Category: Uncategorized

The U.S. is sending 46 warships and 7000 marines to Costa Rica allegedly to “fight drugs”.  An article from Global Research is posted below, along with an action alert sent by  United for Peace and Justice to its supporters:

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The outrageous announcement that 46 US warships and 7000 Marines are heading for Costa Rica to “fight drugs” should alert all peace and justice organizations to the real significance of this action.  Such a move will raise legitimate alarm in the Caribbean, Central and Latin America of the real intent of the United States and react accordingly.

Regardless whether this was done with the connivance of the Costa Rica government or not, as peace and justice activists, we are opposed to the extension of US military force, especially, at these times, when our Brothers and Sisters in the South are moving forward in their struggle for national sovereignty and independence from US influence.

Endorse the “Declaration Against US Military Forces in Costa Rica, the Declaration against Invasion and Military Impunity”:

– We the undersigned and organizations of our support network, categorically reject the U.S. military ships entering Costa Rican territory, as well as any further increase of militarism to attempt to solve conflicts in global politics.

– We oppose the permission granted by the Costa Rican Legislature, which allows for joint patrols against trafficking of drugs into Costa Rica with up to 46 warships, 200 helicopters, 10 AV-8B Harrier aircraft and 7,000 marines.

– With this action, the government of Costa Rica aims to join the U.S. military agenda in Latin America. The solution to drug trafficking is social, not military.

– Costa Rica, with its neutral and pacifist tradition, cannot allow its territory to be used for a military objective that violates their sovereignty. This U.S. military contingent will be able to move freely throughout Costa Rican territory with immunity for its troops. Such a military presence in a country without an army is unacceptable.

– We call on our respective governments and peoples to jointly promote all possible action to defend Costa Rican sovereignty, and to reject this military action.

Call to Action: United for Peace & Justice encourages UFPJ Member Groups and other organizations to individually endorse this declaration and communicate it to Hendrik Voss, School of the Americas Watch, hvoss@soaw.org.   To support endorsement, we encourage that issue information and calls to action be forwarded to member group constituencies.

Background:

We Love Costa Rica article, 46 US Warships Plus 7,000 US Marines On Route To Costa Rica?

Global Post Article, 7,000 US Marines Landing on the beaches of Costa Rica

Thank You,
We are…. United for Peace & Justice

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20171

Militarization of Central America and the Caribbean: The U.S. Military Moves Into Costa Rica

By Mark Vorpahl

Global Research, July 19, 2010

Nestled between Panama to its south and Nicaragua to its north, Costa Rica is a Central American nation roughly the size of Rhode Island.

If another nation were to send Rhode Island a force of 7,000 troops, 200 helicopters, and 46 warships in an effort to eradicate drug trafficking, it is doubtful that the residents of Rhode Island would consider this offer “on-the-level.” Such a massive military force could hardly be efficiently used to combat drug cartels. The only logical conclusion is that the nation whose troops now are occupying this other country had another agenda in mind that it didn’t want to share.

In early July, by a vote of 31 to 8, the Costa Rican Congress approved the U.S. bringing into their nation the same military force described above, justified with the same dubious “war on drugs” rationale. According to the agreement, the military forces are supposed to leave Costa Rica by the end of 2010. This begs the question, however, if such an over the top display of military muscle is needed now to combat the drug cartels, what will be done in the next few months to make their presence unnecessary? The history of such U.S. military deployments around the world suggests a more credible outcome than what the agreement states. Once the U.S. moves such massive forces into a country, they rarely move them out.

When push comes to shove, the political machinery in Costa Rica is subservient to U.S. government and corporate interests. Nevertheless, there are many in Costa Rica who are declaring that the agreement is a violation of their national sovereignty and is unconstitutional. (In 1948 Costa Rica abolished its army, which was sanctioned in its constitution.) Legislator Luis Fishman has vowed to challenge the decision of the Congress in the courts.

