OMNI
US EMPIRE, US
NATIONAL SECURITY STATE, NATIONALISM, MILITARISM, SURVEILLANCE NEWSLETTER # 16,
May 17, 2015.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett, Building a Culture of Peace and Justice.
What’s at stake: HH Dalai Lama on Violence: "Of course, war and the large military
establishments are the greatest sources of violence in the world. Whether their
purpose is defensive or offensive, these vast powerful organizations exist
solely to kill human beings. We should think carefully about the reality of
war. Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and
glamorous - an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since
armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that
war is criminal or that accepting it is criminal attitude. In fact, we have
been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its
very nature is one of tragedy and suffering" " [The attribution to the Dalai Lama seems
plausible, but I received this from a stranger via Facebook, without source
citation or any attempt to verify its authenticity. –Dick]
US Imperialism Newsletters
#1 July 3, 2007
#2 Sept. 20, 2007
#3 April 7, 2008
#4 Nov. 30, 2008
#5 September 13, 2011
#6 October 16, 2011
#7 January 16, 2012
#8 June 3, 2012
#9 Oct. 20, 2012
#10 April 5, 2013
#11 June 3, 2013
#12 July 19, 2013
#13 Sept. 3, 2013
#14 March 2, 2014
#15 June 22, 2014
The military have become
ardent and dangerous competitors for power in American society.” J. William Fulbright, The Crippled Giant (1972, 253).
What is the mission of
OMNI?
a world free of war and the threat
of war,
a society with equity and
justice for all,
a community where every
person’s potential may be fulfilled,
and an earth restored.
My blog: It's the War Department
Newsletters: Laying
the foundation for peace, justice, and ecology in knowledge.
Index:
See: Afghan/US
War, Costs of War, Consequences of War, US Imperialism, US Imperialism Continental Westward Expansion, US Imperial Pacific E.
Asia Expansion, US Leaders Imperial Lawlessness, Iraq/US War,
McCarthyism Ongoing, US Military Industrial Complex, Militarism, US National
Security State, Pentagon, Pentagon: Suicides, Pentagon: Whistleblowing,
Torture, War Crimes, and more.
A wide-ranging source of
information is the Defense News Early Bird Brief: : http://omsswar.blogspot.com/2012/03/defense-news-early-bird-brief_14.html
Nos. 10-15 below.
Contents US Imperialism and Militarism Newsletter #16
History of us wars and interventions
Richard Sanders, US Pretexts for War,
1846-1989
Brumback, America’s
Oldest Professions: Warring and
Spying
PeaceVoice, Keyel, US Post-9/11 Military
Interventions
US Imperialism and Militarism Today
Rothkopf, Bush and Obama in Post-9/11 Age of
Fear
VfP, Stop Illegal Cluster Bombs to Saudi
Arabia
Answer Coalition, Afghanistan and Iraq
Occupations Permanent
Tom Dispatch:
Chalmers Johnson, Sagging Empire, Chalmers’ last book was a
collection of his
essays, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope.
essays, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope.
Tom Dispatch, US Empire on the Psychiatrist’s
Couch
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox People’s Network
(SPN)
William Greider: Hillary Clinton or Jim Webb or Bernie Sanders
or ?
Empire at Home
“the defense and national
security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no
accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind” --Glennon.
Glennon, Double
Government
Rowley, FBI Whistleblower (from Sheehan)
Militarizing Public Health for World Crises and Military Expansion
“…stop this
underhanded funding of US militarism and imperialism.”
Two Articles on Militarizing Public Health
Service: US Army and USAF to West Africa for
Ebola Crisis
Ebola Crisis
Arkansas at Center of Empire
C-130 at Little Rock
Drones in Ft. Smith
The Nation,
“Machineries
of Death”
Missiles in Camden Lockheed
Recent Related Newsletters
Contact President Obama
Contents of Earlier Empire Newsletters
SANDERS, US GOING TO WAR
Here is an improved and expanded version of
my article called "How to start a war: The American Use of War Pretext
Incidents (1846-1989)" (May 2002).
This new version was published by the
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) in issue #50, of Press for Conversion! (January 2003). For information on obtaining
a copy of that issue, which contains 40 pages of articles by numerous authors
on US war pretext incidents, between 1846 and the present, please see the
information after this article.
Going to War: Unraveling the Tangled Web of American
Pretext Stratagems (1846-1989) By Richard Sanders, coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms
Trade, and editor, Press for Conversion!
"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!"
Sir
Walter Scott, Canto vi, Stanza 17, Marmion.
Pretext n. [Latin praetextum, to weave
before, pretend, disguise; prae-, before + texere, to weave], a false reason or
motive put forth to hide the real one; excuse.
Stratagem [Gr. Strategema, device or act of a
general; stratos, army + agein, to lead], a trick or scheme used to deceive an
enemy in war.
For more than a year now the U.S. has seemed
on the verge of attacking
Iraq.
All that is stopping them is their inability to find a credible
pretext for war.
Throughout history, war planners have used many forms of deception
to trick their enemies. Because public support is so crucial to the
process of initiating and waging war, the
home population is also subject
to deceitful stratagems. Creating false
pretenses to justify war is often a
major step in gaining public support for such
deadly ventures.
Like schoolyard bullies who shout 'He hit me first!', war planners
know that it is irrelevant whether their
rival really did 'throw the first
punch.'
As long as the attack can be made to appear unprovoked, the
aggressor can 'respond' with force. Bullies and war planners are experts
in the art of taunting, teasing and
threatening. If enemies cannot be
goaded into 'firing the first shot,' it is
easy enough to fabricate lies
about what happened. Such lies are used to rationalize schoolyard
beatings
or genocidal wars.
Such expedient artifice has no doubt been used by every military
power in history. Roman emperors had their cassus belli to
conceal real
reasons for waging war. Over the millenia, although weapons and
battle
strategies have changed greatly, the
deceitful strategem of using pretext
incidents to ignite war has remained
remarkably consistent. In examining
this history, certain patterns repeatedly
emerge, a distinct modus operandi
is detected, and the institutionalized,
criminal ploys of war planners can
be seen.
Perhaps the most commonly used war pretext device is an apparently
unprovoked enemy attack. Through history, such "attacks"
have been
deliberately incited, completely fabricated,
allowed to occur, or
engineered and then blamed on the desired
enemy. The event is then
exploited to arouse widespread public
sympathy for the victims, to demonise
the attackers and to build widespread support
for military "retaliation"
among the general population, as well as
among politicians and other
leaders of public opinion.
War pretext incidents, in themselves, are not sufficient to spark
wars.
Rumours and allegations about the tragic events must also spread
throughout the target population. Constant repetition of the official
version of what happened, helps to spawn
dramatic narratives that are
lodged into public consciousness. The stories then become accepted without
question and legends are fostered. The corporate media is central to the
success of such war propaganda. Politicians rally people around the flag,
lending their special oratory skills to the
call for a military
"response." Demands for "retaliation" then ring
out across the land, war
hysteria mounts and, finally, a war is born.
