By John
Pilger
Global Research
October 20, 2011
On 14 October,
President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States Special Forces
troops to Uganda to join the civil war there.
In the next few
months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African
Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defence", says
Obama, satirically.
With Libya secured,
an American invasion
of the African continent
is under way.
Obama’s decision is
described in the press as "highly unusual" and
"surprising", even "weird".
It is none of these
things.
It is the logic of
American foreign policy since 1945.
Take Vietnam. The
priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and
"protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region’s
richest hoard of natural resources ...the greatest prize".
Vietnam merely got
in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the
devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its
goal.
Like all America’s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defence" or "humanitarian", words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.
In Africa, says
Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of
Uganda defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped
and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central
Africa".
This is an accurate
description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United
States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of
Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected
prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as
Africa’s most venal tyrant.
Obama’s other justification also invites satire.
This is the "national security of the United States".
The LRA has been
doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States.
Today, it has fewer
than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national
security" usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has
something Washington wants.
Uganda’s
"president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part
of $45 million in US military "aid" ~ including Obama’s favourite
drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America’s latest phantom
Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play
a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial
horror stories.
However, the main
reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the
Vietnam war.
.
It is China.
In the world of
self-serving, institutionalized paranoia that justifies what General David
Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of
perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American
"threat".
When I interviewed
Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon last year, I
asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he
repeated, "Asymmetric threats ... asymmetric threats".
These justify the
money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military
and war budget in history.
With Osama bin Laden airbrushed,
China takes the mantle.
Africa is China’s
success story.
Where the Americans
bring drones and destabilization, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams.
What they want is
resources, especially fossil fuels.
With Africa’s greatest oil reserves,
Libya under Muammar Gaddafi
was one of China’s most important sources of fuel.
When the civil war
broke out and NATO backed the "rebels" with a fabricated story about
Gaddafi planning "genocide" in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000
workers in Libya.
The subsequent UN
security council resolution that allowed the west’s "humanitarian
intervention" was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French
government by the "rebel" National Transitional Council, disclosed
last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent
of Libya’s gross national oil production "in exchange" (the term
used) for "total and permanent" French support for the NTC.
Running up the
Stars and Stripes in "liberated" Tripoli last month, US ambassador
Gene Cretz blurted out:
"We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!"
The de facto
conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version
of the "scramble for Africa" at the end of the 19th century.
Like the
"victory" in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in
dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page
carried a photograph of a terrified "pro-Gaddafi" fighter and his
wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, "celebrate". According to
General Petraeus, there is now a war "of perception ... conducted
continuously through the news media".
For more than a
decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa,
AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions
this would cause.
Libya, and now
Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance.
As WikiLeaks cables
and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for
Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including
death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120.
As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s "defence
strategy" plan,
America simply wishes to rule the world.
That this is now
the gift of Barack Obama, the "Son of Africa", is supremely ironic.
Or is it?
As Frantz Fanon
explained in Black Skin, White Masks, what matters is not so much the colour of
your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.
For more
information on John Pilger, visit his website at www.johnpilger.com
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