THUG POLITIK -- The Neo Con Agenda for a New American Century, Part II

II.

Constabulism: Degrade, Brutalize, Terrorize.

If unilateral and preemptive power projection is fundamentally irreconcilable with the stuff of civilization, what can one expect in its wake? Only anti civilization. “Zones of democratic peace” is simply Neospeak for national concentration camps in which civil society has been brutalized, terrorized and degraded to a sub-social level.

Not only does this follow implicitly from the policy premise of power projection, the neoscum actually brag about it and lay the program in fairly specific terms under the newly minted rubric of Constabulary Missions.

If there were nothing more to the neocon weltanschauung than kicking butt it could perhaps be said that it propounded nothing that different from Hobbesian realism or Calliclean cynicsm -- although even in those case the exercise of power was presupposed to subserve some ulterior good. But even that slim saving grace is removed by the neocon doctrine of constabulary operations. Under this quaint and archaic term -- reminiscent of the avunvular, moustachioed Bobby in his tall hat -- the neocon collapse ends into means and means into routinized bullying and oppression. Constabulism is the essential sarcoma of the Neocon vision for Hell on Earth.

Waging Peace & Maintaining War

After setting forth constabulary operations as one of the four critical missions for the U.S. military, the neocon Manifesto goes on to describe this mission with a string of catch phrases and slogans asserting that the new mission requires the U.S. military to,

• be equipped for “long term constabulary operations”, which
• “secure and amplify zones of democratic peace”; and
• “shape the security environemnt and the early stages of any conflict.”

These constabulary missions are something apart from traditional full-scale theatre wars. Accordingly, the Manifesto declaims that it is necessary to ensure

“that [the army] is equal to the tasks before it: shaping the peacetime environment and winning multiple, simultaneous theater wars”

With respect shaping the peacetime environment,

“the first order of business ... is to establish security, stability and order[,]

and to do so,

“American troops, in particular, must be regarded as part of an overwhelmingly powerful force.”

However, establishing order is only one prong of the constabulary’s two prong mission of “securing and extending” zones of democratic peace. The execution of these constabulary missions requires military forces which are,

"configured for combat but [i.e. “and”] capable of long-term, independent constabulary operations.”

Combat against whom? Whenever a military amplifies a zone, it necessarily invades, incurs into and wages war against an adjacent zone, whatever it may called, although “terrorist zone” seems to be the current label. Thus this constabulary task requires one and the same forces to engage in peacekeeping and war-making at the same time in the same general region.

What the PNAC envisions is “an American led security order” consisting of ongoing zonal wars along what it calls the “American security frontier.” This frontier is not our border with Canada or Mexico, but Eastern Europe and the Middle East

“[T]he new opportunity for greater European stability offered by further NATO expansion will make demands on ground and land based air forces [a]s the American security perimeter in Europe is removed [sic] eastward...”

and

“The Pentagon must retain forces to preserve the current peace in ways that fall short of conduction major theater campaigns. such [constabulary] forces must be expanded to meet the needs of the new, long-term NATO mission in the Balkans, and other missions in Southwest Asia, [i.e. “the Middle East and surrounding energy producing region”]

Madcap as this policy is, it is only half the lunacy, because the PNAC explicitly rejects traditional notions of "peacekeeping" which is why they coined the word “constabulary.” As the Manifesto itself states,

“Constabulary missions are far more complex and likely to generate violence than traditional ‘peacekeeping’ missions.”

Here, for anyone with eyes to read, the Manifesto tips its hand. What kind of constable generates violence? What is so “more complex” to normal “peace patrols”? To answer these questions, one must take a step back and examine historically accepted norms of international conflict.

Traditional peacekeeping operations fell into two broad categories. : (1) restoring civil order and services following conquest and occupation; or (2) acting as a buffer between belligerents. The German occupation of France and the subsequent Allied occupation of Germany are examples of the first variant, and the rules of this kind of peacekeeping are well established in international law. Generally speaking, the occupying army guards key installations in a low key fashion while it works with and relies upon pre-existing police departments and bureaucratic institutions to provide security and services as near to normal as possible. While the full convention of civil rights are not fully restored, the aim of a successful peacekeeping occupation is to be as unobtrusive and invisible as possible while yet maintaining control over the conquered State.

Buffer peacekeeping is the inverse. The goal is to remain as visible as possible to but to retain as little control (or responsibility) for the work of governing the territory in question. This is left to the contending parties in their respective spheres and is supervised only to the degree necessary to prevent further hostilities. In practice, this type of peacekeeping has proved problematic, but overall it has achieved some notable successes.

