[Peace-discuss] Pakistan and the Main Event

[C. G. Estabrook]

[At tonight's meeting it was suggested that the flyer on Pakistan for Saturday's 
Main event was unclear. Here's an edited version of the text ([1], below). There 
was also a request for an illustration of the US concern for the oil spigot. 
That follows ([2], below).  --CGE]

[1]	THE U.S. MAKES WAR IN PAKISTAN
	--Members and friends of AWARE,
	the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort
	of Champaign-Urbana - June 2009

The United States is not at war with Pakistan. Nevertheless our government is 
now attacking civilians in that country, from the air and on the ground, with 
the excuse that we're "fighting terrorism."  The result has been to cause 
immense suffering, outrage the population of this huge country -- Pakistan has 
two-thirds the population of the US and a larger army --  and produce a vast 
exodus of refugees, now numbering over two million people.

The US began Vietnam-style raids into Pakistan last fall.  US ground troops were 
landed from helicopters and stormed into villages, killing as usual women and 
children.  The ground attacks were accompanied by rocket attacks from remotely 
guided planes – drones.  Defense Secretary Gates had been advocating for months 
a secret plan for a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces inside 
Pakistan.  The Obama administration said that the initial raids were only "baby 
steps," and that they would be doing much more.  To carry out that plan, Obama 
put Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of the group that made the first raids 
into Pakistan, in command of the American war in "AfPak" (as the US government 
refers to Afghanistan and Pakistan).

Why is the Obama administration doing this?  Everyone can see that, far from 
fighting terrorism, the frightfulness of the American assault is producing armed 
resistance -- what we call "terrorism."  But the US government is willing to put 
up with that -- and the death and destruction that we cause -- because of the 
long-standing US policy that insists that the US alone control the Middle East 
and its energy resources.  AfPak is the eastern part of what the US military 
calls "Central Command" and is generally known as the Middle East -- the 
"central front," according to president Obama, "of the war on terrorism."

The American assault on Pakistan is in fact part of what the Pentagon calls the 
Long War, which stretches back deep into the twentieth century.  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 from Mideast 
petroleum.  But even more important to the US government for years has been 
control over two-thirds of the world’s estimated petroleum reserves.  Control of 
those resources provides what Obama's foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski 
calls “critical leverage” over our economic rivals in Europe and Asia.  If the 
US government controls the oil spigot, it can turn it off...

The US has conducted a generations-long war (with Israel as its "local cop on 
the beat," as the Nixon administration put it) for the control of energy 
resources in a 1500-mile radius around the Persian Gulf -- from the 
Mediterranean Sea to the Indus valley, from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia – 
and not because the US is dependent on Mideast oil: less than 10% of the oil the 
US imports for domestic consumption comes for the Middle East.

The people whom we're trying to kill in the Middle East – whether we call them 
al-Qaeda, Taliban, insurgents, terrorists, or militants – are those who want us 
out of their countries and off of their resources.  In order to convince 
Americans to kill and die and suffer in this cause, the Bush administration 
repeatedly lied about the situation, from trumpeting the non-existent weapons of 
mass destruction to outright forgery.  But the Obama administration continues to 
utter the biggest lie, that the US is fighting a "war on terror," as they expand 
the war to Pakistan, which they see as the center of opposition to US control of 
the region.

The government of Pakistan has in fact been trying to make peace with their 
local insurgents, and indeed produced a peace treaty for a region called the 
Swat Valley.  But the United States ordered the Pakistani government to tear up 
the agreement, and ordered the Pakistani army to attack the Swat region.  They 
did so, and by the end of May the UN High Commissioner for Refugees put the 
number of "internally displaced persons" -- refugees from the fighting -- at 
nearly 2.4 million.  More than a hundred thousand people flee the fighting every 
day, sending millions of terrified civilians into camps set up in various parts 
of the northwest Pakistan since the beginning of May.  That massive displacement 
is Pakistan's biggest movement of people since the country secured independence 
from Britain in 1947.  That seems to be how the Obama administration “fights 
terrorism”  -- how in fact it prepares much future terrorism...