Shifting Strategy and Tactics

The buildup of U.S. armed forces in Costa Rica is part of an escalating pattern that indicates a shifting of strategy and tactics for the U.S. in controlling what the Monroe Doctrine infamously described as the U.S.’s “backyard” — that is, all of Latin America. Since the U.S. government inspired covert coup d’etats and political reversals of popular governments and/or movements in Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, and El Salvador in previous decades, U.S. rulers had figured they had things stitched up to their liking in Latin America. The political elites in Latin America were uniformly in the pockets of the U.S. corporate empire and appeared to be more or less in control of their people. They commonly outlawed strikes and at times even trade unions, eliminated minimum wage laws, and gave enormous tax breaks to U.S. corporations.

Therefore, the U.S. Empire builders could use their political and economic might alone to subjugate these neo-colonies to a very profitable neoliberal agenda. This agenda included allowing U.S. corporations easy access to pillage these nations’ public sectors through privatization, letting multi-national corporations overrun these nations’ local markets and farms through the elimination of trade barriers, and increasing the exploitation of their workers and the devastation of their natural resources by tossing out national labor and environmental standards. Because of the profits enjoyed by a few as a result of these measures, they carried the day, though they, in turn, created a simmering spirit of rebellion in the semi-colonies’ peasantry and workers that would inevitably find expression.

As the U.S. began to set its sights on and send its resources to other parts of the world, most notably the Middle East and Asia, the web they had wrapped around Latin America began to unravel. This was most apparent in Venezuela where a U.S.-backed coup attempt in April of 2002 failed because of the massive mobilizing of the Venezuelan people in defense of their democratic rights. All subsequent attempts of the Venezuelan oligarchy, in collusion with the U.S. State Department, to get rid of Chavez resulted in their humiliation because of the constant support and organizing of the country’s lower classes. It became apparent to the U.S. ruling class that they could no longer rely on the Venezuelan oligarchy, which had lost direct control over the political situation. What is more, the popular upsurge witnessed in Venezuela in the past decade, opened up floodgates for anti-imperialist organizing across the continent, resulting in the election of a number of left-wing presidents.

Not only was the neoliberal agenda of the U.S. being blocked, an alternative to the U.S. Free Trade policies was being set up. The Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA), which was initiated by Venezuela and Cuba, began to build a trading block based on exchange according to different nations’ needs rather than U.S. corporate profits. While ALBA needs to be more substantially developed in order to fulfill its promise, especially in regards to organizing grassroots control to determine its priorities, it is a challenge to U.S. corporate and political dominance in the region.

U.S. Military Moves

As a result, the U.S. government began to shift its reliance from solely economic and political means to control Latin America towards taking military measures, even while engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What have been some of these measures?

In 2006 the U.S. conducted military exercises off the coast of Venezuela called “Operation Partnership of the Americas.” This exercise involved four ships, 60 fighter planes, and 6,500 U.S. troops.

In 2006 the U.S. State Department classified the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao, with their military bases jointly contracted to Holland and the U.S., as “The Third Frontier of the United States.” U.S. aircraft carriers, war ships, combat planes, Black Hawk helicopters, nuclear submarines, and thousands of troops began to build up in Curacao in particular. In 2009 a U.S. military plane was intercepted in Venezuelan airspace that had flown from Curacao’s base.

In 2008 the U.S. reactivated the Fourth Fleet to patrol Caribbean waters. This fleet had been out of commission since 1950. Now it operates with the potential of acting as a floating base for the U.S. to conduct military strikes throughout Central and South America.

In 2009 the U.S. made a deal with Colombia to build up its military personal in seven bases, from 250 to 800 American troops with 600 civilian contractors, effectively taking control over these installations. This was widely denounced throughout Latin America as an action aimed at intimidating Venezuela. In December of that year a U.S. drone plane flying from one of these Colombian bases violated Venezuelan airspace.

From 2009 to 2010 the U.S. worked behind the scenes to legitimize a military coup in Honduras against lawfully elected President Zelaya, who had aligned the nation with ALBA. Part of the U.S.’s motivation behind its actions was to maintain control of Soto Cano’s Airbase, with its 550 U.S. troops and 650 U.S. and Honduran civilians. In the 1980’s the U.S. had used this base for a training ground and launching pad for the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua and El Salvadorian death squads opposed to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). There is good reason for concern that this Airbase will again be used for similar operations today.