In light of these concepts, the dual task of securing and amplifying would ordinarily be interpreted as requiring both non-combat and combat missions; even if, as a practical necessity, these two distinct missions would usually be accomplished by one and the same military force. To be sure, this heteronomous dual-task is fraught with mission-confusion and screw ups which is why many traditionalist officers rankled at being required to do a job they saw as fundamentally non-military. Nevertheless, it is not such a dual task as has not been done before. Peacekeeping in conquered territory while “advancing the front” is nothing armed forces haven't done before.

However, this dual-tasking presented a problem for the PNAC authors because, in traditional terms, it required the military to discharge the fundamentally distinct missions of peace-keeping and war-making. Traditional peacekeeping was of no interest to the PNAC, which is the PNAC Manifesto explicitly rejected the concept of a post-combat peacekeeping mission, rather,

“these [constabulary] missions demand forces basically configured for combat.”

because the purpose of these missions is to

"remove [“hostile”] regimes from power and conduct post-combat stability operations. In purposes [sic], constabulary missions could be considered “lesser included cases”.

Lesser included of what? “Lesser included cases” was a term borrowed from law, where a simple assault with fists is said to be a “lesser included offence” of aggravated assault with a gun. Thus what the Manifesto explicitly states is that these peacekeeping (“constabulary”) missions are a lesser form of war.

Thus, constabulary forces

“will need sufficient personnel strength to be able to conduct sustained traditional infantry missions”

and

“They will need sufficient personnel strength to be able to conduct sustained traditional infantry missions, but with the mobility to operate over extended areas. They must have enough direct firepower to dominate their immediate tactical situation,”

The PNAC wanted a military that would “shape” the peacetime environment. Of course, the mission has nothing to do with “shaping peace” as a viable reality in itself. The word “peace” was thrown in here and there to lubricate the swallow. What is really at issue is “shaping the security environment” by which is meant shaping the conditions of those areas in which traditional military fighting is not taking place.

That is why “shaping the security” and “shaping the initial stages of conflict” could lie seamlessly along the the same spectrum. They weren’t distinct missions but different levels of the same mission.

That is also why “constabulary” non-peacekeeping was likely to generate violence. The phrase is uttered like a commonplace that ought to be accepted. Would anyone have thought otherwise? Actually, yes.

Customarily, it is not expected that traditional peacekeeping forces will generate violence. In fact it has not even been expected that they were likely to “meet with” more than occasional and isolated violence. The reason is simple. Victor and vanquished alike have an interest in resuming normal life once the battle is over. This does not mean that love and friendship reign; in fact, more than likely, hate and resentment will fester. But anyone who has experienced it hates war even more. War represents a disruption of normal life and hence a threat to life itself. People cannot live in a state of ongoing disruption and thus have a greater interest in the reestablishment of order, of fuel supplies, of food deliveries, of water, of medical services, of schools.

The only reason “constabulary non-peacekeeping”could be expected to generate violence was if it did not seek to restore normal life. Instead, the PNAC Manifesto anticipates ongoing hostilities both inside the newly acquired zone of democratic peace and outside it in seeking toe extend it. In other words, Constabulisim is simply ongoing war at another level. A lesser included case.

This is the first indication that the New American Century has made a radical departure from the structures of international law and conflict management evolved laboriously since Grotius. Everyhting the PNAC Manifesto says indicates that “constabulary” operations are to be regarded as simply a penumbra of war -- an ongoing violence generating “security shaping” within a zone of democratic peace.

Fighting A Lesser Included Peace

How does an army “shape” a peace? What does it mean to “shape the security environment.” The answer to this question is as nauseating as discovering the true meaning of “constabulism”.

Shaping a security environment is something that prison wardens do. It consists in prescribing lock-downs, conducting unannounced searches, the infliction of summary “lesser included” punishments, the imposition of conditions for minor benefits, and so on.

It was no lapse that PNAC talks of the army (constabulary) as “shaping the peace” and “shaping the security environment”. What is meant is that the military is going to control the parameters of existence outside any theatre of actual conventional war and the the “zone of democratic peace” is to be conceived as nothing more than a regional lock-down.

When the PNAC Manifesto speaks of a military capable of “long-term, independent constabulary operations” it means two things;

1) that the mission is not a temporary peacekeeping/ order maintaing operation until such time as civilian authority can be reestablished but rather that

2) it is an occupation which is independent from, unreliant upon and not answerable any civilian institution or authority.

The constabulary units are preeminent, supreme, and they alone decide what is to be. It also means that these military stompers and shapers are not dependent on our own related institutions which might be encumbered by statutory obligations or a feeble concern for norms of law. Constabulism is a law unto itself.

