Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2014 23:22:42 +0200
Iraq, Libya, Syria: Three reasons African Americans should oppose U.S.
intervention in Africa
Ajamu Baraka
2014-07-03, Issue 685 <http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/685>
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/92338
<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/92338>
<http://www.thenation.com/blog/178723/tell-president-obama-end-hypocrisy-int
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The NationAs the U.S. tightens its military grip on Africa, "it is
absolutely imperative that we embark on a massive educational campaign with
our folks that will expose the real intentions of the U.S. on the continent
and worldwide." There is nothing "humanitarian" about U.S. intentions. "The
plan for Africa is being written in the blood of the people in Iraq, Syria
and Libya."
Mass slaughter, rape, torture, pillage, perpetual war, cultural degradation,
creating social divisions, psychological manipulation - the essential tools
employed by Western powers to establish their 522-year domination over many
of the peoples of the world - are still being used with frightening
efficiency and effect to maintain that dominance.
Just over the last decade and a half the orgy of violence unleashed by the
U.S. and the gangster states of NATO in the name of promoting democracy and
the racist absurdity of a "responsibility to protect" has been incalculable.
Masked by the oxymoronic language that connects the White West with
humanitarianism, the U.S. and its NATO allies have been on a killing spree
in more than a dozen countries. President Obama has conducted imperialism's
version of a drive-by shooting with his drone warfare where wedding parties,
funerals and even family gatherings are subject to being blown to bits just
because the U.S. has the technology to do so and the power to get away with
mass murder.
In "normal" times the racist megalomania of the U.S. that produced and is
producing the carnage in Iraq, Libya, Syria and throughout the world would
have been enough to caution African Americans against any pleas to the U.S.
to militarily intervene to "bring back our girls" in Nigeria. But of course
these are not normal times.
A BRIEF HISTORICAL RECAP OF U.S. POLICY IN AFRICA
There have been two factors that help to explain the relative success of
white supremacist capitalist power to construct and impose an historical
narrative in which they have been absolved of their criminal activities in
Africa: the post 9/11 focus on counter-terrorism, and the election of the
first black president of the U.S.
Puerto Rican activist and writer Aurora Levins Morales reminds us that as
the oppressed gain agency in their fight against dominance, memory is a site
of struggle: "One of the first things a colonizing power or repressive
regime does is attack the sense of history of those they wish to dominate by
attempting to take over and control their relationship to their own past."
African American internationalism has always been a central component of the
African American radical tradition. That approach to politics always linked
the struggle for African American liberation with that of the anti-colonial
struggle in Africa and throughout the colonial world. A critical read of
U.S. policy on Africa from that perspective, one that is alien to the
pro-imperialist perspective of Barack Obama, suggests that throughout the
post-World War II anti-colonial struggles that took place in Africa there is
not one instance of the U.S. being on the side of African independence, not
one.
In fact, in every struggle on the part of Africans to free themselves from
the oppressive yoke of European colonialism, the U.S. aligned with the
colonial powers across the continent to undermine African independence. U.S.
policy in Africa was consistently pro-white power, from its continued
support for the white settler regimes in Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, and South
Africa to its direct logistical and military support to the Portuguese
through NATO to fight against African freedom fighters in Angola and
Mozambique.
This support for colonial white supremacy in Africa was consistently
executed by both corporate parties in the U.S.
The assault on historical memory continued and intensified with the election
of Barack Obama. Obama's election not only blurred a critical perspective on
U.S. policy in Africa and globally on the part of many in the black
communities, but did so at a historical moment when the U.S. state was
undergoing a severe crisis of legitimacy and strategic confusion. That
confusion was marked by vacillation between the use of aggressive, hard
power that characterized the large-scale use of the military under the Bush
administration, and more nuanced, soft power, i.e. the ideological, symbolic
and diplomatic manifestations of state power.
The institutional developments and key decision-making over the last six
years has reflected the inchoate character of that ongoing strategic
confusion. But even with that confusion, Obama's deployment as the smiling
face of imperial power has had a devastating impact. His deployment has made
it exceptionally difficult to demystify the elite interests embedded in his
policies. The confusion is such that, for the first time in U.S. history, it
has become possible to win majority black support for the retrograde
policies of U.S. imperialism.
THE STRATEGIC PLAN FOR AFRICA UNDER OBAMA
By the fall of 2008, many among the capitalist elite and within the agencies
of the U.S. government had concluded that the U.S. would have its first (and
hopefully only) black president. It was also in the fall that the U.S.
Strategic Command (AFRICOM) was created.
The clear objective of U.S. policy in Africa, as spelled out by U.S. State
Department advisor to AFRICOM Dr. J. Peter Pham in 2007, was "protecting
access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in
abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those
natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as
China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential
treatment."
Therefore, while the Chinese were involved in economic activities that
resulted in direct investments in infrastructural and technological
development as well as access to low interest loans, the objective of U.S.
policy was to encourage what the U.S. does best - introduce death and
destruction through destabilization and militarization.
