[Peace-discuss] "Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia."

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From a recent Official Hero of the Anti-War Movement, Adm. "Fox" (sic) 
Fallon...  --CGE]


	CENTCOM's Master Plan and U.S. Global Hegemony
	By Robert Higgs
	22/07/08 "Lewrockwell"

Many people deny that the U.S. government presides over a global empire. If you 
speak of U.S. imperialism, they will fancy that you must be a decrepit 
Marxist-Leninist who has recently awakened after spending decades in a coma. Yet 
the facts cannot be denied, however much people's ideology may predispose them 
to distort or obfuscate those facts.

How can a government that maintains more than 800 military facilities in more 
than 140 different foreign countries be anything other than an imperial power? 
The hundreds of thousands of troops who operate those bases and conduct 
operations from them, not to mention the approximately 125,000 sailors and 
Marines aboard the U.S. warships that cruise the oceans, are not going door to 
door selling Girl Scout cookies. United States of America is the name; 
intimidation is the game.

Of course, the kingpins who control this massive machinery of coercion never 
describe it in such terms. In their lexis, American motives and actions are 
invariably noble. Listening to these bigwigs describe what the U.S. forces 
abroad are doing, you would never suspect that they seek anything but "regional 
stability," "security," "deterrence of potential regional aggressors," and 
"economic development and cooperation among nations." Inasmuch as hardly anybody 
favors instability, insecurity, international aggression, economic 
retrogression, and mutual strife among nations, the U.S. objectives, and hence 
the actions taken in their furtherance, would appear to be indisputably laudable.

Yet, from time to time, a U.S. leader lets slip an expression so revealing that 
it warrants a thousand times greater weight than the vague, mealy-mouthed 
banalities they routinely dispense. I came across such a statement recently. In 
seeking funds in 2007 for construction of a $62 million ammunition storage 
facility at Bagram Air Base, Admiral William J. Fallon, then the commander of 
the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), referred to Bagram as "the centerpiece for 
the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia."

Pause to savor this phrase for a moment; let it roll around in your mind: 
CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia. What an 
intriguing expression! What dramatic images of future U.S. military actions it 
evokes! But can those actions be anything other than the very sort that empires 
undertake? Ask yourself: why does the U.S. military anticipate conducting 
operations in Central Asia, a region that lies thousands of miles from the 
United States and comprises countries that lack either the capacity or the 
intention to seriously harm Americans who mind their own business in their own 
national territory? Indeed, what is the U.S. military doing in Central Asia in 
the first place? Have you ever heard of "the Great Game"?

When the Army sought the funds for the new ammunition storage facility at Bagram 
again this year, its request echoed Admiral Fallon's sentiments by stating: "As 
a forward operating site, Bagram must be able to provide for a long term, steady 
state presence which is able to surge to meet theater contingency requirements." 
The statement's reference to "a long term, steady state presence" would seem to 
be especially revealing because it takes for granted that U.S. forces will not 
be leaving this part of the world any time soon. Giving even more weight to this 
interpretation, Congress approved not only the $62 million for the ammunition 
storage facility, but also $41 billion for a 30-megawatt electrical power plant 
at Bagram, a plant large enough to serve more than 20,000 American homes.

Along the same lines, Lt. Colonel John Sotham, commander of the 455 
Expeditionary Force Support Squadron, which is now stationed at Bagram Air Base, 
recently described a number of improvements his squadron is making at the base, 
looking toward giving it "a more permanent footprint." He added: "It's pretty 
clear that the U.S. Air Force will be at Camp Cunningham [a living area at 
Bagram] and involved in the fight against terrorism for a very long time." He 
relished the opportunity to "help drive Bagram from expeditionary to enduring!"

The United States government divides the world into six military regions called 
Unified Combatant Commands. (A separate Africa Command has been created only 
recently. Once it is fully operational, it will include all of the African 
countries except Egypt. A few other northeastern African countries were 
previously included in the Central Command's area of responsibility.) The 
Central Command, abbreviated as CENTCOM, stretches from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and 
Yemen in the West to Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan in the 
East. The easternmost reaches of this combatant area butt up against India, 
China, and Russia.

Looking carefully at the map, one discovers that Israel is not included in the 
CENTCOM area, but in the European Command area. In a sense, however, we may 
describe the twenty-one countries in CENTCOM's newly defined "area of 
responsibility" as a sort of logical complement of Israel: the people of every 
one of these countries devoutly wish (and here I have chosen my adverb 
carefully) that Israel had never come into existence and that it will go out of 
existence as soon as possible. Thus, CENTCOM's area, inhabited predominantly by 
Muslims, comprises a predominant subset of Israel's avowed enemies.

