Levis never went out of fashion, nor did Lansdale\u2019s dirty tricks. Think Saddam Hussein killing babies in their incubators. Such disinformation invariably works on an American public looking for any excuse to rationalize its urge for racist genocide.<\/p>\n
Think Argo and Zero Dark Thirty and every Rambo and Bruce Willis films.<\/p>\n
Only Americans were fooled by the propaganda, and the Vietnamese quickly caught on. So the CIA in 1956 launched the Denunciation of Communists campaign, which compelled the Vietnamese people to inform on Commies or get tortured and murdered. The campaign was managed by CIA agents who could arrest, confiscate land from, and execute Communists and their sympathizers on the CIA\u2019s master list. \u00a0In determining who was a Communist, the CIA used a three-part classification system: A for dangerous party members, B for less dangerous party members, and C for loyal citizens.<\/p>\n
As happened later in the Phoenix program, the threat of an A or B classification was used to extort innocent civilians, while category A and B offenders were put to work building houses and offices for CIA officers and their lackeys. \u00a0And, of course, the puppet Vietnamese President used his CIA created, funded and trained security forces to eliminate his political rivals.<\/p>\n
As Lansdale confessed, \u201cit became a repressive tool to liquidate any opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis development was political,\u201d Lansdale observes. \u201cMy first inkling came when several families appeared at my Lansdale complained, but he was told that a \u201cU.S. policy decision had been made. We Americans were to give what assistance we could to the building of a strong nationalistic party that would support Diem. Since Diem was now the elected president, he needed to have his own party. \u201d<\/p>\n How We Got To Scahill\u2019s Dirty War<\/strong><\/p>\n By 1962, as the US expanded its Dirty Wars in the Far East and South America, the military replaced its Office of Special Operations with an up-dated Special Assistant for Counter-insurgency and Special Activities (SACSA).\u00a0 \u00a0SACSA assigned unconventional warfare forces to the CIA and regular army commanders, who initially resisted.<\/p>\n The development of psychological warfare and special operations is explained in Michael McClintock\u2019s Instruments of Statecraft<\/span><\/a>. For the CIA politics behind it, see Burton Hersh\u2019s The Old Boys<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n In 1965 Lansdale went back to Vietnam to run the Revolutionary Development Cadre Program as the CIA\u2019s \u201csecond station\u201d with a staff of CIA officers, Green Beanies, and Daniel Ellsberg.\u00a0 Vietnam was a laboratory and the CIA was experimenting with Pacification, aka \u201cthe Other War.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1967, the CIA created the Phoenix program to coordinate everyone in its Dirty War. Phoenix combined existing counterinsurgency programs in a concerted effort to neutralize the civilians running the shadow government. \u00a0Neutralize means to kill, capture, or make to defect. \u00a0Central to Phoenix was that it targeted civilians. \u201cBy analogy,\u201d said Ogden Reid, a member of a congressional committee investigating Phoenix in 1971, \u201cif the Union had had a Phoenix program during the Civil War, its targets would have been civilians like Jefferson Davis or the mayor of Macon, Georgia.\u201d<\/p>\n Under Phoenix, due process was nonexistent. \u00a0South Vietnamese civilians whose names appeared on CIA blacklists were kidnapped, tortured, detained without trial, or murdered on the word of an informer. Phoenix managers imposed a quota of 1,800 neutralizations per month on the saps running the program in the field, opening it up to abuses by corrupt security officers, policemen, politicians, and racketeers. \u00a0One CIA officer described Phoenix as, \u201cA very good blackmail scheme for the central government. `If you don\u2019t do what I want, you\u2019re VC.\u201d\u2018<\/p>\n Because Phoenix assassinations (totaling 25,000+) were often conducted at night while its victims were home sleeping, Phoenix proponents describe the program as a \u201cscalpel\u201d designed to replace the \u201cbludgeon\u201d of My Lai-style search and destroy operations, air strikes, and artillery barrages that indiscriminately wiped out entire villages and did little to \u201cwin the hearts and minds\u201d of the people. \u00a0But that was just propaganda and Phoenix was, among other things, an instrument of counter-terror \u2014 the psywar tactic in which enemy agents were brutally murdered along with their families and neighbors as a means of terrorizing the people into a state of submission. \u00a0Such horrendous acts were, for propaganda purposes, often made to look as if they had been committed by the enemy.