Every time the U.S. has gone to war, pretext incidents have been
used as triggers to justify military
action. Later, the conventional views
of these controversial events have been
challenged and exposed as
untrue.
Historians, investigative journalists and others, have cited
eyewitness accounts, declassified documents
and statements made by the
perpetrators themselves to demonstrate that
provocative incidents were used
to stage manage the march to war.
There are dozens of other examples from U.S. history besides those
exposed in these pages. During the Cold War, dozens of covert and
overt
wars were promoted using specific pretext
episodes. However, the crusade
against communism was the generic backdrop
for all rationales.
As the Cold War wound down, the "War on Drugs" was developed
as a
new cover story. Lurking behind U.S. lies about wanting to
squash illicit
drug production and trafficking, are the
actual reasons for financing and
training so many right-wing, military
governments. The "War on
Drugs"
pretext has been used to boost
counter-insurgency operations aimed at
destroying those opposed to U.S. corporate
profiteering. The CIA has not
only used drugs as a pretext to arm regimes
that themselves profit from
illegal drug sales, it has also financed many
of its own covert wars using
the highly lucrative trade in heroine and
cocaine.
The latest thematic pretext for war is the so-called "War Against
Terrorism." It is vitally important to
expose this latest attempt to
fraudulently conceal the largely economic and
geostrategic purposes of
war.
By unraveling the intricate web of pretenses woven to deceive the
public, we can begin to reveal how
corporations are the main benefactors of
war.
By throwing light on repeated historical patterns of deception, we
can promote a healthy skepticism about
government and corporate media yarns
that are now being spun to promote wars of
the future.
If asked to support wars so that wealthy elites can safely plunder
the natural and human resources of foreign
lands, people would likely 'just
say no.' Therefore, over the millennia, war
planners have developed a
special martial art - the creation of war
pretext incidents. These
elaborate webs of deceit are woven to create
the appearance that wars are
fought for just, moral and humanitarian
reasons.
The knowledge of how people have been repeatedly tricked into
going to war, is like a vaccine. It can be used to inoculate the public
with healthy doses of distrust for official,
war pretext narratives and
other deceptive stratagems. Through such immunization programs we can
help
to counter our society's susceptibility to
"war fever" and, hopefully,
prevent the next bout of war from infecting
us.
Press for Conversion! Issue
#50 January 2003
Published quarterly by the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade
Theme of this issue:
"Going to War: The American use of War Pretext Incidents"
Table of Contents:
Unravelling the Tangled Web of Pretext Stratagems
1846: The Mexican-American War
Abraham Lincoln Doubted Polk's Pretext for War
1898: The Spanish-American War
What Happened Aboard the USS Maine?
1915: World War I
The Sinking of the Lusitania
1941: World War II
"Smoking Gun": Provoking the Pearl Harbour Attack
1950: The Korean War
South Korea Likely Provoked War with North
1954: The Covert War Against Guatemala
Arms Shipments on the Alfhem
1959: CIA Plots Soviet Arms Deal with Cuba
1962: Plans to Create Pretexts for War with Cuba
Operation Northwoods Top Secret Documents
Pretexts to Justify Military Intervention in Cuba
1964: The Vietnam War
Gulf of Tonkin: The Lie that Launched the War
1979: The Covert War in Afghanistan
1983: The Invasion of Grenada
Military Exercise Practised the Invasion and Pretext
"Pretext Hostages" Denied they were in Danger
Same Old Recycled Pretext
1986: The Bombing the Libya
La Belle Disco: Debunking the "Libya did it" Theory
1989: The Invasion of Panama
Provoking the Pretext
Drugs, Noriega and Bush Sr.
1991: The Gulf War
Incubator Deaths: A Hill & Knowlton Fabrication
Nayirah and Other "Eyewitnesses"
1999: NATO's War Against Yugoslavia in Kosovo
What Happened at 'Racak'?
The Hoax that Started a War
William Walker: CIA Operative?
2001: The "War Against Terror"
2003: The Next Iraq War
UN Resolution as Cover for U.S. War Plans
Iraq calls UN Resolution a Pretext for War
Inspectors fear they'll be used as Triggers for War
Future: New Covert U.S. Agency to "Stimulate" Terrorists
Published quarterly by the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade
Theme of this issue:
"Going to War: The American use of War Pretext Incidents"
Table of Contents:
Unravelling the Tangled Web of Pretext Stratagems
1846: The Mexican-American War
Abraham Lincoln Doubted Polk's Pretext for War
1898: The Spanish-American War
What Happened Aboard the USS Maine?
1915: World War I
The Sinking of the Lusitania
1941: World War II
"Smoking Gun": Provoking the Pearl Harbour Attack
1950: The Korean War
South Korea Likely Provoked War with North
1954: The Covert War Against Guatemala
Arms Shipments on the Alfhem
1959: CIA Plots Soviet Arms Deal with Cuba
1962: Plans to Create Pretexts for War with Cuba
Operation Northwoods Top Secret Documents
Pretexts to Justify Military Intervention in Cuba
1964: The Vietnam War
Gulf of Tonkin: The Lie that Launched the War
1979: The Covert War in Afghanistan
1983: The Invasion of Grenada
Military Exercise Practised the Invasion and Pretext
"Pretext Hostages" Denied they were in Danger
Same Old Recycled Pretext
1986: The Bombing the Libya
La Belle Disco: Debunking the "Libya did it" Theory
1989: The Invasion of Panama
Provoking the Pretext
Drugs, Noriega and Bush Sr.
1991: The Gulf War
Incubator Deaths: A Hill & Knowlton Fabrication
Nayirah and Other "Eyewitnesses"
1999: NATO's War Against Yugoslavia in Kosovo
What Happened at 'Racak'?
The Hoax that Started a War
William Walker: CIA Operative?
2001: The "War Against Terror"
2003: The Next Iraq War
UN Resolution as Cover for U.S. War Plans
Iraq calls UN Resolution a Pretext for War
Inspectors fear they'll be used as Triggers for War
Future: New Covert U.S. Agency to "Stimulate" Terrorists
HumansForPeace.org -- AfterDowningStreet.org
·
Youtube
Blogs / davidswanson's
blog / Born at War
Born at War
Review by davidswanson -
Posted on 02 February 2015
Foreword to America's
Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying
One
of the ways in which we commonly handicap our own struggles to reform the bad
practices of the U.S. government is by imagining those practices to be
degenerative developments taking us away from a purer and nobler past. As Gary
Brumback shows in this book, the
United States grew out of the idea that (in Thomas Paine's phrase) it was
"common sense" to launch a war to settle political differences, a war
that in turn set the new nation free to launch a series of wars against the
indigenous people of the continent, followed quickly by a ceaseless string of
wars waged in near and far-flung corners of the globe.
This
deeply moral, highly readable, and urgently necessary book, which provides a
wealth of new information even to a reader like myself who writes on similar
topics, takes us from the birth of the
United States to the Barack Obama presidency. Brumback documents George
Washington's role as first warrior in chief and first chief spy, and traces
that legacy through some 13,000 to
14,000 U.S. military wars/interventions since, operations that have killed
some 20 million to 30 million foreign civilians just in the years after World
War II, and that have killed more than two and a half million U.S. soldiers
over nearly two and a half centuries.