In 2009 the U.S. and Panama agreed to open up two naval bases in Panama, which will be the first time U.S. military forces will be based in this nation since 1999.

War on Drugs?

Most of these measures have been justified on the grounds of combating drug trafficking, including the military buildup in Costa Rica. However, they have not curtailed this problem at all. Such U.S. military buildups have generally been accompanied by an increase in drug trafficking, as has happened in both Columbia and Afghanistan. Based on this record it can only be concluded that the “War on Drugs” rationale is a red herring for public relations consumption, not the actual motivation.

This military build up in Costa Rica is the latest in a series of moves the U.S. has made in Latin America that seeks to use threats and arms to reverse the strength of popular anti-imperialist forces across the region. The U.S. is playing with the possibility of erupting a continental conflagration for the sake of corporate profits.

While it is doubtful that the U.S. wants to directly engage in a military conflict with, most likely, Venezuela right now, preparations for this possibility are being made. What is more likely in the short term is that the U.S. military will use its forces to engage in sabotage and intimidation in hopes of reversing support for the nations aligned with ALBA. It is also very possible that the U.S. military will help to support proxy armies, such as Colombia’s, in military conflicts that align with U.S. interests. However, this is a dangerous game. Even in the short term, the U.S. ruling class may drag the nation into another direct conflict, in spite of their intentions, that could spread to involve numerous other nations.

Peace and International Solidarity

While U.S. workers are suffering from unemployment, insufficient health care, drastic cuts to education and social services, as well as environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico created by the Obama governmental collusion with BP, the priorities of the U.S. ruling class are elsewhere. They are more concerned with pouring money into military buildups that threaten war. The target of such a war or wars would be the popular working class movements in Latin America, whose only crime has been to struggle to liberate themselves from super exploitation and political repression. It is the same economic and political elite in the U.S. that are denying U.S. workers what is rightfully theirs that are opposing the efforts of workers and peasants throughout the continent to empower themselves.

It is the task of the anti-war movement not only to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to prevent future U.S. wars in Latin America. Wherever anti-war activists seek to mobilize people against war, they should also seek to educate about the U.S. empire’s military moves in Latin America.

Furthermore, it will require international solidarity to combat what the U.S. elite is doing in Central and South America. There was recently an event that could go some way towards preparing this solidarity. In Sanare, Venezuela, from June 21 – 25, a series of meetings were held entitled “Ecuentro of the Americas: Resisting Militarization and Promoting a Culture of Peace.” It consisted of delegates of organizations from 19 nations across the continent, including School of the Americas (SOA) Watch of the U.S. You can read more about this at http://www.soaw.org/

Mark Vorpahl is a union steward as well as an anti-war and Latin American Solidarity activist. He can be reached at Portland@workerscompass.org.

Thanks to Sung-hee Choi for forwarding this analysis about the sinking of the South Korean ship Cheonan and its implications for peace in NE Asia and three petitions to end the Korean War:

1. ———- Forwarded message ———-

From: Martha Duenas <martduenas@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 12:00 AM
Subject: [famoksaiyanfriends] SIGN THE PETITION “60 Years Is Enough–End the Korean War Now!”!
To: Famoksaiyan Friends <famoksaiyanfriends@lists.riseup.net>

60 Years Is Enough–End the Korean War Now!

You can view this petition at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/tell-a-friend/7483361

Message from Christine Hong:

—–

Dear everyone,

Please take a moment to sign (and to pass to allies–particularl y folks who live in the 9th District) the petition, “60 Years Is Enough–End the Korean War Now!” Our aim is to get Congresswoman Barbara Lee to introduce a statement calling for a peaceful resolution to the as-yet unended Korean War on the House floor on Tuesday, July 27 (Korean Armistice Day), of this year.

Many thanks for your support. Christine

(* Thanks very much, Martha. Sung-Hee)

__________________________________________________________________________

2. Solidarity for Peace And Reunification of Korea

http://www.spark946.org/bugsboard/lee/mj_english_doing.htm

Sign the petition

for a Korean peninsula Peace Treaty

Join the people who are signing petitions for a Korean peace treaty, to be delivered to the governments of four countries : South Korea, North Korea, China and U.S.

