The newest new US plan for Iraq involves political negotiations, selectively assassinating uncooperative Iraqi government and security officials and strengthening the Iraqi army, which is described in the Washington Post story on the plan as “one of the more reliable institutions in the country.”
This would be the same army that U.S officials said only a month ago was no longer a factor in their strategy for securing the country.
But of course the army isn’t the big news in the plan: that’s the U.S. endorsement of assassination as a tool for political reconciliation. Ann Tyson’s sources were quick to add that it wouldn’t be the U.S. doing the assassinating — “we are not running our own death squads or vigilante activity … for us to do it would be horrible” — but say that making examples of particularly recalcitrant government officials and army or other security officers is essential. So it will be the Iraqi government’s responsibility to assassinate its own officials, presumably through the good offices of non-sectarian death squads and vigilantes loyal to the Iraqi factions controlling the government. And thus will sectarian conflict be ameliorated.
What this means is that the men responsible for the plan, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. forces there, have decided to officially adopt the Salvadoran option, or at least a modified version of it — the original involved targeting civilians thought to support the insurgents, while this one turns the Iraqi government against its self, although of course “you need good evidence” before you kill someone. Which means first you have to kill all the intelligence people who might use bogus intelligence to target officials on sectarian grounds.
But it’ll all work out; assassination is, as Clausewitz might say, simply the continuation of office politics by other means. And when the dust settles — in 18-21 months, according to one anonymous U.S. proponent of the plan — the survivors will have sufficient confidence in themselves and trust in one another that they’ll be prepared to assume control of the country and our troops, with the exception of the 40-50,000 necessary to guard our embassy and our permanent bases, can go home.
All thanks to a responsible policy of prudent extrajudicial killings. It is indeed a very cunning plan.
Why do I keep seeing scenes from the second half of “Apocalypse now?”
Funny you should mention that — I watched the film last night and thought about it when I read the Post story. I wonder whether Iraq will have anything like the cultural impact that Vietnam did. On an unrelated note, I happened across a young Navy kid a few weeks ago who says the Navy is offering bonuses to personnel who volunteer for Iraq duty. He was involved in some sort of aircraft ground duty, and apparently there’s a shortage of Army people in his specialty. He was pissed because the slots were meted out according to rank.
Funny you would say “I wonder whether Iraq will have anything like the cultural impact that Vietnam did.” I was wondering the same thing myself this weekend.
Saigon fell in 1975, so it was four years from the last chopper to Apocalypse Now. Oliver Stone’s Platoon came 11 years after the end of the war. I’d say that was the old pace for the culture sort of working through its war-time experiences.
I’m tempted to say that we’ll work through that experience faster now, but maybe not. With the exception of the people with family members in the sandbox, America is alarmingly disconnected from the fighting (re: “The Marines are in Fallujah; America is at the mall”). This is not likely to change until the Bush administration is ushered off the stage and the current cognitive dissonance starts to fade.
And my guess is, once that happens we’re going to discover that the centerpoint of our political culture has shifted. From what I can see of my children’s generation, they’re already profoundly distrustful of anything corporate/political/MSM. How will that jibe with the Singularity? With the two-way culture versus the passive-entertainment culture?
Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.