By Andrew Gavin Marshall
www.andrewgavinmarshall.com/
Part 1: Political Language and the ‘Mafia Principles’ of International Relations
Part 2: Barack Obama’s Global Terror Campaign
Part 3: America’s “Secret Wars” in Over 100 Countries Around the World
While the American Empire – and much of the policies being
pursued – did not begin under President Obama, the focus of “Empire Under
Obama” is to bring awareness about the nature of empire to those who may have –
or continue – to support Barack Obama and who may believe in the empty promises
of “hope” and “change.” Empire is institutional, not individual. My focus on
the imperial structure during the Obama administration is not to suggest that
it does not predate Obama, but rather, that Obama represents ‘continuity’ in
imperialism, not “change.” This part examines the concept of
‘counterinsurgency’ as a war against the populations of Iraq, Afghanistan and
spreading into Pakistan.
Continuity in the imperialistic policies of the United
States is especially evident when it comes to the strategy of
‘counterinsurgency,’ notably in Afghanistan. As examined in Part 1 of this
series, language plays a powerful role in the extension and justification of
empire. George Orwell noted that political language was “largely the defense of
the indefensible,” where horrific acts and policies – such as maintaining
colonial domination, dropping atomic bombs on cities – can only be defended “by
arguments which are too brutal for most people to face.” Thus, political
language is employed, consisting “largely of euphemism, question-begging and
sheer cloudy vagueness.” One specific example was provided by Orwell in his
essay – Politics and the English Language - which holds particular relevance
for the present essay: “Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the
inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the
huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.”
Virtually the same process or strategy is today employed using words like
counterinsurgency or counterterrorism. These military strategies are frequently
employed, and the words are carelessly thrown around by military officials,
politicians, intellectuals and media talking heads, yet little – if any –
discussion is given to what they actually mean.
Near the end of the Bush administration in 2008, General
David Petraeus was appointed as the Commander of CENTCOM (Central Command), the
Pentagon’s military command structure over the Middle East and Central Asia,
overseeing the two major ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, Obama
had appointed Petraeus as commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, and in
2011, he was appointed as CIA Director. Petraeus is a good starting point for
the discussion on counterinsurgency.
Petraeus was previously commander of U.S. forces in Iraq,
having quickly risen through the ranks to lead Bush’s “surge” in 2007. Prior to
the surge, Petraeus was initially sent to Iraq in 2004 given the responsibility
of training “a new Iraqi police force with an emphasis on counterinsurgency.”
While in Iraq, Petraeus worked with a retired Colonel named Jim Steele, who was
sent to Iraq as a personal envoy of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Steele acquired
a name for himself in ‘counterinsurgency’ circles having led the U.S. Special
Forces training of paramilitary units in El Salvador in the 1980s, where he
turned them into efficient and highly effective death squads waging a massive terror
war against the leftist insurgency and the population which supported them,
resulting in the deaths of roughly 70,000 people.[1]
Jim Steele had to leave a promising military career after
his involvement with the Iran-Contra scandal – trading arms to the Iranians for
their war against Iraq to finance the death squads in Central America – and so
he naturally turned to the private sector. But he had so impressed a
Congressman named Dick Cheney, that when Cheney was Vice President, he and
Rumsfeld maintained a cozy relationship with Steele who was then sent to Iraq
in 2003 to help train the Iraqi paramilitary forces. Steele, working with David
Petraeus and others, helped establish “a fearsome paramilitary force” which was
designed to counter the Sunni insurgency which had developed in reaction to the
U.S. invasion and occupation, running ruthless death squads which helped plunge
the country into a deep civil war. Petraeus’ role in helping to create some of
Iraq’s most feared death squads was revealed in a 2013 Guardian
investigation.[2]
However, in 2005, the Pentagon had openly acknowledged that
it was considering employing “the Salvador option” in Iraq in order “to take
the offensive against the insurgents.” John Negroponte, who had been the U.S.
Ambassador to Honduras when the U.S. was running death squads out of Honduras
in Central America was, in 2005, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. The Pentagon and
the CIA were considering what roles they could play, possibly using U.S.
Special Forces, to help train Iraqi “death squads” to hunt down and kill
“insurgents.”[3]
Within the first three years of the Iraq war and occupation,
the British medical journal, The Lancet, published research indicating that
between 2003 and 2006, an estimated 650,000 – 940,000 Iraqis had died as a
result of the war.[4] A survey from 2008 indicated that there had been more
than one million deaths in Iraq caused by the war.[5]
This is referred to as a “counterinsurgency” strategy. In
2006, General Petraeus wrote the foreward to the Department of the Army’s Field
Manual on Counterinsurgency, in which he noted that, “all insurgencies, even
today’s highly adaptable strains, remain wars amongst the people.”[6] A 1962
U.S. counterinsurgency guide for the U.S. war in Vietnam said it even more bluntly
when it noted that, “The ultimate and decisive target is the people… Society
itself is at war and the resources, motives, and targets of the struggle are
found almost wholly within the local population.”[7]
At the risk of being redundant, let me put it even more
simply: counterinsurgency implies a war against the population. An insurgency
is an armed rebellion by a significant portion – or sector – of a population
against an institutional authority or power structure (usually a state or
imperial power). Thus, for the American Empire – adhering to its rigid ‘Mafia
Principles’ of international relations – an ‘insurgency’ is always a threat to
imperial domination: if people are able to resist domestic power structures
(say, a specific U.S. ally/client state), then other people around the world
may try the same. The United States will seek to counter insurgencies for
several reasons: to maintain the stability of their ally, to maintain the
confidence of other allies, to maintain its reputation as the global hegemon,
and to counter more direct threats to U.S./Western interests, such as the loss
of access to resources or key strategic points, or in the case of U.S. military
occupations, to crush any and all resistance.
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