Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Friday, February 17, 2012
Who Will Liberate America?
Obama, the Human Rights Hypocrite
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Is Obama a hypocrite or merely insouciant? Or is he an idiot?
According to news reports Obama’s White House meeting on Valentine’s day with China’s Vice President, Xi Jinping, provided an opportunity for Obama to raise “a sensitive human rights issue with the Chinese leader-in-waiting.” The brave and forthright Obama didn’t let etiquette or decorum get in his way. Afterwards, Obama declared that Washington would “continue to emphasize what we believe is the importance of realizing the aspirations and rights of all people.”
Think about that for a minute. Washington is now in the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and children in six countries. Washington is so concerned with human rights that it drops bombs on schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see, bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear the burka and from male domination.
One hundred thousand, or one million, dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, a country with destroyed infrastructure, and entire cities, such as Fallujah, bombed and burnt with white phosphorus into cinders is the proper way to show concern for human rights.
Ditto for Afghanistan. And Libya.
In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia Washington’s drones bring human rights to the people.
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prison sites are other places to which Washington brings human rights. Obama, who has the power to murder American citizens without due process of law, is too powerless to close Guantanamo Prison.
He is powerless to prevent himself from supplying Israel with weapons with which to murder Palestinians and Lebanese citizens to whom Obama brings human rights by vetoing every UN resolution passed against Israel for its crimes against humanity.
Instead of following Washington’s human rights lead, the evil Chinese invest in other countries, buy things from them, and sell them goods.
Has any foreign dignitary ever raised “a sensitive human rights issue” with Obama or his predecessor? How is the world so deranged that Washington can murder innocents for years on end and still profess to be the world’s defender of human rights?
How many people has China bombed, droned, and sanctioned into non-existence in the 21st century?
Will Syria and Iran be the next victims of Washington’s concern for human rights?
Nothing better illustrates the total unreality of life in the West than the fact that the entire Western world did not break out in riotous laughter over Obama’s expression of his human rights concern over China’s behavior.
Washington’s concern with human rights does not extend as far as airport security where little girls and grandmothers are sexually groped. Antiwar activists have their homes invaded, their personal possessions carried off, and a grand jury is summoned to frame them up on some terrorist charge. US soldier Bradley Manning is held for two years in violation of the US Constitution while the human rights government concocts fabricated charges to punish him for revealing a US war crime. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is harassed endlessly with the goal of bringing him into the human rights clutches of Washington. Critics of Washington’s inhumane policies are monitored and spied upon.
Washington is the worst violator of human rights in our era, and Washington has only begun.
Who will liberate Americans from Washington’s clutches?
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Is Obama a hypocrite or merely insouciant? Or is he an idiot?
According to news reports Obama’s White House meeting on Valentine’s day with China’s Vice President, Xi Jinping, provided an opportunity for Obama to raise “a sensitive human rights issue with the Chinese leader-in-waiting.” The brave and forthright Obama didn’t let etiquette or decorum get in his way. Afterwards, Obama declared that Washington would “continue to emphasize what we believe is the importance of realizing the aspirations and rights of all people.”
Think about that for a minute. Washington is now in the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and children in six countries. Washington is so concerned with human rights that it drops bombs on schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see, bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear the burka and from male domination.
One hundred thousand, or one million, dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, a country with destroyed infrastructure, and entire cities, such as Fallujah, bombed and burnt with white phosphorus into cinders is the proper way to show concern for human rights.
Ditto for Afghanistan. And Libya.
In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia Washington’s drones bring human rights to the people.
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prison sites are other places to which Washington brings human rights. Obama, who has the power to murder American citizens without due process of law, is too powerless to close Guantanamo Prison.
He is powerless to prevent himself from supplying Israel with weapons with which to murder Palestinians and Lebanese citizens to whom Obama brings human rights by vetoing every UN resolution passed against Israel for its crimes against humanity.
Instead of following Washington’s human rights lead, the evil Chinese invest in other countries, buy things from them, and sell them goods.
Has any foreign dignitary ever raised “a sensitive human rights issue” with Obama or his predecessor? How is the world so deranged that Washington can murder innocents for years on end and still profess to be the world’s defender of human rights?
How many people has China bombed, droned, and sanctioned into non-existence in the 21st century?
Will Syria and Iran be the next victims of Washington’s concern for human rights?
Nothing better illustrates the total unreality of life in the West than the fact that the entire Western world did not break out in riotous laughter over Obama’s expression of his human rights concern over China’s behavior.
Washington’s concern with human rights does not extend as far as airport security where little girls and grandmothers are sexually groped. Antiwar activists have their homes invaded, their personal possessions carried off, and a grand jury is summoned to frame them up on some terrorist charge. US soldier Bradley Manning is held for two years in violation of the US Constitution while the human rights government concocts fabricated charges to punish him for revealing a US war crime. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is harassed endlessly with the goal of bringing him into the human rights clutches of Washington. Critics of Washington’s inhumane policies are monitored and spied upon.
Washington is the worst violator of human rights in our era, and Washington has only begun.
Who will liberate Americans from Washington’s clutches?
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Energy Wars, 2012
Welcome to an edgy world where a single incident at an energy
“chokepoint” could set a region aflame, provoking bloody encounters,
boosting oil prices, and putting the global economy at risk. With
energy demand on the rise and sources of supply dwindling, we are, in
fact, entering a new epoch — the Geo-Energy Era — in which disputes over
vital resources will dominate world affairs. In 2012 and beyond,
energy and conflict will be bound ever more tightly together, lending
increasing importance to the key geographical flashpoints in our
resource-constrained world.
Take the Strait of Hormuz, already making headlines and shaking energy markets as 2012 begins. Connecting the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, it lacks imposing geographical features like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Golden Gate Bridge. In an energy-conscious world, however, it may possess greater strategic significance than any passageway on the planet. Every day, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, tankers carrying some 17 million barrels of oil — representing 20% of the world’s daily supply — pass through this vital artery.
So last month, when a senior Iranian official threatened to block the strait in response to Washington’s tough new economic sanctions, oil prices instantly soared. While the U.S. military has vowed to keep the strait open, doubts about the safety of future oil shipments and worries about a potentially unending, nerve-jangling crisis involving Washington, Tehran, and Tel Aviv have energy experts predicting high oil prices for months to come, meaning further woes for a slowing global economy.
The Strait of Hormuz is, however, only one of several hot spots where energy, politics, and geography are likely to mix in dangerous ways in 2012 and beyond. Keep your eye as well on the East and South China Seas, the Caspian Sea basin, and an energy-rich Arctic that is losing its sea ice. In all of these places, countries are disputing control over the production and transportation of energy, and arguing about national boundaries and/or rights of passage.
In the years to come, the location of energy supplies and of energy supply routes — pipelines, oil ports, and tanker routes — will be pivotal landmarks on the global strategic map. Key producing areas, like the Persian Gulf, will remain critically important, but so will oil chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca (between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea) and the “sea lines of communication,” or SLOCs (as naval strategists like to call them) connecting producing areas to overseas markets. More and more, the major powers led by the United States, Russia, and China will restructure their militaries to fight in such locales.
You can already see this in the elaborate Defense Strategic Guidance document, “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership,” unveiled at the Pentagon on January 5th by President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. While envisioning a smaller Army and Marine Corps, it calls for increased emphasis on air and naval capabilities, especially those geared to the protection or control of international energy and trade networks. Though it tepidly reaffirmed historic American ties to Europe and the Middle East, overwhelming emphasis was placed on bolstering U.S. power in “the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean and South Asia.”
In the new Geo-Energy Era, the control of energy and of its transport to market will lie at the heart of recurring global crises. This year, keep your eyes on three energy hot spots in particular: the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Sea basin.
