9/10 et la “privatisation” des armées US

The Nation publie un très long article de Jeremy Scahill sur la “privatisation” des forces armées US, notamment sur le groupe privé Blackwater intensivement employé dans ce but. (Le site Truthout reproduit cet article.)

L’un des aspects intéressants de cet article, qui en comporte bien d’autres, est d’introduire fondamentalement l’idée de la privatisation des forces armées US comme un des moyens de lutter contre la bureaucratie du Pentagone, directement en relation avec le remarquable (et très peu connu) discours de Rumsfeld du 10 septembre 2001, dont nous n’avons cessé de parler lorsque l’occasion s’en présentait.

Voici l’introduction de l’article, qui établit ce lien :

On September 10, 2001, before most Americans had heard of Al Qaeda or imagined the possibility of a ‘war on terror,’ Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the podium at the Pentagon to deliver one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush. Standing before the former corporate executives he had tapped as his top deputies overseeing the high-stakes business of military contracting-many of them from firms like Enron, General Dynamics and Aerospace Corporation-Rumsfeld issued a declaration of war.

»“The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America,” Rumsfeld thundered. “It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk.” He told his new staff, “You may think I'm describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world.... [But] the adversary's closer to home,” he said. “It's the Pentagon bureaucracy.” Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon, supplanting the old DoD bureaucracy with a new model, one based on the private sector. Announcing this major overhaul, Rumsfeld told his audience, “I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”

»The next morning, the Pentagon would be attacked, literally, as a Boeing 757-American Airlines Flight 77-smashed into its western wall. Rumsfeld would famously assist rescue workers in pulling bodies from the rubble. But it didn't take long for Rumsfeld to seize the almost unthinkable opportunity presented by 9/11 to put his personal war-laid out just a day before-on the fast track. The new Pentagon policy would emphasize covert actions, sophisticated weapons systems and greater reliance on private contractors. It became known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine. “We must promote a more entrepreneurial approach: one that encourages people to be proactive, not reactive, and to behave less like bureaucrats and more like venture capitalists,” Rumsfeld wrote in the summer of 2002 in an article for Foreign Affairs titled ‘Transforming the Military.’»

Cette approche n’est pas la nôtre, car nous avons toujours vu plutôt une contradiction entre 9/10 (le discours) et 9/11, le second événement contrecarrant les ambitions de celui de 9/10. (Nous avons déjà examiné cette question dans un article à propos d’un texte d’Andrew Bacevitch.) Si l’article de Scahill ne modifie pas notre appréciation, il constitue une interprétation qui n’est pas inintéressante (et qui pourrait aussi bien être complémentaire de notre analyse de 9/10).

Mis en ligne le 18 mars 2007 à 05H59