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Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

James Petras | 18.05.2009 20:27 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Repression | World

It is just as George Orwell described in Animal Farm: The Democratic Pigs are now pursuing the same brutal, military policies of their predecessors, the Republican Porkers, only now it is in the name of the people and peace. Orwell might paraphrase the policy of President Barack Obama, as ‘Bigger and bloodier wars equal peace and justice’.




“The Deltas are psychos…You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force…”, a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980’s. Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations.

The point of the ‘Special Operations’ teams (SOT) is that they do not distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance. The SOT specialize in establishing death squads and recruiting and training paramilitary forces to terrorize communities, neighborhoods and social movements opposing US client regimes. The SOT’s ‘counter-terrorism’ is terrorism in reverse, focusing on socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed resistance. McChrystal’s SOT targeted local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan through commando raids and air strikes. During the last 5 years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld period the SOT were deeply implicated in the torture of political prisoners and suspects.

McChrystal was a special favorite of Rumsfeld and Cheney because he was in charge of the ‘direct action’ forces of the ‘Special Missions Units. ‘Direct Action’ operative are the death-squads and torturers and their only engagement with the local population is to terrorize, and not to propagandize. They engage in ‘propaganda of the dead’, assassinating local leaders to ‘teach’ the locals to obey and submit to the occupation. Obama’s appointment of McChrystal as head reflects a grave new military escalation of his Afghanistan war in the face of the advance of the resistance throughout the country.

The deteriorating position of the US is manifest in the tightening circle around all the roads leading in and out of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul as well as the expansion of Taliban control and influence throughout the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Obama’s inability to recruit new NATO reinforcements means that the White House’s only chance to advance its military driven empire is to escalate the number of US troops and to increase the kill ratio among any and all suspected civilians in territories controlled by the Afghan armed resistance.

The White House and the Pentagon claim that the appointment of McChrystal was due to the ‘complexities’ of the situation on the ground and the need for a ‘change in strategy’. ‘Complexity’ is a euphemism for the increased mass opposition to the US, complicating traditional carpet ‘bombing and military sweep’ operations. The new strategy practiced by McChrystal involves large scale, long term ‘special operations’ to devastate and kill the local social networks and community leaders, which provide the support system for the armed resistance.

Obama’s decision to prevent the release of scores of photographs documenting the torture of prisoners by US troops and ‘interrogators’ (especially under command of the ‘Special Forces’), is directly related to his appointment of McChrystal whose ‘SOT’ forces were highly implicated in widespread torture in Iraq. Equally important, under McChrystal’s command the DELTA, SEAL and Special Operations Teams will have a bigger role in the new ‘counter-insurgency strategy’. Obama’s claim that the publication of these photographs will adversely affect the ‘troops’ has a particular meaning: The graphic exposure of McChrystal’s modus operendi for the past 5 years under President Bush will undermine his effectiveness in carrying out the same operations under Obama.

Obama’s decision to re-start the secret ‘military tribunals’ of foreign political prisoners, held at the Guantanamo prison camp, is not merely a replay of the Bush-Cheney policies, which Obama had condemned and vowed to eliminate during his presidential campaign, but part of his larger policy of militarization and coincides with his approval of the major secret police surveillance operations conducted against US citizens.

Putting McChrystal in charge of the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan military operations means putting a notorious practitioner of military terrorism – the torture and assassination of opponents to US policy – at the center of US foreign policy. Obama’s quantitative and qualitative expansion of the US war in South Asia means massive numbers of refugees fleeing the destruction of their farms, homes and villages; tens of thousands of civilian deaths, and eradication of entire communities. All of this will be committed by the Obama Administraton in the quest to ‘empty the lake (displace entire populations) to catch the fish (armed insurgents and activists)’.

Obama’s restoration of all of the most notorious Bush Era policies and the appointment of Bush’s most brutal commander is based on his total embrace of the ideology of military-driven empire building. Once one believes (as Obama does) that US power and expansion are based on military conquests and counter-insurgency, all other ideological, diplomatic, moral and economic considerations will be subordinated to militarism. By focusing all resources on successful military conquest, scant attention is paid to the costs borne by the people targeted for conquest or to the US treasury and domestic American economy. This has been clear from the start: In the midst of a major recession/depression with millions of Americans losing their employment and homes, President Obama increased the military budget by 4% - taking it beyond $800 billion dollars.

Obama’s embrace of militarism is obvious from his decision to expand the Afghan war despite NATO’s refusal to commit any more combat troops. It is obvious in his appointment of the most hard-line and notorious Special Forces General from the Bush-Cheney era to head the military command in subduing Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan.

It is just as George Orwell described in Animal Farm: The Democratic Pigs are now pursuing the same brutal, military policies of their predecessors, the Republican Porkers, only now it is in the name of the people and peace. Orwell might paraphrase the policy of President Barack Obama, as ‘Bigger and bloodier wars equal peace and justice’.



* James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

James Petras
- Homepage: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13644

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Fucking A

18.05.2009 21:18

'Fucking A' is americana for wholehearted approval.