It comes as no surprise, then, that of all the unified commands, CENTCOM is the 
one in which, in today's world, the U.S. empire's rubber meets the road most 
abrasively. The command's area of responsibility includes a great part of the 
world's known petroleum and natural gas deposits, a preponderance of Israel's 
enemies, and the places in which the George W. Bush administration has chosen to 
focus its so-called Global War on Terror. Of course, the region also includes 
Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have been fighting for years, and, 
sandwiched between these two battlefields, Iran, where Dick Cheney and the rest 
of the neocons ardently desire to extend the fighting at the earliest opportunity.

The high imperial authorities are not embarrassed by the U.S. empire; on the 
contrary, they are immensely proud of it. They simply do not describe their 
activities as the maintenance and exploitation of an empire. If you care to read 
an extended example, I invite you to peruse Admiral Fallon's testimony of May 3, 
2007, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, regarding CENTCOM'S "posture." 
This carefully prepared statement, written in impeccable military bureaucratese, 
illustrates well how imperial commanders wish to represent their forces' actions 
and, equally important, how members of Congress wish to have those actions 
represented to them. Of course, it's all a solemn farce, a polished and 
meaningless charade staged purely for public-relations purposes―a ceremonial 
hors d'oeuvres served in public before the diners consume the entrée, which 
consists of a massive amount of the taxpayers' money ladled out to the armed 
forces and their civilian contractors.

"Our top priority," Fallon declares, "is achieving stability and security in 
Iraq." Everyone knows, of course, that Iraq was more stable and secure before 
the U.S. invasion, which suggests that perhaps the quickest way to reestablish 
those conditions is for the U.S. forces to leave the country. Certainly many 
Iraqis resolutely oppose a permanent U.S. presence there, and some of them will 
continue their violent resistance to U.S. forces as long as the Americans 
remain. Intelligent adults also know that when Fallon or any other U.S. official 
speaks of achieving stability and security, he has in mind the achievement of 
those blessed conditions only on terms acceptable to the U.S. government, and 
most likely in accordance with its prescription. That the U.S. forces will ever 
pull out of Iraq and leave the Iraqis to do as they please is virtually 
impossible to conceive at this point. Indeed, a mere pullout is nearly 
inconceivable, despite the great amount of talk that goes on about it on both 
sides. On the Iraqi side, this talk is sincere; on the U.S. side, it is all for 
show.

Fallon testified that in Afghanistan, "the foundation of security and governance 
is in place." He must have known how ludicrous that statement was. Outside of 
Kabul, the U.S. forces, their allies, and the puppet regime control hardly 
anything, and U.S. and allied forces that move about the country are at constant 
risk of attack. The Taliban has not been vanquished, and in fact it has been 
rebuilding its ranks and its operational capabilities recently. The likelihood 
that outside forces will ever impose their designs on Afghanistan's backward but 
fiercely resilient tribesmen verges on nil. Even Fallon has the temerity to 
observe that "parts of the country have never known centralized governance." 
Great powers have sought to conquer Afghanistan and bend it to their imperial 
will for centuries, never with more than short-lived success. Eventually the 
imperialists leave, and the Afghans remain.

In an earlier day, Rudyard Kipling advised "The Young British Soldier" who 
served in Britain's imperial army:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

It's probably still good advice. Alternatively, you can get yourself killed by 
your own comrades and instantly become a Great American Hero, thanks to the 
Great American Military Bullshit Information Team (GAMBIT).

Continuing his parade of politicking platitudes, Fallon declares that "Iran's 
most destabilizing activity has been the pursuit of nuclear weapons technology 
in defiance of the international community." Of course, if the Iranians have 
undertaken any such pursuit at all, which remains in doubt, it has been not in 
defiance of the mythical "international community," but in defiance of the 
United States and Israel, as everybody who reads the newspapers knows. It is 
nothing short of astonishing that U.S. officials speak in almost hysterical 
tones of the threat posed by nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons, yet never 
breathe a word about the hundreds of such weapons already in the Israeli 
arsenal, not to mention the thousands that remain at the disposal of U.S. 
forces. Of course, members of Congress, who live in mortal fear of the American 
Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), want to be seen listening to this 
phony-baloney message, so military politicians such as Admiral Fallon dare not 
disappoint them.

Fallon arranged the bulk of his testimony around a description of how CENTCOM's 
"initiatives are organized into five focus areas: setting conditions for 
stability in Iraq; expanding governance and security in Afghanistan; degrading 
violent extremist networks and operations; strengthening relationships and 
influencing states to contribute to regional stability; and posturing the force 
to build and sustain joint and combined war fighting capabilities and 
readiness." Notice that except possibly for the third item listed ("degrading 
violent extremist networks and operations"), none of this has more than a very 
remote connection with defending the people of the United States against foreign 
enemies.

Instead, it has everything to do with maintenance of the U.S. empire in the 
Middle East and Central Asia. The U.S. government maintains a lavishly financed 
Department of Defense, ostensibly to protect Americans in their own country from 
foreign attackers. In reality, however, this department acts as an overfed 
foreign legion, operating around the world as an offensive or potentially 
offensive force to bully other countries into submission to the U.S. 
government's wishes.