Send your name, organization, state by e-mail (to SPARK)

The name list will be published as an advertisement in the newspaper on every 27 July, the day when the Korean War Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953, More than 30,000 people have signed the petition by now.

→ Peace Agreement for the Korean Peninsula (proposed draft)

__________________________________________________________________________

3.

http://www.endthekoreanwar.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=17

National Campaign to End the Korean War

About the National Campaign to End the Korean War
The National Campaign to End the Korean War is the collaboration of more than 50 leading Korean-American, veterans, and human rights organizations working to promote a U.S.-Korea policy that will bring about a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula. Our goal is to finally end the 1950-1953 Korean War through the signing of a peace treaty between the United States and North Korea. For more information, please visit: http://www.endthekoreanwar.org.

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http://peacekorea.org/zbxe/45895#0

Cheonan sinking and New Cold War in Asia

2010. 06. 30

Wooksik Cheong, the Representative of Peace Network.

En Hye Lee, Peace Network Intern, contributed to translation Korean into English.

While there was a huge impact on Cheonan ship sinking on March 26th, there is also a significant impact on Northeast Asia as well. “The flapping of butterfly’s wing in Brazil can bring about a disastrous tornado in Texas.” Like the butterfly effect, the Cheonan incident has the danger to trigger the new cold war in Northeast Asia.

The relations between the North and South which returned to the Cold War era after President Lee took office are getting towards a fierce confrontation after the Cheonan incident. South Korean allies, the US and Japan, are actively supporting Lee administration and trying to raise the level of pressures and sanctions on North Korea. However, North Korea’s long-time friends, China and Russia which also took equal distance diplomacy towards both North and South Korea after the Cold War, have quite different responses. They raise questions on Lee administration’s results of Cheonan investigation, expressing awareness to South Korea, US, Japan which are attempting to push North Korea into the corner on account of the Cheonan incident. Ostensibly, it can be said that the confrontational structure is reemerging.

Unbalance in six party talks can be explained with different perspectives of geopolitics in Northeast Asia. The Obama administration’s ambition of making allies with Northeast Asian countries in order to restrain and contain China was capitalized on the Cheonan accident and succeeded in restoring US-Japan alliance. The US has realized the original bill of Futenma’s relocation, which was the ‘hot potato’ between the US and Japan. Though Japanese Prime minister Hatoyama resigned, the Cheonan incident was used as a method to calm down the oppositions in Japan caused by accepting US demands. Also, the US has got the “bond” and this will lead US-South Korea alliance to the way the US wants.

In addition, South Korea-US joint naval exercise, which is expected to kick off in West Sea, is seen as military restraint against China as well as armed protest toward North Korea. So China is seriously responding to this issue. One of the Chinese national newspaper editorials, titled “Yellow Sea no place for US carrier” mentions that “the deployment of a carrier off of China’s coast is a provocation that will generate hostility among the Chinese public toward the US.” China’s perspective is well presented in this part. It is a warning sign toward the US-led Northeast Asia alliance system, which seem to become strong and rigid on account of the Cheonan incident.

The fundamental problem is that even if the six parties say they want “peace and stability in Northeast Asia”, there is a huge difference in ways and methods. US, Japan, and South Korea which are the 3 nations that concluded North Korea as a suspect of the Cheonan incident claim that taking strong actions to North Korea will help both Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia have peace and stability. On the other hand, China and Russia, nations having huge doubts on the results of the investigation, are demanding “calmness and restraint” mentioning that retaliation against the North will cause the increasing tension including military confrontation. These responses from China and Russia, adjacent to North Korean border, are based on the concerns that the imminent state in Korean peninsula could lead to the damage of their critical interests. Unlike Japan, which is between the Korean peninsula and East sea, or the US near the Pacific, China and Russia are considering geopolitically factors. This is why China and Russia are keeping eye on the conflict in Korean peninsula. Surprisingly, however, South Korean government, which is right next to the demarcation line close to the North, does not care about this imminent situation much more than the US and Japan do and it is getting ready to fight against North Korea.  This attitude is based on a significantly dangerous ‘strategic miscalculation’ that is recognized as the ‘reunification through absorption’.

