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@@ -1748,3 +1748,116 @@ A circular, feedback loop:
system. Second, there was the notion of systematicity that involved a particular
type of method—one that began by collecting a set of promising alternatives,
constructing a model, and using a defined criterion.
+
+ [...]
+
+ This method of systems analysis became influential in government and
+ eventually began to dominate governmental logics starting in 1961 when Robert
+ McNamara acceded to the Pentagon under President John F. Kennedy.
+
+ [...]
+
+ According to its proponents, systems analysis
+ would allow policy makers to put aside partisan politics, personal preferences,
+ and subjective values. It would pave the way to objectivity and truth. As RAND
+ expert and future secretary of defense James R. Schlesinger explained:
+ “[Systems analysis] eliminates the purely subjective approach on the part of
+ devotees of a program and forces them to change their lines of argument. They
+ must talk about reality rather than morality.” 13 With systems analysis,
+ Schlesinger argued, there was no longer any need for politics or value
+ judgments. The right answer would emerge from the machine-model that
+ independently evaluated cost and effectiveness. All that was needed was a
+ narrow and precise objective and good criteria. The model would then spit out
+ the most effective strategy.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Counterinsurgency theory blossomed at precisely the moment that systems
+ analysis was, with RAND’s backing, gaining influence in the Pentagon and at
+ the White House. The historian Peter Paret pinpoints this moment, in fact, to the
+ very first year of the Kennedy administration: “In 1961, the Cuban revolution
+ combined with the deteriorating Western position in Southeast Asia
+
+ [...]
+
+ It convened, as mentioned earlier, the seminal
+ counterinsurgency symposium in April 1962, where RAND analysts discovered
+ David Galula and commissioned him to write his memoirs. RAND would
+ publish his memoirs as a confidential classified report in 1963 under the title
+
+ [...]
+
+ Counterinsurgency theory blossomed at precisely the moment that systems
+ analysis was, with RAND’s backing, gaining influence in the Pentagon and at
+ the White House. The historian Peter Paret pinpoints this moment, in fact, to the
+ very first year of the Kennedy administration: “In 1961, the Cuban revolution
+ combined with the deteriorating Western position in Southeast Asia to shift
+
+ [...]
+
+ One recent episode regarding interrogation
+ methods is telling. It involved the evaluation of different tactics to obtain
+ information from informants, ranging from truth serums to sensory overload to
+ torture. These alternatives were apparently compared and evaluated using a SA
+ approach at a workshop convened by RAND, the CIA, and the American
+ Psychological Association (APA). Again, the details are difficult to ascertain
+ fully, but the approach seemed highly systems-analytic.
+
+ [...] a series of workshops on “The Science of Deception”
+
+ [...]
+
+ More specifically, according to this source, the workshops probed and
+ compared different strategies to elicit information. The systems-analytic
+ approach is reflected by the set of questions that the participants addressed: How
+ important are differential power and status between witness and officer? What
+ pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?
+ What are sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors? How
+ might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects
+ deceptive behaviors? These questions were approached from a range of
+ disciplines. The workshops were attended by “research psychologists,
+ psychiatrists, neurologists who study various aspects of deception and
+ representatives from the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense with interests in
+ intelligence operations. In addition, representatives from the White House Office
+ of Science and Technology Policy and the Science and Technology Directorate
+ of the Department of Homeland Security were present.” 31
+
+ [...]
+
+ And in effect, from a counterinsurgency perspective, these various tactics—
+ truth serums, sensory overloads, torture—are simply promising alternatives that
+ need to be studied, modeled, and compared to determine which ones are superior
+ at achieving the objective of the security system. Nothing is off limits.
+ Everything is fungible. The only question is systematic effectiveness. This is the
+ systems-analytic approach: not piecemeal, but systematic.
+ Incidentally, a few years later, Gerwehr apparently went to Guantánamo, but
+ refused to participate in any interrogation because the CIA was not using video
+ cameras to record the interrogations. Following that, in the fall of 2006 and in
+ 2007, Gerwehr made several calls to human-rights advocacy groups and
+ reporters to discuss what he knew. A few months later, in 2008, Gerwehr died of
+ a motorcycle accident on Sunset Boulevard. 32 He was forty years old.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Sometimes, depending on the practitioner, the analysis favored torture or summary
+ execution; at other times, it leaned toward more “decent” tactics. But these
+ variations must now be understood as internal to the system. Under President
+ Bush’s administration, the emphasis was on torture, indefinite detention, and
+ illicit eavesdropping; under President Obama’s, it was on drone strikes and total
+ surveillance; in the first months of the Trump presidency, on special operations,
+ drones, the Muslim ban, and building the wall. What unites these different
+ strategies is counterinsurgency’s coherence as a system—a system in which
+ brutal violence is heart and center. That violence is not aberrational or rogue. It
+ is to be expected. It is internal to the system. Even torture and assassination are
+ merely variations of the counterinsurgency logic.
+
+ Counterinsurgency abroad and at home has been legalized and systematized. It
+ has become our governing paradigm “in any situation,” and today “simply
+ expresses the basic tenet of the exercise of political power.” It has no sunset
+ provision. It is ruthless, game theoretic, systematic—and legal. And with all of
+ the possible tactics at the government’s disposal—from total surveillance to
+ indefinite detention and solitary confinement, to drones and robot-bombs, even
+ to states of exception and emergency powers—this new mode of governing has
+ never been more dangerous.
+
+ In sum, The Counterrevolution is our new form of tyranny.