or allowing detainees
to accuse the military of “humiliating or degrading treatment,” which
is banned by the provision.
Because of those objections, senior Pentagon officials decided that
the manual and the accompanying policy directives would demand that
detainees be treated humanely, but would avoid any direct mention of
Geneva.
But in June, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld that the
provisions of the Geneva Convention could be applied to an
unconventional conflict, like the war on terrorism. The court said
that Common Article 3 covered all individuals caught up in a
conflict, whether part of a regular military force or not.
A little over a week later, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R.
England issued a memorandum saying that the U.S. military would
adhere to the standards in Common Article 3.
The manual’s guidelines will apply to all prisoners held in Defense
Department facilities and to all interrogators working there. Under
the McCain amendment, the protections also will apply to CIA
prisoners held in Defense Department prisons or bases.
They will not apply to CIA interrogators working in prisons run by
other countries, although under the McCain amendment, those prisoners
must be treated humanely and cannot be tortured.
The Pentagon had intended to keep some of its interrogation
techniques classified. Some military officials believe that releasing
such tactics would make it easier for terrorists to learn how to
resist questioning.
But when State Department officials saw a draft of the manual earlier
this year, they raised reservations about the classified list. They
expressed concern that even if the techniques were humane and lawful,
some advocacy groups and other countries would assume the worst and
insist that by maintaining a secret list, the United States must be
allowing torture.
The revision of the Army manual began after an international outcry
over the Abu Ghraib scandal, as well as questions over the treatment
of hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The new language is
plain and easily understood — “designed to be used by soldiers,” the
military official said.
Military officials say the new manual tries to address the lessons
investigators have drawn from Abu Ghraib, including rebuilding the
wall between soldiers assigned to interrogate detainees and those who
run the prison. Some of the abuses at Abu Ghraib began after officers
who had worked at Guantanamo were brought to Iraq and recommended
using military police to “set the conditions” for interrogators.
Musa, the lawyer for Amnesty International, said the Bush
administration had created confusion in the military by establishing
different standards of treatment for Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and
Iraq.
“There was confusion,” Musa said. “There needs to be a clear message
to soldiers about what is acceptable and what is not.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-
6 September 2006, 5:23 pmtorture6sep06,0,7581942.story?coll=la-home-headlines
OR http://makeashorterlink.com/?K2E5216BD
peggy:
I have seen this Major Peters before, under other guises. There are a bunch of him out there. He and his ilk congregate in places like the Rand Corporation. Governments who terrorize their own people just love him, and he basks in their adoration. He thinks he is among the intellectual elite, the few true cognoscenti, but in fact he is ignorant and stupid. He is made with a cookie-cutter, but he doesn’t see that. I don’t know whether I should engage him in public argument or just accord him the exact amount of attention he deserves, which is none at all.. He will be exposed for what he is, but that will not stop him. He is not desperate - he is too taken by his own decked out image to see anything else - but he appeals to desperate people, who *do* see, to a certain extent, the horrors of the world, and cling to the hope that they will be saved, even if most of humanity perishes, and further, they need to believe that they *deserve* to be saved, whereas most of humanity does not deserve salvation, because those who are saved are by definition the good guys, and those who are not, are not.
The whole scenario is positively archetypal. Maybe for this reason, I think that humanity will muddle through the current crisis, somehow, and in a couple of generations, this whole mess will be understood pretty clearly and taught about in primary school, and people will say, “Never again,” but the future will sneak up behind them, and “again” will happen, again and again.
6 September 2006, 6:49 pmMarilyn Farhat:
The redrawing of the map of the Middle East has been in motion at least since 9-11-2001. The NeoCons with their blueprint for a new world that is under US control has been around for a couple of decades at least.
In a 90-page report labeled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the NeoCon think tank, Project for the New American Century, lays out the intended plans for a new world order and a new Middle East. The report is readily available on line. The plans are well on the way, with quite a few glitches, though.
My experiences with the “peace movement” in the US and with some of the “liberal” elements locally, have opened my eyes to the fact that many did not understand the real implication of the invasion of Iraq. Iraq was to be one of the stepping stones into the new Middle East. After the blitz of Baghdad, many in the “peace movement” were insisting that since we were already in Iraq we should just “shut up and get the job done” and get out of there as quickly as possible after we have helped the Iraqis “democratize.” I had never felt alienated from people I had worked so closely with before, but since that day, something snapped to the point of no return. I tried to explain to my friends that this US regime’s intent was to NEVER leave Iraq (the region); after all, why are we building the largest US embassy in the world and why are we busy constructing secret and not so secret bases all over the region with much rebuilding around the pipeline routes? Many of those same people who abhorred the Iraq War cheered the recent war on Lebanon.
