And in the "insane troll logic" department:
Here's what the Pentagon is kicking around as a possible solution to the insurgency in Iraq: Death squads.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweekFor those who don't remember the 80s, a death squad is a bunch of goons who are paid by the government roam the country assassinating the political opposition. The Newsweek piece above is titled "The Salvador Option" because our support for the Salvadoran government, and its death squads, became notorious during the 1980s--largely because these death squads expanded the definition of "political opposition" to include Catholic priests and nuns who were preaching liberation theology, some of whom were American. Some forms of Christianity, you see, are indistinguishable from communism. That whole helping-the-poor thing, you know.
Puts me in mind of an Elvis Costello song from Armed Forces:
Mother, father, I’m here in the zoo
I can’t come home ’cause I’ve grown up too soon
I got my sentence
I got my command
They said they’d make me major if I met all their demands
I could be a corp’ral into corp’ral punishment
Or the gen’ral manager of a large establishment
They pat some good boys on the back and put some to the rod
But I never thought they’d put me in the
Goon squad
They’ve come to look you over and they’re giving you the eye
Goon squad
They want you to come out to play
You’d better say goodbye...According to the article, this idea actually didn't originate with Rumsfeld, but rather with the charmers we installed as the head of the Iraqi interim government. Here's the kind of synergy you get when our goons talk to their goons:
Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, "are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them." He said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in. One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."Cost-free?
They're the ones who are getting blown to pieces by most of these car bombs. They're the ones who are getting killed in the crossfire when we go blasting into what we think is an insurgent stronghold. No, folks, supporting the insurgency is never cost-free; go ask people in the occupied territories. From a different point of view, it's clear that whatever passive support these people are getting from the civilian community derives from two fairly simple things:
1) The insurgency, at the moment, is able to operate at will, which means that the average Iraqi is not going to inform on them for fear of getting whacked. We can't protect our own troops from these people; and we clearly have never given a shit about protecting Iraqi lives. They have no reason to believe that we would prevent whatever group they dropped a dime on from killing them and their families. Therefore, the dime is not dropped.
2) In addition to having proved ourselves ineffective when it comes to protecting anything or anyone in Iraq, we have also alienated the general population so completely through our use of indiscriminate and unimaginable violence and our callous disregard for their lives, families, property, and culture that many of them would probably be extremely reluctant to do anything that might be seen as helping us or liable to lead to a more permanent US military presence there--even if that would, in the short term, mean a drop in the amount of random violence they have to cope with.
Does either of these possibilities occur to that "military source"? No. His thinking is that these people are not suffering <i>enough</i> yet, so the solution is to make them suffer <i>more</i>. This is the way it works over there. The solution is always more violence. Even if violence is the problem.
The future head of our justice department thinks that the Geneva convention is quaint, that beating up on detainees is a legitimate strategy for ensuring our national security, and that torture isn't torture until the victim is permanently disabled, dying, or dead. Our current secretary of defense is excited about the prospect of setting up death squads. We just had the second election in which a weak-minded president who's constantly dressing up in military uniforms made it into office despite widespread doubts about the legitimacy of his victory.
Things do change. In the 1980s, we supported the Salvadoran government. In 2005, we ARE the Salvadoran government.
I'm so happy,
The Plaid Adder
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