2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World
Global Research E-Newsletter
By Rick Rozoff
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16720
Global Research, December 31, 2009 Stop NATO
January 1 will usher in the last year of the first decade of a new
millennium and ten consecutive years of the United States conducting
war in the Greater Middle East.
Beginning with the October 7, 2001 missile and bomb attacks on
Afghanistan, American combat operations abroad have not ceased for
a year, a month, a week or a day in the 21st century.
The Afghan war, the U.S.'s first air and ground conflict in Asia
since the disastrous wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and
early 1970s and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's first land
war and Asian campaign, began during the end of the 2001 war in
Macedonia launched from NATO-occupied Kosovo, one in which the role
of U.S. military personnel is still to be properly exposed [1] and
addressed and which led to the displacement of almost 10 percent
of the nation's population.
In the first case Washington invaded a nation in the name of combating
terrorism; in the second it abetted cross-border terrorism. Similarly,
in 1991 the U.S. and its Western allies attacked Iraqi forces in
Kuwait and launched devastating and deadly cruise missile attacks
and bombing sorties inside Iraq in the name of preserving the
national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kuwait, and in
1999 waged a 78-day bombing assault against Yugoslavia to override
and fatally undermine the principles of territorial integrity and
national sovereignty in the name of the casus belli of the day,
so-called humanitarian intervention.
Two years later humanitarian war, as abhorrent an oxymoron as the
world has ever witnessed, gave way to the global war on terror(ism),
with the U.S. and its NATO allies again reversing course but
continuing to wage wars of aggression and "wars of opportunity" as
they saw fit, contradictions and logic, precedents and international
law notwithstanding.
Several never fully acknowledged counterinsurgency campaigns, some
ongoing - Colombia - and some new - Yemen - later, the U.S. invaded
Iraq in March of 2003 with a "coalition of the willing" comprised
mainly of Eastern European NATO candidate nations (now almost all
full members of the world's only military bloc as a result of their
service).
The Pentagon has also deployed special forces and other troops to
the Philippines and launched naval, helicopter and missile attacks
inside Somalia as well as assisting the Ethiopian invasion of that
nation in 2006. Washington also arms, trains and supports the armed
forces of Djibouti in their border war with Eritrea. In fact Djibouti
hosts the U.S.'s only permanent military installation in Africa to
date [2], Camp Lemonier, a United States Naval Expeditionary Base
and home to the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA),
placed under the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) when it was
launched on October 1, 2008. The area of responsibility of the
Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa takes in the nations of
Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan,
Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen and as "areas of interest" the Comoros,
Mauritius and Madagascar.
That is, much of the western shores of the Arabian Sea and the
Indian Ocean, among the most geostrategically important parts of
the world. [3]
U.S. troops, aerial drones, warships, planes and helicopters are
active throughout that vast tract of land and water.
With senator and once almost vice president Joseph Lieberman's
threat on December 27 that "Yemen will be tomorrow's war" [4] and
former Southern Command chief and NATO Supreme Allied Commander
Europe Wesley Clark's two days later that "Maybe we need to put
some boots on the ground there," [5] it is evident that America's
new war for the new year has already been identified.
In fact in mid-December U.S. warplanes participated in the bombing
of a village in northern Yemen that cost the lives of 120 civilians
as well as wounding 44 more [6] and a week later "A US fighter
jet...carried out multiple airstrikes on the home of a senior
official in Yemen's northern rugged province of Sa'ada...." [7]
The pretext for undertaking a war in Yemen in earnest is currently
the serio-comic "attempted terrorist attack by a young Nigerian
national on a passenger airliner outside of Detroit on Christmas
Day. The deadly U.S.
bombing of the Yemeni village mentioned above occurred ten days
earlier and moreover was in the north of the nation, although
Washington claims al-Qaeda cells are operating in the other end of
the country. [8]
Asia, Africa and the Middle East are not the only battlegrounds
where the Pentagon is active. On October 30 of 2009 the U.S. signed
an agreement with the government of Colombia to acquire the essentially
unlimited and unrestricted use of seven new military bases in the
South American nation, including sites within immediate striking
distance of both Venezuela and Ecuador. [9] American intelligence,
special forces and other personnel will be complicit in ongoing
counterinsurgency operations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC) in the nation's south as well as in rendering
assistance to Washington's Colombian proxy for attacks inside Ecuador
and Venezuela that will be portrayed as aimed at FARC forces in the
two states.