Brumback's
argument is not for "just wars" or more competent spying but for a
shift away from these practices. War destroys the natural environment, wastes
trillions of dollars, and has no upside. All militarism and spying cost the
U.S. government well over $1 trillion a year and rising. In exchange for this
investment, which at least matches if it does not exceed the rest of the world
combined, the United States leads wealthy nations in inequality, unemployment,
food insecurity, life expectancy, prison population, homelessness, and other
measures of what all the militarism is supposedly protecting: a way of life.
We've
been trained to think of war preparations -- and the wars that result from
being so incredibly prepared for wars -- as necessary if regrettable. What if,
however, in the long view that this book allows us, war turns out to be
counterproductive on its own terms? What if war endangers those who wage it
rather than protecting them? Imagine, for a moment, how many countries Canada
would have to invade and occupy before it could successfully generate
anti-Canadian terrorist networks to rival the hatred and resentment currently
organized against the United States.
Brumback
goes further, documenting that spying is as useless and counterproductive on
its own terms as war is. Most secrets sought and maintained by the U.S.
government have literally no strategic value even in terms of the militarist
thinking that drives the spying. The CIA straddles the space between keystone
cop performances of handing nuclear plans to Iran or grounding flights because
a con artist claims to see secret terrorist messages in television broadcasts,
and the deadly anti-democratic destruction of overthrowing governments and
murdering innocent people with drone strikes. In a "free market"
competition, the CIA or the Pentagon would lose out to an agency that did
literally nothing, much less to a department that worked toward peace, justice,
and stability through nonviolent means.
So,
what drives what has come to look like war for the sake of war and spying for
the sake of spying? Brumback proposes the useful term "badvantages"
to categorize features of U.S. society that are not necessarily
"roots" or "causes" of war but which facilitate war when
found in combination. This section of the book provides an excellent outline of
the military industrial spying congressional complex and analysis of how it
functions. Greed, obedience, and banal immorality play central roles. As I
write these words, the U.S. Congress is missing in action, having fled
Washington in order to allow a new war to begin without holding a vote on
whether or not to authorize it. Weapons stocks are at record heights on Wall
Street, and a financial advisor on National Public Radio was just heard
recommending investing in weaponry.
Banksters
come in for a healthy dose of criticism as a badvantage, as do the think tanks
that just can't stop thinking about tanks. Also exposed to the light in these
pages are front groups for war interests, war supporters in religion and
especially in education, patriotic festivals, news media, Hollywood, war toys,
the domestic U.S. gun industry, academia, and -- last but not least -- people
who do nothing, or "accessories after the fact." That's a lot of
badvantages to be overcome.
Often,
of course, it is after the fact -- after the launching of a new war -- that
people come around to opposing it. For 70 years somewhere upwards of 90 percent
of Americans who argue that war can be just or necessary have gone primarily to
World War II as evidence for their claim. Never mind that World War II is
unimaginable without World War I which nobody thinks was necessary. Never mind
the support that Wall Street and the U.S. State Department gave to the Nazis
for years leading up to the crisis. For 70 years people have imagined that,
like World War II, some new war might be a good one. This hope has lasted for
weeks or months and then faded. For most of the duration of the 2003-2011
U.S.-led war on Iraq, a U.S. majority said it should never have been started.
In this sense, it is "accessories before the fact" who are hurting us
the most.
Brumback
envisions another way of addressing ourselves to the world, in which we would
lose the idea that War #14,001 might finally be the good one that fulfills the
promises of World War I and trails peace and prosperity behind its bombs and
poisons. He also recommends a comprehensive series of steps to move us in that
direction. This book is worth whatever you paid for it for its concluding
sections alone. The creation of a Citizens Assembly is, I think, exactly the way
to go, although I'm not so sure it should be national. An assembly composed of
citizens of the world has potential, I believe. In either case, building such a
structure is project number one. We do not need a better Obama, a change of
face in a position that corrupts absolutely. We need a better Occupy, a bigger
broader bolder movement that finally resorts to the most powerful tool in our
arsenal: nonviolence.
David
Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is
director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books
include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation
Radio.
·
PeaceVoice
A project of the Oregon Peace Institute
A project of the Oregon Peace Institute
AVAILABLE FOR REPRINT. Copy
and use freely. Please help PeaceVoice by notifying us when you use this
piece: PeaceVoiceDirector@gmail.com
“The United States must accept
responsibility for the damage its military actions have caused and recognize
there are alternatives for the future.
In the nearly decade and a half since the September 11th, 2001 attacks, the United States has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, carried out bombing campaigns throughout the Middle East, and launched special operations strikes throughout the world.”
In the nearly decade and a half since the September 11th, 2001 attacks, the United States has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, carried out bombing campaigns throughout the Middle East, and launched special operations strikes throughout the world.”
Author: Jared
Keyel
Published in: Las Vegas Informer http://lasvegas.informermg.com/2015/05/03/time-americans-accept-responsibility-military-interventions/
The Gilmer Mirror http://www.gilmermirror.com/view/full_story/26614165/article-Time-for-Americans-to-Accept-Responsibility-for-Our-Military-Interventions?instance=lead_story_left_column
Huntington News http://www.huntingtonnews.net/112578
Truth Out http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/30617-time-for-americans-to-accept-responsibility-for-our-military-interventions
The Free Weekly http://www.freeweekly.com/2015/05/07/time-for-americans-to-accept-responsibility-for-our-military-interventions/
For the full article:
Time for Americans to Accept Responsibility for Our Military Interventions
505 Words By Jared Keyel [I read this in The Free Weekly (5-7-15), Fayetteville, AR. –Dick]
Published in: Las Vegas Informer http://lasvegas.informermg.com/2015/05/03/time-americans-accept-responsibility-military-interventions/
The Gilmer Mirror http://www.gilmermirror.com/view/full_story/26614165/article-Time-for-Americans-to-Accept-Responsibility-for-Our-Military-Interventions?instance=lead_story_left_column
Huntington News http://www.huntingtonnews.net/112578
Truth Out http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/30617-time-for-americans-to-accept-responsibility-for-our-military-interventions
The Free Weekly http://www.freeweekly.com/2015/05/07/time-for-americans-to-accept-responsibility-for-our-military-interventions/
For the full article:
Time for Americans to Accept Responsibility for Our Military Interventions
505 Words By Jared Keyel [I read this in The Free Weekly (5-7-15), Fayetteville, AR. –Dick]
The United States must accept
responsibility for the damage its military actions have caused and recognize
there are alternatives for the future.
In the nearly decade and a half since the September 11th, 2001 attacks, the United States has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, carried out bombing campaigns throughout the Middle East, and launched special operations strikes throughout the world.
In the nearly decade and a half since the September 11th, 2001 attacks, the United States has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, carried out bombing campaigns throughout the Middle East, and launched special operations strikes throughout the world.
