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Wikileaks Gets Hold of Counterinsurgency Manual
HeavensBlade23 writes in to let us know that Wikileaks has published a US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual, titled Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004). "The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of 'psychological operations' (propaganda) to make these and other 'population & resource control' measures more palatable."
I think it was Dick Cheney. Or George Bush, who in the first moments of the invasion of Iraq treated the attacks like some sports event,
I dunno, I think this is the old problem of mistaking incompetence for evil.
Here in Australia our labor government (and before that, to a lesser extend, the liberal government) can sure be incompetent, but as much as I dislike Rudd he's probably not evil.
He supported the Iraq war in 2003 and now blames Howard for it of course, but he (just like the majority of people) thought it was necessary at the time.
No point mistaking bad intelligence and unquestioning politicians for malice.
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Our commander in chief said as much in a videoconference with troops in Afghanistan on Mar 13, 2008: ...
... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said. ...
( http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1333111120080313 )
"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."
"It must be exciting for you
What a shame he's otherwise "employed".
Next slashdot will be "discovering" Operation Gladio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Let's pull out 100,000 regular troops in Iraq now and replace them with every last special ops and civil affairs troop we have, and we'll have success within months. But no, the politicians insist we play by antiquated rules because we are a "civil" society. Every time a politician says to pull troops out of Iraq and put them in Afghanistan, they instantly lose credibility with anyone who knows anything about how regular troops deploy, and how they are ineffective in the Afghan theater. Keep that in mind this election season. As much as I detest the saying, sometimes the ends really do justify the means. 10 years, trillions of dollars, a few thousand US lives, a few hundred thousand Iraqi lives and years of political instability, or a few months of counter-insurgency operations and a somewhat stable (relative term) governance in place...you decide.
As a result of this reasoning, his take on the subject was that, for people to be able to accomplish anything better than having to live in an eternal struggle for today's food (where anyone can come and take from you what you made, no one bothers to produce anything, much less any surplus), the very first thing they need is a state strong enough to both make other states afraid of messing with them and to make the people under its umbrella afraid of messing with each other. Once you have this established, no matter how (and at this point a totalitarian tyranny is okay for him), you have peace enough for surplus production to develop. And once you have a functional society, then you can start pursuing other goals, such as, say, freedom of belief, freedom of speech, democracy, individual rights etc. (which, contrary to common belief, he pretty much preferred).
So, yes, arming one group of people and giving them a monopoly on violence is indeed the solution to interpersonal conflict. Even if it leads, in the worst case scenario, to the monopolist becoming an absolute totalitarian hereditary monarch and everyone else becoming his personal slaves, as in this case interpersonal conflicts are also few. But, and this is important, it's a solution only to interpersonal conflicts. Everything else requires, of course, much more than this.
A monopoly in violence, thus, is just the very first step required in solving human problems, as it solves our very first problem. But it's never the solution to all of our problems.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
It's $10.20 (paper back) on Amazon.
or you can get it on line from the us army at Us.army.mil.
see FMI 3-07.22
The FAS has the 2004-2006 version posted here
No story. move along.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"While I somehow doubt you are a 'Conservative Republican', you do realize the document was written in 1994? Just like Bush 'faked' the Iraq WMD stuff in 1998, two years before he was elected so Congress would pass the Iraq Liberation Act, now he's being blamed for a 1994 (purported) anti-terrorism manual? You libs are too much."
While i agree tying this document directly to Bush's foreign policy is a non-starter, I have to counter your claim re: WMD. Between Hans Blix's investigations in Iraq (inconclusive at best) and the CIA's complete refute of the Nigerian uranium story, W Bush's Iraq policy was based on false evidence used to mislead supporters.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"