The US and Israel are to be the overseers of the new Middle East. The Lebanese knew perfectly well what Condoleeza Rice was referring to when she declared “we are witnessing the birth pangs of a new Middle East” as phosphorous bombs rained down on civilians and as the US rushed 100-200 uranium tipped missiles to Israel at the beginning of the bombing campaign.
From reading Arab, and specifically Lebanese, papers during the war, there is tremendous fear in the region that the war in Lebanon was to be the testing ground for a possible larger intervention against Syria and Iran. The aggressors vastly miscalculated the resolve of the Arab civilians.
The NeoCons are not interested in peace. They are interested in superficial “democracies,” AKA, American friendly, Capitalist groups/governments, to further their strategic and economic control.
The situation in Iraq is dire for the Iraqis and for the American infantrymen. It is great for the NeoCons and their business partners. Iraq is fragmented and can pose no military threat to the US or Israel.
By attempting to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon, or weaken them, Israel was hoping to force the Lebanese into distancing themselves from Hezbollah. Ironically, many of those who did oppose Hezbollah before the war had a quick change of heart after witnessing what the “most moral army in the world” did to their country.
The main focus of the NeoCon agenda is to create canton-like areas within sovereign countries that will be in conflict with each. They would like to install puppet regimes that will create lucrative businesses for all the so-called “Middle East experts” in the region and the contractors.
The problem with this current imperialist expansion is that the people who are promoting it really do not understand history and have a poor grasp of human behavior. Their expansionist agenda is a racist ideological reaction to a perceived moral imperative to shape the world in the image of the United States. Those people are descendants of ex-liberals turned Neo Conservative as a reaction to what they perceived as failed liberal domestic policies. Their behavior mirrors that of a rebellious child who forfeits everything that his/her parents believe in because they disagree with a few things they do. I think they are dangerously shallow, but they have been able to monopolize on the values of “Middle America” and the religious right, although many of them come from atheist, agnostic, communist, Trotskyite backgrounds.
Their likes are the ones who were instrumental in the pushing of the idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East during the 19th century despite the fact that most of them were only Jews by name.
There is still a danger that the Middle East will succumb into more turmoil. The Arab and Muslim public are stirring and the rift between the West/Christianity and Islam/the East is widening because of the policy of disrespect for the wishes of other nations and their people by people who use aggression at the slightest provocation because they can.
We are in the Middle of uncharted territory in the 21st century. When the president of the strongest “democracy” in the world addresses his nation and confesses to human rights violations committed by his own men and women, and he is not held accountable by those who put him in power, I have to wonder: where are all the patriotic generals and politicians who would die to protect their constitution and why are they not doing anything about it?
6 September 2006, 11:57 pmCharles Brown:
The Military Brass Embraces Hamdan - Rejects Bush
Brian Shannon
Thu Sep 7 09:47:30 MDT 2006
——————————————————————————–
THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT (minus Rumsfield and Co)
VERSUS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Marxists have traditionally used a shorthand explanation of
imperialist patriotism–economic privilege that allowed the wealthy
nations to buy off a top layer of the working class. Yet the list of
elements that reinforce imperialist patriotism is prodigious indeed:
competition between relative equals; fear of those that you oppress;
misunderstood responsibility; real and superficial human rights
within the privileged nation; commitment to one’s history and
ancestors; spontaneous competition; and the ideology of victory
versus cooperation for human improvement and progress. Economic
privilege is only one aspect.
The most intense expression of these emotions is in the American
peoples’ attitude towards the armed forces. It is both fostered and
spontaneous. The ability to focus on sacrifice from a short, even
peaceful, term of service through the death of loved ones is unique.
The hundreds of thousands of lives lost to “natural” occurrences such
as disease and foolish accidents have none of the emotional content,
accentuated when used by demagogues, of sacrifice that needs to be
explained. Even those who hate what happened in war and what
criminality lay behind it, need to feel that somehow the sacrifice
was not in vain.
The military itself needs a sense of pride. Comparisons to sports
competition abound. Robert F. Kennedy once said that football was
second only to military service in building character in men. His
views were not unique. The life of the famous Marine Corps General
Smedley Butler, the son of a prominent Quaker politician who left
school and lied about his age to join the 1898 war against Spain
contains a bundle of contradictions that touch on many of these
elements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler (includes his
famous anti-imperialist statement of 1935).
