[Peace-discuss] Obama's war

[Brussel Morton K.]

I believe that you are being fastidiously critical. That a mainstream  
commentator like Pfaff would make the remark I quoted indicates  
something significant:  On the whole, such a commentary is helpful in  
(in)forming public opinion about our government's policies.  One  
needn't to agree with every detail of his article to think this.   
Clearly, you disagree, thinking it distorts too much to have merit.  
But you also distort. (See below)
--mkb


On Sep 17, 2009, at 1:24 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> This is OK on the domestic constituencies -- governmental &  
> corporate -- for aggressive war by the US, and on how the US has  
> substituted physical force for relative economic decline since over  
> the past 50 years (for most of which time Pfaff's been in Paris, I  
> think).  But it's wrong to suggest that it makes no difference where  
> US presidents wage war.  (Clinton invaded Serbia, not Rwanda.)
>
> It's simply false to say, "On Afghanistan, there seems to be no  
> coherent reason or vision as to why we are there."  The "reason or  
> vision" is obvious, it's been  the same for most of that 50 years,  
> but the Obama administration (which knows it perfectly well) can't  
> admit it, for fear of domestic (and foreign) opposition.  It needs  
> the cover story of "stopping terrorism."  That's also the only legal  
> basis it has for killing people in AfPak  -- the Congress' AUMF of  
> 2001.
>
> During World War II the US State Department described the Mideast is  
> the “most strategically important area of the world,” and the area's  
> vast energy resources – oil and natural gas – as “a stupendous  
> source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes  
> in world history.” In the years since then, oil companies and their  
> associates have reaped colossal profits; but, even more importantly  
> to the US, control over two-thirds of the world’s estimated  
> hydrocarbon reserves – uniquely cheap and easy to exploit – provides  
> what Obama's foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski called  
> “critical leverage” over European and Asian rivals, what the State  
> Department many years earlier had called “veto power” over them.
>
> Pfaff's airy dismissal of Afghanistan's role in that policy is  
> nonsense:
>
> "Once, before all this started, [Afghanistan's] geographical  
> location interested U.S. oil interests as providing a route for a  
> pipeline to carry Central Asian oil to the sea. But today there are  
> cheaper ways for moving oil than by a pipeline across a country at  
> war."
>
> But it's a "country at war" only because the US wants it to be. The  
> war would end with US withdrawal, tho' the US puppet government  
> probably wouldn't be the victor...

There was warlike instability in Afghanistan before the U.S. moved in,  
and could be even if the U.S./NATO forces left, so Pfaff may have a  
point here.
>
> Afghanistan's "geographical location" continues to interest the US   
> -- enough to spend billions of dollars there.  Afghanistan is the  
> keystone in the arch of US colonial control of the Mideast, from the  
> Mediterranean to Pakistan, from the Caspian Sea to the Horn of  
> Africa (note the US killings in Somalia this week) -- what the US  
> calls "The Area of Responsibility of Central Command" -- presided  
> over by US proconsul (and presidential hopeful) Gen. David  
> Petraeus.  (And see Pepe Escobar's articles on "Pipelinistan.")
>
> Even sillier, Pfaff repeats the assertion that Obama is "caught" in  
> a war he supported "to defend against Republican accusations of  
> weakness."

I would argue that this has entered into Democratic party thinking  
over several decades now, which is not to say that other factors also  
enter or even take precedence.

> It's far more disrespectful to Obama than saying "You lie" to say  
> that he would lie about his willingness to commit mass murder for a  
> rhetorical advantage over the Republicans.  But in fact he wasn't  
> lying.  He was down with the program that the US has followed in the  
> Middle East for decades ("Minion of the Long War," <http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook05012009.html 
> >).


> The US is concerned that the real opposition to US control of the  
> region is coming/will come from Pakistan, a country with 2/3 the  
> population of the US -- and a larger army.

Wrong: Pakistan population = 164 million, U.S 300 million. 164/300 =  
0.55. The militaries are about equal in size. (Wikipedia)

> The war in AfPak is primarily to keep the -Pak part in line.  (There  
> are parallels with the wars in Vietnam and Korea, which the US  
> wanted largely to keep dangerous neighbors -- N. Korea & N. Vietnam  
> -- in check.)
>
> Some US planners (Stephen Biddle, David Kilcullen) even admit that  
> we're killing people in Afghanistan primarily to keep Pakistan from  
> crabbing our generations-long act in the Middle East.  --CGE
>
>
> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>> Interesting remarks by Wm. Pfaff, writer for the IHT (alias  
>> European edition of the NYT)
>> … I think the American government now has become institutionally a  
>> war government, which finds its purpose in waging war against small  
>> and troublesome countries and peoples, in the generalized pursuit  
>> of running the world for the world’s own good. In this effort, one  
>> war is pretty much like another, and every president, to be re- 
>> elected, needs one.…
>> Full article at    http://original.antiwar.com/pfaff/2009/09/16/presidents-need-a-war-to-call-their-own-now-obama-has-his/

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