Robert Parry - Iraq: Quicksand & Blood

[glitch]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2003/111303.html

Iraq: Quicksand & Blood
By Robert Parry
November 13, 2003

George W. Bush and his top advisers learned little from the Vietnam debacle of the 1960s, since most avoided service in the war. But many top Bush aides played key roles in the repression of leftist peasant uprisings in Central America in the 1980s, a set of lessons the Bush administration is now trying to apply to the violent resistance in Iraq.

The key counterinsurgency lesson from Central America was that the U.S. government can defeat guerrilla movements if it is willing to back a local power structure, no matter how repulsive, and if Washington is ready to tolerate gross human rights abuses. In Central America in the 1980s, those tactics included genocide against hundreds of Mayan villages in Guatemala’s highlands and the torture, rape and murder of thousands of young political activists throughout the region.

The body dumps that have been unearthed across Central America are thus little different from the mass graves blamed on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, except in Central America they represented the dark side of U.S. foreign policy and received far less U.S. press scrutiny. Another lesson learned from the 1980s was the importance of shielding the American people from the ugly realities of a U.S.-backed "dirty war" by using P.R. techniques, which became known inside the Reagan administration as "perception management."

The temptation to recycle these counterinsurgency strategies from Central America to Iraq is explained by the number of Reagan-era officials now back in prominent roles in George W. Bush's administration.

lots more...

[weldon_berger]

1. I'm afraid we're on our own this time.

There's no sufficiently authoritarian alternative in Iraq, and a civil war would be noticeable even at this remove. I still have difficulty understanding how such a clever group of men could be so stupid.

The sudden change in course is generating whiplash among administration supporters. The Washington Times barely mentions the CIA report and doesn't at all echo the sense of urgency reflected elsewhere.