Send In The Drones ... There Have To Be Drones

(Cartoon by Yaakov Kirschen and posted on his blog.  Click on image to enlarge and then be so kind as to return here, haste-posthaste.)

The nation of Iraq has once again descended into chaos as Sunni and Shiite  forces are battling for control of the country.  The conflict appears to have spilled over into Syria in order to take advantage of the confusion wracking that country.  And the US response?   No surprises here.

From the L.A. Times:

In a sign of the growing danger in Iraq, President Obama notified Congress on Monday that he was sending up to 275 U.S. military personnel “to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.”

Obama also is considering sending 100 or fewer special operations troops to Iraq to advise its armed forces as it battles Sunni Muslim insurgents, according to a senior U.S. official. It was unclear whether they would be among the 275 military personnel or in addition to them. ...

Analysts and military officials said sending U.S. military advisors may prove unavoidable to reverse the insurgents’ momentum. Without U.S. experts to guide drones and manned aircraft to targets on the ground, airstrikes may prove ineffective or accidentally hit civilians.    [Emphasis added]

From a promise of no troops on the ground in Iraq by the administration to the insertion of a "mere" 275 troops and possibly another 100 special operations troops to "guide" the drones.  All of this activity is allegedly to "protect" our personnel currently ensconced in that gazillion-dollar fortress euphemistically referred to as an embassy.

Now I'm just sure that protecting our oil interests in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with this move.  Not a chance.  Nope, no way.

In other words, here we go again.

When Will They Ever Learn

Move over, Watertiger, my head needs to bounce off your desk a few times. At a time when the Supercommittee is looking for ways to "trim" Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and to cut back on education and environmental protection, President Obama has decided we need to open new military bases in the Pacific.

Confronting anxiety about China's growing political and economic clout, President Obama announced a strategic shift by the United States to reassert its role as the dominant military power in the Pacific as it pulls back from post-Sept. 11 wars.

Speaking Thursday in the Australian capital, Canberra, Obama pledged to support the dispatch of more U.S. troops, joint training operations and military exercises in the Asia-Pacific region as the Pentagon draws down in Iraq and Afghanistan. He called the commitment to boost the U.S. military presence a top priority.

"The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay," Obama said in an address to the Australian Parliament. ...

They include stationing 2,500 Marines at an Australian military base in what officials called the first constant U.S. troop presence in that country since the Vietnam War era. The first 200 to 250 Marines will arrive next year, and the unit will grow over several years.

Deploying the contingent in Darwin, on Australia's remote northern coast, gives U.S. planners a way to quickly project power in the crucial sea lanes of the South China Sea and the chokehold straits near Singapore, U.S. officials said. The U.S. Air Force also will gain increased access to military airfields in northern Australia.

But it's ok: we're winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, two wars that bled the country dry and did it mostly off-budget. That should give us plenty of money to expand our imperialistic saber rattling. Besides, that South China Sea has to be kept open so we can import more goods from China, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Moron.

Unwelcome Move

I learned something interesting during my visit to Watching America this weekend: NIMBYISM is not just an American phenomenon. When it comes to relocating American military bases, other parts of the world can be just as cranky as Americans unhappy with a recycling plant in the neighborhood.

GIs have been relocating from Heidelberg to the Erbenheim section of Wiesbaden since the end of 2009. Another 700 GIs assigned to the legendary U.S. V Corps just arrived recently. By mid-2012, the Army's main land force headquarters is scheduled to complete its relocation of some 4,000 troops to Wiesbaden.

All of this is much to the Left Party's displeasure. State parliamentary leader Willi van Ooyen says that rather than spending billions on war and the expansion of military facilities, the money should be spent on improving social and educational services. To back up his demands, he is reminding the Hessen state president of Article 69 of the Hessen state constitution, which says that the state is officially anti-war.

Perhaps Mr. van Ooyen could send a letter to our Supercommittee expressing the same idea with respect to spending billions on war rather than on improving social and educational services. We could use a shift in priorities as well. I mean, the cost of moving the base to Wiesbaden is quite significant:

The U.S. Army justifies the relocation with the fact that its headquarters facilities in Heidelberg are fragmented and scattered, making them more vulnerable to terrorist attack. In Wiesbaden, on the other hand, there is already a secure and compact facility with two access points. Construction of the command center, along with the necessary support buildings, is expected to cost $130 million, of which the U.S. Congress has already appropriated $60 million. The city of Wiesbaden has already assured the U.S. and German governments that the land necessary for construction would be made available and that it would undertake measures aimed at facilitating the acquisition of necessary permits. [Emphasis added]

Of course, the city of Wiesbaden will cooperate: the presence of the US soldiers means an additional $45 million for the local economy. So, regardless of the Left Party's high-minded objections, the Imperial Army is moving to Wiesbaden.

