The Shock Doctrine: Shock and Awe; War as Mass Torture

[Joanne98]

For the strategists of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the answer to the question of "where to stick the needles" appears to have been everywhere. During the 1991 Gulf War, roughly three hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired over the course of five weeks. In 2003, more than three hundred and eighty were launched in a single day. Between March 20 and May 2, the weeks of the "major combat," the US military dropped more than thirty thousand bombs on Iraq, as well as twenty thousand precision-guided cruise missiles-67 percent of the total number ever made.



"I am so scared," Yasmine Musa, a Baghdad mother of three said during the bombings. "Not a single minute passes by without hearing and feeling a drop of a bomb somewhere. I don't think a single meter in the whole of Iraq is safe." That meant Shock and Awe was doing it's job. In open defiance of the laws of war barring collective punishment, Shock and Awe is a military doctrine that prides itself on not merely targeting the enemy's military forces but, as the authors stress, the "society writ at large"- mass fear is a key part of the strategy.



Another element that distinguishes Shock and Awe is its acute consciousness of a war as a cable news spectacle, one playing to several audiences at once: the enemy, Americans at home and anyone else thinking of making trouble. "When the video results of these attacks are broadcasted in real time worldwide on CNN, the positive impact on coalition support and negative impact on potential threat support can be decisive," the Shock and Awe manual states. From the start, the invasion was conceived as a message from Washington to the world, one spoken in the language of fireballs, deafening explosions and city-shattering quakes. In The One Percent Doctrine, Ron Suskind explains that for Rumsfeld and Cheney, "the primary impetus for invading Iraq" was the desire "to create a demostration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons or, in anyway, flout the authority of the United States." Less than a war strategy, it was a "global experiment in behaviorism."



Shock And Awe is often presented as merely a strategy of over-whelming firepower, but the authors of the doctrine see it as much more than that: it is, they claim, a sophisticated psychological blueprint aimed "directly at the public will of the adversary to resist." The tools are familiar from another arm of the US military complex: sensory deprivation and sensory overload, designed to induce disorientation and regression. With clear echoes of the CIA's interrogation manuals, "Shock and Awe" states, "In crude terms, Rapid Dominance would seize control of the enivonment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events." the goal is "rendering the adversary completely impotent." This includes such strategies as "real-time manipulation of senses and imputs....literally 'turning on and off' the 'lights' that enable any potential aggressor to see or appreciate the conditions and events concerning his forces and ultimately, his society' as well as depriving the enemy, in specific areas, of the ability to communicate, observe." The country of Iraq was being subjected to this experiment in mass torture for months, with the process beginning well before the bombs started falling.



Previous thread.. The Kurbark manual...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2568675&mesg_id=2568675

[Lerkfish]

1. "I have become death, destroyer of worlds..."

america is the most pervasive killer of innocents throughout history, unfortunately. By consistent, I mean it doesn't seem to matter who's in charge. Other regimes have killed more, but always related to one particular leader or one administration of that regime.
America, spanning decades and DIFFERENT presidents has been the purveyor of indiscriminate death, and the ONLY country to have used nuclear weaponry on innocent civilians.

but with THIS administration, its was like Bush was trying to set the record for preemptive imperialism.

not a bright era in our history, but we haven't been that stellar at other times, either.

[irislake]

2. I agree

I can't understand why your "image" as a beacon of light and freedom to the world is believed by so many people outside America. It's so opposite to your brutal foreign and domestic policy.

Well Bush has made the truth glaringly obvious to us all now. Wot?

Canada exists because a few settlers who came to the New World strongly disagreed with the American way. Canadians fought hard not to be American. You really believe in violence to solve your problems.

But I am far from smug and self-congratulatory. We have been terrible to the First Nations people and have lots to be ashamed of. At least we didn't have a deliberate policy of genocide. Not that that's saying much.

However, as Chomsky points out the American people don't agree with their leaders. There's a big disconnect between the will of the people and the leaders. Corporate America has no use for the people -- except as consumers. That's why you are "a failed state".

[Lerkfish]

3. chomsky is right, at least in my case

I don't agree with those policies.

However, I do think, the core support for Bush, that obnoxious 24% or whatever it is, represents the worst elements of america, that support those hegemonic policies, but I personally feel the majority don't agree, but large portions of that majority can be played like a cheap violin because they allow themselves to be manipulated, or lulled to political sleep by media, politicians, and a general sense of powerlessness and futility in political process they are frequently disenfranchised from.

[Pavulon]

6. No, the USSR or ww2 europe gets that title

Compared to the killings of the 20th century the action in Iraq does not register. The actions of post war communist china starved millions.

The nuclear weapons lark is a joke. You should avoid it as it carries much drama but little weight.

We killed more people in Tokyo with fire bombs than in the Hiroshima attack. The BRITISH killed more in dresden with the same technology.

Oddly enough if you look at a running average of death in global war there is a massive drop..After 1945.

I am familiar with the tools we have to use on the battlefield. In terms of generating mass casualties strategic bombing of cities and use of artillery in offensive and counter battery fire are FAR and away the most deadly conventional weapons systems.

These were not used. Please do not try and equate anything in Iraq with the scale of destruction payed out in previous wars.

If the object was to inflict mass casualty we have the ability, but have not, and would never, use it in this or any other action.

Obviously the Iraq war is bad policy, but bad policy does not mean imperial desire or action.

[Lerkfish]

7. we disagree, and you avoided my central point.

that america has done this ACROSS various adminisrations and leaders.
Post war communist china was one administration.

Stalin was one leader, Hitler was one leader, Pol Pot was one leader.

[Toots]

4. twenty thousand precision-guided cruise missiles-67 percent of the total number ever made

War Profiteering The companies with No-Bid Government Contracts to replace those missiles are not at all unhappy....

[Joanne98]

5. Wasn't that an amazing figure.

[Joanne98]

8. kick