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| The US military making the world safe for US corporations paid for by our taxes |
“We can no longer
afford to let billionaires use the military to control and dominate as many
nations as possible for economic gain.” Chalmers Johnson*
by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
I remember my mother showing me a map of Africa when I was a child, I lived in Nigeria for three years back then and my sister was born there. I still have that atlas. She pointed to all the pink parts, Nigeria, Kenya, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) Ghana etc. I looked at other parts of the world and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was pink and all of India. The atlas was dated 1934 so Burma where I was born (now Myanmar) was also pink so was Cyprus and much of the Middle East. Man there was pink everywhere and it was ours. Made me feel quite important as a 8 year old or so, that the country I called mine governed such a vast part of the planet. How important it made me feel belonging to a country that was so powerful and did what it could to make the world free
Afscme Local 444, retired
I remember my mother showing me a map of Africa when I was a child, I lived in Nigeria for three years back then and my sister was born there. I still have that atlas. She pointed to all the pink parts, Nigeria, Kenya, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) Ghana etc. I looked at other parts of the world and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was pink and all of India. The atlas was dated 1934 so Burma where I was born (now Myanmar) was also pink so was Cyprus and much of the Middle East. Man there was pink everywhere and it was ours. Made me feel quite important as a 8 year old or so, that the country I called mine governed such a vast part of the planet. How important it made me feel belonging to a country that was so powerful and did what it could to make the world free
My mum didn’t really know much better. She left school at 14, went to work and died
at 85 still working. She never really retired.
The best part of her life was as an army wife living in Nigeria where
British troops could afford to hire local people to clean house or care for
children. She wasn’t a racist or a bad person, just a person of her time.
By the fifties things were changing and it seemed that these
people didn’t want British people there anymore. I remember seeing headlines in the press
about the savagery waged against honest British farmers in Kenya by
terrorists. Throughout Africa it seemed
we were not wanted. I recall a Scottish
officer with the Nickname Mad Mitch.
I have a vague memory of seeing him on TV in England, he was in Aden where we
stopped when I was a child returning to England by boat. It was Arab terrorists
this time that were attacking British troops. What was the matter with these
people? Didn’t they appreciate us? Didn’t they know what was good for them? This guy Lumumba’s followers were doing the
same thing in the Congo. And weren’t our
boys fighting communists in Malaya so Malaysians could be free? I just couldn’t
understand it.
I understand it now. I understand who were the terrorists
and who weren’t. As I grew older and
developed a wider political outlook I also came to understand that while
elements of the IRA did practice terrorist methods, the real terrorism came
from the British state, the same terrorism it inflicted on the Kikuyu of Kenya
who, as the leading elements in the Mao Mao movement drove British colonialism
from the country. In fact, I learned about the occupation of Ireland by the
British, an occupation that was hundreds of years old and that preceded the
occupations in Africa and India.
The war against the Mau Mau in Kenya was a particularly
violent one. It was really the last
colonial war British imperialism fought as it could no longer afford to
maintain its empire especially after the Second World War. The US was boss now.
Stalinism in the form of the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent China led to a
bi-polar world as the two systems vied for global influence. The Vietnamese
paid dearly for that.
It’s not an accident that the struggle against the Mau Mau
was so violent. British colonialism’s days were over. But like a wounded
animal, an empire in decline will resort to the most brutal violence to
maintain its position in the pecking order.
That’s what we are seeing with US imperialism now. The difference is
that this weakened animal is armed to the teeth and can blow up the entire
world including itself. The US capitalist class is the only force in history
that has dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations.
I wince when I read the incredibly biased US media coverage
with regards to Russia. Don’t get me wrong.
I am not a supporter of Russian imperialism and I know what Putin is,
the former KGB thug. Putin and Cheney are like two peas in a pod except Putin
could beat Cheney up.
But the declining influence of US imperialism on the world
stage is behind this terrorist state’s global aggression. The US is in debt. It
is threatened by the rise of Russia, China and to a lesser extent India and
Brazil. The war at home is making the US worker a low waged alternative to the
manufacturers of the world. The cost of
US aggression is cuts in services, jobs, education and the crumbling of the
nation’s infrastructure as a tiny percentage of US citizens accumulate massive
wealth.
This talk of a Russian aggression and annexing this and that
needs a sober assessment. Let’s look at the US presence in the world. It has
pretty much surrounded Russia as well as China with US military installations
of one type or another. This is pushing
a new arms race and is certainly not making us safer; Just the opposite.
Before he died in 2010, Chalmers Johnson wrote of the
growing world military build up of US capitalism and the need to stop it in
order for us all to be safer. The US
“empire” he wrote, “ …..consists
of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S.
territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In
just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had 99,295
people connected to U.S. military forces living and working there -- 49,364
members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178
civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of
Okinawa, the largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.”
