zondag 24 mei 2015

Henk Hofland en de Massa 68


Ours is het first age in which many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have made it a full-time business to get inside the collective public mind. To get inside in order to manipulate, exploit, control is het object now. And to generate heat not light is the intention. To keep everybody in the helpless state engendered by prolonged mental rutting is the effect of many ads and much entertainment. It is observable that the more illusion and falsehood needed to maintain any given state of affairs, the more tyranny is needed to maintain the illusion and falsehood. Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort. 
Marshall McLuhan. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. 1951.

Het door de Canadese hoogleraar McLuhan beschreven en geanalyseerde proces geldt niet alleen voor reclame, maar tevens voor propaganda. Na uitgebreid wetenschappelijk onderzoek is komen vast te staan dat net als advertenties ook politieke 'boodschappen' de werkelijkheid vertekenen. In het hoofdstuk Political relevance of entertainment media in de studie Political Communication (2014), geredigeerd door de Duitse hoogleraar Politieke Communicatie Carsten Reinemann, wijzen de auteurs er terecht op dat

The increase of political entertainment is not a phenomenon peculiar to the United States. Outside the United States, scholarly debates have evolved around the socio-economic meanings of soft news that blends political information and entertainment (Brants and Voltmer 2011) Another line of research has focused on analyzing political messages embedded within magazines and prime-time TV dramas.  

Het grote publiek in het Westen wordt onophoudelijk bestookt door politieke propaganda. Dit wordt dermate normaal geacht dat het bijna niemand meer opvalt hoe hij/zij via ontelbare kanalen het object zijn van 'manipulatie, exploitatie en controle,' waarbij 'It is observable that the more illusion and falsehood needed to maintain any given state of affairs, the more tyranny is needed to maintain the illusion and falsehood,' zoals professor McLuhan al meer dan zes decennia geleden constateerde. Een voorbeeld van dit mechanisme geeft De Groene Amsterdammer van 19 mei 2015, wanneer de redactie zichzelf, namens de immer zwijgzame lezer, de retorische vraag stelt:


De voor de hand liggende vraag tegen wie de als grote boeman opgevoerde 'Poetin' kennelijk in zijn eentje 'een nieuw soort informatieoorlog [voert],' wordt evenwel niet gesteld. Evenmin maakt de redactie duidelijk waarom zij tegelijkertijd de westerse 'informatieoorlog' niet serieus onderzoekt, terwijl het weekblad nota bene zelf fanatiek aan de propagandaslag deelneemt. Hoewel deze vragen relevant zijn, kunnen ze niet door De Groene worden opgeworpen omdat de spreekbuis van Hoflands 'politiek-literaire elite' zichzelf dan onderwerp van discussie maakt. Al vele maanden lang houdt het een hetze tegen 'Poetin' op gang, kennelijk in het onwankelbare geloof dat het beleid van de Russische federatie door slechts één man wordt bepaald, die ook nog eens alleen maar kwade bedoelingen heeft. Hier is sprake van dezelfde soort angst die kinderen vertonen wanneer ze sprookjes lezen over boze heksen en gemene tovenaars. Het spreekt daarbij voor zich dat de Atlantici, onder aanvoering van Washington en Wall Street, de dappere tegenkracht vertegenwoordigen. De geestesgesteldheid van degenen die doorgaan voor de spraakmakende intelligentsia in het piepkleine Nederland is verpletterend infantiel. Wanneer Geert Mak met grote stelligheid en zonder enig intellectueel weerwerk kan verkondigen dat de 'kracht van onze westerse samenleving onze democratie [is], onze variatie in ideeën, onze tolerantie, onze openheid tegenover andere culturen,' dan blijkt hoe gelijk McLuhan had toen hij erop wees dat

[o]urs is het first age in which many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have made it a full-time business to get inside the collective public mind. To get inside in order to manipulate, exploit, control is het object now. 

En dat de 'intentie' van de machtigen is 'to generate heat not light.' Niet het denken wordt gestimuleerd, maar de ressentimenten, niet de matiging maar het onverzadigbare. Opnieuw gelden de woorden van W.B. Yeats uit 1919:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


Libische slachtoffers van een NAVO bombardement.