The Strait of Hormuz
A narrow stretch of water separating Iran from Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the strait is the sole maritime link between the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the rest of the world. A striking percentage of the oil produced by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE is carried by tanker through this passageway on a daily basis, making it (in the words of the Department of Energy) “the world’s most important oil chokepoint.” Some analysts believe that any sustained blockage in the strait could trigger a 50% increase in the price of oil and trigger a full-scale global recession or depression.
American leaders have long viewed the Strait as a strategic fixture in their global plans that must be defended at any cost. It was an outlook first voiced by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980, on the heels of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan which had, he told Congress, “brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow.”
The American response, he insisted, must be unequivocal: any attempt by a hostile power to block the waterway would henceforth be viewed as “an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America,” and “repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
Much has changed in the Gulf region since Carter issued his famous decree, known since as the Carter Doctrine, and established the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to guard the Strait — but not Washington’s determination to ensure the unhindered flow of oil there. Indeed, President Obama has made it clear that, even if CENTCOM ground forces were to leave Afghanistan, as they have Iraq, there would be no reduction in the command’s air and naval presence in the greater Gulf area.
It is conceivable that the Iranians will put Washington’s capabilities to the test. On December 27th, Iran’s first vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said, “If [the Americans] impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz.” Similar statements have since been made by other senior officials (and contradicted as well by yet others). In addition, the Iranians recently conducted elaborate naval exercises in the Arabian Sea near the eastern mouth of the strait, and more such maneuvers are said to be forthcoming. At the same time, the commanding general of Iran’s army suggested that the USS John C. Stennis, an American aircraft carrier just leaving the Gulf, should not return. “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added ominously, “will not repeat its warning.”
Might the Iranians actually block the strait? Many analysts believe that the statements by Rahimi and his colleagues are bluster and bluff meant to rattle Western leaders, send oil prices higher, and win future concessions if negotiations ever recommence over their country’s nuclear program. Economic conditions in Iran are, however, becoming more desperate, and it is always possible that the country’s hard-pressed hardline leaders may feel the urge to take some dramatic action, even if it invites a powerful U.S. counterstrike. Whatever the case, the Strait of Hormuz will remain a focus of international attention in 2012, with global oil prices closely following the rise and fall of tensions there.
The South China Sea
The South China Sea is a semi-enclosed portion of the western Pacific bounded by China to the north, Vietnam to the west, the Philippines to the east, and the island of Borneo (shared by Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia) to the south. The sea also incorporates two largely uninhabited island chains, the Paracels and the Spratlys. Long an important fishing ground, it has also been a major avenue for commercial shipping between East Asia and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. More recently, it acquired significance as a potential source of oil and natural gas, large reserves of which are now believed to lie in subsea areas surrounding the Paracels and Spratlys.
With the discovery of oil and gas deposits, the South China Sea has been transformed into a cockpit of international friction. At least some islands in this energy-rich area are claimed by every one of the surrounding countries, including China — which claims them all, and has demonstrated a willingness to use military force to assert dominance in the region. Not surprisingly, this has put it in conflict with the other claimants, including several with close military ties to the United States. As a result, what started out as a regional matter, involving China and various members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has become a prospective tussle between the world’s two leading powers.
To press their claims, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have all sought to work collectively through ASEAN, believing a multilateral approach will give them greater negotiating clout than one-on-one dealings with China. For their part, the Chinese have insisted that all disputes must be resolved bilaterally, a situation in which they can more easily bring their economic and military power to bear. Previously preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has now entered the fray, offering full-throated support to the ASEAN countries in their efforts to negotiate en masse with Beijing.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi promptly warned the United States not to interfere. Any such move “will only make matters worse and the resolution more difficult,” he declared. The result was an instant war of words between Beijing and Washington. During a visit to the Chinese capital in July 2011, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen delivered a barely concealed threat when it came to possible future military action. “The worry, among others that I have,” he commented, “is that the ongoing incidents could spark a miscalculation, and an outbreak that no one anticipated.” To drive the point home, the United States has conducted a series of conspicuous military exercises in the South China Sea, including some joint maneuvers with ships from Vietnam and the Philippines. Not to be outdone, China responded with naval maneuvers of its own. It’s a perfect formula for future “incidents” at sea.
The South China Sea has long been on the radar screens of those who follow Asian affairs, but it only attracted global attention when, in November, President Obama traveled to Australia and announced, with remarkable bluntness, a new U.S. strategy aimed at confronting Chinese power in Asia and the Pacific. “As we plan and budget for the future,” he told members of the Australian Parliament in Canberra, “we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” A key feature of this effort would be to ensure “maritime security” in the South China Sea.
While in Australia, President Obama also announced the establishment of anew U.S. base at Darwin on that country’s northern coast, as well as expanded military ties with Indonesia and the Philippines. In January, the president similarly placed special emphasis on projecting U.S. power in the region when he went to the Pentagon to discuss changes in the American military posture in the world.
Beijing will undoubtedly take its own set of steps, no less belligerent, to protect its growing interests in the South China Sea. Where this will lead remains, of course, unknown. After the Strait of Hormuz, however, the South China Sea may be the global energy chokepoint where small mistakes or provocations could lead to bigger confrontations in 2012 and beyond.
The Caspian Sea Basin
The Caspian Sea is an inland body of water bordered by Russia, Iran, and three former republics of the USSR: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. In the immediate area as well are the former Soviet lands of Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. All of these old SSRs are, to one degree or another, attempting to assert their autonomy from Moscow and establish independent ties with the United States, the European Union, Iran, Turkey, and, increasingly, China. All are wracked by internal schisms and/or involved in border disputes with their neighbors. The region would be a hotbed of potential conflict even if the Caspian basin did not harbor some of the world’s largest undeveloped reserves of oil and natural gas, which could easily bring it to a boil.
This is not the first time that the Caspian has been viewed as a major source of oil, and so potential conflict. In the late nineteenth century, the region around the city of Baku – then part of the Russian empire, now in Azerbaijan — was a prolific source of petroleum and so a major strategic prize. Future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin first gained notoriety there as a leader of militant oil workers, and Hitler sought to capture it during his ill-fated 1941 invasion of the USSR. After World War II, however, the region lost its importance as an oil producer when Baku’s onshore fields dried up. Now, fresh discoveries are being made in offshore areas of the Caspian itself and in previously undeveloped areas of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
According to energy giant BP, the Caspian area harbors as much as 48 billion barrels of oil (mostly buried in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan) and 449 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (with the largest supply in Turkmenistan). This puts the region ahead of North and South America in total gas reserves and Asia in oil reserves. But producing all this energy and delivering it to foreign markets will be a monumental task. The region’s energy infrastructure is woefully inadequate and the Caspian itself provides no maritime outlet to other seas, so all that oil and gas must travel by pipeline or rail.
Russia, long the dominant power in the region, is pursuing control over the transportation routes by which Caspian oil and gas will reach markets. It is upgrading Soviet-era pipelines that link the former SSRs to Russia or building new ones and, to achieve a near monopoly over the marketing of all this energy, bringing traditional diplomacy, strong-arm tactics, and outright bribery to bear on regional leaders (many of whom once served in the Soviet bureaucracy) to ship their energy via Russia. As recounted in my book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, Washington sought to thwart these efforts by sponsoring the construction of alternative pipelines that avoid Russian territory, crossing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to the Mediterranean (notably the BTC, or Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline), while Beijing is building its own pipelines linking the Caspian area to western China.
All of these pipelines cross through areas of ethnic unrest and pass near various contested regions like rebellious Chechnya and breakaway South Ossetia. As a result, both China and the U.S. have wedded their pipeline operations to military assistance for countries along the routes. Fearful of an American presence, military or otherwise, in the former territories of the Soviet Union, Russia has responded with military moves of its own, including its brief August 2008 war with Georgia, which took place along the BTC route.
