Death
Squad Democracy
By Mike Whitney
20 March, 2006
Uruknet
"I constantly read
the analyses of foreigners or Iraqis who’ve been abroad for decades
talking about the divide that has always existed between Sunnis and
Shia in Iraq…That is simply not true". "Baghdad
Burning"; girl blogger
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 which 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 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 vanished from the newspapers,
as government spin-doctors are now devoting all their time to promoting
their latest product-line; civil war.
In fact, if any of us were
involved in the Pentagon’s "pacification" plans we’d
probably be doing the same thing. After all, the War Department is already
overextended, so a plan had to be devised to divert attention from the
occupation forces and get Iraqis to kill each other. The only reasonable
choice is to incite "sectarian violence" and make civil war
inevitable. That, of course, is the task of the American trained death
squads. (The New York Times has confirmed that the Interior Ministry
death squads were trained by American forces)
For three years the Iraqi
resistance has successfully kept American troops on the defensive; gradually
taking control of more area, destroying pipelines and oil facilities
at will, discouraging enlistment in the Iraqi Security Forces, and undermining
public support among Americans (63% of who now believe the war was "a
mistake")
These are the goals of every
guerilla movement; a gradual erosion of public support, deflating morale,
surprise attacks, and eliciting greater support from the general population.
It is clear that this has
been a winning strategy for the resistance, and not one that they would
abandon to pursue an ethnic/religious war.
So, where does the violence
originate? Could it be that the independent militias are engaged in
sectarian war without help from the greater resistance?
It could be, but it’s
not likely. Again, the only one who benefits from civil war is the US
military; and it’s clear that the military has no other option
but to follow a "divide and rule" strategy. They simply don’t
have the human resources for any other plan.
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.
Death Squad Democracy
Video footage of a massacre
outside of Nahrwan, east of Baghdad, has appeared on the Internet showing
the bodies of Shiite laborers who were allegedly killed by Sunni death
squads. Journalist Paul McGeough was given the tapes and is planning
to report on their content in the "Sydney Morning Herald".
http:
//www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12376.htm In
one incident, four adults were pulled from their vehicle and either
shot or stabbed to death in front of a 5 year old boy whose father was
one of the victims. When the townspeople came to investigate the scene,
they discovered the bodies of 48 men and women who had been dumped in
a ditch. The corpses showed the signs of having been "systematically
murdered. Most were shot but some appear to have been stabbed and mutilated".
It is the "stabbed and
mutilated" part that should interest us. After all, the intention
of the Iraqi resistance is to gather greater support for their cause,
not to alienate ordinary Iraqis through gratuitous acts of murder. If,
however, this was the work of American-backed death squads, then the
alternate goal of "governing through terror" has been achieved.
Journalist McGeough sticks
with the same, feeble mantra as the establishment-media to explain the
tragedy: "The current round of tit-for-tat sectarian violence was
sparked by the bombing of the Samarra mosque—a holy site for Shiites.
In the immediate aftermath, there were reports of many killings and
fears that Shiite reprisals could see the country descend into a civil
war."
Isn’t this the official
narrative?
The media insists that the
destruction of the Golden-dome mosque was a "9-11-type event"
which caused an up-tick in the bloodshed. But, was it? Or was it merely
part of a broader (covert) strategy to foment civil war?
There’s evidence that
the plan to divert attention from the occupation forces is succeeding.
In February the military reported less servicemen killed (31) than in
any month in the last year.
Isn’t this the goal?
In Max Fuller’s seminal
article "For Iraq, the 'Salvador Option’ becomes Reality"
the author disproves the idea "that sectarianism is a sufficient
explanation for the violence in Iraq". Instead, Fuller says it
is "structurally at the hands of the state as part of the ongoing
economic subjugation of Iraq." http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.html
It is simply impossible to
grasp what is taking place in Iraq without reading Fuller’s well-documented
article. His clear-eyed analysis is invaluable in making sense of the
apparent chaos:
"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 applying the same sort of economic shock therapy
that has done so much damage in swathes of the Third World and Eastern
Europe. Covertly, it means intimidating, kidnapping and murdering opposition
voices."
Fuller backs up his observations
with ample evidence; citing open-source material he has compiled in
his research:
"What we do know,
however, is that hundreds of Iraqis are being murdered and that paramilitary
hit squads of the proxy government organized by US trainers with a fulsome
pedigree in state terrorism are increasingly being associated with them."
The objective of the death
squads is not simply to target one particular group or ethnicity, but
to direct the violence outwards creating as much fear as possible in
order to pacify the population.
Fuller winds up his polemic
with a summary statement that confirms the long and bloody history of
colonial wars:
"The pattern is repeated
time after time in every imperialist so-called counter-insurgency war;
for behind each and every one lurks the reality of exploitation and
class war, and, 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."
The secretary general of
the Association of Muslim Scholars, Hareth al-Dhari, said it even more
succinctly than Fuller; "This is state terrorism."
Courtesy and copyright © Mike Whitney