AlterNet: The Bush Admin's How-to Guide for Using Religious Warfare to Destroy Iraq

[marmar]

The Bush Admin's How-to Guide for Using Religious Warfare to Destroy Iraq

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted April 15, 2008.

Using a mixture of cultural ignorance, incompetence and a touch of cronyism, the U.S has turned a patriotic nation against itself.



Here's a thought exercise.

Imagine if the greatest minds this country has to offer were assembled in a conference room and tasked with drawing up a post-invasion plan that would lead to sectarian bloodshed in a country like Iraq -- where different groups had long lived side-by-side, intermarried and thought of themselves first and foremost as Iraqis, rather than as Shiites and Sunnis.

Their first recommendation would probably be to create an environment in which conflict would be likely to flourish. It would be a good idea to go into the country with enough heavy weaponry and air power to defeat the national army, but too few troops to provide security on the ground after the fact. When anarchy reigns, people look inward -- to their family, neighborhood and, yes, their religious community -- and develop a distrust of members of other communities.

If some military experts -- say the Army Chief of Staff -- said that the planned force would be insufficient for providing day-to-day security, one would probably want to humiliate and undermine him publicly. Maybe announce his successor 14 months before the end of his term so that he appeared before the world as some batty lame duck without any support from his superiors.

Then, dismantle the entire government, instead of just the senior leadership, and fire all of the country's bureaucrats, police and security personnel -- even if there were a half-million of them. But don't disarm them -- those weapons will come in handy later.

It would be good to destroy the country's infrastructure, too -- people get pissed off when they lack reliable electricity, working sanitation facilities, clean running water and the like. Make sure not to get those things up and running within five years of the invasion, either. That's a challenge, especially if one wants shovel tens of billions of dollars of American tax-payers' cash into the reconstruction effort. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/82212/

[bushmeister0]

1. Wait, this is about the Iranians, right? They did all this.

[spanone]

2. k&r

[Arctic Dave]

3. Divide and conquer is as old as warfare itself.

In my mind, this was exactly the plan the had laid out.

[L. Coyote]

4. Works in the USA too, to conquer the electorate.