Given the magnitude of the Caspian’s oil and gas reserves, many energy firms are planning new production operations in the region, along with the pipelinesneeded to bring the oil and gas to market. The European Union, for example, hopes to build a new natural gas pipeline called Nabucco from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Austria. Russia has proposed a competing conduit called South Stream. All of these efforts involve the geopolitical interests of major powers, ensuring that the Caspian region will remain a potential source of international crisis and conflict.
In the new Geo-Energy Era, the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Basin hardly stand alone as potential energy flashpoints. The East China Sea, where China and Japan are contending for a contested undersea natural gas field, is another, as are the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands, where both Britain and Argentina hold claims to undersea oil reserves, as will be the globally warming Arctic whose resources are claimed by many countries. One thing is certain: wherever the sparks may fly, there’s oil in the water and danger at hand in 2012.
Take the Strait of Hormuz, already making headlines and shaking energy markets as 2012 begins. Connecting the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, it lacks imposing geographical features like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Golden Gate Bridge. In an energy-conscious world, however, it may possess greater strategic significance than any passageway on the planet. Every day, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, tankers carrying some 17 million barrels of oil — representing 20% of the world’s daily supply — pass through this vital artery.
So last month, when a senior Iranian official threatened to block the strait in response to Washington’s tough new economic sanctions, oil prices instantly soared. While the U.S. military has vowed to keep the strait open, doubts about the safety of future oil shipments and worries about a potentially unending, nerve-jangling crisis involving Washington, Tehran, and Tel Aviv have energy experts predicting high oil prices for months to come, meaning further woes for a slowing global economy.
The Strait of Hormuz is, however, only one of several hot spots where energy, politics, and geography are likely to mix in dangerous ways in 2012 and beyond. Keep your eye as well on the East and South China Seas, the Caspian Sea basin, and an energy-rich Arctic that is losing its sea ice. In all of these places, countries are disputing control over the production and transportation of energy, and arguing about national boundaries and/or rights of passage.
In the years to come, the location of energy supplies and of energy supply routes — pipelines, oil ports, and tanker routes — will be pivotal landmarks on the global strategic map. Key producing areas, like the Persian Gulf, will remain critically important, but so will oil chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca (between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea) and the “sea lines of communication,” or SLOCs (as naval strategists like to call them) connecting producing areas to overseas markets. More and more, the major powers led by the United States, Russia, and China will restructure their militaries to fight in such locales.
You can already see this in the elaborate Defense Strategic Guidance document, “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership,” unveiled at the Pentagon on January 5th by President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. While envisioning a smaller Army and Marine Corps, it calls for increased emphasis on air and naval capabilities, especially those geared to the protection or control of international energy and trade networks. Though it tepidly reaffirmed historic American ties to Europe and the Middle East, overwhelming emphasis was placed on bolstering U.S. power in “the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean and South Asia.”
In the new Geo-Energy Era, the control of energy and of its transport to market will lie at the heart of recurring global crises. This year, keep your eyes on three energy hot spots in particular: the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Sea basin.
The Strait of Hormuz
A narrow stretch of water separating Iran from Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the strait is the sole maritime link between the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the rest of the world. A striking percentage of the oil produced by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE is carried by tanker through this passageway on a daily basis, making it (in the words of the Department of Energy) “the world’s most important oil chokepoint.” Some analysts believe that any sustained blockage in the strait could trigger a 50% increase in the price of oil and trigger a full-scale global recession or depression.
American leaders have long viewed the Strait as a strategic fixture in their global plans that must be defended at any cost. It was an outlook first voiced by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980, on the heels of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan which had, he told Congress, “brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow.”
The American response, he insisted, must be unequivocal: any attempt by a hostile power to block the waterway would henceforth be viewed as “an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America,” and “repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
Much has changed in the Gulf region since Carter issued his famous decree, known since as the Carter Doctrine, and established the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to guard the Strait — but not Washington’s determination to ensure the unhindered flow of oil there. Indeed, President Obama has made it clear that, even if CENTCOM ground forces were to leave Afghanistan, as they have Iraq, there would be no reduction in the command’s air and naval presence in the greater Gulf area.
It is conceivable that the Iranians will put Washington’s capabilities to the test. On December 27th, Iran’s first vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said, “If [the Americans] impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz.” Similar statements have since been made by other senior officials (and contradicted as well by yet others). In addition, the Iranians recently conducted elaborate naval exercises in the Arabian Sea near the eastern mouth of the strait, and more such maneuvers are said to be forthcoming. At the same time, the commanding general of Iran’s army suggested that the USS John C. Stennis, an American aircraft carrier just leaving the Gulf, should not return. “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added ominously, “will not repeat its warning.”
Might the Iranians actually block the strait? Many analysts believe that the statements by Rahimi and his colleagues are bluster and bluff meant to rattle Western leaders, send oil prices higher, and win future concessions if negotiations ever recommence over their country’s nuclear program. Economic conditions in Iran are, however, becoming more desperate, and it is always possible that the country’s hard-pressed hardline leaders may feel the urge to take some dramatic action, even if it invites a powerful U.S. counterstrike. Whatever the case, the Strait of Hormuz will remain a focus of international attention in 2012, with global oil prices closely following the rise and fall of tensions there.
The South China Sea
The South China Sea is a semi-enclosed portion of the western Pacific bounded by China to the north, Vietnam to the west, the Philippines to the east, and the island of Borneo (shared by Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia) to the south. The sea also incorporates two largely uninhabited island chains, the Paracels and the Spratlys. Long an important fishing ground, it has also been a major avenue for commercial shipping between East Asia and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. More recently, it acquired significance as a potential source of oil and natural gas, large reserves of which are now believed to lie in subsea areas surrounding the Paracels and Spratlys.
With the discovery of oil and gas deposits, the South China Sea has been transformed into a cockpit of international friction. At least some islands in this energy-rich area are claimed by every one of the surrounding countries, including China — which claims them all, and has demonstrated a willingness to use military force to assert dominance in the region. Not surprisingly, this has put it in conflict with the other claimants, including several with close military ties to the United States. As a result, what started out as a regional matter, involving China and various members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has become a prospective tussle between the world’s two leading powers.
To press their claims, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have all sought to work collectively through ASEAN, believing a multilateral approach will give them greater negotiating clout than one-on-one dealings with China. For their part, the Chinese have insisted that all disputes must be resolved bilaterally, a situation in which they can more easily bring their economic and military power to bear. Previously preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has now entered the fray, offering full-throated support to the ASEAN countries in their efforts to negotiate en masse with Beijing.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi promptly warned the United States not to interfere. Any such move “will only make matters worse and the resolution more difficult,” he declared. The result was an instant war of words between Beijing and Washington. During a visit to the Chinese capital in July 2011, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen delivered a barely concealed threat when it came to possible future military action. “The worry, among others that I have,” he commented, “is that the ongoing incidents could spark a miscalculation, and an outbreak that no one anticipated.” To drive the point home, the United States has conducted a series of conspicuous military exercises in the South China Sea, including some joint maneuvers with ships from Vietnam and the Philippines. Not to be outdone, China responded with naval maneuvers of its own. It’s a perfect formula for future “incidents” at sea.
The South China Sea has long been on the radar screens of those who follow Asian affairs, but it only attracted global attention when, in November, President Obama traveled to Australia and announced, with remarkable bluntness, a new U.S. strategy aimed at confronting Chinese power in Asia and the Pacific. “As we plan and budget for the future,” he told members of the Australian Parliament in Canberra, “we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” A key feature of this effort would be to ensure “maritime security” in the South China Sea.
While in Australia, President Obama also announced the establishment of anew U.S. base at Darwin on that country’s northern coast, as well as expanded military ties with Indonesia and the Philippines. In January, the president similarly placed special emphasis on projecting U.S. power in the region when he went to the Pentagon to discuss changes in the American military posture in the world.
