From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sat Jan 02 2010 - 06:12:05 EST
2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World
by Rick Rozoff
<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, December 31, 2009
…….The Pentagon has also deployed special forces and other troops to the
Philippines and launched naval, helicopter and missile attacks inside
Somalia as well as assisting the Ethiopian invasion of that nation in 2006.
Washington also arms, trains and supports the armed forces of Djibouti in
their border war with Eritrea……
January 1 will usher in the last year of the first decade of a new
millennium and ten consecutive years of the United States conducting war in
the Greater Middle East.
Beginning with the October 7, 2001 missile and bomb attacks on Afghanistan,
American combat operations abroad have not ceased for a year, a month, a
week or a day in the 21st century.
The Afghan war, the U.S.'s first air and ground conflict in Asia since the
disastrous wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s and the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization's first land war and Asian campaign,
began during the end of the 2001 war in Macedonia launched from
NATO-occupied Kosovo, one in which the role of U.S. military personnel is
still to be properly exposed [1] and addressed and which led to the
displacement of almost 10 percent of the nation's population.
In the first case Washington invaded a nation in the name of combating
terrorism; in the second it abetted cross-border terrorism. Similarly, in
1991 the U.S. and its Western allies attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait and
launched devastating and deadly cruise missile attacks and bombing sorties
inside Iraq in the name of preserving the national sovereignty and
territorial integrity of Kuwait, and in 1999 waged a 78-day bombing assault
against Yugoslavia to override and fatally undermine the principles of
territorial integrity and national sovereignty in the name of the casus
belli of the day, so-called humanitarian intervention.
Two years later humanitarian war, as abhorrent an oxymoron as the world has
ever witnessed, gave way to the global war on terror(ism), with the U.S. and
its NATO allies again reversing course but continuing to wage wars of
aggression and "wars of opportunity" as they saw fit, contradictions and
logic, precedents and international law notwithstanding.
Several never fully acknowledged counterinsurgency campaigns, some ongoing -
Colombia - and some new - Yemen - later, the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of
2003 with a "coalition of the willing" comprised mainly of Eastern European
NATO candidate nations (now almost all full members of the world's only
military bloc as a result of their service).
The Pentagon has also deployed special forces and other troops to the
Philippines and launched naval, helicopter and missile attacks inside
Somalia as well as assisting the Ethiopian invasion of that nation in 2006.
Washington also arms, trains and supports the armed forces of Djibouti in
their border war with Eritrea. In fact Djibouti hosts the U.S.'s only
permanent military installation in Africa to date [2], Camp Lemonier, a
United States Naval Expeditionary Base and home to the Combined Joint Task
Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), placed under the new U.S. Africa Command
(AFRICOM) when it was launched on October 1, 2008. The area of
responsibility of the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa takes in
the nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia,
Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen and as "areas of interest" the Comoros,
Mauritius and Madagascar.
That is, much of the western shores of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean,
among the most geostrategically important parts of the world. [3]
U.S. troops, aerial drones, warships, planes and helicopters are active
throughout that vast tract of land and water.
With senator and once almost vice president Joseph Lieberman's threat on
December 27 that "Yemen will be tomorrow's war" [4] and former Southern
Command chief and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark's two
days later that "Maybe we need to put some boots on the ground there," [5]
it is evident that America's new war for the new year has already been
identified. In fact in mid-December U.S. warplanes participated in the
bombing of a village in northern Yemen that cost the lives of 120 civilians
as well as wounding 44 more [6] and a week later "A US fighter jet...carried
out multiple airstrikes on the home of a senior official in Yemen's northern
rugged province of Sa'ada...." [7]
The pretext for undertaking a war in Yemen in earnest is currently the
serio-comic "attempted terrorist attack” by a young Nigerian national on a
passenger airliner outside of Detroit on Christmas Day. The deadly U.S.
bombing of the Yemeni village mentioned above occurred ten days earlier and
moreover was in the north of the nation, although Washington claims al-Qaeda
cells are operating in the other end of the country. [8]
Asia, Africa and the Middle East are not the only battlegrounds where the
Pentagon is active. On October 30 of 2009 the U.S. signed an agreement with
the government of Colombia to acquire the essentially unlimited and
unrestricted use of seven new military bases in the South American nation,
including sites within immediate striking distance of both Venezuela and
Ecuador. [9] American intelligence, special forces and other personnel will
be complicit in ongoing counterinsurgency operations against the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the nation's south as well
as in rendering assistance to Washington's Colombian proxy for attacks
inside Ecuador and Venezuela that will be portrayed as aimed at FARC forces
in the two states.
Targeting two linchpins of and ultimately the entire Bolivarian Alliance for
the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), Washington is laying the groundwork for a
potential military conflagration in South and Central America and the
Caribbean. After the U.S.-supported coup in Honduras on June 28, that nation
has announced it will be the first ALBA member state to ever withdraw from
the Alliance and the Pentagon will retain, perhaps expand, its military
presence at the Soto Cano Air Base there.