These policies are
non-partisan. Many military actions begun under George W. Bush have continued
and intensified under Barack Obama. The CIA-led drone wars in Pakistan,
Somalia, and Yemen are a key component of Mr. Obama’s administration and the
use of U.S. Special Forces has exploded in recent years, deploying to 134
countries in 2013.
The consequences of these
actions are immense. In the words of 13-year-old Yemeni, Mohammed Tuaiman, U.S.
drone strikes have “turned our area into hell and continuous horror, day and
night, we even dream of them in our sleep.” Mohammed, like his father and
brother, was later killed by an American drone. Fourteen-year-old Zubair Ur
Rehman, whose grandmother was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, told
five members of Congress in 2103, “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I like
gray skies; the drones cannot fly when the skies are gray.”
Physicians for Social
Responsibility, the American affiliate of Nobel Peace Prize-winning
International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, recently released a
report that estimates at least 1.3 million people have died as a result of the
U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the violent
spillover into Pakistan. U.S. policies have not brought stability to countries
such as Afghanistan or Yemen and as the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria has shown, U.S. military actions have fanned the flames of terrorism, not
extinguished them.
There is no doubt that many Americans believe our military interventions are undertaken to help others around the world. Unfortunately, the reality is far different. From Afghanistan to Libya, our military interventions have left broken lives and nations in ruins. It may be surprising to some Americans, but a 2013 Gallup poll of 65 countries saw the United States at the top of the list of greatest threats to world peace.
There is no doubt that many Americans believe our military interventions are undertaken to help others around the world. Unfortunately, the reality is far different. From Afghanistan to Libya, our military interventions have left broken lives and nations in ruins. It may be surprising to some Americans, but a 2013 Gallup poll of 65 countries saw the United States at the top of the list of greatest threats to world peace.
We as Americans need to take
that perception seriously and accept responsibility for the enormous human
suffering our wars and interventions have caused.
Most Americans have a genuine
desire to help and not hurt others around the world. We can work to alleviate
the injury we have already caused by providing more support for emergency humanitarian
aid and refugee protection and resettlement, more funding to allow the
societies we have torn apart to rebuild themselves, and by engaged,
multilateral, diplomacy to try to end ongoing violence.
We need to push our government, no matter which party is currently in power, to live up to our obligations under international law and end the pervasive use of military force. We have relied on military means too widely and too belligerently and it is time to chart a different course.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jared Keyel has a background in International Relations and Middle Eastern Affairs and currently works with refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrants in Chicago, Illinois and is syndicated through PeaceVoice.
We need to push our government, no matter which party is currently in power, to live up to our obligations under international law and end the pervasive use of military force. We have relied on military means too widely and too belligerently and it is time to chart a different course.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jared Keyel has a background in International Relations and Middle Eastern Affairs and currently works with refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrants in Chicago, Illinois and is syndicated through PeaceVoice.
May 4, 2015 | Filed Under Home
US EMPIRE AND MILITARISM TODAY
NATIONAL INSECURITY
American Leadership in an Age of Fear [post-9/11 comparison of
Bush and Obama, anticipating 2016 election]
by David Rothkopf. 2014.
KIRKUS REVIEW
A distinguished journalist and
scholar looks at the shaping of America’s national security and foreign policy
for the past decade.
We live, writes Rothkopf (Power
Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government and the Reckoning
That Lies Ahead, 2012, etc.), in an age
of fear in which the instant delivery of horrific images ratchets up the
dread of terror attack, even as the country suffers a financial meltdown. These
national emotional traumas help account for the swings in our policymaking,
from the George W. Bush administration’s “overheated” response to the 9/11
attacks to the consequent temporizing of the Barack Obama administration,
desperate to be seen as “un-Bush.” Bringing to bear his own government
experience and decades of writing about these issues, Rothkopf sympathetically
examines the two presidents and their principal advisers—he’s interviewed over
100 of them—and demonstrates how the
sense of threat informed so many of their decisions during this highly
charged era. Focusing evenhandedly on the personalities that transformed so
much of our foreign policy and national security strategies, he considers the
Bush team’s second-term makeover, the surge in Iraq, his handling of the 2008
financial crisis and the role played by national security in that year’s
election. The author examines the construction of the Obama foreign policy
team, the failure of Richard Holbrooke’s AfPak shop within the State Department
and of George Mitchell’s efforts in the Middle East, the illusory “pivot” to
Asia and “reset” with Russia, the secret outreach to Iran, and the flat-footed
response to the Arab Spring, the drone war, and the widespread and largely
unknown (until the Snowden disclosures) cyberwar. Rothkopf emphasizes the
difficulty of properly calibrating our policy amid the zeitgeist of fear, and he makes some proposals that might allow us to
better adjust.
A sharp, immensely readable
account of how we’ve arrived at this juncture and where matters stand as we
anticipate the election of a new president.
Pub Date: Oct. 18th, 2014, 496pp, PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16th, 2014, Kirkus
Reviews Issue: Oct. 1st, 2014
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Friday, May 15,
2015
 Veterans For Peace is calling
on the Obama administration to discontinue the delivery of illegal cluster
bombs to Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch provided
convincing evidence this week that Saudi Arabia is dropping
U.S. made cluster bombs in its aerial campaign against neighboring Yemen.In 2008, 116 countries signed the Convention on Cluster Bombs, agreeing not to manufacture or use cluster bombs. Cluster bombs contain many small bomblets that disperse over a wide area, killing and maiming civilians, including many children. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia did not sign the Cluster Bomb Treaty. <Full Statement> |
||||
OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ
PERMANENT
Two Articles from the Answer Coalition,
Oct. 10, 2014
Despite "withdrawal," thousands
of U.S. troops to continue occupation.
With no public discussion or explanation,
the White House signed a new deal on Sept. 30 with the government of
Afghanistan to keep 10,000 U.S. troops occupying the country. There is no plan
or timeline for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops — ever.
Read Article
"No boots on the ground" a lie
Less than one week after the Pentagon
generals announced new one-year deployment rotations to the resurrected U.S.
war in Iraq “for 10 to 15 to 20 years,” they also created a new Marine Corps
unit to fight in Iraq.
Best of TomDispatch: Chalmers Johnson,
Portrait of a Sagging Empire
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: It’s summer and in this season my mind turns to
Chalmers Johnson, "Mr. Blowback,” who died in November 2010 and who, each year around this
time, I like to remember at TomDispatch. Certainly, given recent
events in Iraq and Syria America
MORE
IMPERIALISM
Shrinking the Empire: A Session on the
Imperial Couch
By Tom Engelhardt. Tomdispatch, Nov. 11, 2014.
By Tom Engelhardt. Tomdispatch, Nov. 11, 2014.
[What follows is a
transcript of a therapy session between the American Empire
and a psychiatrist whose name we at TomDispatch have agreed not to disclose.
Normally, even in an age in which privacy means ever less to
anyone, we wouldn’t consider publishing such a private encounter, but the
probative news value of the exchange is so obvious that we decided to make an
exception. The transcript has been edited only for obvious repetitions and the
usual set of “ums” and “uhs.” Tom]
Doctor: Would you like to tell me
why you’re here?
American Empire: Well, Doc, I’m feeling a
little off. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of confused, even a little dizzy
some of the time.
