[Peace-discuss] "The newspaper is half ads, and the rest lies between them"

[C. G. Estabrook]

To the Editor of the News-Gazette:

Abject nonsense arguing for the administration's wars in Asia and Africa is common enough, but Wednesday's AP dispatch on your op-ed page takes some sort of prize:

"U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan, nearly 11 years after they invaded. Why? The answer boils down to one word: al-Qaida. The goal is to damage the terrorist group enough to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks..."

That's the Obama administration’s propaganda claim, designed to justify the killing to a skeptical US public, but it isn't true.

The US is threatening, invading, and occupying countries from Libya to Pakistan, and from Central Asia to Central Africa - the "Greater Middle East" - because the region has the world's greatest concentration of oil and natural gas. The US government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to control it.

Control and not just access to these energy resources is what the US demands. We in fact import very little oil from the Mideast - no more than is exported from the US - but control of Mideast oil gives the US an unparalleled advantage over our economic rivals in Europe and Asia.

The president is killing men, women, and children in Asia and Africa in our name - because China and other countries need oil, and our government intends to control where they get it. He says that we are conducting these wars to stop terrorism and protect civilians - but we're instead killing civilians and creating terrorists. And only the 1% profit.

--C. G. Estabrook