{"id":70764,"date":"2009-05-17T05:56:37","date_gmt":"2009-05-17T05:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2009\/05\/17\/les-marines-de-rumsfeld\/"},"modified":"2009-05-17T05:56:37","modified_gmt":"2009-05-17T05:56:37","slug":"les-marines-de-rumsfeld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2009\/05\/17\/les-marines-de-rumsfeld\/","title":{"rendered":"Les Marines<\/em> de Rumsfeld"},"content":{"rendered":"

C’est une \u00e9trange circonstance ou une circonstance r\u00e9v\u00e9latrice que rapporte le quotidien de Londres The Independent<\/em>, ce 16 mai 2009<\/a>, avec l’histoire du MarSOC<\/em>, une abr\u00e9viation d\u00e9signant le Special Operations Command du Corps des Marines. Il s’agit en fait d’une unit\u00e9 de 2.500 hommes, dont la moiti\u00e9 affect\u00e9e au combat, form\u00e9e sur l’insistance de Rumsfeld et contre le vu, semble-t-il, de la hi\u00e9rarchie du Corps, et qui a \u00e9volu\u00e9 rapidement en une sorte d’unit\u00e9 incontr\u00f4l\u00e9e, op\u00e9rant selon ses r\u00e8gles, r\u00e9alisant \u00e9videmment des op\u00e9rations sanglantes et ill\u00e9gales, en Irak et en Afghanistan. Il semble que MarSOC<\/em> soit \u00e0 la base de nombre d’appels \u00e0 l’appui tactique a\u00e9rien massif qui ont abouti, dans plusieurs cas, aux plus grands massacres de civils en Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tVoici un extrait substantiel de l’article, d\u00e9crivant les activit\u00e9s de MarSOC<\/em>: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abA single American Special Forces group was behind at least three of Afghanistan’s worst civilian casualty incidents, The Independent has learnt, raising fundamental questions about their ongoing role in the conflict.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbTroops from the US Marines Corps’ Special Operations Command, or MarSOC, were responsible for calling in air strikes in Bala Boluk, in Farah, last week believed to have killed more than 140 men, women and children as well as two other incidents in 2007 and 2008. News of MarSOC’s involvement in the three incidents comes just days after a Special Forces expert, Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal, was named to take over as the top commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. His surprise appointment has prompted speculation that commando counterinsurgency missions will increase in the battle to beat the Taliban.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbMarSOC was created three years ago on the express orders of Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary at the time, despite opposition from within the Marine Corps and the wider Special Forces community. An article in the Marine Corps Times described the MarSOC troops as cowboys who brought shame on the corps.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe first controversial incident involving the unit happened just three weeks into its first deployment to Afghanistan on 4 March 2007. Speeding away from a suicide bomb attack close to the Pakistan border, around 120 men from Fox Company opened fire on civilians near Jalalabad, in Nangahar province. The Marines said they were shot at after the explosion; eyewitnesses said the Americans fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and civilian cars, killing at least 19 people.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe US Army commander in Nangahar at the time, Colonel John Nicholson, said he was deeply ashamed and described the incident as a stain on our honour. The Marines’ tour was cut short after a second incident on 9 March in which they allegedly rolled a car and fired on traffic again, and they were flown out of Afghanistan a few weeks later.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe top Special Operations officer at US Central Command, Army Major General Frank Kearney, refuted MarSOC’s claims that they had been shot at. We found no brass that we can confirm that small-arms fire came at them, he said, referring to ammunition casings. We have testimony from Marines that is in conflict with unanimous testimony from civilians.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbAt the military hearings on the incident, which were held back in the US, soldiers said the MarSOC troops, who called themselves Taskforce Violence, were gung-ho and hungry to prove themselves in battle. The inquiry also heard testimony suggesting there were tensions between the Marine unit and its US Army counterparts in Nangahar province.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbCol Nicholson told the court the unit would routinely stray into areas under his control without telling him, ignoring usual military courtesies. There had been potentially 25 operations in my area of operations that I, as a commander, was not aware of, he said. Asked about the moment he was told of the March shootout, he added: My initial reaction was, What are they doing out there?’ The three-week military inquiry ultimately spared the Marine unit from criminal charges.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLa description de ce groupe est tout \u00e0 fait \u00e9tonnante et caract\u00e9ristique \u00e0 la fois. Le MarSOC<\/em> semble ressortir des cas les plus extr\u00eames de forces quasiment para-militaires \u00e0 l’int\u00e9rieur des forces arm\u00e9es, rejoignant m\u00eame des r\u00e9f\u00e9rences de fiction (le cas du colonel Kurtz\/Marlon Brando dans Apocalypse Now<\/em> de Coppola, mais avec une orientation d\u00e9cid\u00e9ment diff\u00e9rente. Kurtz repr\u00e9sente une sorte de dissidence contestatrice de l’U.S. Army et de la bureaucratie militaire au Vietnam, avec une certaine int\u00e9gration dans la population, rappelant certaines situations de groupes fran\u00e7ais travaillant avec des populations locales durant la guerre d’Indochine; MarSOC<\/em> repr\u00e9sente au contraire le cas de groupes autonomes de tueurs, greff\u00e9s de force dans la situation d’un pays, sans la moindre recherche d’une quelconque int\u00e9gration dans les populations locales, semblant appliquer constamment l’agression \u00e0 leur encontre). Le caract\u00e8re incontr\u00f4lable de MarSOC<\/em> est \u00e9vident, ainsi que sa libert\u00e9 d’action quasi-illimit\u00e9e pour \u00e9chapper le plus possible au contr\u00f4le de la hi\u00e9rarchie, pour intervenir d’une fa\u00e7on absolument autonome, sans aucun respect pour les r\u00e8gles diverses des forces arm\u00e9es, des combats, etc. Comme on le lit, ces groupes sont d\u00e9test\u00e9s par les unit\u00e9s r\u00e9guli\u00e8res de l’arm\u00e9e, y compris leur corps d’origine, et l\u00e0 aussi il y a une rupture compl\u00e8te des r\u00e8gles et des structures courantes. Il s’agit effectivement d’une d\u00e9structuration des forces pouss\u00e9es \u00e0 l’extr\u00eame, \u00e0 l’image de la plupart des politiques et des conceptions de l’\u00e9poque GW Bush.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCe qui est particuli\u00e8rement pr\u00e9occupant dans cette affaire, selon le r\u00e9cit qu’en fait The Independent<\/em>, c’est que cette situation perdure et qu’elle joue un r\u00f4le qui semble pr\u00e9pond\u00e9rant, et \u00e9videmment n\u00e9gatif, dans l’\u00e9volution de la guerre. La question qui se pose, bien entendu, est de savoir quelle position a l’administration Obama vis-\u00e0-vis de cette sorte d’unit\u00e9s et de leur r\u00f4le dans les op\u00e9rations en cours, et d’ailleurs quelle sorte de contr\u00f4le elle exerce sur ces unit\u00e9s. La question se pose lorsqu’on observe que les autorit\u00e9s militaires US sur place ne les contr\u00f4lent pas elles-m\u00eames, et lorsqu’on avance l’hypoth\u00e8se assez vraisemblable que la transition entre Rumsfeld et Gates, en novembre 2006 et dans des conditions humiliantes pour Rumsfeld, a tr\u00e8s bien pu \u00eatre l’occasion pour l’ancien secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense de dissimuler ou de rendre difficiles le transfert de certains processus de contr\u00f4le de telles situation. Dans le contexte des conditions de crise du commandement US en Afghanistan (limogeage de McKiernan<\/a> et nomination de McChrystal<\/a>), cette affaire contribue \u00e0 rendre la situation dans ce pays encore plus complexe et insaisissable, sinon incontr\u00f4lable. Toutes ces circonstances, ainsi que celles de l’affaire de Guantanamo<\/a>, ne contribuent en aucun cas \u00e0 \u00e9claircir la situation US, tant sur les intentions de l’administration Obama que sur le terrain. Bien plus que de renforcer l’id\u00e9e d’une orientation fermement d\u00e9finie (dans un sens \u00e9videmment belliciste poursuivant d’une fa\u00e7on coordonn\u00e9e Cheney-Rumsfeld), ces facteurs accentuent la perception d’un d\u00e9sordre, d’une puissance US d\u00e9structur\u00e9e, d’une incapacit\u00e9 de d\u00e9terminer une strat\u00e9gie coh\u00e9rente et viable en Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tMis en ligne le 17 mai 2009 \u00e0 00H43<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

C’est une \u00e9trange circonstance ou une circonstance r\u00e9v\u00e9latrice que rapporte le quotidien de Londres The Independent, ce 16 mai 2009, avec l’histoire du MarSOC, une abr\u00e9viation d\u00e9signant le Special Operations Command du Corps des Marines. Il s’agit en fait d’une unit\u00e9 de 2.500 hommes, dont la moiti\u00e9 affect\u00e9e au combat, form\u00e9e sur l’insistance de Rumsfeld… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3236,4012,4352,8333,3922,8332,8331,5775,3050],"class_list":["post-70764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-afghanistan","tag-apocalypse","tag-illegal","tag-incontrole","tag-independent","tag-kutz","tag-marsoc","tag-now","tag-the"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}