Meet the New Dr. Strangelove

In the depths of the Cold War, Stanley Kubrick created a notoriously-mad scientist character, Dr. Strangelove, whose passion was for dropping atomic bombs. Now there is a rising media and Beltway fascination with a new Dr. Strangelove, whose passion is imposing a mad science of counterinsurgency on Iraq.

His name is David Kilcullen, an Australian academic and military veteran whom the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks once described as Gen. David Petraeus' "chief adviser" on the counterinsurgency doctrine underlying the surge in Iraq.

Kilcullen advocated a "global Phoenix program" in an obscure military journal, Small Wars, in 2004. For the ahistorical or uninitiated, Phoenix was a largely off-the-books detention, torture and assassination program aimed at tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who were identified by informants as the Vietcong's "civilian infrastructure." The venture was so discredited that the US Congress denounced and disbanded it after hearings in the 1970s.

But Kilcullen says the Phoenix program was "unfairly maligned" and was actually a success. So inflammatory was his advocacy in some circles that he revised his 2004 paper to rename the Phoenix program one of "revolutionary development."

In addition, he advocates "armed social science", which involves a key role for anthropologists and shrinks of various kinds in order to "exploit the physical and mental vulnerabilities of detainees."

The long New Yorker piece by George Packer pictured Kilcullen as a charming, eccentric, and isolated genius of sorts. In the Washington culture of national security think tanks, he appears to be a familiar and friendly figure.

His latest media fan is the Post's David Ignatius, reporting a Kilcullen briefing given "in a private capacity" at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies. It was an argument for appearing to get out of Iraq while staying in, expressed in the Kilkullen formula "Overt De-Escalation, Covert Disruption.". Kilcullen argues that the American troop presence is so large that it's counter-productive, only inflaming Iraqi sensibilities. What is required is a combination of US combat troop withdrawals combined with "black" special operations to "hunt terrorists" plus "white" special operations forces training and embedded with the Iraqi security forces, turning tribes against tribes wherever possible. Covert warfare is the future: "over the long run, we need to go cheap, quiet, low-footprint." And, he might have added, off the television screen and front pages.

What Kilcullen means is a kind of deception-based warfare that is contradictory to democracy itself, with its instruments of critical media, congressional oversight, and public disclosure of the cost in blood, taxes and honor. The key militarily is to secure the civilian population from the insurgents, in South Vietnam by "strategic hamlets", in Iraq by the "gated communities" with checkpoints, blast walls, concertina wire, fingerprinting, retinal scans and house-to-house population listings. The insurgents, meanwhile, are to be hunted, killed if necessary, and detained without charges in American-controlled or American-supported prison camps indefinitely, without access to lawyers, journalists, human rights observers, or family members. In most cases, there are no charges against them. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who headed the Abu Ghraib inquiry, has more than once suggested that "a systematic regime of torture" occurs in these camps. That's not including the CIA's secret rendition sites or the secret Baghdad prisons under the US-funded Ministry of the Interior, as reported previously in the New York Times.

Naturally the distinction between civilian and combatant is difficult to draw in counterinsurgency warfare. But aside from those already killed, it is a fair estimate that 100,000 detainees are currently languishing in such facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, few with any charges against them. These facilities are incubators for future insurgencies. Last week, after a long hunger strike, for example, 1,100 detainees escaped an Afghan facility after the Taliban blew up the walls. The Pentagon's plan is to build a permanent $60 million new detention facility on forty acres. The money might be better spent on lawyers for the present defenseless detainees.

These are the realities masked behind the almost-sensual description of a "lighter, smaller, more nimble residual force" in Ignatius' summary of the Kilcullen scenario.

How have the nation's once-great newspapers come to virtually sanctify -- and obfuscate the real meaning of -- these military doctrines, as if there were no alternatives? An explanation is impossible to obtain. But the uncritical acceptance, and even promotion, of counterinsurgency as a rational, realistic alternative to the either the status quo or withdrawal draws the Times and Post closer to the very Pentagon news manipulation operation they have recently exposed. The mainstream media have rarely if ever published anti-war critiques by leaders of protests against US military policy since the 2002 buildup, to the 2003 invasion, to the current turn to counterinsurgency. On the contrary, both the Post and the Times regularly publish the views of unrepentant neo-conservatives with no military experience whatsoever. The only valid "anti-war" voices apparently must be former military men or White House operatives who have turned against their former employers. The spectrum of the "op-ed page" is devolving into center-right insiders. As a result, the wild frontier of the blogosphere has exploded as the only outlet for dissent, with or without the documentation. The two opposing sides of the Iraq debate now inhabit separate worlds, the anti-war voices having been expelled from the mainstream for being prematurely anti-war or not being attendees at places like the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies.