	*	*	*

	WE AT AWARE THINK THAT MOST AMERICANS WOULD BE SHOCKED IF THEY KNEW
	WHAT IS BEING DONE BY OUR GOVERNMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST...

The US war from Palestine to Pakistan will continue until enough Americans speak 
up loudly and reject it.  If you are appalled that our government is conducting 
an unjustified war in the Middle East – and misrepresenting the reason for it – 
call your Congressional representatives and demand an end to it.  Congressman 
Tim Johnson, Senator Roland Burris, and Senator Dick Durbin can be reached 
through the capitol switchboard at 202.224.3121.  Tell them that the US has no 
business killing people in the Middle East who resist our invasion and 
occupation.  We're doing it – not to “fight terrorism,” as the US government 
claims – but to control the resources of the region.

You can also join a local peace group that is working to end the war.  In 
Champaign-Urbana, one local peace group is AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism 
Effort, members and friends of which produced this leaflet for the “Main Event” 
– our monthly peace demonstration in downtown Champaign – on June 6, 2009.  We 
meet every Sunday 5-6:30pm in the Wahlfeldt Room in the basement of the old post 
office in Urbana – 202 South Broadway.  Visitors and new members are welcome.

"AWARE on the Air" is presented each Tuesday at 10pm on Urbana Public 
Television, cable channel 6, by members and friends of AWARE.  Each week we 
bring you comments on the war and the opposition to it, both locally and 
nationally, by Americans who oppose our government's betrayal of our democratic 
principles.

And see the AWARE website at <http://www.anti-war.net>.

===========

[2] The Obama administration's current actions are an enactment of -- not a 
departure from -- the long-term US policy in the region.  The goal of that 
policy is to continue US control of ME energy resources as a check against our 
real economic rivals in the world, the EU and northeast Asia.

US policy has been consistent for two generations in what President Eisenhower 
called "the most strategically important area in the world." In the early 
post-WWII years, the US in effect extended the Monroe Doctrine to the Middle 
East, barring any interference apart from Britain, assumed to be a loyal 
dependency, and quickly punished when it occasionally got out of hand (as in 
1956). The strategic importance of the region lies primarily in its immense 
petroleum reserves and the global power accorded by control over them; and, 
crucially, from the huge profits that flow to the Anglo-American rulers, which 
have been of critical importance for their economies. It has been necessary to 
insure that this enormous wealth flows primarily to the West, not to the people 
of the region. (Chomsky)

"The U.S. genuinely wants a different relationship with the Muslim world than it 
had during the Bush Administration" only to the extent that it can pursue that 
goal by force or persuasion. But the administration does remember the diplomatic 
maxim of "no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests" 
  -- where that interest is the US "national interest," i.e, the interests of 
dominant social groups making up a small fraction of the population, interests 
opposed to those of the large majority.

Israel fears Iran not primarily because of nukes (everyone realizes that an 
Iranian nuclear weapon would be a defensive weapon) but because the greatest 
threat to Israel is democracy between the Jordan and the Sea, and Iran supports 
groups -- notably Hezbollah and Hamas -- pressing for that.  Democracy  is 
indeed an "existential threat" to a racist state. (Hence the fascist laws that 
Uri Avnery analyzes this week.)

But the US needs Iran for several reasons -- partly its military and political 
support in Iraq and Afghanistan, but principally its energy resources.  The most 
ominous event of he week for the US administration was the announcement on 
Wednesday in Beijing that Iran has replaced the French energy company Total with 
a Chinese company to develop Iran's South Pars gas field.

The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is already a major partner in 
Iran's energy projects. The head of Total had said that talks with Iran on 
developing South Pars were advancing slowly due to the US pressure. The South 
Pars gas field has reserves of about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas -- or about 
eight percent of the world's reserves.

What the US most fears is Iran's slipping into the Asian energy grid, dominated 
by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- essentially Russia and China. The US 
is willing to antagonize its chief client, the Israeli government, to prevent 
that happening.  That's the reason "Obama has opened space between U.S. policy 
and Israeli government policy on relations with the Palestinians and on 
relations with Iran."  --CGE

	***