The Counterrevolution
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These three key strategies now guide governance at home, as they do military and foreign affairs abroad. What has emerged today is a new and different art of governing. It forms a coherent whole with, at its center, a security apparatus composed of White House, Pentagon, and intelligence officials, high-ranking congressional members, FISC judges, security and Internet leaders, police intelligence divisions, social-media companies, Silicon Valley executives, and multinational corporations. This loose network, which collaborates at times and competes at others, exerts control by collecting and mining our digital data. Data control has become the primary battlefield, and data, the primary resource—perhaps the most important primary resource in the United States today.
This security apparatus thrives on learning everything about each and every one of us, and draws us in through our own desires, distractions, and indulgences. And it executes a set of simple instructions: total surveillance to achieve full and perfect knowledge; solitary confinement, juvenile detention, militarized policing, and robot bombs to eliminate a radical minority—and all of it geared toward making the American population feel safe and secure to ensure that we consume rather than sympathize with those who are targeted.
Pulsing through this new form of governing are reflections and echoes of that inherited tension, from early counterinsurgency theory, between brutality and legality: between the administration of waterboarding and the legalistic torture memos, between the targeted assassination of American citizens abroad and the lengthy forty-one-page memorandum justifying such killings; between human mapping of Muslim neighborhoods and court-approved guidelines for the investigation of political activity; between the surreptitious cable-splicing of underground communications networks and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This inherited tension still beats through our new style of governing, even though it has essentially been resolved today by means of the legalization of brutality, which ends up producing not a temporary state of exception, but rather variations on the counterinsurgency theme.
The “new paradigm” that President George W. Bush first announced shortly after 9/11 has come to fruition. It patiently burrowed, and has now returned home. Today, it constitutes a new art of governing one’s own citizens. Defying all predictions, rebutting progressive histories, it has come alive and broken through the crust of the earth like that old mole of history, who only makes his appearance when he is finally ready to overthrow the old regime.1 This new mode of governing has no time horizon. It has no sunset provision. And it is marked by a tyrannous logic of violence. There is the widely televised violence of the most extreme faction abroad—the beheadings by ISIS. There are selective videos of riots and looting by the purportedly active minority at home—whether it is in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Ferguson, or London or the Paris banlieus. There are the targeted drone strikes and special operations, torturous interrogations, and the violence and militarized response of the police and state at home. That violence is not exceptional or aberrational. It is part and parcel of the new paradigm of governing that reconciles brutality with legality.
To be clear, episodes involving the domestic use of counterinsurgency techniques occurred in the 1960s, with the application of modern-warfare methods against the Black Panther Party; in the 1970s, in the context of prison uprisings; and in the 1980s and 1990s, against various resistance movements such as MOVE and the Branch Davidians. But what makes The Counterrevolution new and unique today is that the methods have been refined, systematized, applied across the country, and, most importantly, have become dominant at a time when there is not even a semblance of a domestic insurgency or revolution going on in this country. When you add to that the new digital technologies that make possible so much more powerful forms of surveillance and long-distance remote-controlled military force, as well as the systematicity and pervasiveness of counterinsurgency logics—when you put this all together, it is clear that there is a difference of kind, not just degree. We govern ourselves differently in the United States now: no longer through sweeping social programs like the New Deal or the War on Poverty, but through surgical counterinsurgency strategies against a phantom opponent. The intensity of the domestication now is unprecedented.
To be sure, when ISIS broadcasts beheadings of innocent hostages abroad or takes credit for attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Istanbul or when Al Qaeda attacks the Twin Towers causing the deaths of almost three thousand innocent victims, counterinsurgency methods seem more necessary than ever. It felt perhaps different when the counterinsurgency strategies were targeted at individuals like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) or the National Lawyers Guild—people and organizations that so many admired. In those cases, the idea of a domestic counterinsurgency simply seemed inappropriate, and that itself justified criticism. But things may seem different today. Don’t the beheadings alone call for more aggressive counterinsurgency interventions?
The answer is that the existence of enemies abroad—foreign enemies intent on brutally killing United States citizens, Westerners, and others—simply does not justify creating out of whole cloth an active minority in this country. It does not warrant fabricating an internal enemy. Even the few men and women on American soil who wreak terroristic damage do not form an insurgency. (By terroristic, I am referring to attacks that the media refer to as domestic terrorism by contrast to the more ordinary multiple-victim shootings that involve four or more victims and occur on average every day in America).2 For the most past, the men and women who wreak terroristic damage on American soil are unstable individuals who gravitate to radical forms of Islam—or radical forms of Christianity, or the KKK for that matter—because those ideas and organizations represent the most cutting-edge and threatening fringe. In effect, certain extremely violent individuals are expressing their violent acts in the language of radical Islam (and radical Christianity) because that language gains the most attention and plays on the greatest fears of the public. But there is an important distinction between a handful of unstable, lone-wolf, extremely violent individuals and an active minority. A few individuals are, of course, in a literal sense a minority; however, they do not necessarily compose—as counterinsurgency theory envisions them—an organized group with a shared goal. The attempt to define them as an insurgency or active minority is imposing a coherence that does not exist—at a dangerous political cost.