In the era of Dr. Strangelove, the sociologist C. Wright Mills vented against the national security intellectuals as "crackpot realists." Few realized then [or now] that our lives and future are placed at risk by the unbalanced nature of our national dialogue, including the extreme gap between the reportage in America and the rest of the world.

Will a November election of Barack Obama bring an end to the one-note monotony of the national security debate? I fervently hope so. Obama to his credit favors combat troop withdrawals and diplomacy with Iran rather than obliteration. Obama and John McCain would seem to have totally opposing views of Iraq. But at a deeper level, Obama seems to be heading towards the counterinsurgency trap -- planning to leave a "lighter, smaller, more nimble residual force" behind in a wasteland of preventive detention, secret gulags, and advisers like David Kilcullen. For the media and public to fail to recognize, evaluate and debate this likely future during the presidential campaign will mean something beyond tragedy or farce.

Comments

[XME]

Gee, given the title, I thought for sure this must be an article about John McCain!

[Rescisco]

The "Strangeloves" you will always have with you. The truth is so far gone its beyond recovery.

[godsbreath64]

If this is not a Huff Post, if not Pulitzer, I don't know what is.

Unless it was posted here :)

[godsbreath64]

Tom, I can't get over how precious this piece is and that so few are responding to it.

I heard once that the real reason Woodstock recieved so many more guests then expected was the government's survalience was that big. I wonder if you see something akin affects the output of some of the responses to these Victorian Falls of insight you bestow our species and history, one after another. Maybe not.

This (piece) is the heart of the problem which vitiates the american way until it is complete( if somehow it is not yet already), whether it be during the sixties or any decade since. Time after time, I am confronted with those with more degrees, money, and prestige then I and they could be on the moon when it comes to insight. I just want to scream read C. Wright Mills!!! ( if you somehow have a problem with Tom).

Thank you, still yet again. g

[DasBoot]

In the age of satellite, broad band internet, Youtube etc. I hope that this strategy of deception is doomed to fail. But maybe I am being overly optimistic. What if the public is simply too indifferent already???

This great article also goes to show that the issue of government lies is much, much deeper than George W. Bush. Sixty years of Cold War and the rise of the military industrial complex have brought us here. George Orwell anybody?

As a fervent Obama supporter, I can only express my hope that the better angles of his nature will prevail. We have to help him by constantly supporting good decisions and raising hell if he comes under the influence of the hawks in his own party.

[outnow]

I read David Ignatius's column yesterday and I could not believe that he was proposing to ostensibly withdraw from Iraq while conducting a "disguised," permanent counterinsurgency in Iraq. The idea is to make people believe that we are not really controlling the "democracy" in Iraq permanently. Reading in between the lines, we now own Iraq and its oil but we don't want to admit that fact publicly - so we will sneak around with torture and fear to control the Iraqis.

Counterinsurgencies, shock and awe and "democracy" are very different things. Resource wars for oil are what we are conducting. Permanent control of that oil is what we really want.

After WW II, we did not loot Germany or Italy. We allowed Japan to recover. Instead of privatizing the resources of these countries we encouraged some degree of social benefits and democracy.

Special interests in the form of transnational corporations are calling the shots. Calling "resource wars" a "clash of civilizations" is a fraud. The media is complicit by selling these concepts. Voters are too frightened to understand what is at stake. Sociopathic people are always a threat but allowing oil and defense interests in transnational corporations to control policy is the largest mistake in the history of our country. Corporations do not have a soul. Ultimately, our ideals will be gone in exchange for corporate access to oil.

[heavyrunner]

I read "Inside the Company - A C.I.A. Diary" by Phillip Agee shortly after it was published in 1975. He was the first C.I.A. agent to become so disgusted with the C.I.A."s activities that he became a whistleblower and named names.

A good part of his book details the lengths to which the C.I.A. went to subvert the free press in Quito, Ecuador, where Agee was stationed.

When I read his book in 1975 I said to myself, "If they are doing all this to control the press in Quito, Ecuador, what must they be doing in places like Chicago?"