<\/p>\n This practice is at the heart of the film I will be reviewing.<\/p>\n As noted, conventional soldiers hated Phoenix. General Bruce Palmer, commander of the U.S. Ninth Infantry Division in 1968, objected to the \u201cinvoluntary assignment of U.S. Army officers to the program. I don\u2019t believe that people in uniform,\u201d he said, \u201cwho are pledged to abide by the Geneva Conventions, should be put in the position of having to break those laws of warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n Palmer\u2019s was such a charming sentiment. By 2004, Obama advisor Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, in an article for Small Wars Journal<\/i>, was calling for a \u201cglobal Phoenix Program.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Tom Hayden wrote an article for The Nation about Kilcullen in 2008 titled \u201cReviving Vietnam War Tactics\u201d.<\/p>\n Fact is, Phoenix never went out of fashion. As McClintock notes, \u201cCounterinsurgency and indeed all aspects of special warfare doctrine had developed a reasonable level of political sophistication by the mid-1970s, acknowledging the necessity of combining military and civil initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n By 1975 SACSA had expired, the nation had internalized its humiliating defeat in Vietnam, and the CIA, wounded by the Church Committee hearings, went underground. The age of counter-terror began. Central and South America were the new laboratories. \u00a0The CIA forged secret alliances with proxy nations like Israel and Taiwan, whose agents taught Latin American landowners how to organize criminals into death squads which murdered and terrorized labor leaders, Human Rights activists, and all other enemies of the Great White Fathers.<\/p>\n To compensate for the reduction in size of its paramilitary Special Operations Division, the CIA formed its Office of Terrorism. Meanwhile, the military branches beefed up their terror capabilities, all of which glommed together in December 1980 in the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Steve Emerson chronicles this development in detail in Secret Warriors<\/span><\/a> (1988).<\/p>\n JSOC\u2019s mission, conducted on the Phoenix model with the CIA, is identifying and destroying terrorists and terror cells worldwide.\u00a0 Paramilitary personnel are often exchanged between JSOC and CIA.<\/p>\n By the early 1980s, CIA and military veterans of the Phoenix program<\/a> were running counter-insurgency and counter-terror ops worldwide.<\/p>\n General Paul Gorman, who commanded U.S. forces in Central America in the mid-1980\u00e2\u20ac\u00b2s, defined this advanced form of Dirty War as \u201ca form of warfare repugnant to Americans, a conflict which involves innocents, in which non-combatant casualties may be an explicit object.\u201d\u2018 (Toledo Blade 1 Jan 1987)<\/p>\n All of which brings me to my review.<\/p>\n Dirty Wars<\/strong><\/p>\n Dirty Wars is a post-modern film by Jeremy Scahill, about himself, starring himself in many poses.<\/p>\n The film owes more to Sergio Leone and Kathryn Bigelow than Constantinos Gavras. Scahill certainly is no Leslie Cockburn: there is no Tony Poe telling how the CIA facilitates heroin shipments; no Richard Secord suing him for unraveling the financial intrigues of the CIA\u2019s secret operators.\u00a0 The CIA is rarely mentioned.<\/p>\n There is no reference to the Guerra Sucia<\/em> in Argentina.<\/p>\n Scahill is no Franz Fallon documenting the devastating psychological effects of racism on society. There are no cameos by Jean-Paul Sartre advocating violent retribution on Hollywood, no mingling with the Taliban in their caves as they conspire against their Yankee oppressors at the Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n We get the first taste of his self-indulgent idiocy when he says it is \u201chard to tell\u201d when the Dirty War began. He does tell us, however, that he is on the \u201cfront lines\u201d of the war on terror.<\/p>\n Scahill (hereafter JS) brags that he wasn\u2019t going to find the front lines in Kabul, although he could have, if he knew where to look. Instead he just looks around furtively on his way to the scene of a war crime. \u00a0We see a close-up of his face.