That's how we roll.

The Exhausted Empire

My 65th birthday is coming up, and I have been pondering what I have witnessed over my life time: the development of vaccines to prevent the scourges of polio, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough; a man walking on the moon and the placement of telescopes in orbit to study the history of the universe; increased rights for women and African Americans.

That's a few of the good things, but there have been some horrors as well: wars fought for no other reason than the enemy had commodities that we desired; the degradation of our air, water, and soil by our unwise use of energy; the depletion of the middle class and marginalization of the poor by the upper classes; the complete destruction of a once vibrant democracy by corporate interests. I watched the nation rise to become an empire. I am now watching that nation and that empire collapse under its own weight. The last decade has been especially hard on my country and on me.

Yesterday, during my usual Saturday visit to Watching America, I came across an opinion piece which really resonated with what I have been thinking about. Published in Germany's die Welt, the essay is titled "America: The Exhausted Empire."

It was clearly written as a warning to Europe that those countries would have to step forward and start assuming responsibility for their security because the US simply could no longer do it all. As such, it is an extremely timely and perceptive piece. What intrigued me the most was the stunning accuracy with which it describes the current state of the United States.

...as Obama said, America will no longer be based on what it wants, but on what is possible. It is a creed that applies far beyond the Hindu Kush and to others as well. Obama’s speech marks not only a change in policy toward Afghanistan, but also in the ambitions of the country most important to global order. The empire is exhausted by a decade of constant war and it wants to scale back its foreign involvement in the face of dwindling financial resources. “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home,” was the most significant sentence in his address: Instead of rebuilding other countries, it’s time to rebuild U.S. economic strength; that is the basis for America’s role as a global power. Obama’s speech is therefore not only a warning to the Afghan government to get its own house in order, but it applies to Europe as well. The time of the national security free ride is rapidly coming to an end.

America’s power and worldwide influence depend largely on its military capacity to protect sea routes, support its allies and maintain regional balances. To accomplish this role over the past decade, America has reduced social services and expanded military capabilities to a far greater extent than has Europe. The old continent, on the other hand, built an over-the-top wealth-redistribution system while cutting back on military outlays, trusting that U.S. security policy would pull everyone else’s chestnuts out of the fire as it did in the Balkans.

We can no longer afford the role of empire, not if the nation is going to survive as a democracy in which anyone can become president, either of the country as a whole or of a company. We can't afford million dollar missiles fired from drones and world class institutions of higher learning. Hell, we can't even afford decent public schools staffed adequately with trained and competent teachers so they don't burn out within a few years. We can't fight three wars at once and provide decent safety nets for the vulnerable poor and elderly.

Here's the sad part, though. Clemens Wergin, the author of the essay cited, seems to assume that President Obama meant what he said, that he would focus on rebuilding that City on the Hill. I'm not so sure.

Not so sure at all.

During the past week of negotiating an increase in the debt ceiling, the White House made an offer on cutting expenditures which included cuts to Medicare and Social Security. He urged politicians to have the courage to make unpopular decisions, presumably with respect to those programs. Fortunately, this time, Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi refused. But that Obama would even float such a balloon is a signal that he is not interested in nation building, only in giving a boost to the mega-capitalists who already have 90% of the pie.

Sad, indeed.

Well, it was a good 235 year run and fun while it lasted.

Oops, There Goes Another Tomahawk Missile

Andrew Malcolm can be a real cranky old bastard, a quality I'm beginning to appreciate in a man even when I don't always agree with him. Malcolm has his full grumpiness on in his latest blog post for the Los Angeles Times, this time over President Obama's latest war, Libya.

The Obama administration is spending almost $9.5 million every single day to blow things up in Libya because the president has determined that is in the country's national interest, this country's national interest, not Libya's.

You may not have noticed the $392,542 flowing out of the national treasury every hour, day and night, since those first $1.5 million Tomahawks flashed from the launch tubes back on March 19. [Emphasis added]

Although that doesn't look like much money to people in Washington (they tend to think in billions of dollars), spending $9 million a day is pretty significant to the rest of us struggling to keep the lights on in the home we'd like to keep. But there's more to Malcolm's disgust than the money, something even bigger. Something so big that even Washingtonians are getting a little antsy over.

Capitol Hill and many Americans have the notion that Congress is responsible for declaring war. They cite the War Powers Act of 1973, a legislative legacy of the divisive Vietnam War, which was also prosecuted by a Democratic president.