In order to shape the security environment,

“These forward-based, independent units will be increasingly built around the acquisition and management of information. This will be essential for combat operations – precise, long-range fires require accurate and timely intelligence and robust communications links – but also for stability operations.”

thus they should have,

“ have their own human intelligence collection capacity, perhaps through an attached special forces unit if not solely through an organic intelligence unit“

and should be configured with

"combat service support personnel with special language, logistics and other support skills."

because the units involved

“will require the ability to understand and operate in unique political-military environments, ...

and will be

“required to maintain peace and stability in the regions they patrol, provide early warning of imminent crises, and to shape the early stages of any conflict – precise, long-range fires require accurate and timely intelligence and robust communications links – but also for stability operations."

Once again it is necessary to unravel, the unique blend of contradictions the PNAC mavens have brewed up.

When the Manifesto makes reference to “forward-based, independent units” it is not talking, in the first instance, of forward striking forces landing, penetrating and invading new territory. The matrix of “zones of democratic peace” are themselves the “forward based” new “American security perimeter.” Thus, while the mission of the forces entails extending the security perimeter, what the Manifesto is here talking about is “security” operations within the forward based perimeter.

Of course, as has been shown, “secure and extend” are seamlessly connected operations; so seamless in fact as to result in weirdly constructed phrases like:

"shaping “the early stages of any conflict – precise, long-range fires require accurate and timely intelligence and robust communications links – but also for stability operations."

Striking out the part that refers to early stages of an extending operation, it becomes clear that what is called for is acquisition of sufficient intelligence “for stability operations” within the “peace” zone. To understand what this entails, we have to again pause to think about the meaning of words.

The word “intelligence” signifies a creature’s ability to use its mental faculties in an efficient, versatile, creative, and useful manner. In the 19th century the word began to be applied metaphorically to institutions which of course have no brain and cannot be said to be either intelligent or stupid. In this metaphorical sense, “intelligence” became practically synonymous with “knowledge of something” or “information”. However, the original sense was not entirely lost so that the word could also refer to an institution’s ability to gather information. -- which is the closest a corporate entity can come to having an IQ.

Traditionally speaking, military intelligence is concerned with acquiring information as to the location, size and battle plan of opposing theatre forces. As war became more industrialized, military intelligence also brought within its purview information as to armaments, production capacity and sustainability. But in all events “intelligence” was directed at an identifiable combatant enemy and sought specific types of information.

In the sense of “information” corporate, police, military intelligence also seeks knowledge of something specific and usually from specific parties or classes of people. Just as military intelligence seeks specific information about an identified opponent, so police intelligence plants undercover agents and spies upon specific people or groups reasonably suspected of engaging in specific crimes for information about those crimes.

Assuming that this traditional definition (more or less widely construed) fits with the task of "amplifying" zones of democratic peace, It has nothing to do with with the separate and distinct task of "securing" (i.e. traditional peacekeeping). Who is the enemy in a non-battlefield zone? Traditionally speaking there is no enemy; there is only a civilian population that is no doubt demoralized and resentful, but is not engaged in hostilities.

What is the “intelligence” to be gained? Certainly not “battlefield” intelligence because there is no battlefield within the zone of democratic peace. So, then, information about what and from whom?

When the Manifesto talks about “organic” intelligence units, it means that kind of intelligence acquired by penetrating into society; through infiltration on the one hand or extracting (detaining) people on the other. When it speaks of gaining an “understanding” of the “politico-military” environment what it means is acquiring information from anyone about anything. In contrast to the word “knowledge” -- which is always of something -- the word “understanding” is broader and encompasses awareness of a random range of variables. The term “politico military environment” simply means anything in the surroundings which could have a political or military implication -- i.e. anything.

Under the PNAC constabulary regime, information gathering is total and free form, encompassing anything of potential interest to brewing conflicts, (to be shaped) to an understanding of who is connected to whom in a given neighborhood. This is not “intelligence” in the traditional sense of finding answers to specific questions it is rather simply data mining. General free form information gathering.

The difference is critical because data mining means interrogating anyone in the security zone as a “potential suspect” not because he is a potential suspect or even an an actual one, but rather because anything he knows might be potentially useful, or as they say, is potentially usefully.

The difference is critical also because data mining -- once accepted -- simply destroys the concept of arbitrariness.

In traditional military or criminal intelligence there is always a specific suspect and question in mind. Rounding up people without a specific suspicion or specific question is consider “arbitrary” and unlawful. Who would want to live in a society where he or his wife or children could be yanked off the street and hauled off for questioning without specific cause much less notice, advisement?

But in the world of data mining no specific information is sought. What counts is is the possible relation between apparently unconnected and insignificant pieces of data. Since any person in the security zone can possess such a piece of connect able data no arrest is “arbitrary” and every one is a potential “suspect” in “possession of potential information” .