The cost of maintaining this military presence in 2010 was
somewhere around $250 billion a year. Chalmers quotes Robert Pape author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
"America
is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing
government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other
internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's
world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends
continue, we will look back on the Bush years as the death knell of American
hegemony."
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| This is not defense |
The
architects of US foreign policy are the most efficient of the world’s
terrorists. US capitalism says Iran is a
threat as it surrounds that country with bases and invades its immediate
neighbor without justification. The US
overthrew a secular democratic government in Iran in 1953.
It
has installations in Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, Afghanistan and other
countries in Russia’s orbit. This
aggression using NATO as a junior partner is being waged on behalf of US
corporations. Iran is not threat to American workers nor is Russia, not at this
point anyway. It has reached a point where Americans will hardly be able to
travel to any country at all as victims of US foreign policy lash out at us in
a desperate attempt to slow its decline.
As this
blog reported earlier, US capitalism is the main force destabilizing the
Ukraine and supporting right wing fascist elements in its drive to extend its
influence in to Eastern Europe. It is a very dangerous game it is playing here
with our lives and the lives of all workers.
On
the other hand, so few of us travel anywhere compared to Europeans or Asians
for example that we’ll never see the other side or be confronted buy the
victims of US imperialism’s terror.
Reminding
myself once again of my earlier ignorance I eventually discovered that the
British in China had a policy they called extraterritoriality which is
described as the state of being
exempted from the jurisdiction of local law. What this meant was that a British person could kill a
Chinese man or rape a Chinese woman which was common or commit any other crime
and local authorities could not do anything about it. This procedure was
normally the result of negotiations between the parties. But the parties
consisted of a loser and a winner or the stronger and the weaker. These deals were the product of coercion.
US
imperialism forces similar conditions on those countries where it has a
presence through Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) that prevent the host
government from having any jurisdiction over US troops that commit crimes
overseas. Johnson wrote in 2010: “The
problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every continent
and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the
policies of the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of
poverty-stricken countries whose raw materials we covet.” He goes on to say: “It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide
sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from
the consequences of their behavior. “
.
Okinawa
is the most infamous example of this. Johnson
noted that “In Japan, of 3,184 U.S.
military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008, 83% were not
prosecuted. SOFA agreements allow military personnel and military
contractors accused of off-duty crimes to remain in U.S. custody while the
country in question investigates. The U.S., then, moves them out the country
before they can be charged.”
The
same can be said of the US military itself where rape is an epidemic and cover
up as common. The tragedy is that so many Americans just turn a blind eye to it
all. I know from experience that so many of us detest the role our government
plays at home and abroad. But so many people feel there is nothing that can be
done so they simply try to get on with their lives and avoid it. The news
doesn’t help as it is completely biased and there is no force in US society of
any significance that offers an alternative.
The trade union leadership is completely subservient to capital and
refuses even to fight for their own members. They are completely silent with
regards to the US war machine and the likes of the CIA.
The
cost of these wars for US corporations is borne by US workers in the form of
declining living standards and increased misery. Neither party of Wall Street, Democrats or
Republicans will show a way out. There
resides here in the Bay Area Barbara Lee, one of the most progressive or left
of the Democratic politicians. The liberal middle class loves her. But as transit workers here faced a summer of
terror and insecurity as well as two strikes she had nothing to say. She was
nowhere to be found.
After
911, I remember telling some of my co-workers that the first question we should
be asking ourselves is what is our government up to abroad that would lead to
this? We cannot ignore the conduct of this mad clique that has its hands on
levers of society. Being what we are
geographically we have been relatively unscathed, war has been tolerated as
long as Americans don’t get killed. The
present predatory wars are being fought by a small section of US society,
workers all and the rest of us bury our heads, work and party if we’re not in
jail. Most of us wouldn’t know where Crimea is or Ukraine or Bulgaria or
Romania. It is said derisively that we
learn about other countries after the Pentagon bombs them (remember Grenada?
Some threat wasn’t it?) and we see Wolf Blitzer walking over these little
interactive maps on the floor of the CNN newsroom.
Obama
and the US military machine, mad as it is, is playing a dangerous game in
Russia’s back yard. The entire European Union could be affected. We only have to look at the bases, see the
installations and where they are to se who is the aggressor. US foreign policy
is bad for Americans. Chalmers again:
“The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.”
“The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.”
As Pericles was reputed to have said: "Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't
mean politics won't take an interest in you." The events of September 11th 2001
was politics having an interest in us. Only an independent workers movement can
stop this madness. We cannot continue to ignore the actions of our government
and ignore politics. Direct action at varying levels must be part of our
movement, the building of an independent workers’ political party must be also.
We cannot rely on the Democratic Party to resolve these pressing issues.
I am confident that the US working class will enter the
stage of history and make its mark. But
we must not fool ourselves, the stakes are high and the situation is dire. The
domestic security situation has worsened since the onset of the Occupy Movement.
It is safe to say that the US security apparatus probably dwarfs the old
Stalinist KGB.
It’s not over yet, we’ve got a world to win.
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