Doctor: When did you first
experience symptoms of dizziness?
AE: I think it was all the
pivoting that did it. First I was pivoting out of Iraq. Then I was pivoting out of Afghanistan. Then I was pivoting to Asia. Then I was secretly pivoting to Africa. Then all of a sudden I was pivoting intoIraq again, and Syria, and Afghanistan, and... well, you get the picture.
Doctor: And this left you...?
AE: Depressed. But Doc,
there’s a little background you need to know about the dizzying nature of my
life. For almost 50 years -- this was in the last century -- I was in the
marriage from hell. My partner, the Soviet Union, was a nightmare. I mean, we
had a brief sunny courtship when we were more or less in love, but that only
lasted the length of World War II. The minute I got home from the front, it was
hell, and I’m hardly exaggerating if I tell you that, when we got to fighting,
it was scorched Earth all the way. We regularly threatened
to annihilate each other. It was one of those stormy
relationships you could never predict in advance where this planet just isn’t
big enough for the two of you.
Grinding the Propaganda Mill of Empire
CINDY SHEEHAN’S Soapbox People’s Network
(SPN), 9/17/2014
A note from Cindy
So, the Empire is ginning up
some more anti-Peace rhetoric to get the US into more wars. Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox has exposed the lies over and
over again for almost six years! Particularly with the current anti-Peace rhetoric
spewing forth from the White House and its propaganda arm of the Media
Industrial Complex, the Soapbox continues to provide the facts: like ISIS/ISIL
was armed and trained by the US Deep State creepers and the US is partnering
with neo-Nazi fascists in Kiev to isolate Russia and both misadventures are for
corporate profit and Imperial power. Every Soapbox podcast from when we
premiered in January of 2009 is archived, and it’s quite a chronicle of Lie-Busting!
Recently, Cindy Sheehan’s
Soapbox has transformed to the Soapbox People’s Network where we post news
items to grind to extinction the propaganda mill of Empire and we have added
three new podcasts (one active and two still in production) and a list of
featured bloggers to go along with Cindy Sheehan’s insightful and heartfelt
analysis of Imperial hanky-panky.
Read More...
World War Forever SPN by
Cindy Sheehan 09/19/2014
[THE WAR OF TERROR]
A good friend of mine Jon Gold
has taken to calling the US wars against the planet, “World War Forever.” So, I’d like to thank him for
the sadly relevant title of this piece.
Today, a friend of mine named Jacob George killed himself. Jacob George
Jacob was a young vet who performed three tours of duty in Afghanistan and I
met him last year when I was in the middle of riding my bike across from
California to Washington DC for Tour de Peace. We met Jacob in the middle of
the country: Oklahoma City. I can’t begin to say what the death of such a
gentle and sweet human means. The loss is horrible and not just for Jacob’s
friends and family, but for all of us.
Not only is the Empire deadly
to the people who live far away in foreign countries, but also to the people it
recruits with lies and dangling “benefits” to lure our young people into its
bloody maw and then casually tosses them to the garbage pile when they are
“lucky” enough to come home from the wars for profit.
I know many colleagues and
friends, as well as myself, who are beyond frustrated and devastated with World
War Forever, but I also used to be friends and connected to far more people who
are now saying that they are “disappointed” in Obama. My question to these
people is, “just what the hell did you all expect would happen when you sat on
your collective and hypocritical asses for over six year?” Where were these people
when Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan, killed people in ½ dozen countries
with his damned drones, supported neo-Nazis in Ukraine, destroyed Libya,
supported violent rebels in Syria (which many analysts say have blossomed” into
ISIS/ISIL) and all the other evil things the Peace Laureate has done in his
tenure as Managing War Monger for the 1%?
I am convinced these same
people who are just NOW regaining consciousness will soon go back into an
ethics-coma and vigorously support the next Dem warmonger would have never left
the streets if a Republican were in the Oval Office.
I don’t know which group of
people gets under my skin more, the Google-challenged rightwing who constantly
accuse ME of being a hypocrite for not “opposing Obama,” or the ethically and
morally challenged “liberals” who deserted the peace movement like the rats
they are because they support Democrats over peace and justice.
I don’t know what the solution
is because I don’t see anything changing as long as We the People keep allowing
ourselves to be caught up into this never-ending death-cult spiral of partisan
politics which has led to the death-cult of World War Forever.
While you Republicans and
Democrats are waiting for the perfect president (who doesn’t exist) or the next
Congressional Super Majority (that doesn’t help), our young people like Jacob
and our brothers and sisters around this planet are suffering.
How can you live with
yourselves?
THE EMPIRE
AT HOME
|
Vote
all you want. The secret government won’t change. The people we elect aren’t
the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University’s Michael Glennon
Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change. The
people we elect aren’t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University’s Michael
Glennon
Boston Globe, October 19, 2014 http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/10/18/vote-all-you-want-the-secret-government-won-change/jVSkXrENQlu8vNcBfMn9sL/story.html "...In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy. "Glennon cites the example of Obama and his team being shocked and angry to discover upon taking office that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan: The United States could add more troops, or the United States could add a lot more troops. Hemmed in, Obama added 30,000 more troops." |
|||||||||||
We Were Lied To About 9/11 - Episode 5 –
FBI WHISTLEBLOWER Coleen Rowley
Coleen Rowley grew up in a
small town in northeast Iowa. She obtained a B.A. degree in French from
Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa and then attended the College of Law at the
University of Iowa and graduated with honors in 1980 also passing the Iowa Bar
Exam that summer.
In January of 1981, Rowley was
appointed a Special Agent with the FBI and initially served in the Omaha,
Nebraska and Jackson, Mississippi Divisions. In 1984 she was assigned to the
New York Office and for over 6 years worked on Italian organized crime and
Sicilian heroin drug investigations. During this time Rowley also served three
separate temporary duty assignments in the Paris, France Embassy and Montreal
Consulate.
In 1990 Rowley was transferred
to Minneapolis where she assumed the duties of "Chief Division
Counsel" which entailed oversight of the Freedom of Information,
Forfeiture, Victim-Witness and Community Outreach Programs as well as providing
regular legal and ethics training to FBI Agents of the Division and some
outside police training.
In May of 2002 Rowley brought
some of the pre 9-11 lapses to light and testified to the Senate Judiciary
Committee about some of the endemic problems facing the FBI and the
intelligence community. Rowley's memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller in
connection with the Joint Intelligence Committee's Inquiry led to a two year
long Department of Justice Inspector General investigation. She was one of three whistleblowers chosen
as persons of the year by TIME magazine.
In April 2003, following an
unsuccessful and highly criticized attempt
to warn the Director and other administration officials about the dangers of
launching the invasion of Iraq, Rowley stepped down from her (GS-14) legal
position to go back to being a (GS-13) FBI Special Agent. She retired from the FBI
at the end of 2004 and now speaks publicly to various groups, ranging from
school children to business/professional/civic groups, on two different topics:
ethical decision-making and "civil liberties and effective
investigation."
From Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, 9/14/2014
.