Below is a commentary from the distinguished journalist Patrick Cockburn, who can distinguish between genuine 'special forces' and the obviously psychopathic scum recruited by the NeoCons. Personally, from my own investigation and historical knowledge, I find that a very fine distinction. Slightly less professional, more political psyhcopaths is a better definition. Either way Indymedia needs to refocuss on the Afghan civilians who are being slaughtered by our UK state mercenary force and it's US employer.

"
It is astonishing to discover that the same small American unit, the US Marine Corps' Special Operations or MarSOC, has been responsible for all three of the worst incidents in Afghanistan in which civilians have been killed. Its members refer to themselves as "Taskforce Violence" and the Marines' own newspaper scathingly refers to the unit as "cowboys".
The US military commanders in Afghanistan must have known about MarSOC's reputation for disregarding the loss of life among Afghan civilians, yet for 10 days, they have flatly denied claims by villagers in the western Afghan province of Farah that more than 100 of their neighbours had been slaughtered by US air strikes.

Everything the US military has said about the air strikes on the three villages in Bala Boluk district on the evening of 4 May should be treated with suspicion – most probably hastily-concocted lies aimed at providing a cover story to conceal what really happened. Official mendacity of these proportions is comparable to anything that happened in Vietnam.

The US military now seem to have dropped their previous suggestion that Taliban gunmen had run through the village streets lobbing grenades into houses because villagers had failed to give them a cut of the profits from the opium crop. No evidence was produced for this unlikely tale. Witnesses saw no signs of grenade blasts or machine gun fire. A US official source in Washington eventually admitted that the claim was "thinly sourced".

Survivors from Gerani, Gangabad and Khoujaha villages say that there had been fighting nearby but the Taliban had long withdrawn when US aircraft attacked. This was not a few errant sticks of bombs but a prolonged bombardment. It had a devastating effect on the mud-brick houses and photographs of the dead show that their bodies were quite literally torn apart by the blasts. This makes it difficult to be precise about the exact number killed, but the Afghan Rights Monitor, after extensive interviewing, says that at least 117 civilians were killed, including 26 women and 61 children.

The US military has now fallen back on the tired old justification that the enemy was using civilians as human shields. This certainly is not satisfying infuriated Afghans from demonstrating students at Kabul university all the way to President Hamid Karzai. Whatever MarSOC troops thought they were doing in Bala Boluk, the killing of so many civilians will do nothing but strengthen the Taliban.




Danny
- Homepage: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-these-killings-will-only-strengthen-the-taliban-1685705.html


get over it: capitalist democracy is not democracy

18.05.2009 22:11

It's a bit disingenuous to pretend that electing a new president actually alters the structure of the state. This is no defence of the Obama regime, but it is a bit much to expect a new president to have changed the entire military and philosophical attitude of the USA in a just a few months. And it seems to inflate the actual power the vote in a neoliberal democracy actually has.

A few people on IMCUK would claim that no leader can ever change the nature of a capitalist state - myself included, - which begs the question: why pretend to be shocked that 'Democrats' have become the new 'Republicans'?

Krop


The first black Nazi genocidal ruler of the world

18.05.2009 23:47

"It's a bit disingenuous to pretend that electing a new president actually alters the structure of the state. This is no defence of the Obama regime, but it is a bit much to expect a new president to have changed the entire military and philosophical attitude of the USA in a just a few months. And it seems to inflate the actual power the vote in a neoliberal democracy actually has. A few people on IMCUK would claim that no leader can ever change the nature of a capitalist state - myself included, - which begs the question: why pretend to be shocked that 'Democrats' have become the new 'Republicans'?"

Why distract from that fact? In fact, why distract from the fact that is was mythical that George W Bush was the first US president who was a war criminal? Most UK citizens have been conditioned to think of Obama as a good man who wouldn't endorse war crimes, just like Tony Blair came to power on that false reputation, but look at the policies. Obamas policies has not only already slaughtered innocent women and children, he has promoted the worst of Bush's genocidal cowboys, he has slightly increased the number of troops in Iraq and greatly increased the US troops and conctractors in Afghanistan. He has continued completely illegal and immoral CIA death camps such as Abu Ghraib, increased the amount of global torture in the world while posing as a good man, he has endorsed or extended impunity of contractors, CIA and UK torturers.

So I for one am not going to 'get over it', I am going to rebel and treat each complicit US and UK citizen - especially the politicos and torturers - as the Nazi scum they are.

I would not condemn the assasin of Obama because like each US president in living memory, he is as bad as Hitler. If not worse.

Danny


@Danny

19.05.2009 08:46

"So I for one am not going to 'get over it', I am going to rebel and treat each complicit US and UK citizen - especially the politicos and torturers - as the Nazi scum they are."

I'm curious - what form will this "treatment" take?

anonymous


curiousity

19.05.2009 09:49

Well, for proven torturers and their employers, legal prosecution and moral exposure seems a good start. I'll certainly go to prison in 2011 rather than let any CACI employ if I am muslim.

Danny


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