<\/p>\n The endless close-ups artfully convey the feeling that our hero is utterly alone, on some mythic journey of self-discovery, without a film crew or interpreters. There is no evidence that anyone went to Gardez to make sure everyone was waiting and not toiling in the fields or tending the flocks, or whatever they do. And we\u2019ll never find out what the victims do. The stage isn\u2019t big enough for JS and anyone else.<\/p>\n This is a major theme throughout the story \u2014 JS is doing all this alone and the isolation preys on him. He bears this heavy burden alone, with many soulless looks.<\/p>\n Initially, there is no mention that journalist Jerome Starkey reported what happened in Gardez. JS is too busy establishing himself as the courageous super-sleuth. As we drive along the road, he reminds us how much danger he is in. Two journalists were kidnapped here, he says. This area is \u201cbeyond\u201d NATO control.\u00a0 He must get in and out before nightfall or the Taliban will surely kill him like the Capitalist dog he is.<\/p>\n In my drinking days, we referred to this type of behavior as grandiosity. Telling everyone how you defied death, so the guys would talk about your exploits in the bars, and the girls would fall at your feet.\u00a0 For JS, this formula is working \u2014 a visit to his Facebook page reveals scores of \u201cMillennial girls\u201d wringing their hands and fretting for his safety as he strides across America\u2019s secret battlefields in search of the truth. His carefully crafted Wiki bio furthers the legend.<\/p>\n Using the material gathered by Starkey (whom he eventually acknowledges), JS shows that in February 2010, American soldiers murdered five people in Gardez, including two pregnant women, and tried to cover it up by digging the bullets out of the targeted man\u2019s body. He interviews the surviving family members.\u00a0 They weep. Violin music plays. They seem more like props than human beings.<\/p>\n JS ingenuously asks various Afghan and American officials, why the cover-up? The officials suggest that the targeted man was working for the Taliban \u2014 and if you play that double-game, you risk your family and friends. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tells JS they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. He says there will be no investigation.<\/p>\n Cut to Capitol Hill where, by his own account, JS has greatness thrust upon him. \u201cIt is imperative,\u201d he tells Chairman John Conyers, \u201cthat Congress investigates this shadow war to examine its legality.\u201d<\/p>\n What, one wonders, was Conyers thinking? Forty-two years earlier, after hearing testimony from Bart Osborn and Michael Uhl about the Phoenix program, Conyers and three other U.S. representatives stated their belief that \u201cThe people of these United States \u2026 have deliberately imposed on the Vietnamese people a system of justice which admittedly denies due process of law \u2026. In so doing, we appear to have violated the 1949 Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n His testimony, JS tells us, \u201cthrows him into the public arena,\u201d ever so reluctantly. He revisits his Blackwater testimony and shows pictures of himself with numerous celebrities on TV.<\/p>\n B-takes of Scahill walking among the common folk in Brooklyn, plotting his next move. Haunted by the horror of Gardez, he files FOIA requests and discovers that William McRaven is head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).\u00a0 He\u2019s stunned. He\u2019s been a national security reporter for over a decade, and he\u2019s never heard of JSOC before. It\u2019s covert. The story has been hidden in the shadows, he says.<\/p>\n This was the turning point of the film for me. For a National Security correspondent, this is an admission akin to a botanist saying he\u2019d never heard of flowers. It\u2019s an admission that fairly sums up the sorry state of reporting in America today. Has JS ever read a book?<\/p>\n JS discovers that Gardez is not an isolated incident, and that JSOC rampages across Afghanistan with \u201cunprecedented authority.\u201d\u00a0 He talks to a former JSOC soldier about its activities in Iraq, where it had hit lists and conducted night raids. This revelation, and the fact that McRaven took responsibility for Gardez, leads JS to conclude that JSOC is responsible for Gardez. \u00a0It certainly wasn\u2019t Congress, which according to JS, has no control over JSOC. JSOC money comes from rich donors.<\/p>\n JS learns that JSOC is not only in Afghanistan, but that it operates worldwide, and that its hit lists get bigger all the time. And we hear, for the first time, the catchy phrase, \u201cthe world is a battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point JS decides, with the help of The Nation brain trust, to investigate JSOC in Yemen where CIA drones are wiping out people by the score.