Targeting two linchpins of and ultimately the entire Bolivarian
Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), Washington is laying
the groundwork for a potential military conflagration in South and
Central America and the Caribbean. After the U.S.-supported coup
in Honduras on June 28, that nation has announced it will be the
first ALBA member state to ever withdraw from the Alliance and the
Pentagon will retain, perhaps expand, its military presence at the
Soto Cano Air Base there.
A few days ago "The Colombian government...announced it is building
a new military base on its border with Venezuela and has activated
six new airborne battalions" [10] and shortly afterward Dutch member
of parliament Harry van Bommel "claimed that US spy planes are using
an airbase on the Netherlands Antilles island of Curagao" [11] off
the Venezuelan coast.
In October a U.S. armed forces publication revealed that the Pentagon
will spend $110 million to modernize and expand seven new military
bases in Bulgaria and Romania, across the Black Sea from Russia,
where it will station initial contingents of over 4,000 troops.
[12]
In early December the U.S. signed a Status of Forces Agreement
(SOFA) with Poland, which borders the Russian Kaliningrad territory,
that "allows for the United States military to station American
troops and military equipment on Polish territory." [13] The U.S.
military forces will operate Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3)
and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) batteries as part of the Pentagon's
global interceptor missile system.
At approximately the same time President Obama pressured Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to base missile shield components
in his country. "We discussed the continuing role that we can play
as NATO allies in strengthening Turkey's profile within NATO and
coordinating more effectively on critical issues like missile
defense," [14] in the American leader's words.
"Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has hinted his government does
not view Tehran [Iran] as a potential missile threat for Turkey at
this point. But analysts say if a joint NATO missile shield is
developed, such a move could force Ankara to join the mechanism."
[15]
2010 will see the first foreign troops deployed to Poland since the
breakup of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and the installation of the U.S's
"stronger, swifter and smarter" (also Obama's words) interceptor
missiles and radar facilities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East
and the South Caucasus. [16]
U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, site of the longest and most
wide-scale war in the world, will top 100,000 early in 2010 and
with another 50,000 plus troops from other NATO nations and assorted
"vassals and tributaries"
(Zbigniew Brzezinski) will represent the largest military deployment
in any war zone in the world.
American and NATO drone missile and helicopter gunship attacks in
Pakistan will also increase, as will U.S. counterinsurgency operations
in the Philippines and Somalia along with those in Yemen where CIA
and Army special forces are already involved.
U.S. military websites recently announced that there have been 3.3
million deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 with 2 million
U.S. service members sent to the two war zones. [17]
In this still young millennium American soldiers have also deployed
in the hundreds of thousands to new bases and conflict and post-conflict
zones in Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Georgia,
Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mali, the
Philippines, Romania, Uganda and Uzbekistan.
In 2010 they will be sent abroad in even larger numbers to man
airbases and missile sites, supervise and participate in counterinsurgency
operations throughout the world against disparate rebel groups,
many of them secular, and wage combat operations in South Asia and
elsewhere. They will be stationed on warships and submarines equipped
with cruise and long-range nuclear missiles and with aircraft carrier
strike groups prowling the world's seas and oceans.
They will construct and expand bases from Europe to Central and
South Asia, Africa to South America, the Middle East to Oceania.
With the exception of Guam and Vicenza in Italy, where the Pentagon
is massively expanding existing installations, all the facilities
in question are in nations and even regions of the world where the
U.S. military has never before ensconced itself.
Practically all the new encampments will be forward bases used for
operations "down range," generally to the east and south of
NATO-dominated Europe.
U.S. military personnel will be assigned to the new Global Strike
Command and for expanded patrols and war games in the Arctic Circle.
They will serve under the Missile Defense Agency to consolidate a
worldwide interceptor missile network that will facilitate a nuclear
first strike capability and will extend that system into space, the
final frontier in the drive to achieve military full spectrum
dominance.
American troops will continue to fan out to most all parts of the
world.
Everywhere, that is, except to their own nation's borders.
Notes
1) Scott Taylor, Macedonia's Civil War: 'Made in the USA' Antiwar.com,
August 20, 2001 http://www.antiwar.com/orig/taylor1.html 2) AFRICOM
Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World Stop NATO, October
22, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm
-of-the-entire-world 3) Cold War Origins Of The Somalia Crisis And
Control Of The Indian Ocean Stop NATO, May 3, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/cold-war-origins-of-the-somalia-
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-arabi
an-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-base
s-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-shi
eld-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-superpowe
rs-2-million-troop-1-trillion-wa
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Copyright Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, 2009
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