Counterinsurgency, with its tripartite scheme (active minority, passive masses, counterrevolutionary minority) and its tripartite strategy (total awareness, eliminate the active minority, pacify the masses) is a deeply counterproductive self-fulfilling prophecy that radicalizes individuals against the United States. This is especially the case for its more brutal manifestations, such as the Muslim ban, waterboarding, or indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay. The images from Abu Ghraib, the drone casualties, the torture of Muslims during interrogation: these actions have all contributed to the radicalization of many abroad and the alienation of many at home. This fact does not excuse terroristic acts or beheadings in any way, but surely it should compel us to take a different approach, informed by the inescapable reality that each one of us is inevitably implicated in producing the present political situation we live in.
Counterinsurgency strategies sow the seeds of conflict. As Richard Stengel, a former undersecretary of state, explains in the pages of the New York Times, “The Islamic State is not just a terrorist group, it is an idea. Its rallying cry is that the West is hostile to Islam and that every good Muslim has a duty to join the caliphate.”3 Strategies that feed into that perception of American hostility to Islam are therefore deeply counterproductive. In order to combat extremists abroad and to prevent an insurgency at home, the exact opposite is necessary. Americans need to show who they really are: a nation predominantly of immigrants, slaves, and natives that thrives on tolerance and acceptance, and is deeply connected, through its immigrant populations, to every country, creed, and religion of the world. This approach
is not only ethically proper, it also serves foreign policy. As Stengel writes, “To defeat radical Islamic extremism, we need our Islamic allies—the Jordanians, the Emiratis, the Egyptians, the Saudis—and they believe that [the idea of “radical Islamic terrorism”] unfairly vilified a whole religion.”
It is true, of course, that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Muslim individuals who came to and lived within the United States. Several of them had been identified and were being tracked (though the intelligence about them was not being properly shared). These facts alone call for extreme vigilance of any person suspected of terrorist links. But they certainly do not call for turning all Muslims—abroad and on American soil—into a potential active minority. Domesticating the counterinsurgency turns millions of ordinary Americans into potential enemies. It ill-treats our fellow citizens and neighbors. It alienates people, instead of healing wounds. It is the wrong response. The Counterrevolution sees an active minority where there simply isn’t one.
These difficult and delicate issues demand careful thought. The fact is, there are people who try and succeed in carrying out terror attacks both on American soil and abroad. The effort to stop these attacks is of vital importance and entirely legitimate. But it surely must not involve governing ourselves and large swaths of the rest of the world with a counterinsurgency logic that has proven to cause more harm than good. The fact is, counterinsurgency’s track record has been simply abysmal—it failed everywhere: In Indochina. In Algeria. In Malaya. In Vietnam. And in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we were constantly reminded that any small gains rarely extended beyond the momentary surge in ground troops. The United States poured more than $1 trillion and lost almost 5,000 of its own citizens in a war and counterinsurgency effort in Iraq that caused more than 125,000 direct casualties and more than 650,000 excess deaths: it was a failed counterinsurgency that has, at the end of the day, only benefited Iran and private contractors.4 Counterinsurgency produces its own effects of radicalizing minorities, of perpetuating brutality, and of creating social divisions that make it a perilous mode of governing. Historically, counterinsurgency warfare has been strategically ineffective, politically destructive, and ethically dreadful. This does not mean we do not need to be vigilant and protect against terrorist attacks. It does mean that we must resist the counterinsurgency approach to foreign affairs and The Counterrevolution at home.
The attack on the World Trade Center and ISIS beheadings were unconscionable. But it is precisely when we feel so self-righteous—and properly so—that we are at greatest risk of overreaching and embracing simplistic solutions with devastating effects. It is when we feel so morally certain that things get out of hand, that we ignore the collateral damage to innocent men, women, and children, and turn entire communities into internal enemies. These modern warfare strategies have fueled the enemies abroad that they seek to eliminate and created the illusory specter of a rebellion at home that is harming and alienating millions of Americans.5 The Counterrevolution must end.
Instead, we are moving in the exact opposite direction. With the election of President Trump, the United States embraced the most brutal version of counterinsurgency warfare. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to worsen the torture, increase domestic surveillance, and target Muslims, Mexicans, and minorities in this country—in sum, to accelerate and amplify the counterinsurgency abroad and at home.
