Like an ancient war-like tribe withering in its own mythologies, the U.S. Navy SEALS is trying to reinvent itself. But don't be deceived. The Navy SEALS, which is part of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)-once known as Special Operation Forces (SOF)-and includes Army Rangers, Marine Force Recon, Delta Force, Air Commandos, and CIA Paramilitary Forces-was created in the insanity of, and for the purpose of empire building.
The sordid history of the Navy SEALS originated in the depths of the Cold War. Its permanence for behind-alleged-enemy lines warfare was shaped by a genocidal conflict, Vietnam, and an attempt to crush a popular uprising, Iran. During World War Two, and as the American Republic grew into a militant empire, it learned from its mother country, Great Britain, how to form commando units like Frogmen, Rangers, and Air Commandos.
But unlike other wars, the United States did not demobilize its citizen soldiers. Instead, the Truman Doctrine and Korean War strengthened a permanent war economy and its large standing armies. Later, President John F. Kennedy pressed for small unit forces that would fight with a "new kind of intensity-war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration instead of aggression."(1)
The Vietnam War initiated a more belligerent kind of SOF: the Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, Marine Force Recon, and Air Force Commandos. But when reports that elite forces were massacring villagers, including women and children, it challenged Kennedy's vision of mobile fighting units behind enemy lines, of "a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force...a new and wholly different kind of military training."(2)
All of this changed in 1979, though, as the American Empire showed emotional crowds in Iran protesting and demanding that the U.S. return the Shah. Iranians wanted to try the Shah for torturing and murdering tens of thousands of people at the hands of his secret police, SAVAK, trained, of course, by the CIA and U.S. military. Meanwhile, effigies of President Carter and Uncle Sam being burned in the streets served to boost news ratings.
The American Empire was also enthralled by Iranian students storming the U.S. Embassy and blindfolded Marines being paraded. But where were televised images of the U.S.-backed Shah machine-gunning Iranian protesters and killing hundreds in Jaleh Square? Where were American reporters when documents proved the U.S.-backed Shah had employed 20,000 secret police and jailed and tortured over 100,000 political opponents?
Instead of learning from its botched mission in trying to extract 52 prisoners of war from Iran, one that killed several servicemen, the American Empire expanded its SOF. Instead of realizing imperial wars, like Vietnam, were un-winnable and grave mistakes, the American Empire sought to enlarge its colonial holdings, requiring even more SOF. And more unlawful and deadly military raids would replace fair and peaceful negotiations.
Still, it wasn't long before the SOF would become an entirely new branch of the American Empire's military, known as Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and well-equipped with a multi-billion dollar annual budget. SOCOM would unite unconventional warfare units from the Army, Navy, and Air Force. This new paramilitary combat unit would be tested in break-away colonies like Panama, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iran.
This, then, was the origin and continuance of Special Operations Forces, now called Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their imperial warriors, like the Navy SEALS, stand ready to ambush any colonial indigenous peoples seeking self-determination, or any armed group challenging the American Empire and its corporate hegemony. They are a threat to people everywhere, for they keep intact a globally militant and belligerent empire.
With the gunning down of bin Laden in Pakistan, one can only imagine what new elite military forces are being hatched in the Pentagon's secret laboratories of vengeance and death. One can only speculate as to what new deadly weapons technologies are being developed. Already, the killings at Abbottabad are being hailed as the most important unconventional surprise attack in history.
But Bin Laden's assassination was only a fraction of the hundreds of others ambushes and failed raids, many of which have killed innocent people. In the American Empire, such tragedies are easily forgotten. Only successful raids are propagated to churn imperial myths. As fights over bragging rights ensues to who gets credit for assassinating a sickly old man, war profiteers are selling movies, video games, and Navy SEALS action figures.
A retired Special Forces officer slips when he describes these elite forces as "sort of like Murder, Incorporated." Another official boasts that JOSOC's warriors-for-hire are "the most dangerous people on the face of the earth." Meanwhile, thousands of Pakistanis gather and protest the illegal invasion of their country and neglect for their own national sovereignty and rule of law chanting: "Go America, go America, your show is over!"
Unfortunately, there will be more Abbottabads, more Vietnams, more Irans, more Mogadishus, more Iraqs, more Afghanistans. There will be more villagers massacred, along with failed rescue attempts that kill innocent civilians. The American Empire's "rogue" soldiers, (Isn't Special Forces a grandiose euphemism!), will lead to many more retaliatory attacks against Americans. But mythologies will hide this redemptive truth.
Rogers, who fought for the now defunct English Empire, codified the principles of behind-the-lines warfare. In "Standing Orders For Rogers' Rangers," his first principle was: Don't forget nothing. It is unfortunate how the American Republic has forgotten how it once captured the hopes and dreams of people everywhere. Now as a vast empire with paramilitary organizations, it captures and kills hopes and dreams of people everywhere.
The glorification of Navy SEALS reveals an absent mindedness. Such elite militant groups have aided in causing massacres and genocide-like events. In hindsight, Rogers should have added another major principle, one that would have prevented the rise of empires and imperial conquests through their unconventional military units resulting in retaliatory attacks: Fight and use Special Forces only within your own nation and only when invaded.
Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)
(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)
(1) Southworth, Samuel A. and Stephen Tanner. U.S. Special Forces, A Guide To America's Special Operations Units. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2002., p. 19.
(2) Ibid., p. 19.
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