MILITARISM, EMPIRE AND 2016: HILLARY CLINTON OR JIM WEBB (OR BERNIE
SANDERS)? Who Can Lead Us Away from
Endless War?
Jim Webb raises deep questions about US militarism.
October 22,
2014 | This article appeared in the November 10,
2014 edition of The Nation.
Jim Webb speaks at a rally for President Obama in
2012. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Jim Webb raises
deep questions about US militarism.
When Jim Webb
announced that he is thinking seriously about running for president in 2016, it
didn’t exactly excite hearts and minds in the Beltway. The former senator from
Virginia is widely regarded as an odd duck who stubbornly goes his own way. He
dropped out of electoral politics after one term in the Senate and resumed his
successful career as a writer. Webb’s bestselling novel Fields of Fire captured
the reality of the Vietnam War, in which he had fought as a Marine platoon
leader.
Wounded twice in
battle, Webb was awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism. After the
war, he wrote scholarly studies on war and national defense. Ronald Reagan
appointed him secretary of the Navy, though Webb is a working-class Democrat,
descended from hardscrabble country people in Arkansas.
Instead of becoming
more hawkish, as defense intellectuals often do when they acquire status and
influence, Webb has become increasingly critical of how US military force is
used and misused. His biography is what gives his candidacy potential
significance. It is not that he has much likelihood of winning the nomination,
but Webb has a chance to do something far greater for the country. Given his
résumé and valor in war, Webb has the authority (and the guts) to provoke a
profound national debate about the nature of US militarism.
Webb’s unique
perspective may be familiar to political insiders or readers of his books, but
they probably aren’t to the broad public. Six months before George W. Bush’s
invasion of Iraq, Webb prophetically warned against it. “Those who are
pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit
strategy if we invade,” Webb wrote in The Washington Post. In
2004, Webb called Bush’s war “the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory.”
Ten years later, he is still right.
In 2007, Chris
Matthews dubbed him “the antiwar warrior.” That’s a clever label, but it
fundamentally misconstrues Webb’s position. He is not a pacifist—that is, he
is not against wars fought to defend against real threats to the nation. What
Webb opposes are the reckless and limitless interventions that the United
States has initiated during the [Cold War and
--D] post–Cold War era of the past decades.
Presidents of both
parties, including Barack
Obama, have strayed from the old principles. “It is not a healthy thing
when the world’s dominant military and economic power has a foreign policy
based on vagueness,” Webb observed. He had in mind Bush, but also Obama’s vague
purpose in entering the bloody civil war in Syria. “There is no such thing,”
Webb has asserted, as “humanitarian war,” a feel-good concept popularized by
some of Obama’s national security advisers. Webb has not challenged the president’s
authority to bomb Syria, but says “the question of [Obama’s] judgment will
remain to be seen.”
Webb has laid down
principles for foreign interventions that probably would have kept the United
States out of some wars if political and military leaders had listened to him.
“An important caveat on how our country should fight the terrorists if they are
a direct threat to our national security is: do not occupy foreign territory.”
Another Webb warning: “Never get involved in a five-sided argument.” Obama has
stumbled into one in the Middle East, unable to state firmly who is our ally
and who is our enemy.
A glimpse of Webb’s broader intellectual
framework can be found online in the stirring book review he wrote for The
American Scholar in praise of historian Andrew Bacevich’s seminal
work The New American Militarism: How Americans Are
Seduced by War. Bacevich and Webb disagree on some points, but they are kindred
spirits. Both served in Vietnam, and both have sons who went to war in Iraq
(Bacevich’s son was killed there).
Webb saluted
Bacevich’s book for describing the confusion and corruption of military values
that followed Vietnam and for revealing the profound confrontation within the
military institution itself. “One side,” Webb explained, “is represented
heavily by those with a classical training in America’s past wars (and
frequently with experience in having fought them), who would send American
forces into harm’s way only if the nation is directly threatened. The other
side is dominated by a group of theorists, most of whom have never seen the
inside of a military uniform, who adhere to an essentially Trotskyite notion
that America should be exporting its ideology around the world at the point of
a gun.”
This buried
conflict in national purpose is the essence of America’s dilemma in the world—a
self-made trap in which the nation can neither win the endless, borderless
conflicts nor get free of the impossible obligations claimed for the US
military. As a presidential candidate, Webb would be uniquely positioned to
bring this confrontation out of the shadows. He could teach people how to
understand the real choices America faces in its foreign policy and national
defense.
Webb’s ideas may
sound old-fashioned, but they are actually about changing the future. In the
broad sweep of American history, this is often how fundamental change has
occurred. Disruptive new thinking does not usually come from the top down, but
more often is put in play by fearless individuals like Webb who think for
themselves and are sure the people will be with them once they understand
what’s at stake. This requires political skills that Webb may or may not have.
How does he make himself heard if big media ignores his message?
Jim Webb is
probably not going to become our next president. But he has the possibility of
becoming a pivotal messenger. I think of him as a vanguard politician—that
rare type who is way out ahead of conventional wisdom and free to express big
ideas the media herd regards as taboo. With luck, the country might have two
such characters in the 2016 primaries: Jim Webb and Bernie Sanders. In
different ways, both are expressing unsanctioned ideas that Americans need to
hear.
If you follow media
chatter, the 2016 contest is already decided for Democrats. The people are
ready for Hillary, we are told repeatedly. She has staked out a pro-war
position more hawkish than the president’s but smartly aligned with the
public’s current enthusiasm for continued bombing in the Middle East. But how
might folks feel two years from now? Will they turn against war and warrior politicians
if this new war also begins to seem interminable?
Albert Hunt of
Bloomberg, a wise old head in the Washington press corps, offered this
forecast: “Jim Webb could be Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare.” William Greider
October 22,
2014 | This article appeared in
the November 10, 2014 edition of The Nation.
TWO ARTICLES ON MILITARIZING US PUBLIC
HEALTH, SUSTAINING THE MILITARY BUDGET BY ASSIGNING HUMANITARIAN CIVILIAN JOBS
TO THE ARMY. [I stumbled upon the first in
Bing, which gave no author or publisher.
The second comes via Truthout. –Dick]
Write your Congressmen and the President to stop this
underhanded funding of US militarism and imperialism. This is a good occasion for converting funds
from the military to a civilian economy.
And a good opportunity to look to the organization established
specifically for global cooperation to solve global problems—the United
Nations.
President Obama will announce Tuesday that the U.S. military
will take the lead in overseeing what has been a chaotic and widely criticized
response to the worst Ebola outbreak in history, dispatching up to 3,000
military personnel to West Africa in an effort that could cost up to $750
million over the next six months, according to senior administration officials.
By the end of the week, a
general sent by U.S. Africa Command will be in place in Monrovia, Liberia — the
country where transmission rates are increasing exponentially — to lead the
effort called Operation United
Assistance. The command will help oversee and coordinate U.S. and
international relief efforts while a new, separate regional staging base will
help accelerate transportation of urgently needed equipment, supplies and
personnel.
In addition, the Pentagon will
send engineers to set up 17 treatment centers in Liberia — each with a 100-bed
capacity — as well as medical personnel to train up to 500 health-care workers
a week in the region.