But even with complete media control and total brainwashing and NSA blanket wiretapping, it is possible to fail, and the policies of this U.S. government are so wrong headed the only question appears to be "How bad is the collapse going to be?"

"The end of history?" I don"t think so . . .

[outnow]

Legacy of Ashes; the History of the CIA by Tim Weiner, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize talks about the structural and philosophical flaws that have dogged the Agency from day one. A least we can still talk about such things in our society. Our understanding of the world is so much like Plato's cave analogy. We are inside a cave looking at shadows on the wall and trying to determine reality. The suggestion that counterinsurgency measures in Iraq should become both permanent and secret undermines our concept of democracy. In the end, we must live and die by our ideals. Lying, torture and misinformation are not the basis of those ideals. Making quick money has been substituted by many for the enduring values of America.

[arvay]

Like all the glittery military toys we purchase so expensively, this "deception based warfare" will fail, in addition to whatever pain and death it spreads around.

The only way for the US to accurately assess the real threats against us is to cease all the unwarranted and aggressive policies we've implemented, starting with our unconditional backing of the nuclear-armed rogue state, Israel. We need to stop intervening in Latin America, disband NATO (the cold war being over, and Castro still not taking over the hemisphere) and agree with China and Russia on how we will avoid conflicts. And find some way to agree with those powers on nuclear disarmament and ratcheting down the disgraceful arms trade we three nations conduct with the world.

Once we stop poking much of the world in the eye, any one who's still attacking us is a real enemy. I suspect that will be a very short list.

And that goes for the Russians, Chinese, Pakistanis and everyone else who's poking someone and creating their own need for "defense."

[hopeless277]

Now that Obama has revealed his neocon foreign policy advisers, I'm sure David Kilcullen will fit right in. Meet the new boss...............

[godsbreath64]

Same as the old boss...

[outnow]

He's no RFK or MLK. He said that right up front. He wants to "reach across the aisle" and compromise with the right wing fanatics (evil). He is a free trader and neocon lite. There is not much substance to his positions nor much he or anyone could do without losing the "center." DLC would be a good description. Triangulation - whatever you want to call it. By going for the center, you have already lost all principle. There is no "center" in right and wrong. I don't see any principles, just political compromise and opportunism. The medicine was Kucinich - but America is not ready to "take their medicine." Did you see Gandhi, RFK or MLK reach across the aisle? MLK's triple evils are what Obama's mother taught him. He isn't true to what she taught. She played MLK tapes for him but he rejects that in favor of Ronald Reagan.

[zjr909]

Once the descent into madness begins, there is no turning back. The descent didn't begin with the Bush administration, or with their enablers in the media. It began in November of 2001, when an ABC poll asked Americans if they approved of torture; and 40% said yes, they did. I haven't seen a poll since, though undoubtedly there have been. But I would be shocked if the percent approving of torture has fallen instead of risen. When that many people genuinely don't understand the essence of morality, it's over. Your society is well on its way to becoming an archeological relic.

[godsbreath64]

Either ursup Iraq as the 51st state, or get out.

Just a shearing beacon of ad rem though, Tom. Really >: `/

Thanks still yet again.

[BusGreg]

MSM is too much controlled by corporate interests they'll never expose BushCo for what they are. It will be up to the American voter to ascertain that we get the change the country needs. If Grandpa Munster somehow gets elected he'll undoubtably become bush's Gerry Ford, and that would pretty much slam the door shut on any meaningful investigation. Vince Bugliosi, of Charlie Manson fame recently gave the following interview on Democracy Now.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/13/citing_iraq_war_renowned_attorney_vincent
Unfortunately for us and the country, time is running short for the current crop of mis-representatives to do much to fix the damage done by the Village Idiot from Crawford. Even if they tried, there just ain't much time left and, like it or not, until we get representation in Congress that will do the People's work rather than pander to special interests nothing will change.
We all know what happens to the school yard bully. Sooner or later a bigger bully shows up....

[DallasMike]

The only time th MSM is in the tank for the other side is when you do not agree with what they are telling you.

[BusGreg]

wouldn't bet on that

[protagonia]

The Criminal's Colony sure knows how to crank out the doozies. No ordinary crooks there, but really grand-scale villains.

Murdoch is up there too.

[tcagle]

Unlike most of the other groups involved in this situation, anthropologists have a code of ethics that they take quite seriously. Those few that have gone over to the dark side are pariahs from that point on.