Beijing will undoubtedly take its own set of steps, no less belligerent, to protect its growing interests in the South China Sea. Where this will lead remains, of course, unknown. After the Strait of Hormuz, however, the South China Sea may be the global energy chokepoint where small mistakes or provocations could lead to bigger confrontations in 2012 and beyond.
The Caspian Sea Basin
The Caspian Sea is an inland body of water bordered by Russia, Iran, and three former republics of the USSR: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. In the immediate area as well are the former Soviet lands of Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. All of these old SSRs are, to one degree or another, attempting to assert their autonomy from Moscow and establish independent ties with the United States, the European Union, Iran, Turkey, and, increasingly, China. All are wracked by internal schisms and/or involved in border disputes with their neighbors. The region would be a hotbed of potential conflict even if the Caspian basin did not harbor some of the world’s largest undeveloped reserves of oil and natural gas, which could easily bring it to a boil.
This is not the first time that the Caspian has been viewed as a major source of oil, and so potential conflict. In the late nineteenth century, the region around the city of Baku – then part of the Russian empire, now in Azerbaijan — was a prolific source of petroleum and so a major strategic prize. Future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin first gained notoriety there as a leader of militant oil workers, and Hitler sought to capture it during his ill-fated 1941 invasion of the USSR. After World War II, however, the region lost its importance as an oil producer when Baku’s onshore fields dried up. Now, fresh discoveries are being made in offshore areas of the Caspian itself and in previously undeveloped areas of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
According to energy giant BP, the Caspian area harbors as much as 48 billion barrels of oil (mostly buried in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan) and 449 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (with the largest supply in Turkmenistan). This puts the region ahead of North and South America in total gas reserves and Asia in oil reserves. But producing all this energy and delivering it to foreign markets will be a monumental task. The region’s energy infrastructure is woefully inadequate and the Caspian itself provides no maritime outlet to other seas, so all that oil and gas must travel by pipeline or rail.
Russia, long the dominant power in the region, is pursuing control over the transportation routes by which Caspian oil and gas will reach markets. It is upgrading Soviet-era pipelines that link the former SSRs to Russia or building new ones and, to achieve a near monopoly over the marketing of all this energy, bringing traditional diplomacy, strong-arm tactics, and outright bribery to bear on regional leaders (many of whom once served in the Soviet bureaucracy) to ship their energy via Russia. As recounted in my book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, Washington sought to thwart these efforts by sponsoring the construction of alternative pipelines that avoid Russian territory, crossing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to the Mediterranean (notably the BTC, or Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline), while Beijing is building its own pipelines linking the Caspian area to western China.
All of these pipelines cross through areas of ethnic unrest and pass near various contested regions like rebellious Chechnya and breakaway South Ossetia. As a result, both China and the U.S. have wedded their pipeline operations to military assistance for countries along the routes. Fearful of an American presence, military or otherwise, in the former territories of the Soviet Union, Russia has responded with military moves of its own, including its brief August 2008 war with Georgia, which took place along the BTC route.
Given the magnitude of the Caspian’s oil and gas reserves, many energy firms are planning new production operations in the region, along with the pipelinesneeded to bring the oil and gas to market. The European Union, for example, hopes to build a new natural gas pipeline called Nabucco from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Austria. Russia has proposed a competing conduit called South Stream. All of these efforts involve the geopolitical interests of major powers, ensuring that the Caspian region will remain a potential source of international crisis and conflict.
In the new Geo-Energy Era, the Strait of Hormuz, the South China Sea, and the Caspian Basin hardly stand alone as potential energy flashpoints. The East China Sea, where China and Japan are contending for a contested undersea natural gas field, is another, as are the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands, where both Britain and Argentina hold claims to undersea oil reserves, as will be the globally warming Arctic whose resources are claimed by many countries. One thing is certain: wherever the sparks may fly, there’s oil in the water and danger at hand in 2012.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Blackwater (renamed "ACADEMI ") mercenaries to return to Iraq
Source: Press Tv
December 13, 2011
New York-based USTC Holdings, the investment group that bought ex-Blackwater firm, Xe Services, in December 2010, announced on Monday ACADEMI as the new name for Blackwater/ Xe Services, AFP reported.
The development came as US President Barack Obama met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss the next phase of the relations between the two countries after withdrawal of US soldiers.
“We have had a year of extraordinary changes that have resulted in a new, better company," ACADEMI president and chief executive Ted Wright said in a statement.
In an interview published on Monday, Wright said he would like to take ACADEMI's business back to Iraq and went on to say that the firm had hired an external company to help it apply for an operating license in the country.
"I think eventually, we're going to get a license; we're going to do business in Iraq," he said.
Blackwater adopted the name Xe Services after Iraqi authorities announced in 2009 that they would not renew the security firm's contract because of a deadly incident in 2007 in which guards protecting a US diplomatic convoy opened fire in a busy district in the capital Baghdad killing 17 civilians.
Iraqi officials could not sue the Blackwater mercenaries as they had immunity from local prosecution and were not subjected to any Iraqi laws.
The US State Department had reportedly announced in August 2010 that the Pentagon would replace American troops in Iraq with private mercenaries, who call themselves private security firms or security contractors, on grounds of ensuring the security in the war-torn country.
The deployment of ACADEMI mercenaries is likely to cause outrage in Iraq where its predecessor Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries could kill civilians with impunity during their time in Iraq.
Iraqis will also take it as America's unwillingness to end the occupation of their country where since 2003 the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation caused one million deaths, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.
December 13, 2011
With the US pulling out troops from Iraq this
month, Washington plans to send Blackwater mercenaries to the Middle
Eastern country under the new brand of ACADEMI.
New York-based USTC Holdings, the investment group that bought ex-Blackwater firm, Xe Services, in December 2010, announced on Monday ACADEMI as the new name for Blackwater/ Xe Services, AFP reported.
The development came as US President Barack Obama met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss the next phase of the relations between the two countries after withdrawal of US soldiers.
“We have had a year of extraordinary changes that have resulted in a new, better company," ACADEMI president and chief executive Ted Wright said in a statement.
In an interview published on Monday, Wright said he would like to take ACADEMI's business back to Iraq and went on to say that the firm had hired an external company to help it apply for an operating license in the country.
"I think eventually, we're going to get a license; we're going to do business in Iraq," he said.
Blackwater adopted the name Xe Services after Iraqi authorities announced in 2009 that they would not renew the security firm's contract because of a deadly incident in 2007 in which guards protecting a US diplomatic convoy opened fire in a busy district in the capital Baghdad killing 17 civilians.
Iraqi officials could not sue the Blackwater mercenaries as they had immunity from local prosecution and were not subjected to any Iraqi laws.
The US State Department had reportedly announced in August 2010 that the Pentagon would replace American troops in Iraq with private mercenaries, who call themselves private security firms or security contractors, on grounds of ensuring the security in the war-torn country.
The deployment of ACADEMI mercenaries is likely to cause outrage in Iraq where its predecessor Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries could kill civilians with impunity during their time in Iraq.
Iraqis will also take it as America's unwillingness to end the occupation of their country where since 2003 the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation caused one million deaths, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Another Crisis Over, Thanks to the Government
By Anthony Gregory on Sep 20, 2010
It’s all over the news. “The recession is over.” The mainstream economists say so. This was the longest recession since World War II, I heard on the news (say, I thought the economy was just dandy throughout that war—oh, never mind).
The end of this terrible recession into which the free market plunged us is all thanks to the federal government, of course. In particular, we owe the Obama administration our gratitude for its stimulus program. But we should also tip our hats—hats we can presumably now afford to buy— toward the Bush administration for its TARP bailouts, without which the banking system would have completely collapsed, credit would have dried up and we would have all starved to death.
This is another wonderful crisis brought to an end by government. All within about a month of the end of the Iraq war! That, too, was a crisis, incalculably costly in American blood and treasure. The Iraqis, too, were suffering, or so we heard some time several years ago. But thank goodness that horror is now over. Sure, there are still U.S. soldiers there, shooting, killing and dying—but this does not mean the war is not over, just as the high unemployment figures and inconsistent private investment do not mean that our economic troubles are somehow still persisting.