That act, passed by a veto-beating two-thirds majority, sets numerous requirements for any president involving the U.S. military without congressional authorization or a declaration of war: There must be an "attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."

The president must notify Congress within 48 hours. And the White House has a total of 90 days to prosecute the conflict and withdraw without a declaration of war or legislative authorization.

Sunday is Day 90 of the Libyan war.

Now, nobody in Congress seemed too annoyed with the previous administration for invading Iraq which had not attacked us and was not sheltering those who did (the excuse used to attack Afghanistan, which provided a quick Authorization for the Use of Military Force from Congress). That doesn't make President Obama's care free attitude towards generating more military activity any more justifiable. The Constitution is clear about who gets to declare war, and the War Powers Act of 1973 underscores that constitutional mandate. It was wrong when Bush did it, just as it is now.

And we also could use the money right now for some pretty important domestic needs.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Katrina vanden Heuvel has come up with a pretty good idea on reducing the federal deficit. I don't think the Pentagon is going to be real happy, but I don't see that as an insurmountable obstacle.

According to the Pentagon, there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad—over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included. The cost? $102 billion annually—and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases. ...

The bases—isolated from the host communities and, as [anthropologist Hugh] Gusterson writes, “generating resentment against [their] prostitution, environmental damage, petty crime, and everyday ethnocentrism”—face growing opposition from local citizens. ...

While major peace organizations and other groups focused on human needs are demanding that the military budget be cut in order to fund vital domestic programs, the empire of bases is often overlooked.

“Most people involved in this work have no idea that the US maintains a network of roughly 1,000 foreign military bases,” says Joseph Garson, director of programs for the American Friends Service Committee in New England and editor of The Sun Never Sets: Confronting the Network of U.S. Foreign Military Bases. “Similarly, they have no awareness that the bipartisan budget reduction commission called for cutting the number of US foreign military bases by a third.”

That's a pretty expensive way to keep the empire intact, but I'm not so sure we can afford the bases or even the empire, especially since there's no real proof all of those bases are providing us with any kind of security. I mean, how many bases do we have to have in Germany? Do we need even one?

Vanden Heuvel's conclusion is, as always, right on the mark:

The plain truth is that the staggering resources we spend to support an empire of bases isn’t making us more secure. Instead, they fuel resentment and consume resources desperately needed to invest here at home, as well as targeted development aid that could be used more wisely and efficiently by non-military experts.

Go read the whole post. It's worth it.

Decisions Begging Reversal

The recent ending of the Supreme Court's session was the best part of the whole thing. In a series of decisions that destroyed rights, the Roberts' court showed that it is dead set on ending public protections of the law.

While it's hard to beat the decision in Ledbetter that a woman had no right to a lifetime's earned income, freeing a mining company to save on costs that it incurs in its business by dumping poisons into a lake may be worse.

The five decisions featured in Mother Jones, which includes the mine dump finding, merit some attention. They are highlights in judicial decline, a decline that President Obama likely, hopefully, will have the opportunity to end.

Chief among those decisions is the one concerning use of DNA, a use denied to wrongfully convicted criminals. In effect, that decision contradicts a concept basic to our laws, that it should be impossible to jail those who are innocent.

* District Attorney's Office v. William Osborne (pdf)

The Upshot: In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that death row inmate William Osborne could not challenge his conviction with DNA technology invented after he was jailed. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said he was disappointed by the "narrow Supreme Court ruling denied access to post-conviction DNA testing for a defendant who wanted to prove his innocence."

Prove no evil: In his dissent, Justice Stevens criticized Roberts' ruling: "for reasons the State has been unable or unwilling to articulate, it refuses to allow Osborne to test the evidence at his own expense and to thereby ascertain the truth once and for all."

This court has shown no respect for the public, and decisions have gone to the benefit of business overwhelmingly. While we don't stoop to such nastiness as the Pat Robertson prayer for justices to die, we are ready for turnover which will improve the composition of the Supreme Court.

The country has this remaining legacy of the maladministration to rid itself of, so that our Rule of Law can be returned. Until the winger leanings of this third branch of government are healed, the law will do no good that it can offset.

And Zimbabwe Weighs In

Of all the articles at Watching America on our election, perhaps the one which touched me most came from Zimbabwe's Daily Mail. This south African nation has its own problems right now. Long time president Robert Mugabe is fighting to hold on to power in Zimbabwe, and to do so, he played fast and loose with the country's recent elections. His opposition continues to pressure Mr. Mugabe, insisting that power be shared or the country will fall into civil war.