In the United States, the subordination of the armed services to the
civilian government is considered one of the fundamental pillars of
the constitution. http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/democracy/
dmpaper12.htm
Of course, this has been said of many other nations whose military
later claimed an inherent right to protect the nation. There have
been several U.S. generals who felt the same. It was feared that
Nixon had the same view regarding his presidency, and today we see
that the Bushites, including the attorney general of the United
States, claim inherent constitutional rights for the Presidency
superior to that of Congress, despite the clear language of the U.S.
Constitution and the detailed assertion in the Federalist Papers that
not only does power emanate from the people, but is embodied above
all in Congress and in the most democratic house, the House of
Representatives, in particular.
Putting this always present background danger from presidents and
military aside, it is clear that the military, in its patriotic mode,
has learned from Vietnam and Iraq. In fact, Iraq has reinforced the
lessons from Vietnam. To achieve its mission, for its own self-
protection, and even as an implicit political criticism, the armed
forces is now declaring that it must have full authority among its
own ranks. It will be breached during the passions of any war by rank-
and-file soldiers and just as importantly by ambitious gung-ho
officers who aggressively pursue their own careers. The freewheeling
Colonel Nate Sassaman, cashiered at 40, who covered up the crimes of
his subordinates, and once put every citizen of a town in Abu Ghraib
or another prison, comes to mind. http://makeashorterlink.com/?M625218BD
Yet such breaches cannot be allowed as the standard. The planned
murders of Iraqi civilians by rank-and-file soldiers, encouraged and
covered up by superior NCOs and officers have to stop. If the recent
cases are what we know, what don’t we know and what has that meant
for the attitude towards and danger to the troops from the Iraqis?
And what does it mean to their own lines of command–even more
important from the point of view of the military brass?
From the beginning of the Iraq war, the Bushite civilian directors
of the military forces have ignored the military and political views
of the armed forces. But the military leaders knew that the reasons
for going to war were a lie. That, however, was not their decision.
And they respected the civilian authority. But how it was to be
carried out was supposed to be based on their professional military
knowledge. Based on the lessons of Vietnam and the relative success
of the first Gulf War, they called for a massive force, they knew
that security after the initial onslaught would be needed. All this
was ignored.
A great deal of this comes across in the explanation of the two new
documents promulgated yesterday (9/6/2006) by the Defense Department.
Although George W. Bush trashed the Supreme Court Hamdan decision, it
is clear that the armed forces are embracing it. In several passages,
the service spokespeople refer to the worthlessness of information
extracted through torture and implicitly the danger that torture of
others poses for their own troops.
Here is the transcript of an exceptionally detailed description of
some of the reasoning behind the revision and publication of two Army
Field Manuals. “The first is the Defense Department directive (”The
Department of Defense Detainee Program.”) for detainee programs, and
the second is the Army field manual for human intelligence collector
operations.”
OR http://makeashorterlink.com/?M2F1258BD
Brian Shannon
7 September 2006, 2:56 pmCharles Brown:
by Lou Proyect
“The Ground Truth” is a wrenchingly powerful documentary about the mental
and physical disorders of GI’s returning from Iraq and their political
awakening. Made up almost entirely of interviews with these soldiers and
soldier-activists from previous generations, it follows a tripartite
dramatic narrative that evokes Ron Kovic’s “Born on the Fourth of July.”
The first part describes how the soldiers were recruited with false
promises of the sort seen on television commercials and made by recruiters,
including one former Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy J. Massey who looks and
sounds like a bedrock Bush supporter. Not only was he a recruiter, he was a
drill instructor as well. On December 8, 2004, the Washington Post reported:
A former U.S. Marine staff sergeant testified at a hearing Tuesday that his
unit killed at least 30 unarmed civilians in Iraq during the war in 2003
and that Marines routinely shot and killed wounded Iraqis.
Jimmy J. Massey, a 12-year veteran, said he left Iraq in May 2003 after a
diagnosis of post-traumatic stress. He said he and his men shot and killed
four Iraqis staging a demonstration and a man with his hands up trying to
surrender, as well as women and children at roadblocks. Massey said he had
complained to his superiors about the “killing of innocent civilians,” but
that nothing was done.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/09/07/the-ground-truth/
–
7 September 2006, 3:03 pmDeAnander:
Marilyn, just wanted to make a sympathetic noise. I know what you mean about the US peace movement. many good people, but they cannot grasp the notion that their government is an active force of oppression — not merely mistaken or bumbling or temporarioy deranged, but a repeat offender, a calculating imperial predator with a rap sheet a mile long.