Speaking of which, the economy sure has been perfected by government’s responses to all the various crises, hasn’t it? Not just currently, but going back many years. In 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, which not only allowed for the financing of the Great War that succeeded in securing democracy throughout the world and precluding any wars from ever again being necessary, but also ensured that our monetary system has been completely solid ever since—no banking panics, no trouble keeping the U.S. dollar strong and stable. Well, there was the Great Depression, but FDR sure acted quickly to make sure we’d never have another big boom and bust. The sharp increase in regulation, federal spending, taxes, stimulus and government control over money in the 1930s sure put an end to any economic problems. The early 1970s might have looked bad, but that was just an illusion, as Nixon fixed that for good by closing the gold window and giving us price controls. The dotcom recession? Bush remedied that once and for all with an engineered housing bubble that was egged on by the most respected of America’s Keynesian economists. All that government intervention from 1913 and the New Deal through the 1970s and onward sure kept the economy from ever falling off the tracks again. And yet, when it did fall off the tracks again in 2007 and 2008—when it was called the greatest financial collapse, at least since 1929—government sure came to the rescue, fixing the disaster caused by the free market, for we all know that the century worth of cascading interventions into the financial markets, the real estate industry, money, banking and the overall economy, could not possibly have had anything to do with this last recession; only the remaining sphere of American economic freedom could be the culprit.
Speaking of the economy, remember how America used to have a crisis with poverty? Lyndon Johnson sure put an end to that. I don’t actually know if the war on poverty ever ended as decisively as the Iraq war has—probably sometime in the 1990s, with welfare reform. Now the government doesn’t need to wage war on poverty any more. It has won. Poverty is vanquished from America.
Although, in the 1980s and 1990s, there sure was a homelessness crisis. It was all over the news. It must have been a very big deal. But no more. The war on homelessness stopped that, thank goodness. Now even left-liberals don’t ever talk about any sort of homelessness problem, so there must not be one.
Speaking of domestic crusades from the last couple generations, remember when our public schools were failing? Thank goodness for the ramping up of public school spending in the last 40 years. Where would we be without it? If not for the war on illiteracy, Carter’s Department of Education, Bush’s No Child Left Behind and the rest of the government’s constant intervention into educational life, we’d probably have such an illiterate, uneducated populace that we’d elect to the presidency men who brag that they don’t read newspapers, or come close to electing Vice Presidents who can’t name two important Supreme Court decisions.
And to think that all this progress has happened alongside the many other problems the government has solved. Back in the 1960s, Americans used to do illegal drugs. Thanks to Nixon, Reagan and all the presidents since, practically no one does illegal drugs, the war on drugs is over, according to the current administration, our streets are safe and we didn’t have to sacrifice any precious liberties to get here. Meanwhile, Americans consume only the safest of pharmaceuticals, and everything that is effective comes quickly to market. We can also be certain, thanks to agricultural subsidies, that healthy food is easily accessible and unhealthy food is more expensive. If the market handled farming completely, you’d probably be able to get a box of corn-syrup-drenched snack cakes for less than a bag of carrots. And if you did overeat and needed medical attention, health care would be massively expensive. Thank goodness for more than fifty years of increasing federal involvement in health care. But it’s too bad that this federal involvement did not prevent the unregulated free market from causing a health care crisis that Obama had to repair with his gigantic health care plan. We can take solace, at least, that the health care crisis is finally over.
The environment is also totally clean, thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures that there will never be, say, a huge oil leak off the Gulf Coast that lasts for a couple of months before being plugged. And as for oil, it sure is affordable, thanks to the numerous price regulations and America’s active energy policy, which the last eight presidents have assured us would stabilize prices and produce “energy independence” within a few years. And we need plenty of oil in this country to power our wonderful automobiles, which are built by the kind of companies that are the fulcrum of the American economy, a fulcrum we can thank Uncle Sam for propping up. Now that we know the auto industry is secure, we can drive those American cars with pride on our wonderful government roads—roads you know are safe, with practically no deaths on them. Could you imagine private industry handling the roads? Not only would they be congested and littered with potholes, we’d have thousands of deaths per year, probably more than ten times as many as died on 9/11.
Which brings us to terrorism, the great crisis of the last decade. Solved, thanks to government. Indeed, the “war on terrorism,” just like the “war in Iraq” and the “war on drugs,” has been officially over for a more than a year. Another great government success, and at minimal cost, too.
Americans used to think that government itself could be a serious problem, as it was prone to corruption. Another crisis solved. Thanks to our trustworthy Congress passing campaign finance laws, we know that Congress will never be corrupted.
Some might say this post is sardonic—even cynical. Can we afford to be sarcastic in the current climate? We can afford practically anything, I say, thanks to the end of the recession—another total victory for the government. And we all know that, thanks to our four-trillion dollar central government in DC, our military-industrial complex, our millions of pages of federal edicts, our millions of federal employees, our national police forces unbound by traditional legal constraints, our thousands of regulators, our dozens of welfare programs, our public school system, our government infrastructure, our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, our numerous international quasi-governmental organizations from the WTO to the UN, not to mention the massive state and local bureaucracies that most Americans are blessed to live under—we know that thanks to all this government, we will never see another crisis comparable to this ghastly recession. And if we do, we can always blame it on the free market and the lack of government involvement.
It’s all over the news. “The recession is over.” The mainstream economists say so. This was the longest recession since World War II, I heard on the news (say, I thought the economy was just dandy throughout that war—oh, never mind).
The end of this terrible recession into which the free market plunged us is all thanks to the federal government, of course. In particular, we owe the Obama administration our gratitude for its stimulus program. But we should also tip our hats—hats we can presumably now afford to buy— toward the Bush administration for its TARP bailouts, without which the banking system would have completely collapsed, credit would have dried up and we would have all starved to death.
This is another wonderful crisis brought to an end by government. All within about a month of the end of the Iraq war! That, too, was a crisis, incalculably costly in American blood and treasure. The Iraqis, too, were suffering, or so we heard some time several years ago. But thank goodness that horror is now over. Sure, there are still U.S. soldiers there, shooting, killing and dying—but this does not mean the war is not over, just as the high unemployment figures and inconsistent private investment do not mean that our economic troubles are somehow still persisting.
Speaking of which, the economy sure has been perfected by government’s responses to all the various crises, hasn’t it? Not just currently, but going back many years. In 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, which not only allowed for the financing of the Great War that succeeded in securing democracy throughout the world and precluding any wars from ever again being necessary, but also ensured that our monetary system has been completely solid ever since—no banking panics, no trouble keeping the U.S. dollar strong and stable. Well, there was the Great Depression, but FDR sure acted quickly to make sure we’d never have another big boom and bust. The sharp increase in regulation, federal spending, taxes, stimulus and government control over money in the 1930s sure put an end to any economic problems. The early 1970s might have looked bad, but that was just an illusion, as Nixon fixed that for good by closing the gold window and giving us price controls. The dotcom recession? Bush remedied that once and for all with an engineered housing bubble that was egged on by the most respected of America’s Keynesian economists. All that government intervention from 1913 and the New Deal through the 1970s and onward sure kept the economy from ever falling off the tracks again. And yet, when it did fall off the tracks again in 2007 and 2008—when it was called the greatest financial collapse, at least since 1929—government sure came to the rescue, fixing the disaster caused by the free market, for we all know that the century worth of cascading interventions into the financial markets, the real estate industry, money, banking and the overall economy, could not possibly have had anything to do with this last recession; only the remaining sphere of American economic freedom could be the culprit.
Speaking of the economy, remember how America used to have a crisis with poverty? Lyndon Johnson sure put an end to that. I don’t actually know if the war on poverty ever ended as decisively as the Iraq war has—probably sometime in the 1990s, with welfare reform. Now the government doesn’t need to wage war on poverty any more. It has won. Poverty is vanquished from America.