Het brandende verlangen is zo 'intens' geworden dat zelfs een hoogbejaarde met één been al in het graf met een verbazingwekkende viefheid kan oproepen ten strijde te trekken, terwijl hij weet dat de overgrote meerderheid van de slachtoffers vrouwen, kinderen, bejaarden, ongewapende burgers in het algemeen, zullen zijn. En ondertussen geldt dat '[t]he best lack all conviction,' met als gevolg dat de Hoflanden en Makkianen de ruimte kregen om het publieke domein te domineren. 'Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,' en heeft er 'democratisch' voor gezorgd dat rijke parasieten het maatschappelijk weefsel hebben verwoest. Het is wanorde die door de 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder wordt verkocht als 'ordebewaking' en 'vredestichtend.' Woorden en begrippen zijn door de zelfbenoemde 'elite,' namens de macht, verkracht: oorlog heet nu vrede, vrijheid slavernij, en onwetendheid kracht.  Haar politieke taal is, in de woorden van Orwell, 'designed to make lies sound truthful  and murder respectable and to give an appendance of solidarity to pure wind.' Hofland en Mak zijn onmisbaar voor de hedendaagse machthebbers en hun postmodern fascisme. Of dit slag propagandisten nu optimisten dan wel pessimisten zijn, maakt niets uit, allen sleuren de mens mee naar de afgrond. Ik heb ze decennialang van nabij kunnen observeren en weet dat ze even onnozel als gevaarlijk zijn. Hun enthousiasme voor wapens en geweld, om dit keer 'meneer Poetin' eens te leren waar de neoliberale macht en haar NAVO 'de grenzen' leggen, is godzijdank tot nu toe contraproductief geweest, niet meer dan het geschreeuw van malloten, zoals overduidelijk blijkt uit het feit dat 'John Kerry admits defeat: The Ukraine story the media won’t tell, and why U.S. retreat is a good thing.' 

It is just as well Secretary of State John Kerry’s momentous meetings with Russian leaders last week took place in Sochi, the Black Sea resort where President Putin keeps a holiday home. When you have to acknowledge that two years’ worth of pointless hostility in the bilateral relationship has proven none other than pointless, it is best to do so in a far-away place.

Arriving in the morning and leaving in the afternoon, Kerry spent three hours with Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s very competent foreign minister, and then four with Putin. After struggling with the math, these look to me like the most significant seven hours the former senator will spend as this nation’s face abroad,

aldus de Amerikaanse deskundige Patrick Smith,

author of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century.” He was the International Herald Tribune’s bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote 'Letter from Tokyo' for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @thefloutist.

Smith is geen praatjesmaker uit een kikkerlandje die voor een tijdschrift schrijft met een oplage dat in 2014 met 1,6 procent daalde naar wekelijks 19.446 exemplaren, maar iemand die van binnenuit weet hoe realpolitiek zich in de praktijk niets aantrekt van de ideologische kletskoek van mainstream-opiniemakers. Nu de Hoflanden en Makkianen zichzelf in een doodlopende straat hebben gemanoeuvreerd, kijken ze elkaar met een bête blik aan, in de hoop dat iemand van hen een oplossing verzint om met zo min mogelijk schade aan hun imago uit de zelf veroorzaakte cul de sac te kunnen ontsnappen. Het uiteindelijke resultaat van hun weerzinwekkende houding zal, vrees ik, dezelfde zijn als die na hun steun aan de NAVO-geweld dat Afghanistan, Libië en Syrië in een bloedige burgeroorlog heeft gestort, namelijk een 'conspiracy of silence.' Ze zwijgen hun persoonlijke verantwoordelijkheid voor de massale terreur gewoon dood, doen alsof hun neus bloedt. Voordat internet bestond kon dit probleemloos, bijna niemand wist wie wat een week eerder had beweerd, maar nu is dit niet meer mogelijk. Wie schrijft die blijft, tot eigen roem of schande, een feit dat de bedriegers zeker na hun dood niet meer kunnen veranderen, net zomin als de meeste nazi's en fascisten dit na 1945 konden. Steun aan het postmoderne fascisme is in een communicatietijdperk voor altijd vast gelegd, en ook al 'vertrouwt [Hofland] liever op zijn geheugen dan dat hij in de archieven afdaalt, ook al omdat hij ervan uitgaat dat de gemiddelde lezer nog slechter gedocumenteerd is,' dan nog zal onder ware intellectuelen bekend zijn dat 'Hofland zich in eerste en laatste instantie' niet 'altijd door zijn stijl,' redt, zoals een bewonderaar van hem beweerde. En wat zijn bestseller-collega Geert Mak ook aan nonsens moge verspreiden, de komende generaties zullen zich niet in de luren laten leggen door zijn 'weke sentiment,'  eenvoudigweg omdat zij zullen worden geconfronteerd met de consequenties van Mak's steun aan het neoliberale en neoconservatieve fascisme waarbij hij de Amerikaanse genocidale praktijken  in Vietnam etc. verheerlijkt als zegeningen van de grote 'ordebewaker en politieagent' in de wereld. Intussen kan een onafhankelijke waarnemer niet anders dan de beschrijving prijzen van de Britse hoogleraar Russian and European Politics, Richard Sakwa. In zijn boek Frontline Ukraine. Crisis In The Borderlands (2015) constateerde hij ondermeer dat de Polen 'demonstrated their distrust of European institutions in their desire to gain US security guarantees,' en dat bij gebrek aan een eigen beleid zowel de EU van zowel 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel' als van de NAVO zich door de Oost-Europese lidstaten hebben laten domineren. Sakwa:

