[Peace-discuss] Pakistan and the Main Event
Morton K. Brussel
brussel at illinois.edu
Sun Jun 7 20:30:43 CDT 2009
Good. Much clearer. I would not assert everything so positively. In
particular for the last sentence, I would prefer: That's That may
well be the reason "Obama has opened space …
--mkb
On Jun 7, 2009, at 8:02 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [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
>
> ***
>
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