Even in the midst of this turmoil, perhaps even because of it, the Daily Mail editorialist's analysis of the US election, along with the advice offered to President Elect Obama, moved me, and the indictment of the Bush administration reminded me that we weren't the only ones scarred by the last eight years.

Mr Bush had made America unpopular in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and in the Far East. He was not short of enemies in both North and South America. His doctrine of unilateralism and his self-righteous approach of labelling other countries the "axis of evil" to be bombed had given rise to anti-American sentiments everywhere. Thus the election of Mr Obama was a major public relations exercise for America.

Mr Obama seems eager to repair this image. In his acceptance speech, he said: "And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals — democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope."

We hope he will be true to this approach of not abusing America’s might of arms and wealth to force smaller nations to swallow its beliefs the George Bush way. We pray that he will respect the sovereignty of smaller nations.

Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular will need to position themselves to take advantage of the change in administration in the US. For Zimbabwe, the expected conclusion of the talks to form an inclusive government would offer such an opportunity.

President Bush's policy in Africa ultimately was a military one, Africom, in which all aspects of foreign contact fell under the Pentagon's aegis rather than that of the State Department. That a small nation like Zimbabwe would deplore such a move is not hard to understand. It smacks of the colonialism that wracked the continent the last two centuries.

And just to make sure the new US president is aware of the problem, the editorialist adds a not-so-subtle caveat:

Africa is the future. Emerging powers like China and India have seen that and are relating with Africa using a win-win approach as opposed to the neo-colonial approach of divide-and-rule. We hope Obama’s America will not be one that will be busy promoting conflicts on the continent while it loots its resources.

Hopefully someone on the Obama team is paying attention.

The NEW New World Order

Professor Andrew Bacevich of Boston University and author of "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism" has an interesting op-ed piece in today's Los Angeles Times. He notes that in the midst of the election campaign and the economic crisis, most folks failed to note the dramatic reversal of the Bush Administration when it came to North Korea. This Stalinist country went from one part of the Axis of Evil with whom the US would never negotiate to a country which successfully negotiated its removal from the State Department list of countries who harbor terrorists. How could this have happened under the cocky self-assurance of George W. Bush?

The professor's thesis is that the country's zeitgeist in 2001 is not the zeitgeist of 2008, and the country which once embraced its role as the leader of the unipolar world (the "Age of Triumphalism") is now sick of the responsibilities that role entailed. As a result, the nation's leaders don't have the backing of the people in carrying on that role:

The reality is that when it comes to statecraft, policies devised in Washington frequently express not so much the carefully calculated intentions of the nation's leaders as the people's frame of mind.

Following 9/11, "the people's frame of mind" was pretty clear, and Prof. Bacevich notes that President Bush was fully aware of it.

His presidency began with the Age of American Triumphalism at its zenith. When Bush entered office in 2001, America's status as sole superpower was self-evident and seemingly irrefutable. As the indispensable nation, the United States presided over a unipolar order. The emery board of globalization was sanding away the world's rough edges and gradually remaking it in America's own image. Commentators vied to find the appropriate historical analogy. The consensus: America was the new Rome, only more so.

Bush's response to 9/11 reflected this widespread sense of assurance and entitlement. The Bush doctrine of preventive war, the president's impatient, with-us-or-against-us attitude, his disdain for international opinion and international law, his confidence that American military power, once unleashed, would quickly bring evildoers to justice or justice to evildoers -- and above all his conviction that the people of the Islamic world thirsted for freedom American-style -- all of these made explicit precepts that had been germinating during the post-Cold War decade of the 1990s. Bush was merely expressing in a crude vernacular -- "Bring 'em on!" -- ideas and attitudes to which the majority of Americans already subscribed.

Today those ideas and attitudes have become the equivalent of an oversized SUV: They no longer sell. Not least among Bush's errors in judgment has been his failure to appreciate just how ephemeral the Age of Triumphalism would prove to be.

Eight years is a pretty short time frame, yet so much happened in those eight years that I think more was at work than the notorious short attention span of Americans. The kinds of sacrifices that the citizenry were asked to make turned out to be pretty drastic.

We were asked to send our sons and daughters off to fight two wars, both of them still ongoing and going poorly seven years later. We were asked to submit to long lines and body searches at airports, some of us were even on "no fly" lists for no known reason which prevented boarding flights altogether. Our rights to privacy were shredded by warrantless searches and spying on our telephone and electronic communications. We've had to endure the opprobrium of the rest of the world for our government's open disdain of the Geneva Conventions and its insistence that torture of those being detained without charges was necessary for our "security."