Although, in the 1980s and 1990s, there sure was a homelessness crisis. It was all over the news. It must have been a very big deal. But no more. The war on homelessness stopped that, thank goodness. Now even left-liberals don’t ever talk about any sort of homelessness problem, so there must not be one.
Speaking of domestic crusades from the last couple generations, remember when our public schools were failing? Thank goodness for the ramping up of public school spending in the last 40 years. Where would we be without it? If not for the war on illiteracy, Carter’s Department of Education, Bush’s No Child Left Behind and the rest of the government’s constant intervention into educational life, we’d probably have such an illiterate, uneducated populace that we’d elect to the presidency men who brag that they don’t read newspapers, or come close to electing Vice Presidents who can’t name two important Supreme Court decisions.
And to think that all this progress has happened alongside the many other problems the government has solved. Back in the 1960s, Americans used to do illegal drugs. Thanks to Nixon, Reagan and all the presidents since, practically no one does illegal drugs, the war on drugs is over, according to the current administration, our streets are safe and we didn’t have to sacrifice any precious liberties to get here. Meanwhile, Americans consume only the safest of pharmaceuticals, and everything that is effective comes quickly to market. We can also be certain, thanks to agricultural subsidies, that healthy food is easily accessible and unhealthy food is more expensive. If the market handled farming completely, you’d probably be able to get a box of corn-syrup-drenched snack cakes for less than a bag of carrots. And if you did overeat and needed medical attention, health care would be massively expensive. Thank goodness for more than fifty years of increasing federal involvement in health care. But it’s too bad that this federal involvement did not prevent the unregulated free market from causing a health care crisis that Obama had to repair with his gigantic health care plan. We can take solace, at least, that the health care crisis is finally over.
The environment is also totally clean, thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures that there will never be, say, a huge oil leak off the Gulf Coast that lasts for a couple of months before being plugged. And as for oil, it sure is affordable, thanks to the numerous price regulations and America’s active energy policy, which the last eight presidents have assured us would stabilize prices and produce “energy independence” within a few years. And we need plenty of oil in this country to power our wonderful automobiles, which are built by the kind of companies that are the fulcrum of the American economy, a fulcrum we can thank Uncle Sam for propping up. Now that we know the auto industry is secure, we can drive those American cars with pride on our wonderful government roads—roads you know are safe, with practically no deaths on them. Could you imagine private industry handling the roads? Not only would they be congested and littered with potholes, we’d have thousands of deaths per year, probably more than ten times as many as died on 9/11.
Which brings us to terrorism, the great crisis of the last decade. Solved, thanks to government. Indeed, the “war on terrorism,” just like the “war in Iraq” and the “war on drugs,” has been officially over for a more than a year. Another great government success, and at minimal cost, too.
Americans used to think that government itself could be a serious problem, as it was prone to corruption. Another crisis solved. Thanks to our trustworthy Congress passing campaign finance laws, we know that Congress will never be corrupted.
Some might say this post is sardonic—even cynical. Can we afford to be sarcastic in the current climate? We can afford practically anything, I say, thanks to the end of the recession—another total victory for the government. And we all know that, thanks to our four-trillion dollar central government in DC, our military-industrial complex, our millions of pages of federal edicts, our millions of federal employees, our national police forces unbound by traditional legal constraints, our thousands of regulators, our dozens of welfare programs, our public school system, our government infrastructure, our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, our numerous international quasi-governmental organizations from the WTO to the UN, not to mention the massive state and local bureaucracies that most Americans are blessed to live under—we know that thanks to all this government, we will never see another crisis comparable to this ghastly recession. And if we do, we can always blame it on the free market and the lack of government involvement.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Film Shows How Bush Admin Lies Marred Legacy of Pat Tillman
The "Tillman story," tells the struggle his family went through to learn the truth about Tillman's death and how political leaders covered-up the real story
By Rory O'Connor, MediaChannel.org
Posted on August 16, 2010
Of the many lies George W. Bush told us about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some were larger but none worse than that told about the death of Pat Tillman.
In 2004 – just after Bush’s invasion of Iraq, ostensibly in search of those non-existent weapons of mass destruction — Tillman became a military-and media-manufactured symbol of duty, sacrifice, patriotism and heroism. But the truth about Tillman’s life is much more complex, and his death ultimately far more heroic, than the convenient, self-serving lie served up by the military and then sent out by our ever-gullible media.
Tillman, a truly remarkable young man who walked away from a multi-million dollar contract as a professional football player to enlist as in the Army Rangers after the 9/11 attacks, is the subject of The Tillman Story, a moving documentary directed by Amir Bar-Lev that opens in theatres in New York and Los Angeles this week. Although the film rightly tells the story of Pat Tillman’s remarkable life, it also focuses on a parallel Tillman story, that of the struggle his family went through to learn the truth about Tillman’s death from “friendly fire” and the ongoing cover-up of how and why our military and political leaders lied in order to exploit his heroism for propaganda purposes.
Tillman was on his second tour of duty when he was killed in Afghanistan — a victim of “fratricide,” inadvertently killed by his own troops during an ill-fated expedition. Our leaders should have told the truth — namely, that Corporal Tillman’s death was a senseless accident coupled with incompetence. Instead they lied — to all of us, but most despicably to his family – rewrote the details of his death, awarding Tillman a posthumous Silver Star, America’s third-highest military decoration, and turned the tragedy into an opportunity to promote their endless and unpopular wars.
Why did they lie? No doubt it began because at the time of Tillman’s death, in April 2004, the Bush war machine was roiled by a number of negative images that threatened to adversely affect public perception of the war in Iraq. Remember those haunting photographs and videos of the bodies of American contractors strung up in Fallujah? Can you ever forget the searing images depicting abuse by U.S. soldiers working as guards in the Abu Ghraib prison? Adding the news that American soldiers had gunned down a celebrated NFL star certainly wouldn’t help the war effort… So Pat Tillman was recast, in death, as a war hero and lesson to us all.
The Tillman Story excels in teaching us other lessons, however — not only about Corporal Pat Tillman, but also about his remarkable family, led by his indefatigable mother Dannie. It shows the arduous journey his family undertook to find the truth about what happened and to have someone held accountable not only for their son’s death but also for the added insult of its use as a propaganda tool. Handed a massive, confusing box of intelligence records — thousands of pages of documents about her son’s death – Dannie Tillman patiently dug through the voluminous material to uncover the roots of a carefully coordinated cover-up. Her efforts, along with that of Tillman’s father and other family members and friends, eventually forced a Congressional hearing into the matter. As the film dramatically demonstrates in its stunning climax, however, the ultimate fix was in… and although the many obvious lies and cover-ups can be tracked up to and even well beyond such military brass as the recently fired general Stanley McChrystal, in the end no one among the higher-ups was ever found blameworthy or even responsible for lying to the Tillman family and the nation.
In lieu of presenting a hagiography, Director Bar-Lev does an excellent job of humanizing Tillman and offering a multi-dimensional look at his actual character. Scenes with Tillman’s family as they lovingly describe his character and his close, funny and frequently profane relationship with two brothers (the film is unfortunately and unfairly burdened with an “R” rating as a result) along with testimony from family friends and fellow soldiers paint a clear portrait of who Tillman really was — warts and all. As Bar-Lev points out, Pat Tillman was no “paragon of moral certitude; he was curious and tried to see things from every possible point of view.” That impulse is what the director attempts to give back to his subject, after he had been dehumanized and exploited for political gain by America’s leaders, aided and abetted as usual by the complicit cheerleaders of the national news media.
“I hope the story of Tillman tells us that heroism and humanity are not contradictory and heroism is complex,” Bar-Lev told Documentary magazine. “‘Hero’ is a problematic word that says a lot more about the people using it than the person they’re speaking about….
