Dirty Wars and Self-Indulgence: Review by Douglas Valentine

[JohnDJasper]

Let me begin with some background not covered in the film. Dirty War derives from La Sale Guerre, the term the French applied to their counter-terror campaign in Algeria, circa 1954-1961. Algeria wanted independence, and France resisted.

Like subject people everywhere, the Algerians were badly outgunned and resorted to guerrilla tactics including “selective terrorism,” a hallmark of the Viet Minh, who fought the French until 1954, when America claimed Vietnam as its rightful property. Viet Minh tactics were derived largely from Mao’s precepts for fighting a People’s War.

Selective terrorism meant the murder of low-ranking officials – collaborators – who worked closely with the people; policemen, mailmen, teachers, etc. The murders were gruesome – a bullet in the belly or a grenade lobbed into a café – designed to achieve maximum publicity and demonstrate to the people the power of the nationalists to strike crippling blows against their oppressors.

Whether the Great White Fathers are French or American or English, they agree that putting down a People’s War means torturing and slaughtering the people – despite the fact that most people are not engaged in terrorism or guerrilla action and have no blood on their hands.

As John Stockwell taught us years ago, Dirty War means destabilizing a targeted nation through covert methods, the type the CIA has practiced around the world for 66 years. Destabilizing means “hiring agents to tear apart the social and economic fabric of the country.

“What we’re talking about is going in and deliberately creating conditions where the farmer can’t get his produce to market; where children can’t go to school; where women are terrified inside their homes as well as outside; where government administered programs grind to a complete halt; where the hospitals are treating wounded people instead of sick people; where international capital is scared away and the country goes bankrupt.”

- See more at: http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/dirty-wars-as-self-indulgence/#sthash.IlYb01DT.dpuf

And so begins Douglas Valentine's excellent commentary and review of the movie Dirty Wars.  The movie might be a complete sham (I won't know as I'll never watch it) but it serves as a useful prompt to review the real history of the "dirty war" philosophy and Valentine pulls no punches in his delivery.

Read the rest of the article here

Let me begin with some background not covered in the film. Dirty War derives from La Sale Guerre,
the term the French applied to their counter-terror campaign in
Algeria, circa 1954-1961. Algeria wanted independence, and France
resisted.

Like subject people everywhere, the Algerians were badly outgunned
and resorted to guerrilla tactics including “selective terrorism,” a
hallmark of the Viet Minh, who fought the French until 1954, when
America claimed Vietnam as its rightful property. Viet Minh tactics were
derived largely from Mao’s precepts for fighting a People’s War.

Selective terrorism meant the murder of low-ranking officials –
collaborators – who worked closely with the people; policemen, mailmen,
teachers, etc. The murders were gruesome – a bullet in the belly or a
grenade lobbed into a café – designed to achieve maximum publicity and
demonstrate to the people the power of the nationalists to strike
crippling blows against their oppressors.

Whether the Great White Fathers are French or American or English,
they agree that putting down a People’s War means torturing and
slaughtering the people – despite the fact that most people are not
engaged in terrorism or guerrilla action and have no blood on their
hands.

As John Stockwell taught us years ago, Dirty War means destabilizing a
targeted nation through covert methods, the type the CIA has practiced
around the world for 66 years. Destabilizing means “hiring agents to
tear apart the social and economic fabric of the country.

“What we’re talking about is going in and deliberately creating
conditions where the farmer can’t get his produce to market; where
children can’t go to school; where women are terrified inside their
homes as well as outside; where government administered programs grind
to a complete halt; where the hospitals are treating wounded people
instead of sick people; where international capital is scared away and
the country goes bankrupt.”

Economic warfare – strangling nations like Cuba, Iraq and Iran in
Medieval fashion – is a type of Dirty Warfare beloved by the Great White
Fathers who control the world’s finances. Though no less deadly than
atomic bombs, or firebombing Dresden, it is easier to sell to the
bourgeoisie.

You’ll hear no mention of this in Scahill’s film, nor will you hear
any references to Phil Agee, or the countless others who have explained
Dirty War to each generation of Americans since World War Two.

You will not hear about psychological warfare, the essence of Dirty War.

America’s first was terror guru was Ed Lansdale, the advertising
executive who made Levi’s blue jeans a national craze in the 1930’s. He
applied his sales skills to propaganda in the OSS and after WW II,
concocted a new generation of psywar tactics as an agent of the Office
of Policy Coordination assigned to the Philippines under military cover.
Lansdale’s bottomless black bag of dirty tricks included a “skull
squadron” death squad that roamed the countryside, torturing and
murdering Communist terrorists.

One of Lansdale’s counter-terror “psywar” tactics was to string a
captured Communist guerrilla upside down from a tree, stab him in the
neck with a stiletto, and drain his blood. The terrorized Commies fled
the area and the terrified villagers, who believed in vampires, begged
the government for protection.

Lansdale referred to his sadism as “low humor,” an excuse borrowed
liberally by American officialdom during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Lansdale formalized “black propaganda” practices to vilify the
Communists: one of his Filipino commando units would dress as rebels and
commit atrocities, and then another unit would arrive with cameras to
record the staged scenes and chase the “terrorists” away.

Lansdale brought his black propaganda and passion for atrocity to
Saigon in 1954, along with a goon squad of Filipinos mercenaries
packaged as “Freedom Company.”