And then we watched as our economy weakened, faltered, and then failed. That symbol of American success, home ownership, turned into the nightmare of foreclosure for millions of Americans. Jobs were lost and unemployment figures were jiggered to hide the true numbers of Americans unemployed and underemployed. Basic medical treatment became out of reach for millions of those who couldn't afford even the medicine to sustain them. Retirees and soon-to-be-retirees watched their savings evaporate and then watched as this government bailed out businesses "too big to fail," whose executives walked away with multi-million dollar golden parachutes.

In the last year, especially in the last three months, Americans clearly had had enough of being "The New Rome," and understandably so. Prof. Bacevich's conclusion looks to be accurate, but it fails to fully note the deep-seated reasons for the shift in temperament.

Having discovered that being the new Rome entails burdens as well as privileges, Americans have opted out. Although Bush's wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, Joe the Plumber's interest in liberating the greater Middle East or courting a showdown even with a figure as vile as Kim Jong Il is close to zero. Americans are no longer in the mood to chase after distant evildoers. They care about jobs, affordable energy, decent healthcare and restoring their 401(k) accounts. Fix what's broken abroad? No thanks; not until we've fixed what's broken at home. This defines the new normalcy.

Those Terrorist Enablers

With dread, on the rational front we are facing a campaign which will have to be negative by historical tradition on the right wing, and because there is no positive campaign for the worst administration in history. At the moment, it's all about scary qualities like failing to wear a flag pin and being caught on camera in front of a flag without holding his hand over his heart by candidate Sen. Obama. Oh, yes, and having Muslims in his family background.

Their dread of terrorists, however, has not kept our wingers from creating a whole passel of them wherever it raises its ugly hand in war. Not admitting that al Qaida was brought into the works in Iraq doesn't equal removing the faction there. It just begs the question of what good this war is doing. The answer to that one is pretty obvious, the only purpose the war criminals have served, besides giving terrorists the status of heroes, is enrichment of war profiteers.

This country went into Afghanistan with some cause, and should have finished by chasing Osama bin Laden down or ousting him and his followers, but its conduct of that war has alienated the populace - those that haven't been outright killed in any case. The war has turned against us there, and again we are serving the terrorists' cause.

The very different reactions to the casualties of American and Nato violence, compared to those inflicted by the Taliban, reflect a desperate confusion about what is happening in Pakistan and how to respond.Unfortunately, as Hoodbhoy notes, U.S. behavior has reinforced such attitudes: There is, of course, reason for people in Pakistan and across the world to feel negatively about America. In pursuit of its self-interest, wealth and security, the United States has for decades waged illegal wars, bribed, bullied and overthrown governments, supported tyrants, undermined movements for progressive change, and now feels free to kidnap, torture, imprison, and kill anywhere in the world with impunity. All this, while talking about supporting democracy and human rights.

Even Americans — or at least the fair-minded ones among them — admit that there is a genuine problem. A June 2008 report of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs entitled The Decline in America’s Reputation: Why? concluded that contemporary anti-Americanism stemmed from “the perception that the proclaimed American values of democracy, human rights, tolerance, and the rule of law have been selectively ignored by successive administrations when American security or economic considerations are in play”.

American hypocrisy has played into the hands of Islamic militants. They have been vigorously promoting the notion that this is a bipolar conflict of Islam, which they claim to represent, versus imperialism. Many Pakistanis, who desperately want someone to stand up to the Americans, buy into this.

The imperialism of the worst administration ever is undeniable. The refusal to deal with chosen enemies using civilized negotiation techniques has made the U.S. easily identifiable by the 'evil axis' as a crusader. The rejection by the U.S. public has grown steadily during the ludicrous misconduct of the occupied White House, unfortunately not in time to save our reputation. The cronies who have been given charge of the conduct of affairs in the executive branch have been uniformly inept, when not downright criminal.

The results are dismally predictable.

At least 45 international troops, including at least 27 Americans, died in Afghanistan in June, the deadliest month since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban, according to an Associated Press count.

It was also the second straight month in which militants killed more U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

The somewhat justifiable war that was declared over several times by the worst administration ever is now renewed, and we are losing there as well.

A first activity in the new administration must be President Obama's revising the war plan that has brought terrorists into the position of respect they hold. Bombing civilians from afar, the 'boys with toys' warfare, must stop. Our troops need to be brought home, the affairs of those countries we invaded turned over to their native population.

Our military is in shambles, and needs to be renewed after a thorough review and the imposition of honest accounting, and acquisition, standards put into play. More than anything, it will need to be returned a sense of pride in keeping peace, the reason we have a military at all.

The sadly misguided element that keeps returning war criminals to office can be given a new source of pride, in the return of this country to a position of eminence from one of shame and squalor.