“I knew there were myths around his death,” Bar-Lev added, “but what began to intrigue me was when we found out there were equally as many myths about his life.”
“Ultimately, what I would want to have happen is just the truth,” Pat’s youngest brother Richard told ESPN.com. “At the end of the day, Pat deserves the truth. This isn’t about our family. This isn’t about the Tillmans. This is about Pat Tillman. And he deserves the truth, period. He sacrificed so much for his country, and then the government turns around and uses him for propaganda. That is totally unacceptable.”
By Rory O'Connor, MediaChannel.org
Posted on August 16, 2010
In 2004 – just after Bush’s invasion of Iraq, ostensibly in search of those non-existent weapons of mass destruction — Tillman became a military-and media-manufactured symbol of duty, sacrifice, patriotism and heroism. But the truth about Tillman’s life is much more complex, and his death ultimately far more heroic, than the convenient, self-serving lie served up by the military and then sent out by our ever-gullible media.
Tillman, a truly remarkable young man who walked away from a multi-million dollar contract as a professional football player to enlist as in the Army Rangers after the 9/11 attacks, is the subject of The Tillman Story, a moving documentary directed by Amir Bar-Lev that opens in theatres in New York and Los Angeles this week. Although the film rightly tells the story of Pat Tillman’s remarkable life, it also focuses on a parallel Tillman story, that of the struggle his family went through to learn the truth about Tillman’s death from “friendly fire” and the ongoing cover-up of how and why our military and political leaders lied in order to exploit his heroism for propaganda purposes.
Tillman was on his second tour of duty when he was killed in Afghanistan — a victim of “fratricide,” inadvertently killed by his own troops during an ill-fated expedition. Our leaders should have told the truth — namely, that Corporal Tillman’s death was a senseless accident coupled with incompetence. Instead they lied — to all of us, but most despicably to his family – rewrote the details of his death, awarding Tillman a posthumous Silver Star, America’s third-highest military decoration, and turned the tragedy into an opportunity to promote their endless and unpopular wars.
Why did they lie? No doubt it began because at the time of Tillman’s death, in April 2004, the Bush war machine was roiled by a number of negative images that threatened to adversely affect public perception of the war in Iraq. Remember those haunting photographs and videos of the bodies of American contractors strung up in Fallujah? Can you ever forget the searing images depicting abuse by U.S. soldiers working as guards in the Abu Ghraib prison? Adding the news that American soldiers had gunned down a celebrated NFL star certainly wouldn’t help the war effort… So Pat Tillman was recast, in death, as a war hero and lesson to us all.
The Tillman Story excels in teaching us other lessons, however — not only about Corporal Pat Tillman, but also about his remarkable family, led by his indefatigable mother Dannie. It shows the arduous journey his family undertook to find the truth about what happened and to have someone held accountable not only for their son’s death but also for the added insult of its use as a propaganda tool. Handed a massive, confusing box of intelligence records — thousands of pages of documents about her son’s death – Dannie Tillman patiently dug through the voluminous material to uncover the roots of a carefully coordinated cover-up. Her efforts, along with that of Tillman’s father and other family members and friends, eventually forced a Congressional hearing into the matter. As the film dramatically demonstrates in its stunning climax, however, the ultimate fix was in… and although the many obvious lies and cover-ups can be tracked up to and even well beyond such military brass as the recently fired general Stanley McChrystal, in the end no one among the higher-ups was ever found blameworthy or even responsible for lying to the Tillman family and the nation.
In lieu of presenting a hagiography, Director Bar-Lev does an excellent job of humanizing Tillman and offering a multi-dimensional look at his actual character. Scenes with Tillman’s family as they lovingly describe his character and his close, funny and frequently profane relationship with two brothers (the film is unfortunately and unfairly burdened with an “R” rating as a result) along with testimony from family friends and fellow soldiers paint a clear portrait of who Tillman really was — warts and all. As Bar-Lev points out, Pat Tillman was no “paragon of moral certitude; he was curious and tried to see things from every possible point of view.” That impulse is what the director attempts to give back to his subject, after he had been dehumanized and exploited for political gain by America’s leaders, aided and abetted as usual by the complicit cheerleaders of the national news media.
“I hope the story of Tillman tells us that heroism and humanity are not contradictory and heroism is complex,” Bar-Lev told Documentary magazine. “‘Hero’ is a problematic word that says a lot more about the people using it than the person they’re speaking about….
“I knew there were myths around his death,” Bar-Lev added, “but what began to intrigue me was when we found out there were equally as many myths about his life.”
“Ultimately, what I would want to have happen is just the truth,” Pat’s youngest brother Richard told ESPN.com. “At the end of the day, Pat deserves the truth. This isn’t about our family. This isn’t about the Tillmans. This is about Pat Tillman. And he deserves the truth, period. He sacrificed so much for his country, and then the government turns around and uses him for propaganda. That is totally unacceptable.”
Monday, June 7, 2010
The Coming Escalation in Obama’s War
by Ali Ahmed
June 4, 2010
Six months on and Obama’s War is nowhere nearer the end state he outlined in his West Point speech of December last year. He has merely a year to deliver on his promise of beginning to pull back troops by July next year. This is only seemingly a setback. The ‘AfPak strategy’ can be expected to have planned for this contingency. Escalating the war this military campaigning season is therefore possible given US presidential election-related deadlines of 2012.
The political prong of strategy has not delivered the ‘good’ Taliban yet. The ongoing jirga is the latest effort to this end. With the hostiles staying away and terrorists attacking it, it is a non-starter. US allies are in disarray. The German President has had to resign over controversial remarks and the new UK dispensation has promised a review. Pakistan appears to have gained space for its position of having a ‘say’ in Afghanistan after its strategic dialogue with the US of February. Nevertheless, Secretary Clinton felt it necessary to administer a warning of unspecified action in case of a successful repeat of the Times Square plot. Relations between the US and Karzai are back on an even keel, but the military operation in Kandahar looms large ahead.
Militarily, US casualties have crossed 1000 even as US troops in Afghanistan finally exceeded their numbers in Iraq. Drones have been an effective weapon; but have drawn adverse attention from the UN on their use viewed through the prism of laws of war. Operation Mostarak, launched in the Taliban heartland of Marjah in Helmand in February, would have been studied for any lessons for application in the forthcoming campaign, and in particular how to avoid killing civilians. The link between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban has deepened, with the Pakistani Taliban demonstrating repeatedly their ability and intent by taking terror into Punjabi heartland best signaled by the Friday massacres in the two Ahmadiya mosques in Lahore. Hakimullah Mehsud has resurfaced.
The course of the future can be seen in the constellation of the present. Pakistan has conducted its conventional exercises Azm e Nau involving 40,000 troops. The exercise gives it the self-confidence to take on any Indian attack in case a future terrorist provocation was to cross the Indian threshold of tolerance. Operation Rah-e-Nijat to clear South Waziristan having ended last year, the army has had a breather. The operations over the past two years have not borne out the apprehension that an ethnic divide would open up in the Pakistan Army. Therefore, the Army is ready for the summer campaign. It is being pressured to go into North Waziristan to knock out the base of the Haqqani faction there. Kayani’s extension as Chief being virtually certain, the Pakistan Army may well do so, in conjunction with launch of the long delayed operations in Kandahar by US troops. Feelers for talks through declarations of Karzai, the Arabs, Pakistanis, the UN and possibly the UK, have not yielded results. This is seen as legitimizing the military option. This is the escalation predicted in the immediate future.
The intent would be to degrade the Taliban further. If the Taliban has not come to talk thus far, it is because it has apparently not felt pressured enough. A concerted operation on both sides of the Durand line could influence its decision and, in any case, contain its presence and military capacity. While military success can be predicted in light of the experience gained and preparatory time thus far, the possible asymmetric response options compel a pause.
