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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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December 16th,
2006 - Commentary: The Military Boomerang Effect |
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Commentary: The Military
Boomerang Effect By William S. Lind Middle East Times December 16, 2006 Washington - Recently, one of my students, a Marine
captain, asked whether I had heard a news report about an "IED-like
device" supposedly found near Cincinnati, and if I thought we would soon
start seeing improvised explosive devices here in the United States. I
replied that I had not heard the news story, but as to whether we would see
improvised explosive devices in the American homeland, the answer is yes. One of the things US troops
are learning in Iraq is how people with little training and few resources can
fight a state. Most American troops will see this within the framework of
counterinsurgency. But a minority will apply their new-found knowledge in a
very different way. After they return to the
United States and leave the military, they will take what they learned in
Iraq back to the inner cities, to the ethnic groups, gangs, and other
alternate loyalties they left when they joined the service. There, they will put their
new knowledge to work, in wars with each other and wars against the American
state. It will not be long before we see police squad cars getting hit with
IEDs and other techniques employed by Iraqi insurgents, right here in the
streets of American cities. I know this thought - not to
speak of the reality when it happens - will be shocking to some readers. To
anyone who really understands Fourth Generation war (4GW), it should not be. Fourth Generation war does
not merely work on the will of a state's political leaders, as some theorists
have said. It does something far more powerful. It pulls an opposing state
apart at the moral level. We saw this phenomenon in
the effect the defeat in Afghanistan had on the Soviet Union. Just as that
defeat led to the disintegration of the Soviet state, so defeat in the
current Afghan war will bring the disintegration of NATO. We are seeing 4GW pull Israel
apart today, to the point where a leaden blanket of Kulturpessimismus, or
cultural pessimism, now oppresses that country. We will see the same thing
here, powerfully I think, as a result of our defeat in Iraq. It will manifest
itself in many ways, and one of those ways will be the progression of
inner-city and gang crime into something close to warfare, including war
against the state. Police will not be surprised
by this prediction. I have talked with cops about Fourth Generation war, and
they "get it" much better than do American soldiers and marines. Many have told me that they
already recognize elements of war in what they are encountering, especially
in inner cities. Cops have been killed while just sitting in their cruisers,
because they represent the authority of the state. How big a step is it for
those cruisers to get hit with IEDs instead of pistol shots? The Bush administration, as
usual, has it exactly backwards. The danger is not that the
"terrorists" we are fighting in Iraq will come here if we pull out
there. Rather, American involvement in 4GW in Iraq will create
"terrorism" here from among the people we have sent to fight the
war there. Well educated in the ways of
successful insurgency, they will come home embittered by a lost war, by
friends dead and crippled for life to no purpose. Thanks to America's
de-industrialization, they will return to no jobs, or lousy
"service" jobs at minimum wage. Angry, frustrated, and
futureless, some of them will find new identities and loyalties in gangs and
criminal enterprises, where they can put their new talents to work. It will, of course, be only
a small minority of returning troops who will go this route. But something
else they will have learned from the Iraqi insurgents, along with how to make
and deploy IEDs, is that it takes very few people to create and sustain an
insurgency. The boomerang effect is a
central element of Fourth Generation war. When a state involves itself in 4GW
over there, it lays a basis for 4GW at home. That is true even if it wins
over there, and all the more true if it loses, as states usually do. The
toxic fallout from America's 4GW defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan will be far
greater than most people expect, and it will fall most heavily on America's
police. William S. Lind is director
for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.
Acknowledgement to UPI. External link: http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20061216-094717-4980r |