The destructive Russophobia of new Europe undermined the credibility and coherence of the EU as a whole. It had been anticipated that the new members would be 'socialized' in the ways of the EU, but, instead, the EU was in danger of reverse socialization -- incorporating the axiological dynamics and virulent neo-liberal free marketism of some new members, accompanied by their priorization of Atlantic security over EU social solidarity.

Van Baalen en Verhoffstadt spreken het volk in Kiev toe. Their finest hour.

Bovenstaande is de kern van het neoliberale programma van Liberalen als het reactionaire VVD-Europarlementslid Hans van Baalen en de voormalige premier van België, Guy Verhofstadt, een al even groot warhoofd die door Geert Mak wordt bewonderd, getuige diens woorden dat:

het Europese project – zoals veel grote historische projecten – er alleen komt dankzij een handvol mensen met een langetermijnvisie, en ik heb Guy Verhofstadt altijd bewonderd omdat hij aan zo’n perspectief vasthoudt.

Beide politici adviseerden de gewelddadige zogenaamd 'democratische oppositie' op het Maidan-plein om de kant van Brussel en Washington te kiezen tegen de Russen. 'Lang leve het democratisch Oekraïne,' schreeuwde Van Baalen in Kiev de demonstranten toe, wetende dat zich onder hen een aanzienlijk aantal neo-nazi's bevond, aangezien dit algemeen bekend was. In de virtuele politieke werkelijkheid van de Europese autoriteiten en hun opiniemakers in de commerciële massamedia maakt het evenwel niet uit wat waar is en wat niet, zolang ze maar de aandacht blijven trekken. Ondertussen creëerde de

Ukraine crisis a new and irreparable dividing line across the heart of the continent. In the words of a recent study: 'The idea of co-operation in the region is dead -- at least for the foreseeable future.' What had once been described as the 'common neighborhood' now became the 'contested neighborhood.' Almost universally the proposed remedies only deepen the tensions that provoked the crisis...

Compromise and balancing are the essence of EU politics, but the Ukraine crisis undermined its credibility as an international actor. It failed to enunciate a European perspective and instead was reduced to no more than a junior partner of the Atlantic alliance, which in turn had become little more than an extended platform for the Washington hawks. The EU's normative agenda was inverted, and instead of bringing peoples and nations together, it acted as yet another instrument of discord. The EU is all about dialogue or else it is nothing, yet as the Ukraine crisis dragged on the EU simply imported the language of sanctions, threats and warnings, even after a ceasefire was agreed on 5 September 2014. The EU allowed the very notion of 'dialogue' to be discredited and, indeed, to become a dirty word. Critics of the EU who had considered it to be just another expression of Cold War politics were vindicated, while those who believed that it could pursue a transformative agenda for continental peace were left disappointed,