Two possible outcomes can be envisaged. First is the worst case scenario in which the Punjabi portion of Pakistani Taliban escalates forays into mainland Pakistan. This would increase their unpopularity and enable legitimacy for military operations underway. However, two factors merit attention. One is whether the Pakistani state and society would be able to bear an extended terrorist onslaught. This concern is occasioned by the fact that both Zardari and the US are not popular even in mainstream Pakistan. The Punjabi Taliban has identified the Pakistani state with the US. A repeat of the situation in Algeria in the early nineties that resulted in over a hundred thousand dead eventually is a plausible scenario. Next, is the impact on cohesion of the Pakistan Army. The consensus among the Corps Commanders could come under considerable strain. Fears of this had led Pakistan to suggest to its partner, the US, a reaching out to the Taliban. With Mullah Omar still holding out, the fears may yet come true. Added to this is the wild card of terror directed at India and the US.
The second scenario is one in which the low intensity war continues, with the Taliban considerably inconvenienced, but still reckonable as a military foe and political presence. Obama has the choice to follow the set schedule without the situation stabilizing to desired levels, but with both Kayani and Karzai having the capacity to manage the degraded Taliban. This can transpire if the Pakistani state and society display the capacity to withstand the inevitable spike in violence. For this, Pakistan would require considerable support.
Additionally, even as the operations are ongoing, another Arabian or Pakistani-led initiative to get the Taliban on board needs initiation. In case the violence crescendo reaches Iraq-like levels, then a shift of gears to the much neglected political prong would be possible. In any case, persistence with this over the following period as the political prong of strategy may be necessary, perhaps a replay of the Kai Eide dialogue by the UN. Even if a surrender is to be negotiated, holding out the possibility through maintaining contacts makes strategic sense.
It is more than just a timely coincidence, then, that India is poised to restart the composite dialogue. With the Pakistani state able to claim credit for movement on Kashmir, it would gain the space it needs to combat its internal enemies. The resumption would decrease the threat of anti-India terror attacks. With Pakistan taking on the Taliban finally, India’s concerns would be met considerably. In retrospect it would be perhaps be possible to trace India’s role in pressure in concert with the US on Pakistan to take on the terrorists.
While the military escalation is set to occur, preemption of the worst case possibility must be the focus. Keeping Pakistan on an even keel is a strategic necessity, since it is on the frontline. The Pakistani Taliban, in both its Pukhtun and Punjabi variants, would want to profit from instability. The resilience of Pakistan would be finally tested. Past experience suggests it could use whatever support possible, including, paradoxically, from India.
June 4, 2010
Six months on and Obama’s War is nowhere nearer the end state he outlined in his West Point speech of December last year. He has merely a year to deliver on his promise of beginning to pull back troops by July next year. This is only seemingly a setback. The ‘AfPak strategy’ can be expected to have planned for this contingency. Escalating the war this military campaigning season is therefore possible given US presidential election-related deadlines of 2012.
The political prong of strategy has not delivered the ‘good’ Taliban yet. The ongoing jirga is the latest effort to this end. With the hostiles staying away and terrorists attacking it, it is a non-starter. US allies are in disarray. The German President has had to resign over controversial remarks and the new UK dispensation has promised a review. Pakistan appears to have gained space for its position of having a ‘say’ in Afghanistan after its strategic dialogue with the US of February. Nevertheless, Secretary Clinton felt it necessary to administer a warning of unspecified action in case of a successful repeat of the Times Square plot. Relations between the US and Karzai are back on an even keel, but the military operation in Kandahar looms large ahead.
Militarily, US casualties have crossed 1000 even as US troops in Afghanistan finally exceeded their numbers in Iraq. Drones have been an effective weapon; but have drawn adverse attention from the UN on their use viewed through the prism of laws of war. Operation Mostarak, launched in the Taliban heartland of Marjah in Helmand in February, would have been studied for any lessons for application in the forthcoming campaign, and in particular how to avoid killing civilians. The link between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban has deepened, with the Pakistani Taliban demonstrating repeatedly their ability and intent by taking terror into Punjabi heartland best signaled by the Friday massacres in the two Ahmadiya mosques in Lahore. Hakimullah Mehsud has resurfaced.
The course of the future can be seen in the constellation of the present. Pakistan has conducted its conventional exercises Azm e Nau involving 40,000 troops. The exercise gives it the self-confidence to take on any Indian attack in case a future terrorist provocation was to cross the Indian threshold of tolerance. Operation Rah-e-Nijat to clear South Waziristan having ended last year, the army has had a breather. The operations over the past two years have not borne out the apprehension that an ethnic divide would open up in the Pakistan Army. Therefore, the Army is ready for the summer campaign. It is being pressured to go into North Waziristan to knock out the base of the Haqqani faction there. Kayani’s extension as Chief being virtually certain, the Pakistan Army may well do so, in conjunction with launch of the long delayed operations in Kandahar by US troops. Feelers for talks through declarations of Karzai, the Arabs, Pakistanis, the UN and possibly the UK, have not yielded results. This is seen as legitimizing the military option. This is the escalation predicted in the immediate future.
The intent would be to degrade the Taliban further. If the Taliban has not come to talk thus far, it is because it has apparently not felt pressured enough. A concerted operation on both sides of the Durand line could influence its decision and, in any case, contain its presence and military capacity. While military success can be predicted in light of the experience gained and preparatory time thus far, the possible asymmetric response options compel a pause.
Two possible outcomes can be envisaged. First is the worst case scenario in which the Punjabi portion of Pakistani Taliban escalates forays into mainland Pakistan. This would increase their unpopularity and enable legitimacy for military operations underway. However, two factors merit attention. One is whether the Pakistani state and society would be able to bear an extended terrorist onslaught. This concern is occasioned by the fact that both Zardari and the US are not popular even in mainstream Pakistan. The Punjabi Taliban has identified the Pakistani state with the US. A repeat of the situation in Algeria in the early nineties that resulted in over a hundred thousand dead eventually is a plausible scenario. Next, is the impact on cohesion of the Pakistan Army. The consensus among the Corps Commanders could come under considerable strain. Fears of this had led Pakistan to suggest to its partner, the US, a reaching out to the Taliban. With Mullah Omar still holding out, the fears may yet come true. Added to this is the wild card of terror directed at India and the US.
The second scenario is one in which the low intensity war continues, with the Taliban considerably inconvenienced, but still reckonable as a military foe and political presence. Obama has the choice to follow the set schedule without the situation stabilizing to desired levels, but with both Kayani and Karzai having the capacity to manage the degraded Taliban. This can transpire if the Pakistani state and society display the capacity to withstand the inevitable spike in violence. For this, Pakistan would require considerable support.
Additionally, even as the operations are ongoing, another Arabian or Pakistani-led initiative to get the Taliban on board needs initiation. In case the violence crescendo reaches Iraq-like levels, then a shift of gears to the much neglected political prong would be possible. In any case, persistence with this over the following period as the political prong of strategy may be necessary, perhaps a replay of the Kai Eide dialogue by the UN. Even if a surrender is to be negotiated, holding out the possibility through maintaining contacts makes strategic sense.
It is more than just a timely coincidence, then, that India is poised to restart the composite dialogue. With the Pakistani state able to claim credit for movement on Kashmir, it would gain the space it needs to combat its internal enemies. The resumption would decrease the threat of anti-India terror attacks. With Pakistan taking on the Taliban finally, India’s concerns would be met considerably. In retrospect it would be perhaps be possible to trace India’s role in pressure in concert with the US on Pakistan to take on the terrorists.
While the military escalation is set to occur, preemption of the worst case possibility must be the focus. Keeping Pakistan on an even keel is a strategic necessity, since it is on the frontline. The Pakistani Taliban, in both its Pukhtun and Punjabi variants, would want to profit from instability. The resilience of Pakistan would be finally tested. Past experience suggests it could use whatever support possible, including, paradoxically, from India.
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