I have a theory that until America comes to terms with its own ethnic cleansing of N American indigenes, the US public will never be able to identify and oppose racist colonialism abroad. so long as they cling to their fantasies about the Noble Pioneer and the Brave Cowboy and the whitefellas’ “right” to own N America and “civilise” and evangelise the Lesser Races, they can’t look clearly at any other occupation. but I may be out to lunch on this one…
7 September 2006, 3:29 pmMarilyn Farhat:
DeAnder,
I agree with what you describe about colonialism and our perception in the US of our role in the world.
The American “experience” is an unusal one in history. This country was founded by “entrepreneurs” with a “go-getter” spirit (AKA Capitalist spirit). Europeans of the time were imperialists, but those escaping persecution from their governments soon turned into persecutors of weaker nations (our history with the natives of this continent and the African slaves).
I believe that, as individuals, we are capitalists at heart. We are self-centered (in varying degrees of course). But we also have the capacity to channel the spirit of invention and exploration and, under respectful and humane conditions, we can achieve wonders (while trying to avoid the psychopaths).
I believe we will always have violence in our future because we will always have people who do not play by the rules. Our task is to figure out ways to survive and progress despite such people and hopefully stay as happy as possible.
The moral destiny to civilise the world is still present of course, but it has an underlying imperialist agenda, which many do not notice.
I find it surprising that the US is one of the few nations in the world that tends to trust its government in most things when, based on the Constitution, one would think it should be otherwise.
Other nations are by far more questioning of their leaders. Most of the followers of regimes in the Middle East, for example, do it out of fear or extreme loyalty (tribalism). Dissent and oppostion are treated with violence (encouraged by the empires).
As long as we remain affluent in the United States and as long as we live in our little bubble of working, spending, and partying, things will not change. If the rift between those who have and those who have not continues to widen, things may start to change.
But, as you said, you can still see it within the US. I was in Louisiana to help out after Hurricane Katrina hit. It was an eye opener for me how those who came to help from outside the state (I am being general here) were in it for some personal gratification to feel good about helping (the moral imperative to help). You saw it in the little things like the way they talked to (at) people and how they looked at them. I and some of the local nurses at the shelter talked about that and one of their comments was “they think we’re stupid here, they have to put the nurses from outside in charge.”
From my end, it was a very stressful and distressing experience, but at least a number of lives were saved and people were being taken care of despite the chaos. It was the start of the school season and many of the dislocated kids had to be enrolled in new schools and bussed to health clinics for shots. It was a big shelter. When I left, there were 4,000 people in it and more coming in.
I have lived all my US years in California, so I am not really familiar with how things are in other states, but I saw a lot of racism in Louisiana, and I also saw a lot of decent people who were willing to extend themselves out for others without any agenda (mostly locals). Volunteering was not an experience to include on their resumees. Many of us did not want to leave because of the kindness of the locals.
From being on different volunteer assignments, I have noticed a trend: that the spirit of volunteering is focused on “doing something” to help as opposed to helping others by asking them and respecting their wishes and their needs, not ours. That is one thing that I have found very difficult, at least in CA. Even in situations where people need to work as a team for the welfare of others, they do not. I think it is a sense of duty born of an ideology as opposed to personal experience and empathy. Most of us have fallen prey to that kind of thinking at some time.
But, I see that in our politicians, in the government in general, in our corporate world, and among ordinary people.
The US is a very lonely place if you like people. However, it is great for personal freedom and for accumulating stuff.
8 September 2006, 11:10 pmG.:
I don’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said, so all I will say is this:
I’m scared and ashamed.
9 September 2006, 2:02 pmFire Witch:
No, DeAnander, you are not out to lunch at all on facing Amerikkka’s history of ethnic cleansing.
Prioritizing Indigenous issues is absolutely key to dismantling the US imperial predator that is able to project itself outward globally because of its colonization of American Indian lands and resources.
Uranium, for which the US government pays only pennies on the ton (instead of the market rate), is a perfect example of the super profits that enable its global hegemony. The toxic wastes are dumped on Indian reservations, aka concentration camps, further displacing the cost onto the colonized.
Restore the sovereignty of the Indigenous Nations (read, honor the treaties)and you will have gone a long way towards dismantling the US terror state. In other words, US out of North America.