US is on two tracks, South Korea is on one track?

Cheonan accident has a critical impact on the six party talks as well. First, North Korea, China and Russia are generally positive with the earliest resumption of six party talks, however, South Korea, US, and Japan are taking passive attitude relating six party talks to the Cheonan incident. Of course there is a difference. South Korea is going towards one track of Cheonan diplomacy, which is under the strong basis of ‘No need to resume six party talks without solving the Cheonan incident’. On the other hand, the US is trying to approach this with two tracks. It is trying to reach the conclusion that the North is guilty and to push forward with denouncement and sanctions against North Korea. Furthermore it is expecting denuclearization on Korean peninsula through six party talks. The US’ diplomatic dogma against hostile nations, dealing with both ‘sanctions and dialogues’, can be confirmed in the Cheonan incident.

However, it can be said that not only South Korea’s one track but also US’ two tracks cannot be successful. The two tracks which are referred to the theory of ‘carrot and stick’ and ‘sanctions and dialogues’ will definitely cause the similar reactions from the North. North Korea has been steadily dealt South Korea, US, Japan with the slogan of “Confrontation as confrontation, dialogue as dialogue”. Moreover, North Korea has been demanding for lifting sanctions on condition of resumption of six party talks. In this situation, if there are some additional sanctions on the North, which argues its innocence, or if a statement denouncing North Korea is adopted from the UN Security Council, we can hardly expect the possibility of resuming six party talks. Once the UN Security Council adopts the statement of denouncing North Korea again, it is likely for North Korea, which gave us a warning of ‘ultra hard line actions’, to counter with launching long range rockets or with the third nuclear test.

The concerns that the Cheonan tragedy might lead to new cold war in Northeast Asia is just an idle fear, and it is better to remain as an idle fear. There are 3 things that need to be resolved.  First is to reinvestigate the cause of the Cheonan sinking. Not only North Korea but also China and Russia are raising questions on the results of the Lee administration’s investigation. In this situation, the matter will get worse if the US, South Korea and Japan force North Korea with denouncements and stringent sanctions against the North. Some say that it is more realistic if there is a joint investigation team among North and South Korea, US, and China. Second is normalizing inter-Korean relations as soon as possible. Demarcation line is the ‘divided line’ of Korean peninsula and ‘the line of the balance power in Northeast Asia’. In this sense, it is geopolitically impossible to say that peace and stability in Northeast Asia can be maintained without getting rid of unstable inter-Korean relations. Third is the resumption of six party talks within the earliest possible time. There has to be continuous investigation for the truth of the Cheonan incident, and it is obvious that it will take a huge amount of time to get the true result even though the joint investigation team of 4 nations works together. In this sense, dealing investigation of Cheonan first and six party talks afterwards is not an appropriate approach.

There has to be new ways of thinking that the Cheonan sinking is emphasizing the necessity of constructing peace regime and denuclearization on Korean peninsula with the earliest resumption of six party talks. Now is the time to find the way to prevent the confrontation on Korean peninsula and the new cold war in Northeast Asia.

http://www.japanfocus.org/-Norimatsu-Satoko/3381

Assault on the Sea: A 50-Year U.S. Plan to Build a Military Port on Oura Bay, Okinawa

Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting (Video) and Norimatsu Satoko (Introduction and translation)

So often, Okinawan voices go unheard outside of Okinawa. So often, probing TV documentaries on such sensitive issues as the Battle of Okinawa or on Okinawa-Japan-U.S. relations are shown once and archived, never to return to public view. So often, even if they are broadcast outside of Okinawa, they are aired at odd times. This was the fate of this documentary on Oura Bay, which TV Asahi scheduled at 2:40 a.m., but it deserves the attention of more than a few night owls. The documentary, “Nerawareta Umi: Okinawa,Oura-wan – Maboroshi no gunko keikaku 50 nen” (The Targeted Sea – A 50-year Unrealized Plan for a Military Port in Oura Bay, Okinawa), was produced by QAB (Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting) and broadcast in the first week of October 2009. This program reveals the little-known fact that the plan to build a large-scale U.S. military complex in Oura Bay, including a military port, was initiated as early as the mid-1960s. Oura Bay is located on the northeastern shore of Okinawa Island, adjacent to USMC Camp Schwab and Cape Henoko, where the U.S. and Japanese governments are planning to build the controversial “replacement facility” for the Futenma Air Station. While it is widely believed that this facility is being built as a substitute for the dangerous Marine airbase in a crowded residential area of Ginowan City, the evidence disclosed here confirms that the U.S. aims to take advantage of this opportunity to close an obsolete base and build (for the most part at Japanese expense) the brand-new military complex that it has sought to build since the 1960s.