It's About The Oil

A couple of months ago, I posted on the sudden attention being paid to Africa, a continent the Bush administration had pretty much ignored. Under the aegis of the military, AFRICOM was ostensibly set up to provide services normally assigned to the State Department and aid agencies: painting schools and digging wells. The real purpose of the new program, however, was pretty clear. It was to protect major oil companies' interests in the region. In an article written originally for Foreign Policy in Focus, and reprinted at Asia Times Online, policy analyst Antonia Juhasz points out just why the US is embarking on this new military adventure.

"A key mission for US forces [in Africa] would be to insure that Nigeria's oilfields, which in the future could account for as much as 25% of all US oil imports, are secure," explains General Charles Wald, deputy commander of US forces in Europe in an interview with Wall Street Journal writer Greg Jaffe.

To secure and maintain access to oil, if not for the nation, then most certainly for our oil companies, the Bush administration has increasingly turned toward the US military. Author Kevin Phillips coined the term "petrol-imperialism" to describe the Bush administration's policies in this regard, "the key aspect of which is the US military’s transformation into a global oil protection force". Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, the Bush administration has implemented the greatest realignment of US forces since the end of the Cold War. With a map of Big Oil's overseas operations, the world's remaining oil reserves, and oil transport routes, one can now track the realignment and predict future deployments of the US military. [Emphasis added]

We've discovered via the Iraq War just how expensive using the military to protect oil companies' interests can be, and just how devastating. Even assuming that the misadventure in Iraq will wind up costing only $1 trillion dollars (and that's a conservative estimate), the waste of lives and national integrity will wind up costing the US considerably more.

Instead of pouring that kind of national treasure into the back pockets of oil companies, which deal in a product that ultimately is limited, we should be pouring money and resources into the development of alternative sources of energy. A trillion dollars would go a long way into refining and reducing the costs of solar and wind power, for example.

And then we also wouldn't be having these bogus arguments over drilling offshore and in ANWR (site of about a month's worth of oil for US use). Let the oil companies fund their own police forces. I understand Blackwater has some nice specials available this time of year.

Under the Bounded Main

Somehow the urgings of the right wing that the U.S. charge ahead full bore (pun intended) with oil drilling on the American landscape ignore the largest estimated source of oil, the continental shelf. The rest of the world is fully engaged in wrestling over rights to that very source. As usual, our occupied White House goes after its own dubious ends while telling us it's going to protect us.

For the moment, I won't get into why we should do away altogether with all this damage to our environment, and switch to grass based fuel. Let's look at why we are hanging behind everyone else at the present conference on the application of the U.N. Law of the Sea, which the U.S. Senate has refused to ratify. And incidentally, the World Wildlife Foundation is on the record supporting that ratification, and yes, that is a hint.

The claim to possession of the Arctic underwater resources was brought into focus when Russia claimed to be the head honcho, and went on a dive to put up its flag. Wakeup calls should have sounded here, but didn't. Maybe our press couldn't transcribe GoPerv bumper stickers under 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Denmark will today launch an effort to calm the scramble for the Arctic, bringing together the five coastal nations competing for what are believed to be the largest unclaimed reserves of oil and gas left on the planet.

The gathering in Greenland begins in the shadow of a new "oil shock" as soaring prices force governments to reassess their energy policies and heat up already feverish interest in who owns the seabed beneath the Arctic Ocean. The issue has already been pushed to the fore as rising temperatures melt ever larger sections of the polar ice sheet and scientists warn that climate change could result in sea ice cover disappearing altogether within a generation.

The Danes hope the meeting will see all parties agree to a UN-brokered solution rather than a free-for-all over possible oil riches and commercially valuable sea routes such as the recently thawed North West Passage.

So far the race for the Arctic has been limited to posturing, with Russia deploying an experimental submarine to plant a flag on the seabed close to the magnetic pole, while Denmark has pinned its colours to the frozen Hans Island and Canada has conducted military exercises further into the frozen north than ever before. Both Norway and the US are thought to be considering their own challenge for sovereignty under the UN Law of the Seas convention, meant to govern territorial claims over the continental shelf.

The argument over who owns the Arctic has come down to a technical squabble over which country is best connected to one of several undersea mountain ranges that extend towards the North Pole. Under the 1982 UN convention, coastal states own the seabed beyond existing 200 nautical mile zones if it is part of a continental shelf of shallower waters.

