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Special Comment
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Of
“Lily Pads” and “Enduring” Bases… Neo-Colonialism
American Style By
Werther 12.15.07 (Excerpt) According to the site [AFRICOM],
"U.S. Africa Command will better enable the Department of Defense and
other elements of the U.S. government to work in concert and with partners to
achieve a more stable environment in which political and economic growth can
take place. U.S. Africa Command is consolidating the efforts of three
existing headquarters commands into one that is focused solely on Africa and
helping to coordinate US government contributions on the continent." In other
words, more meddling, more fishing in troubled waters, more displacement of
traditional diplomacy with militarized "shaping of the
environment," more armed, buzz-cut boy scouts playing roughly the same
role Graham Greene's "Quiet American" played in
Southeast Asia. Oh, yes, and oil in the Gulf of Guinea. The Center for Defense Information has posted a useful primer on AFRICOM [pdf], and discusses some of the misgivings that the intended host
countries have about Uncle Sam's gun-toting social work on the Dark
Continent. There is no need to recapitulate its information and arguments;
the reader should consult it for further enlightenment. There remain only two issues to mention that the
CDI piece does not cover: the domestic institutional angle and the domestic
political angle. All
government bureaucracies, if allowed to fester, metastasize like a malignant
cancer cell. DOD, having been given extraordinarily indulgent latitude by a
somnolent Congress, has metastasized more than the norm. AFRICOM is yet
another venue for general officer billets, staff jobs, and proconsular
pretensions. Once created, the bureaucratic imperative becomes paramount. The
collapse of the Warsaw Pact nearly two decades ago did not lead to the
dissolution of NATO. AFRICOM, once created, will be immortal. AFRICOM also represents a God-sent opportunity
for both our major political parties to find new worlds to conquer. The GOP,
being a subsidiary of Big Oil, is fairly licking its chops at West African
oil, although how a bunch of armed social workers would "stabilize"
a basket case like Nigeria is not clear, given the unfortunate precedent of
Somalia. As for the Democrats, this could be their big moment once again
to preen as Wilsonian internationalists and hairy-chested liberals.
Throughout the 1990s, any discussion about the Balkans was sure to include
some cavil from advanced thinkers that we intervene only in white countries
because we value their lives more – what about
Rwanda?  The Washington Sponsored Ethiopian
Invasion of Somalia Casts That Nation Into Africa's Worst Crisis By
Shashank Bengali McClatchy
Newspapers 12.13.07 Shashank Bengali of McClatchy Newspapers reports, "A year after
the US-backed Ethiopian army toppled a hard-line Islamist regime in Somalia,
the country has become Africa's worst humanitarian catastrophe."  By
Mark Lattimer The
Guardian, UK 12.13.07 Mark Lattimer, of The Guardian UK writes that "After the
invasion of Iraq, the US government claimed that women there had 'new rights
and new hopes.' In fact their lives have become immeasurably worse, with
rapes, burnings and murders now a daily occurrence’."  Globe and Mail - Canada December 14, 2007 Mark
McKinnon of the Globe and Mail reports that the Red Cross, in a rare foray into
politics, was releasing its report to raise the alarm about the
"drastic deterioration" in the humanitarian situation of
Palestinians ahead of an international donors' conference scheduled for
Monday in Paris. The International
Committee for the Red Cross has condemned Israel's 40-year-old occupation of
the Palestinian territories, saying security concerns could not justify the
"enormous humanitarian cost" of Israel's actions in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip. |
Global News - By Nation & Region
December 15, 2007