Previous Japan Focus articles have examined the controversy over the base in detail. What this special report adds is its detailed and sensitive visual depiction of the subtle and mixed emotions of the local residents toward the base construction plan. Residents, including the uminchu (fishermen) who appear in this documentary, have been largely ignored by government planners. Over generations, those plans appeared in many different forms, ranging from coercive land expropriation, to the destruction of coral reefs in the name of “land surveys,” and rumors of hefty compensation for individual households. Henoko, which has hosted USMC Camp Schwab for the last 53 years, is now confronted with a plan for a new high-tech base – a “Futenma relocation” base. For the past six decades, the base issue has divided the remote fishing village, whose residents cherished the value of cooperation through cultural traditions like Kakuriki (Okinawan sumo wrestling) and the Henoko Tug-of-War Festival, events that have often welcomed the participation of USMC members.

This documentary was filmed before the historic regime change in Japan in September 2009, with the landslide victory of the left-of-centre Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over the long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Viewers may notice the general apathy among residents over the base plan and their reluctant acceptance of their inability to stop it. They did not anticipate the dramatic turn of events in the offing after Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio took office, having pledged to reverse the previous government’s commitment to the base construction plan. After his failure to follow through on that pledge led to Hatoyama’s resignation in early June 2010, new Prime Minister Kan Naoto disappointed Okinawans by endorsing the Henoko base plan within hours of his appointment. At the Battle of Okinawa Memorial on June 23, Kan reinforced Okinawans’ fear and anger by expressing his “apology” and “appreciation” to the islanders for bearing the additional burden of the new base.

The Okinawan struggle to stop the new base construction will continue. This documentary sheds new light on the historical context of the controversy over the new base plan in Henoko/Oura Bay.

Since the documentary is in Japanese, an English summary is provided below, but the beauty of Oura Bay, and the richness and liveliness of such cultural expressions as Okinawan-style sumo wrestling and the Henoko Tug-of-War can only be appreciated by watching the video. See below for YouTube links.

Norimatsu Satoko

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/18/afghan

Tom Engelhardt on “The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s”

We discuss the latest in the ongoing US war in Afghanistan, the longest-running war in American history, with Tom Engelhardt, creator and editor of the website TomDispatch and author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s. Engelhardt says the US war in Afghanistan has troubling parallels with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan of the 1980s.

Guest:

Tom Engelhardt, creator and editor of the website TomDispatch. His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We go now to Afghanistan, where the Ministry of Mines has announced Thursday it is taking the first steps toward opening the country’s vast mineral resources to international investors. News of Afghans’ mineral reserves made headlines earlier this week when the New York Times detailed findings of the Pentagon and US Geological Survey that Afghanistan has at least $1 trillion in untapped mineral wealth. Afghan officials suggested the reserves could be worth as much as $3 trillion.

Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill, debate over the US war effort continues. Senior Pentagon and military officials spoke to lawmakers Wednesday to urge patience and support for their operations. The head of US Central Command, General Petraeus, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the war was moving in the right direction, and they were on track to begin withdrawing forces from Afghanistan by next summer.

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: The conduct of a counterinsurgency operation is a roller coaster experience. There are setbacks, as well as areas of progress or successes. It is truly an up and down, when you’re living it, when you’re doing it, even from from afar, frankly. But the trajectory, in my view, has generally been upward, despite the tough losses, despite the setbacks.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the ongoing US war in Afghanistan, the longest-running war in American history, we’re joined now here in New York by author Tom Engelhardt. He is the creator and editor of the website TomDispatch.com. His latest book is called The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s. His latest post on TomDispatch “Call the Politburo, We’re in Trouble: Entering the Soviet Era in America.”