The retraction of the ice sheet is proceeding ever more rapidly, of curse, making the exploration ever less prohibitively expensive. Some oil companies, such as Shamrock, almost went bankrupt not so long ago in drilling unproductive wells on our continental shelf. Most drilling is chancy and expensive, and many expensive drilling project turn up 'dry', a fact that oil companies have used to exact large subsidies from the U.S. government.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a 1982 pact establishing guidelines for ocean security and regulation, is presently up for debate in the United States Senate. But so far, a concerted push from President Bush and military officials has not been enough to secure the necessary votes for ratification. Despite a growing list of treaty advocates, which includes powerful shipping and environmental lobbies as well as influential military leaders, a core group of conservative senators are intent on holding up ratification.

The treaty was brought up for debate in 2004 and sailed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a unanimous vote of approval. However, the issue was never voted on because then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) declined to bring the matter to a floor vote.

Although the treaty kicked off its wave of support with an encouraging 17-4 committee vote, it may be doomed to the same fate for months to come. Opposition to the treaty from far-right conservatives has prompted fears that the treaty would bind the US to support an over-expansion of United Nations authority. In addition, presumptive Republican nominee for President John McCain has announced that he is withdrawing support for the treaty in its present form.

The Northwest passage has become ever more accessible, and has led to a conflict between the U.S. and Canada over rites of passage (the punning instinct is out of hand) and you will recall that shipping is a major source of trade.

Further, the treaty calls for pollution controls as well as control by international law. Now you see the problem for the right wing. There is no sovereignty allowed to the U.S. recidivists. They would answer to laws, laws that couldn't be ignored as they are under the worst administration ever.

All this public interest is sinking the Law of the Sea for the usual subjects. Responsibility for interests that aren't answerable to polluting, abusive, industry is anathema to the right wing. They can't leave office soon enough.

How Others See The New Imperialism

Last week, and then again yesterday, I noted the new role our military is assuming. That role is best exemplified by AFRICOM, a program which has received very little press in this country. That lack of coverage, however, appears to be in place only here, as I discovered in this op-ed piece in The Journal of Turkish Weekly. Here's how the Turkish writers view the new program:

Even though the rationale behind the trip was presented as related to the humanitarian issues, the hidden aim of the Bush’s visit to Africa on his last months as the President has been to build up the ‘legitimate’ grounds for the recently initiated project of AFRICOM. In fact, the AFRICOM has been the product of the gradually evolving policy of the US and indicated the increased militarization of the US policies in Africa. [Emphasis added]

Placing US military bases in other countries is certainly not a new phenomenon, but the sudden thrust into Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, is. The writers suggest that the perceived US hegemony certainly explains some of the change in policy. In the past, the earlier colonial powers in Europe were expected to secure "western interests" in this region of the world. That is no longer a satsifactory arrangement for a country that sees itself as the only super-power.

Then, the inevitable question of ‘why’ arises to reveal the reasons behind such a considerably important policy shift towards Africa. That is, why has Africa suddenly become an important strategic concern for the US to launch such a grand project of AFRICOM?

Regarding such a crucial question, the Bush administration justifies the project of AFRICOM by arguing that it will “… bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy and economic growth in Africa.” In fact, the rhetoric is the same: to solve the problems with the military force ready to intervene into the internal affairs of any country. However, quite interestingly, Bush on his trip to five African countries never referred to AFRICOM, but instead tried to divert attentions to the US humanitarian assistance to the Black Africa

...Many experts have rightly argued that there are mainly three reasons behind the US project of AFRICOM:

The first and foremost reason behind the establishment of the AFRICOM is related with the security of the ‘US access to African natural resources, especially oil.’ It has been widely argued that the US has increasingly become more and more dependent on the African oil. ...

As a second factor behind the US project of AFRICOM, the current rivalry with China over Africa is on the top agenda of the Bush administration to tackle with. In one way or another, the recently increasing engagement of China in Africa has alarmed Washington with the concerns for the security of the US access to the African oil. ...

The third reason commonly referred to explain the real US ambitions behind the initiation of AFRICOM is simply to make Africa another front for the so called war on terrorism. ... [Emphasis added]

In other words, it's about the oil. Oh, and terra terra terra, which is shorthand for using the boogie man to get what the current administration and its corporate sponsors want. How surprising is that?

Apprently at least some African nations are not buying into this oh-so-generous offer for "humanitarian aid" by the US.

...[A] Majority of the African states have demonstrated crucial doubts about the ‘humanitarian’ aspects of the recent US project, and firmly stood against any deployment of US military basis in African soil. Especially such countries as Nigeria and South Africa have explicitly declared that they would not permit such a policy in their countries.

Smart, them. I'm certain the current administration hadn't considered that part of the equation which states that some countries treasure their national sovereignty too much to be easily bought off by promises to paint schools and such like.