A few days ago "The Colombian government...announced it is building a new
military base on its border with Venezuela and has activated six new
airborne battalions" [10] and shortly afterward Dutch member of parliament
Harry van Bommel "claimed that US spy planes are using an airbase on the
Netherlands Antilles island of Curaçao" [11] off the Venezuelan coast.
In October a U.S. armed forces publication revealed that the Pentagon will
spend $110 million to modernize and expand seven new military bases in
Bulgaria and Romania, across the Black Sea from Russia, where it will
station initial contingents of over 4,000 troops. [12]
In early December the U.S. signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with
Poland, which borders the Russian Kaliningrad territory, that "allows for
the United States military to station American troops and military equipment
on Polish territory." [13] The U.S. military forces will operate Patriot
Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) batteries as
part of the Pentagon's global interceptor missile system.
At approximately the same time President Obama pressured Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to base missile shield components in his
country. "We discussed the continuing role that we can play as NATO allies
in strengthening Turkey's profile within NATO and coordinating more
effectively on critical issues like missile defense," [14] in the American
leader's words.
"Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has hinted his government does not view
Tehran [Iran] as a potential missile threat for Turkey at this point. But
analysts say if a joint NATO missile shield is developed, such a move could
force Ankara to join the mechanism." [15]
2010 will see the first foreign troops deployed to Poland since the breakup
of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and the installation of the U.S's "stronger,
swifter and smarter" (also Obama's words) interceptor missiles and radar
facilities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the South Caucasus. [16]
U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, site of the longest and most wide-scale
war in the world, will top 100,000 early in 2010 and with another 50,000
plus troops from other NATO nations and assorted "vassals and tributaries"
(Zbigniew Brzezinski) will represent the largest military deployment in any
war zone in the world.
American and NATO drone missile and helicopter gunship attacks in Pakistan
will also increase, as will U.S. counterinsurgency operations in the
Philippines and Somalia along with those in Yemen where CIA and Army special
forces are already involved.
U.S. military websites recently announced that there have been 3.3 million
deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 with 2 million U.S. service
members sent to the two war zones. [17]
In this still young millennium American soldiers have also deployed in the
hundreds of thousands to new bases and conflict and post-conflict zones in
Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Georgia, Israel, Jordan,
Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mali, the Philippines, Romania,
Uganda and Uzbekistan.
In 2010 they will be sent abroad in even larger numbers to man airbases and
missile sites, supervise and participate in counterinsurgency operations
throughout the world against disparate rebel groups, many of them secular,
and wage combat operations in South Asia and elsewhere. They will be
stationed on warships and submarines equipped with cruise and long-range
nuclear missiles and with aircraft carrier strike groups prowling the
world's seas and oceans.
They will construct and expand bases from Europe to Central and South Asia,
Africa to South America, the Middle East to Oceania. With the exception of
Guam and Vicenza in Italy, where the Pentagon is massively expanding
existing installations, all the facilities in question are in nations and
even regions of the world where the U.S. military has never before ensconced
itself. Practically all the new encampments will be forward bases used for
operations "down range," generally to the east and south of NATO-dominated
Europe.
U.S. military personnel will be assigned to the new Global Strike Command
and for expanded patrols and war games in the Arctic Circle. They will serve
under the Missile Defense Agency to consolidate a worldwide interceptor
missile network that will facilitate a nuclear first strike capability and
will extend that system into space, the final frontier in the drive to
achieve military full spectrum dominance.
American troops will continue to fan out to most all parts of the world.
Everywhere, that is, except to their own nation's borders.
Notes
1) Scott Taylor, Macedonia's Civil War: 'Made in the USA'
Antiwar.com, August 20, 2001
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/taylor1.html
2) AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World
Stop NATO, October 22, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-
of-the-entire-world
3) Cold War Origins Of The Somalia Crisis And Control Of The Indian Ocean
Stop NATO, May 3, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/cold-war-origins-of-the-somalia-c
risis-and-control-of-the-indian-ocean
4) Fox News, December 27, 2009
5) Fox News, December 29, 2009
6) Press TV, December 16, 2009
7) Press TV, December 27, 2009
8) Yemen: Pentagon’s War On The Arabian Peninsula
Stop NATO, December 15, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/yemen-pentagons-war-on-the-arabia
n-peninsula
9) Rumors Of Coups And War: U.S., NATO Target Latin America
Stop NATO, November 18, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/rumors-of-coups-and-war-u-s-nato-
target-latin-america
10) BBC News, December 20, 2009
11) Radio Netherlands, December 22, 2009
12) Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East
Stop NATO, October 24, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/bulgaria-romania-u-s-nato-bases-f
or-war-in-the-east
13) Polish Radio, December 11, 2009
14) Hurriyet Daily News, December 30, 2009
15) Ibid
16) Black Sea, Caucasus: U.S. Moves Missile Shield South And East
Stop NATO, September 19, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/283
U.S. Expands Global Missile Shield Into Middle East, Balkans
Stop NATO, September 11, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/u-s-expands-global-missile-shield
-into-middle-east-balkans
17) World’s Sole Military Superpower’s 2 Million-Troop, $1 Trillion Wars
Stop NATO, December 21, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/worlds-sole-military-superpowers-
2-million-troop-1-trillion-wa
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