What do you mean? Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tom.

TOM ENGELHARDT: What I mean is that in the Cold War, which we’ve largely forgotten at this point, the Soviet leaders made a kind of a basic miscalculation. They mistook military power for global power. They poured all their money functionally into their military. They got stuck in Afghanistan, very much like us, for ten years. In the meantime, their budget deficits were going up. They were growing—their indebtedness to other countries was growing. Their infrastructure was beginning to crumble. The very society they had built was beginning to crumble. And when the Red Army came out of Afghanistan—it limped out in 1989, after a decade—it basically returned to a country that didn’t exist, because within two years the Soviet Union collapsed.

In Washington, this caught everybody by surprise. Everybody expected the Cold War to go on and on. When American leaders saw this happen, they declared victory. The world was without an enemy at this point. And they—in one of the more striking decisions, I think, that’s been made in many, many years, they decided then to follow the Soviet path. And they began—and they put the so-called peace dividend in a ditch, and they began to pour money, successive administrations, as we know, up through the Bush administration into today, into the American military, while budget deficits rose, indebtedness rose, infrastructure crumbled, and the society began to—you know, began to weaken. Now, the United States is not the Soviet Union. It was always by far the more powerful country. And it isn’t today the Soviet Union in 1989 or 1991. But it is striking that our leaders, in declaring victory, decided to go down, in essence, the Soviet path, which was the path to implosion.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You spend quite a bit of time on the book in one chapter talking about the language of war and how the American media portrayed Muslim resistance fighters in other wars, initially in the first war in Afghanistan against the Soviets—

TOM ENGELHARDT: Yes, yes, yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —and in Chechnya, as well. Could you talk about the language of war?

TOM ENGELHARDT: Well, you know, if you go back, in the 1980s, of course, we were supporting many of the very people we’re now fighting. And at that point, they were not Muslim extremist whatevers. They weren’t Islamic totalitarians. They were—well, the President said it at the time. That was President Reagan. He called them “freedom fighters.” And when you look at the language in the press for these very same people doing many of the very same things, they were—it just happened to be against the Soviets—car bombs, camel bombs, bike bombs, suicide attacks, so on and so forth. I mean, and this included Osama bin Laden and so on and so forth. They were portrayed as resistance fighters. You no longer—you would never say the word “resistance” fighter with—put with the Taliban, nor, to give you an example in the Iraq war—it was very interesting. The phrase that the military often used for those they were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is they referred to them as “anti-Iraqi forces” or “anti-Afghan forces,” as if they were foreigners. And, of course, nobody would refer to us as anti-Iraqi forces or foreign forces or anything of the sort.

I mean, there’s a whole language that goes with American-style war. To give you just a simple example, and you hear it relatively often, when things start to go badly, American officials—Robert Gate said it relatively recently—say, let’s put an Afghan mask—an Afghan face on the war. And that’s just a commonplace thing. And it means, let’s get an Afghan out front. But if you think about that phrase for a minute, an Afghan face is, of course, a mask over really an American war. And often the words that they use, the images that they use, are very telling, if you just look barely under them, about what they think about who’s actually running what war. I mean, you can really see in our language that we feel this is ours, it should be ours, you know, it’s our war. I mean, this has—the Afghans are ancillary to the war we’re fighting.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you propose pulling out? How do you propose Obama get out?