The president’s decision to
enlist the U.S. military, whose resources are already under strain as it
responds to conflicts in the Middle East, reflects the growing concern of U.S.
officials that, unless greater force is brought to bear, the epidemic could
wreak havoc on the continent.
“It’s this broad range of
capabilities together that will turn the tide of this epidemic,” said one senior
administration official, who along with others spoke on the condition of
anonymity in order to discuss the president’s plan in advance of Obama’s trip
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Tuesday.
Global health experts and international
aid groups who have been urging the White House to dramatically scale up its
response praised the plan as described. They have said charities and West
African governments alone do not have the capacity to stem the epidemic.
The U.S. military, with its
enormous logistical capability, extensive air operations, and highly skilled
medical corps, could address gaps in the response quickly.
“This is a really significant
response on the military side,” said Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global
health at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of a book about the first
Ebola outbreak in 1976 and another on the global public-health system. “This is
really beginning to seem like a game-changer.”
But much depends on how quickly
personnel and supplies can get there.
“The problem is, for every
single thing we’re doing, we’re racing against the virus, and the virus has the
high ground right now,” she said. “I would hope this would reduce transmission,
but it’s all about how fast people can get there and get the job done. If it
takes weeks to mobilize, the strategy won’t even be within reach.”
Although the official death
toll is at least 2,400 people in five African countries, officials say it
vastly underestimates the true caseload. Garrett, who has been talking to
health-care workers in the region, said the cumulative total, including deaths,
could reach 250,000 by Christmas.
A senior official cautioned
that the efforts “won’t happen overnight.” It will be several weeks before
training of health-care workers can be up and running.
At a briefing Monday, White
House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama is visiting the CDC to get an
update from the experts there “about the success of their efforts so far to try
to confront this problem. . . . And that is the strategy that we’re
implementing here, is to try to invest early to prevent this from becoming much
more serious.”
Washington has come under fire
from African officials — especially in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea — and on Capitol Hill for not marshaling more of its
resources to combat the epidemic.
The United States has already
spent $175 million responding to the outbreak and has dispatched 100 CDC
experts, among the largest deployments of agency personnel in its history. The
administration has sought an additional $88 million and may ask for more,
according to a senior administration official. “I don’t want to close the door
to potential additional funding,” the official said. Separately, the Pentagon
wants to take up to $500 million from existing funds within the Pentagon’s
budget that have not yet been spent and use it for the plan to fight Ebola.
The Pentagon announced last
week that it would send a 25-bed hospital to Liberia. The hospital is designed
to care for health-care workers who become ill, and eventually will be turned
over to the Liberian government. It will be at least a month before the
hospital is up and running. The United States Public Health Service
Commissioned Corps is preparing to deploy 65 Commissioned Corps officers to
Liberia to manage and staff the hospital.
The United States has already
set up one mobile laboratory, and another two are on the way.
In addition to expanding
treatment and training facilities, the United States will send enough basic
Ebola response kits to supply 400,000 households in Liberia, according to a
senior administration official. That is intended to address an increasingly
common phenomenon in which sick patients are being denied access to overflowing
treatment centers and being sent home.
The packages, which include
sanitizers, will help curb transmission of the disease among family members and
expand access to ambulances and treatment centers so those infected can be
isolated. As part of this effort, the U.S. Agency for International Development
this week will airlift 50,000 home health-care kits from Denmark to Liberia to
be hand-delivered to distant communities by trained youth volunteers.
The administration’s decision
to involve the military in providing equipment and other assistance for
international health workers in Africa comes after mounting calls from some
unlikely groups — most prominently the international medical organization
Doctors Without Borders — pressed the urgency of the issue.
While the world’s largest
international health organizations, several governments and many nonprofits
have already devoted significant resources to addressing the virus outbreak,
administration officials said Monday that they had concluded that the United
States would have to lead more aggressively in order to check Ebola’s spread.
In Liberia’s capital, patients are dying on the street because there aren’t
enough beds in treatment centers.
“Our concern is if we do not
arrest that growth, and we don’t arrest that growth now, we could be looking at
hundreds of thousands of cases” in Africa, the official said, noting that it
will still take “months” to reduce the numbers of illnesses and deaths from the
disease.
Even as officials emphasized
the need for bolder action and said they were bolstering defenses within the
United States, they said the chance of an Ebola outbreak here was “a very low
probability.”
Public health experts in
America “know how to contain this virus,” one official said. “If there is a
case that appears in the United States, that person would be isolated [and] the
appropriate protocols would be put in place such that it would contain that.”
To some extent, the measures
that the president is now adopting have been called for by some of his critics.
On Friday, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) called on Obama to appoint a “central
coordinator” to oversee the federal government’s response to the disease.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.),
the top Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said
in a statement Monday, “This is an instance where we should be running toward
the burning flames with our fireproof suits on.”
High-level planning by top
officials from the CDC, the Pentagon, the State Department, USAID and the National
Institutes of Health has been taking place for some time about options for a
U.S. response, according to a senior administration official who spoke on
background because planning was underway. The most recent high-level meeting
was convened by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
at the Pentagon last Wednesday.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet The
Press” on Sept. 7, Obama said that if the United States and other countries did
not send equipment, health workers and other supplies to the region, the virus
could mutate to become more transmissible.
“And then it could be a serious
danger to the United States,” Obama said on the show.
Few would oppose a robust US
response to Ebola. But the Obama administration's deployment of 3,000 troops to
Liberia comes amid a broader US-led militarization in West Africa. http://truth-out.org/news/item/26465-militarizing-the-ebola-crisis
Militarizing the Ebola Crisis
Saturday, 27 September 2014 10:30 By Joeva Rock, Foreign
Policy In Focus | News Analysis, Truth-Out.Org, Sept. 28, 2014.
o
A C-17 U.S. military
aircraft arrived in Liberia with the first shipment of increased U.S. military
equipment and personnel for the anti-Ebola fight. The cargo included a heavy
duty forklift, a drill set and generator and a team of seven military
personnel, including engineers and airfield specialists. Monrovia, Liberia,
September 23, 2014. (Photo: U.S. Embassy) [See the article on C-130s and Arkansas. Production of the Boeing C-17 is being
ended. –Dick.] Last
of the Globemasters: The USAF's Final C-17 Orders. ww.defenseindustrydaily.com/last-of-the-globe... Defense Industry Daily
A C-17 U.S. military
aircraft arrived in Liberia with the first shipment of increased U.S. military
equipment and personnel for the anti-Ebola fight. The cargo included a heavy
duty forklift, a drill set and generator and a team of seven military
personnel, including engineers and airfield specialists. Monrovia, Liberia,
September 23, 2014. (Photo: U.S. Embassy) [See the article on C-130s and Arkansas. Production of the Boeing C-17 is being
ended. –Dick.] Last
of the Globemasters: The USAF's Final C-17 Orders. ww.defenseindustrydaily.com/last-of-the-globe... Defense Industry Daily
Sep 19, 2013
- The C-17 has had more money-driven last hurrahs than The Who.
