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Back door to war, reopened

Afghan chaos shows Middle East
to be Empire's primary goal

 

By STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI

 

It now appears that the key aim of U.S. policymakers (run by the Perle crowd) is control, not of Central Asia, but of the Middle East. And that the former aim has been sacrificed to advance the latter. As Ahmed Rashid points out, the U.S.-backed government of Afghanistan actually has little control of the country. Preparation for the war on Iraq has served to prevent the United States from consolidating control of Afghanistan. Rashid, a close observer of the situation, writes:

There are mounting fears in Afghanistan that President George W. Bush's war against Iraq will seriously compromise further attempts by the U.S.-led Western alliance to stabilize Afghanistan — even as the U.S. Defense Department appears to be finally acknowledging its failures in helping to rebuild the country.

Almost a year after the defeat of the Taliban, President Hamid Karzai's government is weaker than it was a few months ago, ethnic and political rivalries plague the country, the military power of the warlords has increased, and there is a new wave of anti-Americanism from the Pashtun tribes in the east and south, who feel alienated and victimized both by the Kabul government and U.S. forces.

As I pointed out in "September 11 and the origins of the "War on Terrorism" — see especially part three — U.S. imperial strategists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski viewed U.S. control of Central Asia with its strategic location and energy supplies as vital for American global supremacy. That appeared to be the guiding motive for Washington's war on Afghanistan.

I now must alter my original interpretation. I definitely underplayed the role of the pro-Zionist faction. I noted their role, but I believed that the Bush administration was generally pro-American imperialist/pro-oil. It now appears that the primary policymakers in the Bush administration have been the Perle Zionists all along. Control of Central Asia is secondary to control of the Middle East. In fact, for the Perle/Likud element, the war on Afghanistan may simply have been a way to reach their ultimate and crucial goal. In other words, the war on Afghanistan was simply a means to get a coalition of forces behind a "war on terrorism," which had as its real purpose U.S. control of the Middle East in the interests of Israel.

Here's a historical analogy: the Perle/Likudnik strategy appears quite similar to Franklin Roosevelt's "back door to war" approach during World War II. Roosevelt wanted war with Japan in order to fight Germany, and he provoked Japan into attacking U.S. colonial possessions. Once the United States got into war through the back door, Roosevelt focused American military efforts on fighting Germany. For a review of Roosevelt's efforts to get the United States into the war, see my "The Case for Pearl Harbor Revisionism" at The Occidental Quarterly and also my "Pearl Harbor: facing facts" right here on the TLD site.

Undoubtedly, U.S. oil interests fear that a war in the Middle East might have a detrimental effect on oil production in America's client states. There is no evidence that those interests are pushing for war. However, they are being placated by the offer that U.S. oil companies will be able to exploit "liberated" Iraq oil resources. And to reconcile American imperialists, as opposed to Zionist imperialists in various countries, it is argued that Iraq possesses far more oil than does Central Asia. Control of that vital region would put the United States in the energy catbird's seat.

Posted October 12, 2002

© 2002 by WTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.

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