by Rick Rozoff
December 31, 2009
from
GlobalResearch Website
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.
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
-
Yemen,
...and as "areas of interest",
-
the Comoros
-
Mauritius
-
Madagascar
That is, much of the western shores of the
Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, among the most geo-strategically 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" (The
Grand Chessboard -
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
-
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,
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-crisis-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-arabian-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-for-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