Even so, FY 2010 featured the USAF's last planned orders
of C-17 ...]
Six months into West Africa's
Ebola crisis, the international community is finally heading calls for
substantial intervention in the region.
On September 16, President
Obama announced a multimillion-dollar U.S. response to the
spreading contagion. The crisis, which began in March 2014, has killed over 2,600 people, an alarming figure that experts say will rise quickly if the disease is not
contained. Obama's announcement comes on the heels of growing international
impatience with what critics have called the U.S. government's "infuriatingly" slow response to the outbreak.
Assistance efforts have already
stoked controversy, with a noticeable privilege of care being afforded to
foreign healthcare workers over Africans.
After two infected American
missionaries were administered Zmapp, a life-saving experimental drug,
controversy exploded when reports emerged that Doctors Without Borders had
previously decided not to administer it to the Sierra Leonean doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who succumbed to Ebola after helping to
lead the country's fight against the disease. The World Health Organization
similarly refused to evacuate the prominent Sierra Leonean doctor Olivet Buck, who later died of the disease as well. The
Pentagon provoked its own controversy when it announced plans to deploy a $22
million, 25-bed U.S. military field hospital—reportedly for foreign health workers only.
One particular component of the
latest assistance package promises to be controversial as well: namely, the
deployment of 3,000 U.S. troops to Liberia, where the U.S. Africa Command
(AFRICOM) will establish a joint command operations base to serve as a
logistics and training center for medical responders.
According to Think Progress, this number represents "nearly
two-thirds of AFRICOM's 4,800 assigned personnel" who will coordinate with
civilian organizations to distribute supplies and construct up to 17 treatment centers. It's unclear whether any U.S.
healthcare personnel will actually treat patients, but according to the White House, "the U.S. Government
will help recruit and organize medical personnel to staff" the centers and
"establish a site to train up to 500 health care providers per week."
The latter begs the question of practicality, and where these would-be health
workers will be recruited from.
According to the Obama
administration, the package was requested directly by Liberian President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf. (Notably, Liberia was the only
African nation to offer to host AFRICOM's headquarters in 2008, an
offer AFRICOM declined and decided to set up in Germany instead). But in a
country still recovering from decades of civil war, this move was not welcomed
by all. "Every Liberian I speak with is having acute anxiety attacks,"
said Liberian writer Stephanie
C. Horton. "We knew this was coming but the sense of mounting doom is
emotional devastation."
Few would oppose a robust U.S.
response to the Ebola crisis, but the militarized nature of the White House
plan comes in the context of a broader U.S.-led militarization of the region.
The soldiers in Liberia, after all, will not be the only American troops on the
African continent. In the six years of AFRICOM's existence, the U.S. military
has steadily
and quietly been building its presence on the continent through drone
bases and partnerships with local militaries. This is what's known as the
"new normal": drone strikes, partnerships to train and
equip African troops (including those with troubled human rights records),
reconnaissance missions, and multinational training operations.
To build PR for its military
exercises, AFRICOM relies on soft-power tactics: vibrant social media
pages, academic symposia, and humanitarian programming. But suchmilitarized
humanitarianism—such as building schools and hospitals and responding to
disease outbreaks—also plays more strategic, practical purpose: it allows
military personnel to train in new environments, gather local experience and
tactical data, and build diplomatic relations with host countries and
communities.
TomDispatch's
Nick Turse, one of the foremost reporters on the militarization of Africa,
noted that a recent report from the U.S. Department of Defense "found
failures in planning, executing, tracking, and documenting such projects,"
leaving big questions about their efficacy.
Perhaps more importantly,
experts have warned that the provision of humanitarian assistance by uniformed
soldiers could have dangerous, destabilizing effects, especially in countries with long
histories of civil conflict, such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. At the outset of
the crisis, for example, efforts by Liberian troops to forcefully quarantine the residents of West Point, a
community in the capital of Monrovia, led to deadly clashes. Some public health
advocates worry that the presence of armed troops could provoke similar
incidents.
The U.S. operation in Liberia
warrants many questions. Will military contractors be used in the construction
of facilities and execution of programs? Will the U.S.-built treatment centers
be temporary or permanent? Will the treatment centers double as research labs?
What is the timeline for exiting the country? And perhaps most significantly
for the long term, will the Liberian operation base serve as a staging ground
for non-Ebola related military operations?
The use of the U.S. military in this operation should raise red
flags for the American public as well. After all, if the military truly is the
governmental institution best equipped to handle this outbreak, it speaks
worlds about the neglect of civilian programs at home as well as abroad.
Joeva Rock is a graduate
student in the Department of Anthropology at American University in Washington,
DC focusing on colonial legacies in West Africa. Follow her on Twitter:@southsidetrees.
ARKANSAS AT CENTER OF EMPIRE: C-130s in LITTLE ROCK, DRONES in FT. SMITH,
ROCKETS in MALVERN
Arkansas at Center of Growing Empire: the C-130
Air base births new airlift unit By Nikki Wentling
The activation of a
unit at the Little Rock Air Force Base today [the 913th Airlift
Group] will bolster the presence of the Air Force Reserve on base and draw more
airmen and aircraft to central Arkansas, according to Reserve officials. Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette (July 13, 2013) 12A.
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here to login or subscribe below.
“As an
aircraft-equipped combat airlift group, the unit will add to the base’s
classification as home to the largest fleet of tactical transport aircraft in the
Air force.” And the group (composed of
six squadrons) “is expected to grow by 70 percent in the next two years.” Big deal?
Yes, because LRAFB flies the C-130, not only the C-130H, but the
newest model, the C-130J, and these planes are the Pentagon’s flying boxcars. Without the C-130, the US would be unable to
attack and threaten around the world thanks also to its more than 1000 military
bases abroad and its many military alliances.
President Obama’s proposed military budget for 2015 includes 10 C-130J
aircraft for the 913th, that “has the ability to climb higher and faster and
take off and land on shorter runways.”
--Dick
Drones at Ft. Smith
See OMNI’s Drone Watch Newsletter: http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/03/drones-newsletter-16.html
MQ-9
Reaper
Published
August 18, 2010
1 of 5
MQ-9
Reaper
Published
August 18, 2010
The
Reaper is larger and more heavily-armed than the MQ-1 Predator and attacks
time-sensitive targets with persistence and precision, to destroy or disable
those targets.
MISSILES AT MALVERN, AR
Lockheed Martin has received a
$174 million…contract to produce the Army Tactical Missile system for the US.
Army and the United Arab emirates. LM “has produced more than 3,700 of the
missile systems.” In addition, “Gov. Asa
Hutchinson called this week for a special legislative session to help
strengthen a bid from Lockheed Martin to win a contract for the Camden facility
to build the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.” Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette (May 14, 2015).
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RESISTANCE TO US
EMPIRE
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Expensive and Powerful Military Does Not Bring Safety
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Interests, Domino Dogma
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Contents US Imperialism and Militarism Newsletter #15
Credo,
Repeal the 2001 Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF)
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in 134 Countries
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END US MILITARISM & IMPERIALISM
NEWSLETTER #16
END US
EMPIRE NEWSLETTER #16
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