<\/p>\n B-take of JS sipping tea thoughtfully. He\u2019s going to talk to the most powerful man in South Yemen. We view of scene of a drone strike: 46 killed, including five pregnant women. A woman in a black veil says her entire family, save one daughter, were wiped out. Violin music. But there\u2019s no cover-up here. In fact, Obama personally kept the journalist in prison who reported the strike.<\/p>\n What will Obama do to JS?<\/p>\n Once again, we fear for JS. Luckily he lives to talk to Rachel Maddow and Morning Joe. The greatness thrust upon him forces him onto TV shows everywhere. There he is with Amy Goodman!<\/p>\n More close-ups.\u00a0 We count the pores on his nose, the hairs in his eyebrows. We feel the fear. He gets a strange call. Someone tells him JSOC tortures people without telling the CIA or regular army, which are too busy torturing people to care.<\/p>\n As he studies the hit lists, he comes across radical America Muslim, Anwar al-Awlaki.\u00a0 After talking to Tony Schaffer, he realizes JSOC targets Muslims and that is why, along with the US invasion of Iraq, Awlaki is pissed off.\u00a0 Awlaki is an American but is inciting people to revolution in Yemen, so Yemen allows the CIA to kill him.<\/p>\n Note \u2014 the CIA is mentioned maybe twice in the film.\u00a0 Apparently it is so covert it escaped his notice.<\/p>\n We see JS in an exotic location. An airplane lands. JS is back in the USA. He\u2019s been traumatized by what he\u2019s seen. He tells anyone who will listen that the US cannot kill its way to peace, as if peace is the objective. The war on terror, he concludes, is creating enemies, which of course is the objective.<\/p>\n Before the American people can rally to JS\u2019s clarion call, Obama sends some guys to kill Osama bin Laden. \u00a0This is too much of a coincidence to ignore. Was it done to subvert his investigation? In any event, McRaven and JSOC are now heroes. He meets a knowledgeable person who tells him the Dirty War will go on forever. He tells us about signature strikes that kill people randomly (but not that the CIA conducts them) and that the war on terror is out of control.<\/p>\n Pictures of JS pointing to countries on a map where JSOC operates. He decides to visit Somalia, where JSOC is snatching bodies and taking them to ships in the Arabian Sea, and outsourcing its Dirty War to mercenaries. He visits mercenaries wearing camo fatigues. There are no other journalists here, it is too dangerous. Someone hands JS a flak jacket. Someone tells him they bury traitors alive. The tension soars. He\u2019s surrounded by armed men. There\u2019s a gunshot.\u00a0 He ducks behind sandbags.<\/p>\n We wonder who arranged for JS to meet these guys? Where did he get an interpreter? What\u2019s the quid pro quo?<\/p>\n JS goes to a hospital morgue and look at a mutilated body. \u00a0After which he wants to go home. But he learns that Awlaki\u2019s son has been killed and reluctantly he returns to Yemen.<\/p>\n I liked this part of the film. It seemed genuine. We see home videos of Awlaki\u2019s son doing youthful happy things.\u00a0 JS tries to understand why the US would deliberately kill a 16 year old kid? Which is a good question. Perhaps America is ruled by a murderous Cult of Death.<\/p>\n We see pictures of young girls smiling, and we revert back to the contrived scenes and monologue that drag the documentary down into gratuitous self-promotion. JS says he never had any idea where the story would lead, as if all this happened magically, like a rabbit pulled out of a hat.<\/p>\n The film ends and I wonder what he could have produced if he hadn\u2019t melodramatized and spent so much time and film on close-ups. I wonder what he could have done if he\u2019d read a few history books.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the film is so devoid of historical context, and so contrived, as to render it a work of art, rather than political commentary. And as art, it is pure self-indulgence.<\/p>\n And in this sense, it is a perfect slice of modern American life.<\/p>\n Doug Valentine<\/strong>\u00a0is the author of five books, including The Phoenix Program. See\u00a0www.douglasvalentine.com<\/a>\u00a0or write to him at\u00a0dougvalentine77@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n![\"phoenix\"](\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2013\/06\/phoenix.jpeg\")
<\/a>house one morning to tell me about the arrest at midnight of their men-folk, all of whom were political figures. The arrests had a strange aspect to them, having come when the city was asleep and being made by heavily armed men who were identified as `special police.\u201d”\u2018<\/p>\n