We all need to know on whose National Territory we are each standing at this moment. For myself, it is the Cheyenne and Arapahoe. Here’s an alliance of Indigenous peoples and their non-Indian allies that organizes every year to confront the racist Convoy of Conquest celebrating Chrisotpher Colombus’ invasion:
http://www.transformcolumbusday.org
9 September 2006, 3:52 pmpeggy:
A wee bit off topic, but whatever.
Five years ago today, George Bush stood on the pile of rubble that once had been the World Trade Center, and said, “I stand on a pile of rubble.”
And today …
11 September 2006, 1:44 ampeggy:
And today, as a platform for the upcoming elections, he refers to his anti-terrorism campaign and says, “This is what I stand on.”
(Insert picture of pile of rubble here.)
11 September 2006, 2:09 am...:
“The PKK are a Kurdish guerilla group that operate in Turkey and Iraq, not Iran.”
Ever heard of PEJAK; the PKK proxy in Iran? Same thing- leftist Kurd guerrillas.
11 September 2006, 6:25 am...:
Think of de foco strategy…as people get really agitated, switch to non-violent instigation.
Azeri Unrest
PKK/Pejak
MEK
11 September 2006, 7:10 am...:
And how could I forget the feminists in Iran? lol
Women
11 September 2006, 7:27 amAl:
I have no comments on the author’s analysis–with which I substantially agree–of retired major Peters’ fantasies, but want to remark on the publication in which the article appears. The Armed Forces Journal is not an official Department of Defense publication, but a civilian-run magazine with a definite bias. Over the past several years, it has become a mouthpiece for neo-conservatives. The editor, Thomas Donnelly, is a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and also a member of the neo-con’s imperialist Project for The New American Century.
18 September 2006, 11:04 pmArticles in the Armed Forces journal are disproportinately authored by neo-cons and other rightwingers. Most are written by civilians–often connected with the American Enterprise Institute–not military personnel. They may disproportionately reflect certain geopolitical currents in the military, but definitely not all. One hopes (optimism to the point of foolishness?) that Maj. Peters was retired because wiser heads recognized his neo-con
“intelligence” babblings for what they truly are.
Stan:
Yes, I had noted in the introduction the this title claiming this was “the Army” was hypebole at best (you are right, it is wrong).
There is, in fact, a ferocious struggle within the armed forces over many of these questions, that Rumsfeld’s heavy-handedness has driven underground.
The longer Rumsfeld remains in charge, however, the more thoroughly he will replace the top brass through time and attrition with like-minded nitwits.
One of the contradictions of managing a military organization that is also a tremendous bureaucracy in today’s “information age,” and under what I like to think of as a truly postmodern regime (they honestly seem to believe that the narrative can re-constitute the reality), is that the logics of warfare are often contrary to the logics of public relations.
Rumsfeld wants to have this cake and eat it too in the form of officers who can be both effective military thugs and slick PR hacks. The irony, I suppose, is that he is neither.
19 September 2006, 7:18 amKevin:
Carved-up Map of Turkey at NATO Prompts US Apology
“A map prepared by a retired U.S. military officer that sketches Turkey as a partitioned country was presented at the NATO’s Defense College in Rome, where Turkish officers attend.
The use of the map at a conference meeting by a colonel from the U.S. National War Academy angered Turkish military officers.”
5 October 2006, 4:47 amKevin:
bad link
“Turkish officers also briefed Ankara about the developments relevant to the incident. ”
5 October 2006, 5:01 amKevin:
“In Iran, which is the big one, if you look at it, the oil of the region (that’s where most of the hydrocarbons in the world are) they are right around the gulf, the Shiite sections of Iraq, the Shiite sections of Saudi Arabia and an Arab—not Persian—region of Iran, Khuzestan, right near the Gulf, it happens to be Arab. There is talk floating around Europe (you know it’s probably planted by the CIA) of an Ahwazi Liberation Movement for this region. A feasible, I don’t know if it’s feasible or not, but I think the kind of thought that would be occurring to the Pentagon planners is to sponsor a liberation movement, so-called, in the area near the Gulf then move in to defend it.”
16 October 2006, 3:22 am-Noam Chomsky
Kevin:
“In spite of the harsh internal struggle for power and the country’s inner social and political heterogeneity, which displays the fragmentation of the Iranian leadership and the country as a whole, “nuclear nationalism” is an element that rallies the nation together, minimizing the political and social cleavages and reinforcing the Iranian projection of power overseas.”
-PINR
16 October 2006, 4:06 am