And of course since anyone is suspect of having potentially useful information howsoever useless it might seem to be at the moment, it is easy to forget why we are interrogating him altogether, and just simply beat him up by way of affirmative pacification.

As a result of the hybrid task, military intelligence gets twisted into meaning general unfocused intelligence run by the military in non-battlefield zones. in order to maintain occupation and prevent the eruption of resistance. “Intelligence” is metamorphosed into data mining which becomes the excuse for wholesale door smashing, draggings, detentions, interrogations and in general boot-stomping, boot smashing, ass kicking, terrorization of the population in general.

Confidence is the foundation of all civil society which cannot function without expectations of integrity, confidentiality and security “in one’s person, papers and effects.” Data-mining is under-mining. A society that is “organically” penetrated by spies, informers and extraction-actions is not society that has been “rebuilt” to be democratic and prosperous but one that has been subverted and consumed.

Under the PNAC’s new Constabulary Order the secured zone of peace is just as much in a state of violence as the extended zone of peace. The only difference is that the “enemy within” is more pathetically helpless than the “enemy without”.

Safety is War. Total Safety is Total War

It is not for nothing that the Russians have called the neocon manifesto another Mein Kampf. Forthrightly and without shame its sets forth a goal of global domination for its own sake. But next to neocon megalomania, Mein Kampf seems almost restrained and philosophical.

According to the Manifesto, the American led security-order will require the United States to

maintain multiple full theatre wars in conjunction with
long term constabulary operations
that secure and amplify zones of democratic peace
and shape security environment

and what this means has now become clear. But it is still only half the story. In in paroxyms of truly Strangelovian Joy, the PNAC mavens go on to declaim that the New American Security Order requires, us to

“CONTROL THE 'NEW INTERNATIONAL COMMONS" or SPACE AND “CYBERSPACE,”

Not only does the Manifesto call for” the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control” The PNAC’s goal of “space control” is to prevent anyone else from having access to outer space and to use outer space for the placement military weapons that can strike anywhere on earth from the push of a button in some bunker in Wyoming.

But even more lethal is the Neoscum’s call for military missions to be extended to the new “battlefield” of the internet.

The Manifesto begins by complaining that terrorist groups (including by its own count the EZLN peasant autonomy movement in Chiapas, Mexico) use the internet for “propaganda” and “recruitment”. The notion that “terrorists” are having applicants sign up through e-applications is, of course, inane. In reality, any recruitment occurs through the fact of propaganda, and propaganda is what free speech is all about. Although there are always problems when a Government starts to exercise so-called free speech, it can be assumed for the present that it would be equally legitimate for the United States or any other party to use the internet to make its own and contrary propaganda.

However, the “competitive market place of idea” as Justice Brandeis put it is not how the PNAC conceives of “cyberwar” None other than Donald Scumsfeld, signatory to the Manifesto, and currently Secretary of War, has stated that the U.S. military needs to engage in disinformation campaigns.

Just as data-mining is not the same as intelligence gathering, so too disinformation is not the same as propaganda. All propaganda is interpretative. It argues an interpretation of and from given facts. Almost everyone’s propaganda engages in some “fact-massaging” -- playing up those facts that are helpful to the argument and omitting facts that are inconvenient. Disinformation is far more toxic. It consists in planting false facts under false identities, or using false identities to generate conflict or confusion and to induce social disorientation. . Like a person spun around to the point of staggering dizziness, disinformed society is one that simply cannot function as social organism; it is simply humanoid putty.

Thus, in addition to destroying language so that “words no longer have their original and intended meaning” the neocons want to destroy information in general so that none of us any longer can say for sure that what is reported as fact was really a fact or only a lie. This is the ultimate heteronomy that destroys everything.

Not quite... there still remains your young son on the cusp of manhood.... The neocons call for radical reconfiguring of the Army in terms that exceed any Stangelovian orgasm

"Future soldiers may operate in encapsulated, climate-controlled, powered fighting suits, laced with sensors, and boasting chameleonlike “active” camouflage. “Skin-patch” pharmaceuticals help regulate fears, focus concentration and enhance endurance and strength."

The PNAC plan for Neocon Youth calls for our sons to be turned into doped up murderous Borg units.

It is a fatal mistake to think of the Neocon movement as a political opposition that can be met on the customary field of polemical and electoral give and take. For only the brain of a monster, and not that of a man, could misconceive such a “Project” whose workings must finally bring about the collapse of human civilization and turn this world into a desert waste. No - this movement is an invasive disease and every single goddamn, misbegotten neocon, von kopf zum fuss, is a malignant, infected, stinking shit in vaguely human form. The devil himself would be revolted.

©WCG, 2003

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