To read Fallon's testimony is to take a refresher course in U.S. nation 
building. He speaks about "infrastructure development," "provision of basic 
services to Iraq's citizens," and improving "local government performance and 
capacity." In Afghanistan, he perceives that the "priorities are roads and 
electricity, followed by agricultural development, microcredit, job skills, and 
education." The occupation force, he testified, "is actively pursuing 
initiatives in these areas, from building schools and providing them with 
supplies to encouraging and stimulating the growth of small businesses." Should 
we laugh or cry?

Someone needs to remind the admiral and his audience that the military is 
trained and equipped to dispense death and destruction. Military leaders know 
nothing about nation building, and their efforts along these lines result only 
in gigantic waste of time, money, and lives. (Of course, we must never forget, 
especially when discussing the U.S. empire, that one man's waste is another 
man's fabulously enriching government contract.)

To make matters even worse, "CENTCOM supports US government and United Kingdom 
lead nation counter-narcotics activities." No U.S. war is complete, it seems, 
without dragging the disastrous drug war along with it.

The imperial authorities constantly emphasize their efforts to promote our 
security by suppressing "violent extremism" abroad. Repeat after me: extremism 
always bad; moderation always good. If Barry Goldwater were alive today and 
still telling us that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," he might 
well be placed on the Air Force's target list for the Predator drone. While 
decrying the violent extremists in the Middle East, Admiral Fallon notes: 
"Unfortunately, their tactics and radical ideology remain almost unchallenged by 
voices of moderation." It takes a heap of chutzpah to impose sanctions on a 
country, killing hundreds of thousands of children and others with weakened 
immune systems, then invade the country, killing hundreds of thousands of men, 
women, and children by bombing, shooting, shelling, beating, stabbing, 
suffocating, and immolating them, then create such chaos and violence among the 
populace that millions are forced to abandon their residence and rendered 
homeless, then announce your regret that so few speak in favor of moderation. 
Next thing you know, the Devil will express regret that so few denizens of Hell 
speak in favor of fraternal kindness and Christian charity.

Fallon aims at "de-legitimizing the underlying social and political movements 
that support" the extremist groups. He fails to recognize that such 
delegitimization is utterly impossible as long as the U.S. forces continue to 
occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and to brutalize their people. The admiral proposes 
"building capacity in governance and security that helps at-risk societies 
address problems that foster internal and local grievances." The overwhelming 
grievance in the Middle East, however, is the presence of U.S. forces and 
Washington's support for local dictators and their legions of thugs. Fallon, 
however, looks to "empowering credible experts to expose the flaws and internal 
contradictions of the enemy's ideology; provide viable, competing alternative 
worldviews; and contest the intellectual 'safe harbors' where extremist ideas 
incubate." U.S. military leaders seem to have made a little progress since the 
days when they lived by the motto, "If you've got 'em by the balls, their hearts 
and minds will follow." Yet the idea that in the midst of everything the U.S. 
forces are doing in the Middle East they can employ "credible experts" to 
transform the dominant ideology is sheer lunacy. Al-Qaida requires no wily 
recruiting agents in Afghanistan and Iraq; its supporters need only invite 
people to look out their windows.

Fallon speaks glowingly of the various Middle Eastern dictatorships with whom 
the U.S. government maintains cordial relationships. (It's amazing how many 
"friends" you can win with a combination of generous bribes and credible 
threats.) The United States' "close, reliable partner nations" include such 
paragons of social and political modernity as "Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, 
and Pakistan." Moreover, "Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the 
United Arab Emirates are important partners in maintaining stability in the 
Gulf." An honest observer feels compelled to recognize, however, that every one 
of the filthy-rich sheiks in these desert despotisms would gladly cut Fallon's 
throat if they weren't raking in such fabulous amounts of money from the current 
arrangements.

The admiral does recognize a few problems. "Our present inventory of language 
and intelligence specialists (especially human intelligence) and 
counterintelligence agents does not support current requirements." Translation: 
because we don't speak or understand Arabic, Pashto, Persian, or any other local 
language in this part of the world, we haven't a clue as to what's going on in 
the politics and social life of these countries, and therefore we are constantly 
at the mercy of English-speaking collaborators who will take the risk of feeding 
us lies and fabricated "intelligence" long enough to get rich and then flee the 
country before their infuriated countrymen kill them.

Notwithstanding the many troubles that plague the imperial crusaders in 
CENTCOM's area of responsibility, Fallon bravely concludes, "we fight tirelessly 
against those who would do us harm." He fails to mention, however, that the 
people of southwest Asia would harbor no grievances whatsoever against Americans 
if the U.S. government had only possessed the intelligence and the decency to 
stay out of their affairs.

Robert Higgs [send him mail] is senior fellow in political economy at the 
Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review. He is also a 
columnist for LewRockwell.com. His most recent book is Neither Liberty Nor 
Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government. He is also the author of 
Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy, Resurgence of the 
Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 and Against Leviathan: Government Power and 
a Free Society.

Copyright © 2008 Robert Higgs