324 days

Our Ms. Brooks: The New Imperialism

Rosa Brooks' latest column, published in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, considers the latest permutation in US military thinking, and she raises some interesting, if disquieting questions about the change.

This week, the Army released a new version of FM 3-0, the Army Field Manual on Operations. The first revision since 9/11, it offers what the Army -- which is not an institution prone to exaggeration -- calls "a revolutionary departure from past doctrine." For more than 200 years, the Army has had two "core missions": offense and defense. FM 3-0 adds a third: "stability operations," better (if more controversially) known to the public as nation building. ...

By adding stability operations as a new core mission, the revised Army Field Manual tries to ensure that the failures of Iraq will never be repeated. FM 3-0 foresees future Army forces fighting when fighting is called for -- but troops also will work as needed to ensure civilian security and provide "emergency infrastructure reconstruction, humanitarian relief [and] political, legal, social and economic institutions that support the transition to legitimate local governance."

Stability operations will be integrated into Army planning and training at every level and will take place across the "full spectrum of conflict": that is, such activities may be preventive (intended to keep an unstable society from collapsing), or coexist with traditional war fighting, or occur in the aftermath of a conflict. [Emphasis added]

Now that's interesting: it appears that the Army is planning to take over activities traditionally left to the State Department and humanitarian relief organizations. And the inclusion of this new mission certainly fits nicely with the new AFRICOM set up, about which Ms. Brooks has already commented (see here). The broadening of the military role is disturbing, for reasons suggested by questions Ms. Brooks raises:

The Army can't possibly "stabilize" every troubled society, so how will the U.S. select priorities? Will military involvement in traditionally humanitarian activities create new dangers for private relief and humanitarian organizations? Will others around the world see U.S. stability operations as just a new form of imperialism?

Why, yes, the rest of the world will undoubtedly see it that way, because that is precisely what it is. Gunboat diplomacy has been the preferred way to operate in the world by this neocon-riddled administration, and at least one of the presidential candidates sees no problem with that. Sen. McCain's comment that he finds nothng disturbing about having troops remain in Iraq for a hundred years is quite telling in that respect.

But, hey, it's just another facet of Mr. Bush's legacy.

325 days.

What A Coincidence

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has pushed Pakistan even closer to chaos than it was when President Pervez Musharraf declared a national emergency, suspended the Constitution, and jailed most of his nation's Supreme Court. As I noted earlier today, the US meddling in Pakistan played a large part in the current unrest in Pakistan. Now, with conditions rapidly deteriorating, comes news that the US will try to "fix" the situation in the only way the current administration knows how. It's planning on sending troops into Pakistan.

There are several possible justifications which are being floated for such a move. First, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are gaining strength inside of Pakistan, and the Pakistani military either can't or won't do anything to curb that strength. Second (and closely allied with the first), Pakistan has a full blown nuclear weapon system which can deliver those weapons in several different ways. Nobody (especially India) wants those weapons in the hands of extremists.

Amazingly, very little has been said about the plans to send in the military in the US press. Journalists outside of the US, however, haven't been so reticent. The different "takes" on the plan are pretty reflective of each of the justifications.

The first article is from Pakistan's The Nation and was published December 27, 2007. It is based in part on a rather ambigous reference to a Washington Post article, but, given the language of the Nation piece, I think it safe to assume that this is the article alluded to. In my opinion, this reflects the "official" US view.

EARLY next year, US special forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counter-terrorism units, according to American defence officials involved with the planning, reports Washington Post.

These Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the US military and for US-Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept 11, the US used Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the US deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at Bagram, north of Kabul, US forces left Pakistan almost entirely. Since then, Pakistan has restricted US involvement in cross-border military operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil. [Emphasis added]

The second article was published December 28, 2007 in the UK's Guardian and might very well be a more accurate representation of the thinking in Washington.

The Pentagon is working on a series of contingency plans to prevent Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of Islamist radicals and insisted today that the arsenal was safe in spite of the upheaval in the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. ...

The US administration has spent $100 million (£50 million) over the last six years on improving the security of Pakistan's nuclear programme.
One of the contingency plans would involve US special forces, working in conjunction with Pakistan's military and intelligence services, to spirit away any weapons at imminent risk. [Emphasis added]

Since Pakistan has apparently agreed to the entrance of special forces inside its borders, I suppose the actual reason is unimportant. What is important, however, is the fact that American troops will be positioned in yet another country as a means to correct a defective foreign policy. Whether their presence will prevent all hell from breaking loose is debateable. What is not debateable is that this administration's foreign policy has been a disaster for the US and for the world.