April 24, 2006
On
occasion, I receive an email suggesting I’m a mental case for
speculating that "al-Qaeda in Iraq" is a black op perpetuated by the
Pentagon and various intelligence organizations. Now comes vindication,
of a sort, issued by a neocon at the Hoover Institution "on War,
Revolution, and Peace," a conspiratorial and criminal brotherhood with
members such as Paul Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, Richard Scaife, Robert
Kagan, Don Rumsfeld, and others, and connected at the hip to other
warmongering organizations such the American Enterprise Institute,
where Bush gets his "minds," deplorable creatures such as Bill Kristol,
Michael Ledeen, John Bolton, and other war and mass murder hounds, in
short the most "influential" of the Straussian neocon coterie.
Thomas
H. Henriksen is a "senior fellow" at the Hoover Institution and also at
the U.S. Joint Special Operations University, the latter billed as a
"university" that "focuses on the educational needs of special
operations forces at the executive senior- and intermediate-leader
levels," according to the Hoover Institution.
"It enjoys a direct reporting relationship with and is subordinate to
the United States Special Operations Command," overseer of various
Special Operations Commands, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in
Tampa, Florida.
In an article posted on the Hoover Digest
website, Henriksen "explains how to adapt [subversion and deception] to
the war on terror, exploiting the ideological and religious differences
of our enemies," in other words implementing the dirty work of P2OG
(Proactive Preemptive Operations Group), a psychological operation
designed to "stimulate reactions" on the part of "terrorists," in this
instance the Iraqi resistance struggling against the illegal invasion
and occupation of their country. "In the current anti-terrorist
campaign," Henriksen writes in an appropriately entitled essay (Divide et Impera,
or divide and conquer), "small groups of Special Operations Forces
(SOF) will continue to find themselves up against insurgents in
societies marked by tribal and sectional differences that could be
turned to the advantage of the special forces," a situation "ideally
suited to the world of stealth and counter-subversion," or killing
Iraqi patriots opposed to neocons and neolibs destroying their country.
Mr. Henriksen writes:
Sowing divisions
among enemies is as old as warfare. By the time Niccolò Machiavelli
cited the ancient political maxim divide et impera, the strategy of
dividing to conquer had long been accepted in statecraft and warfare.
U.S. military forces have not ignored the tactics associated with
pitting one enemy against another. But those tactics have often been
subordinated to the American way of war that relies on massive
firepower. The global struggle against violent extremism is a highly
political conflict where overwhelming combat "punch" is less
applicable. By the same token, the extreme ideological and political
divisions among the terrorists and insurgents open chinks to savvy and
adaptable forces.
In other words, shock and awe
is less effective at subduing official enemies—an enemy resisting the
on-high dictates of the global elite and their uncompromising demand to
be allowed to steal natural resources and other profitable goodies—than
subverting resistance through "stealth and counter-subversion." It
should not be surprising that Mr. Henriksen would mention Machiavelli,
one of several philosophers adored by the neocons (others include Leo
Strauss and his mentor, the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt). Machiavelli was
an advocate of tyranny, cruelty, and fraudulence—sociopathic traits
currently reflected in the Bush administration.
"From the
founding of the United States, the federal government has relied on
subterfuge, skullduggery, and secret operations to advance American
interests," Henriksen notes, dispensing with the normal neocon tendency
to avoid history or at best gloss over it. "Even in the midst of World
War II, America’s greatest conventional war of the twentieth century,
the United States resorted to cloak-and-dagger missions under the
Office of Strategic Services. For example, the OSS, along with British
intelligence services, aided the French resistance to the German
occupation, helping prepare for Europe’s liberation. When divisions
were absent in the Cold War, American operators instigated them."
Indeed—and one such instigation was Operation Gladio, a clandestine
"stay-behind" operation sponsored by the CIA and NATO after World War
Two to fight against "communist influence," or subvert democratically
elected governments not sufficiently reactionary or fascist through
terrorism and mass murder (one such incident was the Strage di Bologna,
or Bologna massacre, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 200,
a collaboration by Ordine Nuovo, the Italian secret service, and the P2
Masonic lodge and part of Operation Gladio’s strategia della tensione,
or strategy of tension, designed to manipulate public opinion using
fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents
provocateurs, and threats of terrorism).
Henriksen only
mentions "subterfuge, skullduggery, and secret operations" against the
Nazis. In fact, since Truman set up the national security state at the
close of the Second World War, such tactics have been used habitually.
Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner’s Office of Policy Coordination at the
newly established CIA employed "propaganda, economic warfare,
preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition
and evacuation procedures" and "subversion against hostile states,
including assistance to underground resistance groups." States
considered "hostile" (or had their own ideas about how to run their
countries) included Iran, Guatemala, Hungary, Laos, Haiti, Cuba, the
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, the Congo, Brazil, Indonesia, Greece,
Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Angola, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Honduras, Panama, Iraq, and others. The CIA’s "secret operations" and
"skullduggery" included assassination (for instance, the CIA had the
democratically elected leader of the Congo, later Zaire, Patrice
Lumumba assassinated—other victims include Dominican Republic President
Trujillo, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, and Chilean Rene
Schneider), torture, and death squads (the CIA put Brazil’s General
Castelo Branco in the torture and death squad business in 1964—the
effort was so successful at generating dread and fear the spook and
subversion agency used it as a matter of course over the years).
Henriksen mentions none of this—or does he bother to make note of the
Pentagon’s various "counter insurgency" programs, including Operation
Phoenix in Vietnam (an assassination program "plain and simple," as Mark Zepezauer comments).
Mr.
Henriksen looks fondly back at the "fictitious resistance movement
entitled the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League (SSPL)" in Vietnam, a
precursor to the black op terrorists groups (the mythical al-Zarqawi
terrorist "network" Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad comes to mind)
currently at work "exploiting the ideological and religious differences
of our enemies" in Iraq. "Although created by the Central Intelligence
Agency in 1962, the SSPL was handed off to the Military Assistance
Command Vietnam—Studies and Observation Group (MACVSOG or SOG). Special
Forces officers assumed oversight of SSPL and other 'black’ operations
aimed at North Vietnam," Henriksen writes. "SOG conducted a spate of
espionage activities, psychological operations, and deceptions to throw
North Vietnam off balance." However, it appears the crop in Washington
at the time was a bit squeamish about the idea of Pentagon-sponsored
terrorists. "Although SOG had unheralded successes as well as setbacks
from 1964 to 1972, it constantly ran up against impediments from senior
military officers, the State Department, and Lyndon Johnson’s White
House. Official timidity and bureaucratic interference hampered
operations and constrained missions to narrow agendas. In today’s
anti-Islamist struggle, we cannot afford a repeat of this governmental
inertia and interference." Of course, with the Straussian neocons and
their operatives fast at work in the White House and the Pentagon,
"timidity" (or moral scruples) is in short supply.
In Iraq,
the Straussian neocon dominated Pentagon unleashed "wily machinations,"
in other words the dirty and bloody work of P2OG terrorists. "Like
their SOG predecessors in Vietnam, U.S. elite forces in Iraq turned to
fostering infighting among their Iraqi adversaries on the tactical and
operational level." In short, the Pentagon has put its own "resistance"
in the field, determined to instigate "factional fighting" or Iraqis
killing Iraqis, an antecedent to full-blown "civil war," now in
progress, as per the overall plan to balkanize the region, a plot
engineered by the Israelis decades ago.
"As with other
weapons in our arsenal, the orchestration of red-on-red clashes has a
correct time and place," Henriksen concludes. "Not all hostile
environments will accommodate application of this tactic. But as
another arrow in the counter-terrorism quiver, it can, when aimed
deftly, be discriminating and lethal." Iraq is the "correct time and
place" because the Iraqi resistance is determined to fight on and has
not rolled over—and the Iraqi people did not shower U.S. troops with
rose petals, as the popular mythology originally dictated in the
corporate media generated fable about the Iraqi "cakewalk." If
anything, Henriksen has provided us with a glimpse of what is really
going on in Iraq—black operations mounted by red (actually blue)
operatives designed to create "factional fighting" and thus splinter
Iraq into malleable pieces.
As noted earlier, it is not
surprising the Straussian neocon Pentagon is fully engaged in
subversive "Divide et Impera" operations. It is a bit surprising,
however, they have wheeled out an academic highbrow to carry on about
the efficacy of "subterfuge, skullduggery, and secret operations"
ultimately resulting in large numbers of dead people and incalculable
misery. But then, as is becoming increasingly apparent, the Straussian
neocons are not only shameless about their plans, they also want us to
know on various levels about the sort of future they have mind, for as
the grand daddy neocon, Norman Podhoretz, admonishes, "there can be no
question that we possess the power and the means" to kill hundreds of
thousands, possibly millions of people, now we must summon "the stomach
to do what will be required."
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