Joint Special Operations Command: The United States' Secret Police?

The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is the United States’ military’s most covert and elite fighting force.  After the attacks on the World Trade center in 2001, they have been focused on eliminating terrorists in the Middle East.  The Arab Spring is a movement of revolt against the oppressive governments in Arab countries.  One of the consistent factors in these countries is the use of secret police, corruption, and oppression.  Since 2001, the United States' use of JSOC has mirrored abroad the suppression used by Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya domestically that led to the Arab Spring uprisings in 2010 and 2011.

            The Joint Special Operations Command was formed in 1980, and consists of various Special Forces units from the United States’ military.  After 2001, the president has employed these units to eliminate high value targets; often without going through the proper channels, such as Congress.  Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, of the Washington Post write, “Since 9/11, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA has managed. ‘We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,’ a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit.” There have been many reported incidences of torture and extrajudicial killings within countries the United States is not formally in war with.  Jeremy Schahill, of The Nation reports, “Col. W. Patrick Lang, a retired Special Forces officer with extensive operational experience throughout the Muslim world, described JSOC’s forces as ‘sort of like Murder, Incorporated.’ He told The Nation: ‘Their business is killing Al Qaeda personnel. That’s their business. They’re not in the business of converting anybody to our goals or anything like that.’”  The fact that The U.S. executes these targeted strikes is similar to how Arab governments use their secret police.

            The Arab Spring began in Tunisia at the end of 2010, when Muhammad Bouazizi set himself ablaze.  Corruption ran amok in Tunisia.  Most of the businesses were in some way tied to the Ben Ali family.  After Bouazizi made his fatal protest, others began to mass and rally against the government demanding reform.  Ben Ali did not respond kindly, “In the town of Kasserine in western Tunisia, where twenty-one died at the hands of government snipers, infuriated protesters turned their sights on those responsible, demanding the immediate departure of Ben Ali.”(Gelvin P. 43)  This form of suppression is not unlike the deadly force that JSOC uses on a regular basis.

            The killing of Osama bin Laden was carried out by Navy SEAL Team Six, a unit under JSOC’s command.  This operation was extremely classified, as Schahill writes, “The vast majority of JSOC’s missions are highly classified and compartmentalized. In some cases, JSOC operators have conducted operations without informing the combatant commanders of their presence. ‘Only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance,’ a senior Obama administration official said shortly after bin Laden’s killing was announced.”  This lack of communication can lead to distrust from both the public and within.  Schahill goes on to report,

“Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, has alleged that then–Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld often circumvented the traditional military command structure in how they used JSOC. ‘What I was seeing was the development of what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even knowing what they were doing,’ Colonel Wilkerson told me in late 2009 for a story about JSOC in Pakistan. ‘That’s dangerous, that’s very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don’t tell the theater commander what you’re doing.’

Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg. ‘I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite good,’ said Wilkerson. ‘I think Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions.’ He said the relationship between JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld ‘built up initially because Rumsfeld didn’t get the responsiveness. He didn’t get the can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went straight to the horse’s mouth. At that point you had JSOC operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things the executive branch—read: Cheney and Rumsfeld—wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier.’”

This way the executive branch was using JSOC as a personal hit team is reminiscent of how Egypt used their secret police.

            Wael Ghonim was an integral part of the revolutions in Egypt.  He was the creator and administrator of the Facebook page, "We Are All Khaled Said."  Ghonim was arrested because of his involvement with the page and describes his imprisonment in his memoir Revolution 2.0.  He writes, “It would be very difficult to convey the psychological torture that I suffered during my abduction.  I could write scores of pages and yet not adequately convey the feeling.  Over the next eleven days, with my blindfold firmly in place and no sounds reaching me from outside the prison, I had little sense of time.”(P. 211)  This kind of torture was common place from the Egyptian secret police, and is one of the many reasons Egyptians took to Tahir Square to demand the resignation of Mubarak.  The Joint Special Forces Command was used as the United States secret police in foreign countries. 

            In September of 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a drone strike coordinated by the CIA and JSOC.  Al-Awlaki was a Muslim radical who contributed anti-American propaganda to English magazines.  He was also believed to be a leader of al-Qaeda.  Although this attack took place in Yemen, it is problematic because he was a United States citizen.  Damien McElroy of The Telegraph writes,

“Al-Awlaki's death is the latest in a run of high-profile kills for Washington under President Barack Obama. But the killing raises questions that the death of other al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden, did not.  Al-Awlaki is a US citizen, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, who had not been charged with any crime. Civil liberties groups have questioned the government's authority to kill an American without trial.”

This strike sends a message that if one is actively working against America and the president believes they are a threat, that individual can be killed.  This kind of authoritative rule is similar to Gadhafi’s extended term in Libya.

            Muammar Gadhafi, of Libya, was the longest ruling dictator in the Arab world.  Libya is an oil rich country and Gadhafi controlled that wealth.  There were many unemployed educated Libyans.  When protests began demanding Gadhafi to step down he did not respond kindly.  As Lin Nouheihed and Alex Warren wrote in their book The Battle for the Arab Spring, “A mixture of terror, apathy, and popular support kept Gadhafi in control of Tripoli and much of the surrounding area, where pro-government forces and alleged African mercenaries shot or arrested demonstrators and restricted any large scale rallies.”(P.179)  Ultimately Gadhafi was found beaten and stabbed to death in a gutter.  His death illustrates how unhappy the Libyans were with him and his reign.

            There are many parallels in the force used by the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and the Joint Special Operations Command.  Priest and Arkin describe the violence used by JSOC, “JSOC’s lethality was evident in its body counts: In 2008, in Afghanistan alone, JSOC commandos struck 550 targets and killed roughly a thousand people, officials said. In 2009, they executed 464 operations and killed 400 to 500 enemy forces. As Iraq descended into chaos in the summer of 2005, JSOC conducted 300 raids a month. More than 50 percent of JSOC Army Delta Force commandos now have Purple Hearts.”  Although these attacks are occurring on foreign soil, as details emerge the American public will become uneasy.  The lack of transparency and authoritative power being asserted is in line with the events that sparked the Arab Spring revolutions.

Works Cited:

Dirty Wars. Dir. Jeremy Schahill. 2013.

Gelvin, James L. The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Ghonim, Wael. Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater than the People in Power: A Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.

McElroy, Damien. "Same US Military Unit That Got Osama Bin Laden Killed Anwar Al-Awlaki." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 30 Sept. 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.

Noueihed, Lin, and Alex Warren. After the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-revolution and the Making of a New Era. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2012. Print.

Priest, Dana, and William M. Arkin. "‘Top Secret America’: A Look at the Military’s Joint Special Operations Command." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 03 Sept. 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.

Schahill, Jeremy. "JSOC: The Black Ops Force That Took Down Bin Laden | The Nation." JSOC: The Black Ops Force That Took Down Bin Laden | The Nation. The Nation, 2 May 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.