|
|
|
|
Is Prisoner Abuse Neocon Grand Strategy?
Who among us has survived junior high school without witnessing the school bully egging on the pimply faced nerd kid - about his mother, about his sexual identity, or whatever -- just so the bully can kick hell out of the nerd when he fights back? Suppose -- just suppose -- the Bush Administration Neocons took their beatings (you know these guys were the pimply faced nerds when they were in junior high) and are now applying those lessons as "strategy" in American foreign policy.
Lost in all the discussion of Newsweek's purported "shoddy" reporting about the Koran being flushed in the toilet (and a subsequent FBI report that the Koran was, indeed, at least "mishandled") is one central question: What if it the Neocons ordered such belligerance? What if, in their grand designs to "remake the Middle East", they figured they could draw all the young radical Islamists into Iraq for a jihad, just so they could exterminate them? Wouldn't that all make sense, given the Neocon's stated goal of establishing American hegemony throughout the region?
Newsweek wasn't the first report of abuse of the Koran; there were several others before the Newsweek story. What's more, they didn't all come from Gitmo. There were similar reports about abuses in Kandahar by Al-Jazeera, long before the Newsweek story, as well as numerous reports from Guantanomo.
Think back, further, to the prisoner abuse photos, with Lindy England pointing at penises and such. Just who, in their right mind, takes such photos??? And then shares them? What military unit does so? Surely, the American soldiers at Abu Gharib knew that taking such photos was tantamount to sitting for a full length color portrait by a bank security camera while they pulled a stick-up. Why would they do it?
Does anybody think any of it makes any sense? Could anybody be that stupid?
But if you think strategically, maybe it does make sense. Maybe, in some distorted mind, it wasn't stupid; it was smart! Maybe it was more than smart -- maybe it was strategic.
Farfetched?
Not as much as you might think. Military forces with some perceived advantage often impel their enemies into an "asswhoopin" by playing to their emotions and their honor.
Jimmy Doolittle's heroic raid on Tokyo in the months after Pearl Harbor, while doing little damage, so incensed the Japanese high command that they decided to extend their defensive perimeter to a tiny island in the central Pacific -- Midway. There, the outnumbered -- but plucky -- American carrier force caused the Japanese to suffer their greatest naval defeat in history. (It helped, of course, that the Navy had months before cracked the Japanese naval code and knew, precisely, what the Japanese were planning.)
More recently, Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount helped ignite the intifada that allowed his government to (a) essentially isolate Yassir Arafat prior to his death; (b) defeat Ehud Barak and unilaterally withdraw concessions Barak had previously made to the Palestinians; and, (c) negotiate a settlement that is far more favorable to the Israelis than would have otherwise been the case. All these successes came about because Sharon knew that incitement of his adversary would work to his political and diplomatic advantage.
The Pentagon, of course, denies that any of the prisoner abuses had the authorization from higher-ups in the chain of command; it either didn't happen or it was done by enlisted paeons on their own initiative. (When you're inciting the enemy into a trap, you don't want him to read your plan and stay home to fight another day.)
But when you deceive your own people and lie to them about your grand strategy, a strategy that will prolong American involvement in Iraq and lead to thousands more casualties -- perhaps you -- and your battle plan -- deserve to be exposed.
That way, maybe America can declare victory, go home , leave the Iraqis to the government of their choosing, and bring American soldiers back home in time to honor their fallen comrades come our next Memorial Day.
bravenet.com