[News] Obama's Animal Farm

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Obama's Animal Farm

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21552
May 27, 2009 By James Petras
Source: <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13644>GR

"The Deltas are psychos...You have to be a certified psychopath to 
join the Delta Force...", a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told 
me back in the 1980's.  Now President Obama has elevated the most 
notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the 
US and NATO military command in Afghanistan.  McChrystal's rise to 
leadership is marked by his central role in directing special 
operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic 
torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy 
missions.  He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that 
accompanies military-driven empire building.  Between September 2003 
and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon's Joint Special 
Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas 
assassinations.

The point of the 'Special Operations' teams (SOT) is that they do not 
distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between 
activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance.  The SOT 
specialize in establishing death squads and recruiting and training 
paramilitary forces to terrorize communities, neighborhoods and 
social movements opposing US client regimes.  The SOT's 
'counter-terrorism' is terrorism in reverse, focusing on 
socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed 
resistance.  McChrystal's SOT targeted local and national insurgent 
leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan through commando raids and 
air strikes.  During the last 5 years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld 
period the SOT were deeply implicated in the torture of political 
prisoners and suspects.  McChrystal was a special favorite of 
Rumsfeld and Cheney because he was in charge of the 'direct action' 
forces of the 'Special Missions Units.  'Direct Action' operative are 
the death-squads and torturers and their only engagement with the 
local population is to terrorize, and not to propagandize.  They 
engage in 'propaganda of the dead', assassinating local leaders to 
'teach' the locals to obey and submit to the occupation.  Obama's 
appointment of McChrystal as head reflects a grave new military 
escalation of his Afghanistan war in the face of the advance of the 
resistance throughout the country.

The deteriorating position of the US is manifest in the tightening 
circle around all the roads leading in and out of Afghanistan's 
capital, Kabul as well as the expansion of Taliban control and 
influence throughout the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.  Obama's 
inability to recruit new NATO reinforcements means that the White 
House's only chance to advance its military driven empire is to 
escalate the number of US troops and to increase the kill ratio among 
any and all suspected civilians in territories controlled by the 
Afghan armed resistance.

The White House and the Pentagon claim that the appointment of 
McChrystal was due to the 'complexities' of the situation on the 
ground and the need for a 'change in strategy'.  'Complexity' is a 
euphemism for the increased mass opposition to the US, complicating 
traditional carpet 'bombing and military sweep' operations.  The new 
strategy practiced by McChrystal involves large scale, long term 
'special operations' to devastate and kill the local social networks 
and community leaders, which provide the support system for the armed 
resistance.

Obama's decision to prevent the release of scores of photographs 
documenting the torture of prisoners by US troops and 'interrogators' 
(especially under command of the 'Special Forces'), is directly 
related to his appointment of McChrystal whose 'SOT' forces were 
highly implicated in widespread torture in Iraq.  Equally important, 
under McChrystal's command the DELTA, SEAL and Special Operations 
Teams will have a bigger role in the new 'counter-insurgency 
strategy'.  Obama's claim that the publication of these photographs 
will adversely affect the 'troops'  has a particular meaning:  The 
graphic exposure of McChrystal's modus operendi for the past 5 years 
under President Bush will undermine his effectiveness in carrying out 
the same operations under Obama.

Obama's decision to re-start the secret 'military tribunals' of 
foreign political prisoners, held at the Guantanamo prison camp, is 
not merely a replay of the Bush-Cheney policies, which Obama had 
condemned and vowed to eliminate during his presidential campaign, 
but part of his larger policy of militarization and coincides with 
his approval of the major secret police surveillance operations 
conducted against US citizens.

Putting McChrystal in charge of the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan 
military operations means putting a notorious practitioner of 
military terrorism - the torture and assassination of opponents to US 
policy - at the center of US foreign policy.  Obama's quantitative 
and qualitative expansion of the US war in South Asia means massive 
numbers of refugees fleeing the destruction of their farms, homes and 
villages; tens of thousands of civilian deaths, and eradication of 
entire communities.  All of this will be committed by the Obama 
Administraton in the quest to 'empty the lake (displace entire 
populations) to catch the fish (armed insurgents and activists)'.

Obama's restoration of all of the most notorious Bush Era policies 
and the appointment of Bush's most brutal commander is based on his 
total embrace of the ideology of military-driven empire 
building.  Once one believes (as Obama does) that US power and 
expansion are based on military conquests and counter-insurgency, all 
other ideological, diplomatic, moral and economic considerations will 
be subordinated to militarism.  By focusing all resources on 
successful military conquest, scant attention is paid to the costs 
borne by the people targeted for conquest or to the US treasury and 
domestic American economy.   This has been clear from the start:  In 
the midst of a major recession/depression with millions of Americans 
losing their employment and homes, President Obama increased the 
military budget by 4% - taking it beyond $800 billion dollars.

Obama's embrace of militarism is obvious from his decision to expand 
the Afghan war despite NATO's refusal to commit any more combat 
troops.  It is obvious in his appointment of the most hard-line and 
notorious Special Forces General from the Bush-Cheney era to head the 
military command in subduing Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan.

It is just as George Orwell described in Animal Farm:  The Democratic 
Pigs are now pursuing the same brutal, military policies of their 
predecessors, the Republican Porkers, only now it is in the name of 
the people and peace.  Orwell might paraphrase the policy of 
President Barack Obama, as 'Bigger and bloodier wars equal peace and justice'.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20090527/f9bb30a4/attachment.htm>