Chris Floyd: Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire

[laststeamtrain]

Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire
Written by Chris Floyd

Here's a purely hypothetical scenario. Let's say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country's security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let's say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy – the machtpolitik – that you believe in.

But there's a problem. The general public – the cow-like herd out there that doesn't understand grand strategy the way you and your fellow elites do – is growing weary, and wary, of your Long War. The national treasury is bankrupt, the national infrastructure is rotting, the nation's communities are dying; millions of people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their dreams, spiraling down into want, privation and despair. Yet you have big plans to escalate the war, expand your war machine, and maintain the global dominance that you believe is the right and natural role for your special nation – and its elites. What to do? How to galvanize the truculent, self-absorbed herd into enthusiastically supporting your vital agenda once more?

Well, here's one purely hypothetical approach you might try. You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine – the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world – they naturally respond with "asymmetrical" operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups' own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland – either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble's petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business.

One never knows exactly what goes on behind the imperial drapery in the Potomac palaces, of course; ordinary American citizens were long ago turned into Kremlinologists of their own government, trying to discern -- through ceremonial signs, backstairs gossip, and slight deviations in ritualized rhetoric -- just what their masters are really up to. But some cynics darkly suspect that scenarios something like the one sketched out above have already been enacted; for instance, in the "new Pearl Harbor" that struck America on September 11, 2001 – one year after a group channeling the views of future Bush Administration bigwigs (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby and many others) had openly pined for a "new Pear Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into supporting their militarist agenda, which included an invasion of Iraq – whether Saddam Hussein was in power or not.

But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks.

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http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1733-darkness-renewed-terror-as-a-tool-of-empire.html

[FiveGoodMen]

1. K&R

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. K&R - I read over a decade ago that some of the founders just looked at North Americas a "base"

.
.
.

somewhere to amass a military might then strike back at Europe.

Asia wasn't an issue then, but the USA became such a power, they tried for Asia also, that's what Korea and Vietnam were about - didn't work.

Now the big "invasion" is the Middle East - the USA attacked and occupied one of the weakest countries available -

Now they've got much of the USA's firepower on the Eastern continent's soils, and tons of nukes hidden in carriers and subs in the Gulf.

USA needs those funds(tax dollars) and young bodies on their own soil, but the powers that be see fit to keep poking away at the rest of the globe while their own citizens languish at home.

So I wish I could recollect where I read this about the powers using the USA just as a base to expand their powers globally, . .

because the way the USA neglects their own citizens,

it sure makes sense to me. .

[gula]

3. K&R

[KoKo]

4. Sy Hersh has talked about how we use groups to incite uprisings,

attacks that are categorized as terrorist bombings, etc. Infiltration has been going on in America since our founding and in the 60's was well known with intrusion into groups trying to stop the Vietnam war and those working for Civil Rights.

So, Chris Floyd's article is an interesting read to remind us that this is still going on. And, that the meddling we do has grave repercussions in the kind of Global Economy we are in today. The OPS of Cheney, Rumsfeld and our past aren't going to give up just because there seems to be a "new group" in the White House.

[acmavm]

5. Floyd's one of my favorites, and he's one of the best. Some people can

just cut through the crap and get to the real issues, and not be afraid to call out the powers-that-be who are responsible for the mess this country finds itself in right now.

It's interesting that things are heating up in Iraq now that this administration is talking about more troops to Afganistan. Endless war is a game both parties seem to enjoy playing.