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."