aldus professor Sakwa. Opvallend maar geenszins onverklaarbaar was de agressieve reflex van een opiniemaker als Geert Mak die weliswaar niet zonder 'hoop' kan, maar die desalniettemin de Nederlands bevolking via de televisie opriep om nog meer geld te besteden aan het militair-industrieel complex, aangezien 'we' in 'Europa zo bezig [waren] met die soft power en op een andere manier een internationale orde te scheppen, en Europa is daar heel succesvol in geweest. Alleen Poetin doet dat weer op een negentiende eeuwse manier. Het is een andere manier van denken die hij ineens weer de Europeanen door de strot douwt... Dus defensie kun je niet helemáál afbreken,' daarmee het beeld oproepend dat, ondanks Vietnam, Afghanistan, Irak, Libië etcetera, het 'Westen,' zoals Hofland stelt 'vredestichtend' is, terwijl 'meneer Poetin' druk doende is met 'expansionisme.' Terwijl de NAVO in Azië en Afrika met maximaal geweld wordt ingezet, en het bondgenootschap almaar oostwaarts expandeert, doen de EU-propagandist en zijn collega-opiniemakers het voorkomen alsof Rusland het Westen bedreigd, dat van zijn kant druk bezig was zijn 'defensie  helemáál' af te breken. Niet in staat hun Koude Oorlogsreflex te beheersen door even na te denken over wat er werkelijk aan de hand was gingen ze voluit. Hoewel Mak en Hofland door de mainstream worden gezien als denkers van formaat weet ik uit eigen ervaring met hen dat hun opvattingen gebaseerd zijn op de unanimiteit onder politici en de belangrijkste westerse media, en dat die consensus doorgaans zonder bronvermelding moeiteloos door hen wordt overgenomen. Nog opmerkelijker, maar wederom verklaarbaar, is dat dezelfde Geert Mak in zijn zogeheten 'State of the European Union, uitgesproken voor het Vlaams Parlement op 5 mei 2011,' concludeerde dat 'we'

Nog éénmaal de mogelijkheid [hebben] tot een Europees reveil, de kans om de Europese Unie te verdiepen en te democratiseren, om onze kwaliteit van bestaan te herijken, om het Europese project nieuw leven in te blazen. Nog even hebben we gelegenheid om onze oude zelfbeelden te herzien. Gemakzucht is nu onze grootste vijand. Niets is meer vanzelfsprekend, maar van die ijsschots moeten we af. Er is zo veel bereikt. Er valt zo veel te verliezen.  


En toch weigert Mak, op de dag af drie jaar later, 5 mei 2014, om zijn 'oude zelfbeelden te herzien' doordat zijn '[g]emakzucht' zijn 'grootste vijand' is, terwijl tegelijkertijd '[n]iets meer vanzelfsprekend' is, en er 'zoveel te verliezen [valt].' Ergens, diep in zijn bewustzijn, onder een massieve laag ijdelheid, weet de poseur dat hij poseert, de leugenaar weet dat hij liegt, en de 'chroniqueurs van het heden en verleden,' weten dat zij hun 'taak,' te weten het ‘uitbannen van onwaarheid’ niet serieus genoeg nemen, dat zij bedriegers zijn '[z]eker in deze tijd,' nu, '[o]p dit moment op Europees en mondiaal niveau een misvorming van de werkelijkheid plaats[vindt] die grote consequenties heeft,' om mijn oude vriend Geert Mak te citeren. Maar verslaafd aan schouderklopjes en zilverlingen zijn de Hoflanden en Makkianen zo corrupt geraakt dat ze zich maar te graag laten omkopen voor een handvol duiten. Zodra bijvoorbeeld de 'beste journalist van de twintigste eeuw' karakter moet tonen en een controversieel standpunt moet innemen, geldt dat '[o]p dit soort momenten Hofland instinctmatig [kiest] voor de Welingelichte Kringen of voor de man die zijn declaraties tekent,' zoals de journalist Martin  van Amerongen in De Groene Amsterdammer van 31 januari 1996 meldde. Het poldermodel in vol bedrijf. Hetzelfde geldt voor Geert Mak, en alle anderen 'of the best-trained individual minds' die er een dagtaak van hebben gemaakt 'to get inside the collective public mind.'


De 'democratische oppositie' in Kiev die door de 'politiek-literaire elite' in Nederland wordt gesteund. Die 'oppositie' heeft gewonnen dankzij het feit dat 'we,' volgens Geert Mak, in 'Europa zo bezig [waren] met die soft power en op een andere manier een internationale orde te scheppen, en Europa is daar heel succesvol in geweest. Alleen Poetin doet dat weer op een negentiende eeuwse manier.' 


