The "Salvador Option" for the Iraq insurgency: Train death squads to kill the leaders

Now the Pentagon is thinking of dealing with the Iraqi insurgents through the “Salvador Option”: Train special squads – the kind known as “death squads” back in the 1970s and '80s during El Salvador’s civil war – to assassinate and/or kidnap the insurgent leaders. This tactic might also be used on the insurgents operating from bases in Syria: Send in death squads to take out their leaders, without actually engaging the Syrian armed forces. From http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/:

See also http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010905V.shtml.

What do you think? Is this justifiable tactic? Is it a workable one?

If anything, it will make things far worse by creating martyrs, I would have thought.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Killing of leaders is an old and effective guerilla tactic and any counter-insurgency would use it.

Could you paint a way toward victory that did not include killing enemy leaders?

It might (or might not) work, but we are dealing with a new sort of insurgency and we need new thinking to fight it.

I find myself in an odd sort of position. I would normally oppose acts such as this - after all, this is what the insurgents themselves do, and I think legitimatizing assassination may be a step in the wrong direction - but it would seem to be an effective tool. I don’t think the foreign relations would get any better with it, though - only room for disaster like the Contra and Iran missions were. Or even Somolia. If you’re talking about a military assassination in Syria… you’ve gotta do that carefully.

Detente?

Detente is a way towards peace. Peace is not always the same as victory.

If you wanted death squads to deal with Islamicist terrorists in Iraq, why didn’t you leave Saddam Hussein in power? He had some of the best death squads in the world, and they were doing a pretty good job keeping the fundamentalists at bay.

That, in essence, is what’s wrong with this plan. I’m sure they’ll do a fine job killing insurgent leaders. Then they’ll move on to killing union leaders, political opposition leaders, human rights leaders, whistle-blowers, random peasants, and eventually they’ll just be tossing students out of helicopters. Can anyone name a country that used this sort of tactic that actually exhibited restraint?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Did it occur to anyone in Washington that targeting leaders for assassination would be an easy tactic for the enemy to retaliate in kind with?

Of course not! Remember the Administration we’re talking about here. If they do it, it’s an evil, cowardly way of silencing your opposition. If we do it, it’s a noble and necessary method of bringing peace to the Middle-East.

Red crescent, baaaaad. Red white and blue, goooood…

Future son of Iraqi insurgent leader, speaking about George W. Bush:
“This is a man who continually lies… There’s no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us. There’s no doubt he can’t stand us. After all, this is the guy that tried to kill my dad at one time.”

Oops, that was Bush talking about Saddam.

When I first hear about this, I didn’t believe it. Figured it must be some sort of wild exaggeration, short of making shit up. But its for real. And it stinks.

Our policy in El Salvador was darkness manifest. I can hardly believe anyone could speak of it in tones other than shame and remorse. The cynicism is stunning.

But worse…is it worse?..the stupidity. The blind stupidity. How are we to know who the “right” targets are? We’re going to end up relying on these hired thugs for the intelligence that we use to determine who they should kill. Does this sound like a good idea to anybody? How the hell are we going to know that they are advancing “our” agenda and not their own? They can tell us any damn thing they want, and we won’t know the difference!

They’ll be getting paid, no doubt. Likely some sort of bounty system, yes? Whats to stop Abdul from going out and snuffing goat-farmer Achmed, stuffing his head in a bag and walking it into the office. “Here. Achmed. Big time Al Queda terrorist. Write me check.”

Dragnet music. Dumb-da-dumb-dumb. Dumb-da-dumb-dumb-dumb!

Hey, it has the added value of not leaving all kinds of embarrassing loose ends like the whole Gitmo thing did, so we won’t have to go through Constitutional contortions to keep anyone else locked up for life without a trial. Or charges, for that matter…

Er…huh? Am I missing something here? I thought the glorious Iraqi Insurgency™ was ALREADY in the assassination game. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t they wack a high official in the capital not too long ago? Do you suppose that they are restraining themselves as we speak, holding back in a humanitarian effort to show what great guys they are, and that assassinating their leaders will let them slip their bonds and REALLY get nasty? Maybe they will cut off the heads of small children and priests next…or execute a few nuns. Push some puppies and kittens into the croc pond live on the web? I can hardly think of anything they could do (that they are able to do) that they haven’t done in Iraq to date.

Personally I don’t think its a good idea for a whole myriad of reasons…but the threat of the insurgency suddenly figuring out that assassination is something THEY could do is not one of them.

-XT

Yes, you may be missing something. They know who we are. We don’t know who they are.

Really? You’d think if President Bush had been assassinated it would have made the papers.

Oh boy!, they must be pretty busy at the School of Americas revamping the place!.

School of Middel East, no…
School of Arabia, nope…
School of Counter-Terrorism, I´m getting somewhere here.

We re-elected Bush. This is what we get. Torture and murder. I don’t see why it’s a surprise to anyone.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I have been in opposition to the war from day one. It has been an absolute disaster, and I am convinced that beginning to withdraw US troops soon after the elections in Iraq is the best thing that can be done. I am even more strong in my belief that the death squads of El Salvador were an affront to the most fundamental human rights of all people, and there is nothing that can be said to excuse the Salvedorian government for the cold-blooded murder of countless innocents at the hands of their mobs, or to justify the US actions in condoning that brutality.

However, I think that this idea, as described, may have some merit.

First, it is quite obvious that the insurgents must be killed or captured. There is no political settlement that can be made to convince them to lay down their arms, as I think may now be the case in Afghanistan. The insurgents in Iraq are on the offensive, and winning, by killing Iraqis. The focus of this war is against the legitimacy of an incipient Iraqi government. The focus is no longer, IHMO, on simply getting the Americans out.

Second, we (the US and the Iraqi government) don’t have a hell of a lot of good options for taking the fight to the insurgents. The Iraqi forces are a joke, especially in areas where the fight is. They’re riddled with corruption and spies, and they don’t amount to a hill of beans, no matter what propaganda Rumsfeld et al might put out there. The US forces also have very few options, because they are geared to be more iron hand than velvet glove. When it comes to taking the fight to insurgents, our options seem mostly limited to indescriminate raids that net innocent civilians, but no terrorists; dropping 1000 lb. smart bombs; or laying siege to an entire city. There is no surer way to recruit more insurgents than driving innocents out of house and home. The harder we fight, the more we lose.

Third, despite those limitations, the US has to move the fight into the hands of Iraqis. We ought to be getting out, and it may well be that the best option now is to focus our efforts on recruiting and training a smaller force of elite anti-terrorism paramilitiaries. The efforts to train large numbers of police have been a failure. We have to think smaller.

Now, the parallels to the Salvedorian death squads are alarming. I don’t know how this can be done, but if these kind of paramiltiaries are formed in Iraq, there must be very strict controls over their actions. If any member or unit of these possible paramilitaries are found to engage in the thuggism as was the case in Central America, they should be taken out. Literally. I disagree that one must become a terrorist to fight terrorists.

Yes, there are very real risks to this idea, but I think it might have some merit. We clearly cannot continue along the path we are now, because it is a failure. I am convinced that the United States has already lost this war, and the only hope now is to turn this fight over to the Iraqis.

No, it’s not clear. It’s certainly not clear that we are in the moral position to decide who are “insurgents” and who are “freedom fighters”. It’s their country, let them sort out who is the legitimate Iraqi government.

So, you think the folks beheading aid workers might, in fact, be the good guys in Iraq? Give me a break.

You think it’s “us” and “them” and there is only one “them”? Give me a break.