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"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."
"For Iraq, the 'Salvador
Option' becomes Reality"
Max Fuller
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 completely vanished from the newspapers, as
government spin-doctors are now devoting 100% of 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; 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 readily 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".
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
that what is taking place is in "the hands of the state"
and a "part of the ongoing economic subjugation of Iraq."
Fuller's well-documented article
is indispensable 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 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."
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."
A spokesman for the Association
of Muslim Scholars, Hareth al-Dhari, put it more succinctly than
Fuller; "This is state terrorism."
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