Het neo-nazi Battaljon van de Kiev-regering die door he Westen wordt gesteund.



Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS





Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’


by Nafeez Ahmed









This story is published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project.
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A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.
The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”
According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.


Hypocrisy


The revelations contradict the official line of Western governments on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home.
Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as “secret,” dated 12th August 2012.
The DIA provides military intelligence in support of planners, policymakers and operations for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.
So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.
Some outlets have reported the US intelligence community’s internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria.
Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said:
“Given the political leanings of the organisation that obtained these documents, it’s unsurprising that the main emphasis given to them thus far has been an attempt to embarrass Hilary Clinton regarding what was known about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012. However, the documents also contain far less publicized revelations that raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

The West’s Islamists


The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies.
Noting that “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the document states that “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition,” while Russia, China and Iran “support the [Assad] regime.”
The 7-page DIA document states that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the ‘Islamic State in Iraq,’ (ISI) which became the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,’ “supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media.”
The formerly secret Pentagon report notes that the “rise of the insurgency in Syria” has increasingly taken a “sectarian direction,” attracting diverse support from Sunni “religious and tribal powers” across the region.
In a section titled ‘The Future Assumptions of the Crisis,’ the DIA report predicts that while Assad’s regime will survive, retaining control over Syrian territory, the crisis will continue to escalate “into proxy war.”
The document also recommends the creation of “safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command centre for the temporary government.”
In Libya, anti-Gaddafi rebels, most of whom were al-Qaeda affiliated militias, were protected by NATO ‘safe havens’ (aka ‘no fly zones’).

‘Supporting powers want’ ISIS entity


In a strikingly prescient prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecasts the probable declaration of “an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”
Nevertheless, “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts” by Syrian “opposition forces” fighting to “control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar)”:
“… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran. Crucially, Iraq is labeled as an integral part of this “Shia expansion.”
The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is “exactly” what the “supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.” Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those “supporting powers” as “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.”
Further on, the document reveals that Pentagon analysts were acutely aware of the dire risks of this strategy, yet ploughed ahead anyway.
The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, it says, would create “the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi.” Last summer, ISIS conquered Mosul in Iraq, and just this month has also taken control of Ramadi.
Such a quasi-state entity will provide:
“… a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy. ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of territory.”
The 2012 DIA document is an Intelligence Information Report (IIR), not a “finally evaluated intelligence” assessment, but its contents are vetted before distribution. The report was circulated throughout the US intelligence community, including to the State Department, Central Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, FBI, among other agencies.
In response to my questions about the strategy, the British government simply denied the Pentagon report’s startling revelations of deliberate Western sponsorship of violent extremists in Syria. A British Foreign Office spokesperson said:
“AQ and ISIL are proscribed terrorist organisations. The UK opposes all forms of terrorism. AQ, ISIL, and their affiliates pose a direct threat to the UK’s national security. We are part of a military and political coalition to defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria, and are working with international partners to counter the threat from AQ and other terrorist groups in that region. In Syria we have always supported those moderate opposition groups who oppose the tyranny of Assad and the brutality of the extremists.”
The DIA did not respond to request for comment.

Strategic asset for regime-change


Security analyst Shoebridge, however, who has tracked Western support for Islamist terrorists in Syria since the beginning of the war, pointed out that the secret Pentagon intelligence report exposes fatal contradictions at the heart of official pronunciations:
“Throughout the early years of the Syria crisis, the US and UK governments, and almost universally the West’s mainstream media, promoted Syria’s rebels as moderate, liberal, secular, democratic, and therefore deserving of the West’s support. Given that these documents wholly undermine this assessment, it’s significant that the West’s media has now, despite their immense significance, almost entirely ignored them.”
According to Brad Hoff, a former US Marine who served during the early years of the Iraq War and as a 9/11 first responder at the Marine Corps Headquarters Battalion in Quantico from 2000 to 2004, the just released Pentagon report for the first time provides stunning affirmation that:
“US intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.”
Hoff, who is managing editor of Levant Report— an online publication run by Texas-based educators who have direct experience of the Middle East — points out that the DIA document “matter-of-factly” states that the rise of such an extremist Salafist political entity in the region offers a “tool for regime change in Syria.”
The DIA intelligence report shows, he said, that the rise of ISIS only became possible in the context of the Syrian insurgency — “there is no mention of US troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State’s rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits.” The report demonstrates that:
“The establishment of a ‘Salafist Principality’ in Eastern Syria is ‘exactly’ what the external powers supporting the opposition want (identified as ‘the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey’) in order to weaken the Assad government.”
The rise of a Salafist quasi-state entity that might expand into Iraq, and fracture that country, was therefore clearly foreseen by US intelligence as likely — but nevertheless strategically useful — blowback from the West’s commitment to “isolating Syria.”

