Does Iraq "sectarian violence" and "civil war" remind you of Iraq "WMDs?"

[NNN0LHI]

Keep in mind that the "sectarian violence" and "civil war" meme fits in perfectly with the Republican war pigs argument that "we just can't leave Iraq if those "savages" won't stop killing one another."

Vietnam was in a state of civil war for many years too. The north against the south. That nonsense ended soon after our military left.

[Lilith Velkor]

1. It reminds me of Colombia

Funny how nobody is calling for US troops there...

[Arkansas Granny]

2. No. "Sectarian violence" and "civil war" = real.

WMD's in Iraq = not real.

[The Magistrate]

3. Not In The Least, Sir

The Viet Nam analogy is particularly poor in this connection: the violence there ceased because one side decisively defeated the other in purely military terms, not because there was no real hostility or clash of interests between leaders and masses of people.

While it can be admitted as a possibility that there might be a deliberate U.S. policy to foment civil war in the country, several factors incline me against that view. The most important is that there are great limits on what can be achieved by meddling manipulations in the totality of a social order. Without already existing sentiment disposing many towards something like revolution or civil war, the thing cannot be contrived by an outside intervention, and if sentiment towards the thing is in wide existence, than it is going to occur, and the manipulation supposed to cause it almost certainly unnecessary to its outbreak and course. Things like this simply cannot be whomped up out of whole cloth, they can only emerge naturally or they will never reach a self-sustaining pitch. There probably is something on the order of the old Pheonix program being employed against suspected Sunni Arab insurgent cadres, but it will not acount for any appreciable portion of the killing,a nd if subtracted from the scene, would not alter the situation in the least.

The idea that "if we leave those savages will just kill each other" may strike a few as a promising line of argument in support of continued occupation, but it is in fact a very poor one, and if the enemy is inclined to indulge in the folly of employing it, we will rap the benefit. It hugely over-rates both the altruism and the empathetic concern of our country's people. Very few people here give a tinker's damn if Iraqis kill one another, indeed, it is just what they expect "those savages" to do, and they do not think it worth American lives and American dollars to prevent them from indulging in what they consider to be their native inclinations. The casual assumption of others' inferiority can cut any number of ways in political life, and "Who gives a flying fuck what they do to each other" will easily trump "If we leave they'll just kill each other!" in the mass of the people.

[NNN0LHI]

4. This is not unlike the CIA's Phoenix Program during the Viet Nam War, Sir

http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/internal-security.htm

Phoenix Project documents

"Internal Security in South Vietnam - Phoenix"


<snip>Thieu had been elected President of South Vietnam in 1967 by stuffing the ballot boxes and using Phoenix to neutralize his political opponents. He also sabotaged peace negotiations in 1968, based on a promise from Richard Nixon that if he did so, Nixon would give him increased financial and political support. Thieu dutifully sabotaged the negotiations, costing the Democrats the 1968 presidential election. Having stolen his office, like Nixon and Bush, Thieu (again like Nixon and Bush) preferred political internal security over a peaceful settlement that would end the national emergency, suspend all police-state actions (like administrative detention), and allow for majority rule. Thieu's actions led to congressional investigations in February 1970, and the charge in the New York Times (17 February 1970, article by Robert Kaiser) that the CIA had used the Phoenix Program as "an instrument of mass political murder" to neutralize politicians and activists who opposed Thieu or espoused peace. "By analogy," said Representative Ogden Reid (D-NY) in 1971, "if the Union had had a Phoenix program during the Civil War, its targets would have been civilians like Jefferson Davis or the mayor of Macon, Georgia."

During the 1970 Congressional hearings, Senator Clifford Case asked William Colby if the Phoenix Program might be used "by ambitious politicians against their political opponents, not the Viet Cong at all."

Said Colby, "It is our impression that this is not being used substantially for internal political purposes."

Senator William Fulbright then asked Colby, "Where is Mr. Dzu, the man who ran second in the last election?"

Colby replied, "Mr. Dzu is in Chi Hoa jail in Saigon."

Fulbright asked Colby to reconcile that with his statement that Phoenix was not being used for political purposes.

Colby calmly said that Dzu was not arrested under the Phoenix Program but under a provision that made it a crime to propose the formation of a coalition government with the Communists.

Colby dazzled the Committee with his disinformation, and New York Times reporter Tom Buckley sarcastically observed: "The Senate Foreign Relations Committee may have been confused by last week's testimony on Operation Phoenix." Indeed, attempts to portray Phoenix as legal and moral were transparent public-relations gimmicks meant to buy time while Thieu consolidated power before the cease-fire. To ensure Thieu's internal security, CIA officers willingly betrayed their penetration agents, and this capacity for treachery and deceit is what really defined American policy in regard to Phoenix. Republican Senators, following the party line, viewed Phoenix as perfectly executed, legal, moral, and popular. The other, more accurate view, articulated by Senator Fulbright, is that Phoenix was "a program for the assassination of civilian leaders."

On 12 December 1970, the CIA issued a report titled "Internal Security in South Vietnam - Phoenix." It is significant for two reasons. First, it confirms that the CIA equated its Phoenix "anti-terror" Program with political "internal security." Second, it acknowledges that the VCI, with its political and psychological operations, was more dangerous to Thieu's political internal security than enemy main force military operations.


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Don't you see any obvious comparisons between the Pheonix Program and what is happening in Iraq right now? These are not just coincidental events that happen to mirror one another. This has been our policy for decades. Its in the history books.

Don

[The Magistrate]

5. Where We Seem To Be Talking Past One Another, Sir, Unfortunately

Is the matter of the scale of events. You would hardly claim, for instance, that the Pheonix program was the source of even most of the violence in Viet Nam at that time, or even was the principal agent of political violence employed by the various South Vietnamese regimes against their civil opponents. It was the cherry on top, not the flour and yeast and sugar and water of the cup-cake and frosting that make up the substance of the tasty treat. The question of "death squads" in Central and South America is similar. The U.S. did not create them, though in some instances it assisted their operations: such things have been endemic to political life there, and an important element of oligarchic suppression in those countries for centuries. That is a place where the rich make no bones, and never have, about killing the poor when they grow restive. You cannot make widespread social movements and tendencies from outside: the most you can do is nudge a little in a direction you might think you want to see things go, and even then, you will have little real effect on the totality of events.

Iraq is and always has been riven by sectarian and ethnic rivalries pursued violently by ardent champions of the various factions whenever opportunity offered. The principal business of central government there from the days of King Feisal has been suppressing Kurdish irridentism and oppressing the Shia Arab majority in favor of the Sunni Arab minority. The tool has always been state police terror. It is region of long memories, and social structures that require blood vengeance as a part of normal social operation. Smash the central authority in such a circumstance, leave a situation of chaos in place for a lengthy time, and this is what will occur. It no more needs to be started by some clandestine foreign operator than it could be stopped by one in the existing circumstances.