In just his first months in office, President Trump ratcheted up and accelerated The Counterrevolution on every front. With his executive order banning travel of American residents from Muslim-majority countries, his promise to build the wall on the southern border, and his pledge to refill Guantánamo, including with American suspects, President Trump threw fuel on the flames. The Muslim ban was particularly egregious and counterproductive because it fed right into the recruitment strategy of ISIS. As Richard Stengel quickly reported, “The Islamic State has called it ‘the blessed ban’ because it supports the Islamic State’s position that America hates Islam. The clause in the order that gives Christians preferential treatment will be seen as confirming the Islamic State’s apocalyptic narrative that Islam is in a fight to the death against the Christian crusaders. The images of Muslim visitors being turned away at American airports will only inflame those who seek to do us harm.”6
While the Muslim travel ban represented Trump’s determination to cast Muslims as an active minority, the president quickly loaded his cabinet with counterinsurgency warriors. Trump appointed as his secretary of defense General James Norman Mattis, who was a close collaborator and contributor to General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency field manual. Petraeus had reached out to Mattis early on, during the time they overlapped in Iraq in the early aughts. Mattis’s wealth of experience with counterinsurgency as a Marine Corps commander, after having led the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was of great influence on Petraeus.7 On February 20, 2017, Trump appointed another counterinsurgency champion as his national security adviser: Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, a respected military strategist with a particular expertise in modern warfare.8 McMaster was responsible for what was claimed to be one of the great counterinsurgency successes of the Iraq war, the 2005 effort to secure the city of Tal Afar in northern Iraq, discussed earlier and described at length in General Petraeus’s field manual. In fact, that particular counterinsurgency success weighed heavily on Petraeus, who would draw on it both theoretically, to develop his style of modern warfare, and practically, when he took command in Iraq in 2007. General McMaster published his PhD under the title Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, a devastating criticism of the failures of the joint chiefs of staff to stand up against President Johnson and Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War. He was also a critic of the manner that President George W. Bush fought the war in Iraq, stating that the administration had not planned for “a sustainable political outcome that would be consistent with our vital interests,” which “complicated both of those wars.”9 The political rather than the military dimensions were key for McMaster, a classic reflection of the counterinsurgency paradigm. And on July 28, 2017, President Trump elevated another counterinsurgency warrior, former general John Kelly, who had served for months as secretary of homeland security, to chief of staff. A tried and true counterinsurgency practitioner was running all White House operations.
President Trump’s first budget proposal virtually enacted counterinsurgency strategy, combining a sharp increase in unconventional military spending and funding for a southern wall with dramatic reductions in refugee and social spending—effectively, to provide “essential services” only. Trump proposed to increase defense spending by $54 billion, or 10 percent, for 2018 and budgeted $469 billion in discretionary monies for defense over the next decade. In his own words, he sought to achieve “one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.” His proposed budget also included $2.6 billion to enhance border security, to begin building a wall on the border with Mexico, and to keep immigrants out. Trump proposed slashing social programs, such as Medicaid and health-care services (down 23.3 percent over the next ten years), supplemental food assistance, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program (down 25.3 percent), and refugee programs (down 74.2 percent); and eliminated wholesale other programs, such as national service programs like AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Vista—in effect, cutting social programs and essential services to their bare essentials.10
The Muslim ban, the counterinsurgency cabinet, the budget proposals—as well as the promises of a wall on our southern border, of American detainees at Guantánamo, and of more surveillance of mosques—fit perfectly in The Counterrevolution framework. These measures serve, first, to produce a fictitious active minority in the United States consisting of resident nationals from those Muslim-majority countries (despite the fact that no single terrorist attack on United States soil has to date been conducted by a national from those countries) and our southern neighbors. Having
created an active minority and instilled fear in the general population, second, these measures seek to eradicate and eliminate the minority by excluding it from the country. Finally, the measures also serve to demonstrate who is in charge, who is willing to and able to protect best, and who is looking out for the American people. It is the perfect counterinsurgency strategy—except that it rests on a phantom enemy at home and fuels real enemies abroad.
One of the greatest tragedies—and the most worrisome—is that so many Americans knowingly embraced The Counterrevolution when they cast their ballots for Trump in November 2016. During his presidential campaign, Trump had pledged to do exactly what he did in the first days of his administration—and worse. Yet despite that, he was elected president.
During the campaign, Trump explicitly stated that he was prepared to resume torture. “I would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” Trump pledged. He expressed his intention to fill Guantánamo Bay prison again, and for a while claimed he would torture the family members of suspected terrorists to get information from them if necessary. He embraced torture not only because it “works,” he said, but because even “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway.”11 He even said he would send American terrorism suspects to Guantánamo for military prosecutions.
“I have made it clear in my campaign that I would support and endorse the use of enhanced interrogation techniques if the use of these methods would enhance the protection and safety of the nation,” Trump wrote in USA Today. “Though the effectiveness of many of these methods may be in dispute, nothing should be taken off the table when American lives are at stake. The enemy is cutting off the heads of Christians and drowning them in cages, and yet we are too politically correct to respond in kind […] I will do whatever it takes to protect and defend this nation and its people […] With their support, we will make America great again.”12