Under Lansdale’s guidance, Freedom Company sent Vietnamese commandoes
into North Vietnam, under cover as relief workers, to activate
stay-behind agent nets and conduct all manner of sabotage and
subversion. Disinformation was a Lansdale specialty, and his agents
spread lurid tales of Vietminh soldiers’ disemboweling pregnant Catholic
women, castrating priests, and sticking bamboo slivers in the ears of
children so they could not hear the Word of God.

In the South, with the help of the American media, Lansdale re-branded the heroic Vietminh as the beastly Viet Cong.

Lansdale’s greatest innovation, still used today, was to conduct all
manner of espionage and terror under cover of “civic action.” As a way
of attacking Viet Minh agents in the South, Lansdale launched “Operation
Brotherhood,” a Filipino paramedical team patterned on the typical
Special Forces A team. With CIA money, Operation Brotherhood built
medical dispensaries that the CIA used as cover for terror operations,
as depicted in the book and movie The Quiet American.

Levis never went out of fashion, nor did Lansdale’s 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.

Think Argo and Zero Dark Thirty and every Rambo and Bruce Willis film.

- See more at: http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/dirty-wars-as-self-indulgence/#sthash.IlYb01DT.dpuf

Let me begin with some background not covered in the film. Dirty War derives from La Sale Guerre,
the term the French applied to their counter-terror campaign in
Algeria, circa 1954-1961. Algeria wanted independence, and France
resisted.

Like subject people everywhere, the Algerians were badly outgunned
and resorted to guerrilla tactics including “selective terrorism,” a
hallmark of the Viet Minh, who fought the French until 1954, when
America claimed Vietnam as its rightful property. Viet Minh tactics were
derived largely from Mao’s precepts for fighting a People’s War.

Selective terrorism meant the murder of low-ranking officials –
collaborators – who worked closely with the people; policemen, mailmen,
teachers, etc. The murders were gruesome – a bullet in the belly or a
grenade lobbed into a café – designed to achieve maximum publicity and
demonstrate to the people the power of the nationalists to strike
crippling blows against their oppressors.

Whether the Great White Fathers are French or American or English,
they agree that putting down a People’s War means torturing and
slaughtering the people – despite the fact that most people are not
engaged in terrorism or guerrilla action and have no blood on their
hands.

As John Stockwell taught us years ago, Dirty War means destabilizing a
targeted nation through covert methods, the type the CIA has practiced
around the world for 66 years. Destabilizing means “hiring agents to
tear apart the social and economic fabric of the country.

“What we’re talking about is going in and deliberately creating
conditions where the farmer can’t get his produce to market; where
children can’t go to school; where women are terrified inside their
homes as well as outside; where government administered programs grind
to a complete halt; where the hospitals are treating wounded people
instead of sick people; where international capital is scared away and
the country goes bankrupt.”

Economic warfare – strangling nations like Cuba, Iraq and Iran in
Medieval fashion – is a type of Dirty Warfare beloved by the Great White
Fathers who control the world’s finances. Though no less deadly than
atomic bombs, or firebombing Dresden, it is easier to sell to the
bourgeoisie.

You’ll hear no mention of this in Scahill’s film, nor will you hear
any references to Phil Agee, or the countless others who have explained
Dirty War to each generation of Americans since World War Two.

You will not hear about psychological warfare, the essence of Dirty War.

America’s first was terror guru was Ed Lansdale, the advertising
executive who made Levi’s blue jeans a national craze in the 1930’s. He
applied his sales skills to propaganda in the OSS and after WW II,
concocted a new generation of psywar tactics as an agent of the Office
of Policy Coordination assigned to the Philippines under military cover.
Lansdale’s bottomless black bag of dirty tricks included a “skull
squadron” death squad that roamed the countryside, torturing and
murdering Communist terrorists.

One of Lansdale’s counter-terror “psywar” tactics was to string a
captured Communist guerrilla upside down from a tree, stab him in the
neck with a stiletto, and drain his blood. The terrorized Commies fled
the area and the terrified villagers, who believed in vampires, begged
the government for protection.

Lansdale referred to his sadism as “low humor,” an excuse borrowed
liberally by American officialdom during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Lansdale formalized “black propaganda” practices to vilify the
Communists: one of his Filipino commando units would dress as rebels and
commit atrocities, and then another unit would arrive with cameras to
record the staged scenes and chase the “terrorists” away.

Lansdale brought his black propaganda and passion for atrocity to
Saigon in 1954, along with a goon squad of Filipinos mercenaries
packaged as “Freedom Company.”

Under Lansdale’s guidance, Freedom Company sent Vietnamese commandoes
into North Vietnam, under cover as relief workers, to activate
stay-behind agent nets and conduct all manner of sabotage and
subversion. Disinformation was a Lansdale specialty, and his agents
spread lurid tales of Vietminh soldiers’ disemboweling pregnant Catholic
women, castrating priests, and sticking bamboo slivers in the ears of
children so they could not hear the Word of God.

In the South, with the help of the American media, Lansdale re-branded the heroic Vietminh as the beastly Viet Cong.

Lansdale’s greatest innovation, still used today, was to conduct all
manner of espionage and terror under cover of “civic action.” As a way
of attacking Viet Minh agents in the South, Lansdale launched “Operation
Brotherhood,” a Filipino paramedical team patterned on the typical
Special Forces A team. With CIA money, Operation Brotherhood built
medical dispensaries that the CIA used as cover for terror operations,
as depicted in the book and movie The Quiet American.

Levis never went out of fashion, nor did Lansdale’s 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.

Think Argo and Zero Dark Thirty and every Rambo and Bruce Willis film.

- See more at: http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/dirty-wars-as-self-indulgence/#sthash.IlYb01DT.dpuf