Complicity


Critics of the US-led strategy in the region have repeatedly raised questions about the role of coalition allies in intentionally providing extensive support to Islamist terrorist groups in the drive to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.
The conventional wisdom is that the US government did not retain sufficient oversight on the funding to anti-Assad rebel groups, which was supposed to be monitored and vetted to ensure that only ‘moderate’ groups were supported.
However, the newly declassified Pentagon report proves unambiguously that years before ISIS launched its concerted offensive against Iraq, the US intelligence community was fully aware that Islamist militants constituted the core of Syria’s sectarian insurgency.
Despite that, the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.
As Shoebridge told me, “The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria’s rebellion” — namely, the emergence of ISIS — “but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West’s public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria’s rebellion was overwhelmingly ‘moderate.’”
Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer who blew the whistle in the 1990s on MI6 funding of al-Qaeda to assassinate Libya’s former leader Colonel Gaddafi, similarly said of the revelations:
“This is no surprise to me. Within individual countries there are always multiple intelligence agencies with competing agendas.”
She explained that MI6’s Libya operation in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of innocent people, “happened at precisely the time when MI5 was setting up a new section to investigate al-Qaeda.”
This strategy was repeated on a grand scale in the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, said Machon, where the CIA and MI6 were:
“… supporting the very same Libyan groups, resulting in a failed state, mass murder, displacement and anarchy. So the idea that elements of the American military-security complex have enabled the development of ISIS after their failed attempt to get NATO to once again ‘intervene’ is part of an established pattern. And they remain indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that is unleashed as a result of such game-playing.”

Divide and rule


Several US government officials have conceded that their closest allies in the anti-ISIS coalition were funding violent extremist Islamist groups that became integral to ISIS.
US Vice President Joe Biden, for instance, admitted last year that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Turkey had funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamist rebels in Syria that metamorphosed into ISIS.
But he did not admit what this internal Pentagon document demonstrates — that the entire covert strategy was sanctioned and supervised by the US, Britain, France, Israel and other Western powers.
The strategy appears to fit a policy scenario identified by a recent US Army-commissioned RAND Corp report.
The report, published four years before the DIA document, called for the US “to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”
The US would need to contain “Iranian power and influence” in the Gulf by “shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.” Simultaneously, the US must maintain “a strong strategic relationship with the Iraqi Shiite government” despite its Iran alliance.
The RAND report confirmed that the “divide and rule” strategy was already being deployed “to create divisions in the jihadist camp. Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level.”
The report observed that the US was forming “temporary alliances” with al-Qaeda affiliated “nationalist insurgent groups” that have fought the US for four years in the form of “weapons and cash.” Although these nationalists “have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces,” they are now being supported to exploit “the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties.”
The 2012 DIA document, however, further shows that while sponsoring purportedly former al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq to counter al-Qaeda, Western governments were simultaneously arming al-Qaeda insurgents in Syria.
The revelation from an internal US intelligence document that the very US-led coalition supposedly fighting ‘Islamic State’ today, knowingly created ISIS in the first place, raises troubling questions about recent government efforts to justify the expansion of state anti-terror powers.
In the wake of the rise of ISIS, intrusive new measures to combat extremism including mass surveillance, the Orwellian ‘prevent duty’ and even plans to enable government censorship of broadcasters, are being pursued on both sides of the Atlantic, much of which disproportionately targets activists, journalists and ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.
Yet the new Pentagon report reveals that, contrary to Western government claims, the primary cause of the threat comes from their own deeply misguided policies of secretly sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the ‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and is also a columnist for Middle East Eye. He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the ‘Alternative Pulitzer Prize’, for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was selected in the Evening Standard’s ‘Power 1,000’ most globally influential Londoners.
Nafeez has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others. He is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

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