TOM ENGELHARDT: Well, let me say, as a start, that one of the problems with answering a question like this is, you know, basically, we’ve never tried it. I mean, in other words, it’s like talking about peace. All the money goes into war. So, you know, and in addition, as you try to get out, as was true in Vietnam for years, future fantasies are put forward: you know, there’s going to be a bloodbath, terrible things will happen. We don’t know what actually will happen in Afghanistan, if we were to pull out. We know what’s happening now, and it’s quite terrible, and it’s actually devolving. I mean, I think it’s perfectly reasonable, whether you—I mean, you could simply announce a withdrawal, a reasonable withdrawal schedule, and pull out American troops. You could offer—you could offer money. We really don’t know. I think it’s very unlikely, for instance, that the Taliban would simply take over the country. They didn’t the last time. They might get part of the country, but not all of it. We really don’t know what would happen. We just know that this will otherwise be a trillion-dollar war, which, like the Soviet war, will go on forever and ever. I mean, the Soviets, from about 1986 on, for about the last three or four years, they wanted to get out. The Soviet leadership, you look at their documents, they want to get out, but they can’t muster the will. They keep worrying, will Afghanistan be stable?, etc., etc. It goes on for years. And the problem isn’t how will we get out of Afghanistan, but when Obama decides he wants to, it’s going to be difficult.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And this most recent announcement about the vast mineral wealth—

TOM ENGELHARDT: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —in Afghanistan, especially coming, the timing of it, as the war is actually not progressing as well as the Obama administration had hoped, is it your sense that this was more sort of rallying the corporate and financial elites of the world to take more renewed interest in supporting the US effort?

TOM ENGELHARDT: I’m want convinced it’s going to have that effect, actually. First of all, as you can see from the Times today—the Times had a piece on it today—and as was true with Iraq, it’s very hard to get Western, these big Western mining companies, to come into a situation where, you know, the lithium that they’re talking about is basically under lands that basically are Taliban-controlled right now. They don’t want to send their people in there. The people who might come in are the Chinese, maybe, who would be willing to take more risks, or various state mining interests that we wouldn’t be interested in. So I’m not sure this is a great benefit in that sense.

Secondly, you know, to get—in a country with almost no infrastructure and no mining infrastructure to get anything out of the ground there, I mean, I’m sure you’re talking a—you’re not talking about now, you’re not talking about something striking that’s going to happen now. I think—yeah, I mean, it was a kind of a good news story at a bad news time, and it is significant that there’s all this stuff under Afghanistan, which was known—

AMY GOODMAN: It’s not as if it wasn’t known.

TOM ENGELHARDT: No.

AMY GOODMAN: And the question is why it’s being raised as a story now, if not to justify the US’s continued presence, that maybe the US can get these natural resources.

TOM ENGELHARDT: Let’s point out that it was known by the Russians. You know, in the Russian war, the Russians knew this. I mean, I’m struck by one small thing. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russian leader who did finally get them out, his term for Afghanistan was “the bleeding wound.” Our Afghan war commander recently referred to his kind of pet offensive in the small southern area of Marjah, where they threw in 15,000 troops in the spring, declared it a victory, and now find out that things are not going well, he’s called it a “bleeding ulcer.” There is kind of an eerie parallel there, and it reminds us that both countries will now have been in a war in Afghanistan, a place known as the graveyard of empires, for a decade.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about, finally, garrisoning of the planet.

TOM ENGELHARDT: Yes. Well, the American way of war, which is the title of my book, is based on something that, in the United States, we have basically no interest in. Unless a base closes in the United States, and then there’s an enormous uproar, a military base, we really don’t think about much our basing policy around the world. And yet—

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds, then we go to a web special after.

TOM ENGELHARDT: And yet, we have maybe up to 1,200 bases, depending on what you’re counting, maybe even more, around the world. We basically garrison the planet. Washington is a war capital. We are in a state of war. We don’t know it.

AMY GOODMAN: Tom Engelhardt, congratulations on your new book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s. We’re going to continue this after the show and put it up at democracynow.org.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/15/i_love_the_us_republic_and

“I Love the US Republic, and I Hate the US Empire”: Johan Galtung on the War in Afghanistan and How to Get Out

We turn now to the second part of my interview with Johan Galtung. Known as a founder of the field of peace and conflict studies, he’s spent the past half-century pursuing nonviolent conflict resolution in international relations. His latest book is The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What?: Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US Blossoming? I spoke to him last week about his prediction of the collapse of US empire in ten years, by 2020. In this second part of our interview, Galtung discusses his assessment of President Obama, the US corporate media and more. But we began with the war in Afghanistan, where he has worked extensively in attempts at conflict resolution.

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