In line with the historic role of capitalist development in Africa, a
capitalist relationship that at its core has always been dependent on
violence and plunder, is it an incredulous position to conclude that the
real interest of the U.S. policy in Nigeria is less a concern with the lives
of Nigerian girls and more with bringing key strategic areas in Africa under
their control in order to block the Chinese?
And while all of us mourn for the more than 200 girls who have been
kidnapped and can only imagine what their families must be going though, we
also have to make sure that we don't allow the very real emotion of the
issue to cloud our analysis - something that is probably easier for us who
are not directly impacted. We have to do this because it is precisely at
these moments that we have to be clear-eyed and not allow ourselves to be
manipulated.
Militarization in the name of fighting terrorism - the terror phenomenon
seems to develop in whatever country the U.S. has a strategic interest - is
the cornerstone of the "new" strategy of counter-terrorism partnerships that
President Obama revealed in his famous (or infamous, depending on one's
view) speech at West Point on May 28.
Even though the speech was attacked by the Washington Post, New York Times
and the Wall Street Journal, the strategy of reducing the U.S. footprint by
relying on small numbers of special forces - Delta force, Seals, Green
Berets etc. - and not committing massive ground forces, thus reducing the
possibility of U.S. casualties and the attention of the public, reflects a
serious strategic threat to the cause of peace and anti-interventionism. It
is not only a strategy that commits the U.S. to a permanent war posture,
especially since the connection of covert U.S. support to these terrorist
operations is now well established, it also means that the plan for Africa
is being written in the blood of the people in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Similar to its policies in those countries, the U.S. has embarked on a
strategy of destabilization in Africa, operating through non-state terrorist
operations like their al Qaeda proxy's directly, or al Qaeda linked
organizations like Boko Haram in Nigeria. The objective is to create
security emergencies that weaken the state and creates a situation where the
U.S. then comes to the aid of the embattled states and is able to entrench
itself within the life of various nations on the African continent.
THE EDUCATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL IMPERATIVE
The aggressive posture of U.S. imperialism over the last few years has
proceeded with very little organized opposition from the capitalist center
in the U.S. Not just because of the institutional weakness of left and
progressive forces but, even more ominously, because of the ideological
collaboration and alignment by left forces with the imperial project. This
latter phenomenon is more characteristic of positions taken by some of the
more chauvinistic elements of the white left than our ranks, but even within
our ranks the confusion seems to be increasing when, for example, you look
at the positions taken by some on Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the U.S. NATO
assault on Libya.
As a consequence of this theoretical and ideological confusion, we are not
able to meet the challenges posed by the new strategic innovations
introduced in Obama's speech at West Point, innovations that not only have a
military component but powerful cultural and ideological elements. The
confusion generated by the "bring our girls back" campaign where we have
African Americans calling on the U.S. to intervene in Nigeria is
understandable. But what it dramatically demonstrates is that it is
absolutely imperative that we embark on a massive educational campaign with
our folks that will expose the real intentions of the U.S. on the continent
and worldwide.
Black Left forces must engage in respectful ideological discussions with our
people at every level, from community organizations and youth groups to
church groups where we once again attempt to determine "who is a friend and
who is an enemy" related to U.S. policies. Global militarism and the growing
domestic police state are fundamentally linked: Both are expressions of the
desperate moves by capital to maintain its hegemony. But its growing
dependence on military options, as dangerous as that is, still provides
revolutionary forces some strategic educational and organizing
opportunities.
That is why in my humble offerings I have been attempting to make the links
between all of these various global maneuvers so that we can connect them
theoretically and devise the correct response politically and
organizationally as we struggle to rebuild and unite the black left. The
imperialist machinations in Iraq, Syria, Libya and even the Ukraine are not
exotic issues disconnected from our concerns but part of the global
right-wing collaboration the U.S. is leading to undermine national
anti-colonial projects in the global South and the militarization of working
class and nationally oppressed communities and peoples' in the U.S. Making
these connections and grounding ourselves in the global struggle against
white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy is a central element of
the Black radical tradition.
The explosion of death and destruction that we see from Kenya and Somalia
across the Sahel to Nigeria and down to the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) and now developing in Mozambique, reflects the emergency situation
that we face today. We can no longer dance around the need to level direct
and devastating criticism of the oligarchical and imperialistic interests
being championed by Barack Obama. Critical revolutionary consciousness does
not emerged spontaneously from de-politicized "practice."
We must arm our people with the critical theoretical tools needed to wage
the life-and-death struggle that we and the people of the world are waging
against a rapacious enemy willing to destroy the planet in order to maintain
their unearned privilege. As brother George Jackson reminded us,
"International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of
struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the blacks inside the U.S.,
wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses." It is time that we let
the world know that we are back and that massa's days are numbered.
* Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer and geo-political
analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies
(IPS) in Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing columnist for the
Black Agenda Report. His latest publications include contributions to two
recently published books "Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA" and "Claim No
Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral." He can be reached at
<mailto:info.abaraka_at_gmail.com> info.abaraka_at_gmail.com and
<http://www.AjamuBaraka.com> www.AjamuBaraka.com
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