The U.S. counterinsurgency and security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan also have been augmented by heavily armed mercenaries, such as the Blackwater “security contractors” who operate outside the law and were accused by Iraqi authorities of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in a shooting incident on Sept. 16.
The use of lethal force against unarmed suspects and civilians has a notorious history in irregular warfare especially when an occupying army finds itself confronting an indigenous resistance in which guerrillas and their political supporters blend in with the local population.
In effect, Bush’s “global war on terror” appears to have reestablished what was known during the Vietnam War as Operation Phoenix, a program that assassinated Vietcong cadre, including suspected communist political allies.
Bush’s global strategy also has similarities to “Operation Condor” in which South American right-wing military regimes in the 1970s sent assassins on cross-border operations to eliminate “subversives.”
Despite quiet support for these Latin American “death squads,” the U.S. government presented itself, then as now, as the great defender of human rights, criticizing repressive countries that engaged in extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions.
That gap between American rhetoric and reality widened after 9/11 as Bush waged his “war on terror,” while continuing to impress the American news media with pretty words about his commitment to human rights – as occurred in his address to the United Nations on Sept. 25.
Under Bush’s remarkable double standards, he has taken the position that he can override both international law and the U.S. Constitution in deciding who gets basic human rights and who doesn’t. He sees himself as the final judge of whether people he deems “bad guys” should live or die, or face indefinite imprisonment and even torture.
Effective Immunity
While such actions by other leaders might provoke demands for an international war-crimes tribunal, there would appear to be no likelihood of that in this case since the offending nation is the United States. Given its “superpower” status, the United States and its senior leadership are effectively beyond the reach of international law.
However, even if the Bush administration can expect de facto immunity from a war-crimes trial, the brutal tactics of the “global war on terror” – as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan – continue to alienate the Muslim world and undermine much of Bush’s geopolitical strategy. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Global Dirty War.”]
The ugly image of Americans killing unarmed Iraqis also helps explain the enduring hostility of Iraqis toward the presence of U.S. troops.
While the Bush administration has touted the improved security created by the “surge” of additional U.S. troops into Iraq, a survey of more than 2,000 Iraqis by the BBC, ABC News and the Japanese news agency, NHK, discovered mounting opposition to the U.S. occupation.
In August, 85 percent of those polled said they had little or no confidence in American and British occupation forces, up from 82 percent in February, when the “surge” began. Only 18 percent said they thought the coalition forces had done a good job, down from 24 percent in February. Forty-seven percent said occupying forces should leave now, up from 35 percent.
But a core question of the Iraq War always has been how hard the Iraqis would fight. President Bush and the neocons initially got that question wrong in March 2003 when instead of a “cake walk,” U.S. troops encountered surprisingly stiff resistance and, even after taking Baghdad, faced a determined insurgency.
The neocons now believe the U.S. occupation has turned a corner, that rank-and-file Iraqis have suffered so severely that they are ready to accept the continued U.S. military occupation with declining resistance.
In the view of some influential neocons, this “success” in Iraq means it is now time for the United States to turn its attention to other troubled Muslim countries, such as Iran and Pakistan.
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