Posted 11:00 P.M. MDT 10/04/01
U.S. Officials Describe “Dirty War”
Can We Face the Unthinkable?
September 11 was a repeat of December 7, 1941 -- "a day which will live in infamy." This phrase was borrowed from Franklin Roosevelt's December 8 address before Congress after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After FDR's address only one member of Congress, Montana pacifist Jeanette Rankin, voted against the declaration of war on Japan. She later explained she didn't trust FDR and felt the attack on Pearl Harbor was "a trick" to get the country into the war. Smart woman.
History would later vindicate Rep. Rankin's view of FDR, who used the surprise attack and the loss of 3,500 American lives as the opportunity to maneuver the U.S. into a world war. Admiral Kimmel, one of the American officers blamed and later exonerated in the tragedy, pinned the blame on the Roosevelt administration because they withheld important intelligence about the impending attack. In a 1958 interview Admiral Kimmel stated:
My belief is that General Short and I were not given the information available in Washington and were not informed of the impending attack because it was feared that action in Hawaii might deter the Japanese from making the attack. Our president had repeatedly assured the American people that the United States would not enter the war unless we were attacked. The Japanese attack on the fleet would put the United States in the war with the full support of the American public.
And now we have another "day of infamy" that will mobilize an unthinking American public behind another world war. When Congress voted on September 15 to give President Bush authority to use military force in the "war on terror", there was, once again, only one vote of dissent -- Representative Barbara Lee of California who felt that there was insufficient cause for declaring a war. "I haven't seen the evidence," she said. Rep. Lee has a record of opposition to U.S. bombing campaigns from Iraq to Kosovo.
"Days of infamy" like September 11 have a way of galvanizing people into supporting the previously unthinkable. Some Americans have long disdained the "dirty wars" of Latin America, where "death squads" attack and kill people in their homes, or take them away to join the ranks of the "disappeared." Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has been implicated in a "death squad" hit in Lima where a special security force stormed a house and killed some anti-government rebels. It was a "take no prisoners" approach to terrorism that was a fruit of Peru's counter-insurgency strategy -- their "war on terror."
But when terrorism hits home suddenly a "dirty war" wasn't such a bad idea among your average Americans, just like Pearl Harbor changed public sentiment in 1941. Congress handed a blank check to the Bush Administration to fight this invisible enemy, in any country, and with any means at his disposal.
Two days following the attacks Vice President Cheney said that the "war on terrorism" would be "long and dirty", requiring the country to expand the powers and tools of its intelligence services. If we want a proper definition of what a "dirty war" means, perhaps we should ask those tortured and "disappeared" by secret government squads in latin America, trained by the architects of the "war on terror" at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas and the CIA.
In an email that he sent to a cadet at West Point on September 19, and was made public by CNN today, retired Army General Barry McCaffrey explained what a dirty war looks like.
We are going to disrupt these people through preemptive attack ... we will deceive them, we will run psyops on them, at selected points and times they will be killed suddenly, in significant numbers, and without warning.
Tomahawk missiles, 2000 pound laser guided weapons dropped from B2's or F22's at very high altitude, remote control, booby traps, blackmail and at places, small groups of soldiers or SEALs will appear in total darkness, blow down the doors and kill them at close range with automatic weapons and hand grenades...
We will find their money and freeze it. We will arrest their front agents. We will operate against their recruiting and transportation functions. We will locate their training areas and surveil or mine them. We will isolate them from their families.
We will try to dominate their communication function and alternately listen, jam or spoof it. We will make their couriers disappear. If we can find out how they eat, or play or receive rewards, or where they sleep -- we will go there and kill them by surprise.
Perhaps we should ask Gen. McCaffrey if the U.S. will be using "death squads" to carry out these raids.
General McCaffrey is a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. He also commanded the federal government's "war on drugs" and, as we can see from his analysis, is schooled in "wars" of various kinds. CNN showed McCaffrey's comments to an unnamed U.S. military official who responded, "It's the plan."
But there are also other methods to this madness. On October 3 Newsmax.com published an interview with retired Admiral Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired General Jack Singlaub who commanded U.S. forces in South Korea and is an expert in unconventional warfare. Both officers warned that the war against terror would broaden, and that the U.S. could find itself over-extended militarily if North Korea invaded South Korea, or China invaded Tiawan.
"I think the war is going to broaden," Gen. Singlaub told Newsmax. "I think that the president made it quite clear that this is a pure case of good vs. evil and those who want to live in peace must unite and eliminate those who want to kill one another." He added, "We just have to recognize that it's going to develop into a larger war and there are lots of people and nations involved."
Both officers are encouraging the Bush administration to prepare for a wider war, warning that the U.S. is unprepared because the military has been reduced 40 percent since the Gulf War. This ominous assessment by two distinguished officers begs the question: if America is unprepared to fight a world war, why is the Bush administration plunging ahead anyway?
The answer lies in the obscure realm of the unthinkable. While conventional war making capacity apparently has diminished, the U.S. retains its global superiority in unconventional warfare and weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps Moorer and Singlaub, like most people, cannot envision a war where these kinds of weapons are predominantly used, but we must face this inevitable reality for a couple of reasons.
First, a healthy fear of the global consequences for a nuclear or CBW attack has kept the option off the table -- until now. Godless secularism has cheapened human life, making mass destruction a viable solution for the intractable problems of the nations. It also fulfills the judgments of God as foretold in the Bible, where plagues afflict the human race before the end of the secular world. God, true to his character of love, would let mankind manufacture his own plagues rather than arbitrarily impose them Himself.
Second, according to some analysts, the attacks of Sept. 11 are considered by government policy makers as the equivalent of a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack on an American city, even though the weapons were airplanes. The U.S. response is being planned accordingly, with all options on the table. If this war spreads, as Singlaub and Moorer predict it will, it will make the most devastating war in history, World War II, look minor in comparison.
Harbingers of the future are already at our door. On April 10 the London Telegraph reported an outbreak of Ebola on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan. Evidence suggests that this plague, also known as Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever, originated within Afghanistan. This is the largest outbreak of the disease in history. If we are willing to recognize the true nature of human-kind left desolate by the Spirit of God, we cannot dismiss this outbreak as "chance", but rather acknowledge it as a trend of the future; an outworking of a deliberate policy that will become more and more evident in the days ahead.
A web site called The Emperor's New Clothes published a photo collage entitled Death on a Very Small Planet which compares the damage in Belgrade during the NATO bombardment to the damaged World Trade Center. It brings to mind the following verse:
"Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double." Rev. 18:6
We can know without question that whatever terror is unleashed upon this nation's adversaries in the future will come home with double force.
Related Articles:
The Plagues Have Begun
General: Action will come without warning -- CNN.com
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