The template for such covert regime change has been developed by the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies and various think-tanks such as RAND Corporation over decades, beginning with the May 1968 destabilization of the de Gaulle presidency in France. This is the first time since the US-backed regime changes in Eastern Europe some two decades back that Washington has initiated simultaneous operations in many countries in a region. It is a strategy born of a certain desperation and one not without significant risk for the Pentagon and for the long-term Wall Street agenda. What the outcome will be for the peoples of the region and for the world is as yet unclear.
Category: Head Stories
The US has been seeking to play a complex game amidst these developments, which it did not anticipate and cannot control. The realistic assessment of the Obama administration, thus far, is that the democratic trend is probably irreversible, so the goal becomes how to orchestrate a transition without endangering “stability” in the region as a whole.
Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported:
The Pentagon is moving U.S. warships and other military assets to make sure it is prepared in case evacuation of U.S. citizens from Egypt becomes necessary, officials said Friday.
The Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship carrying 700 to 800 troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and the Ponce have arrived in the Red Sea, putting them off Egypt’s shores in case the situation worsens.
Pentagon officials emphasized that military intervention in Egypt was not being contemplated and that the warships were being moved only for contingency purposes in case evacuations became necessary.
The United States, so far, is essentially following the usual playbook. I mean, there have been many times when some favored dictator has lost control or is in danger of losing control. There’s a kind of a standard routine—Marcos, Duvalier, Ceausescu, strongly supported by the United States and Britain, Suharto: keep supporting them as long as possible; then, when it becomes unsustainable—typically, say, if the army shifts sides—switch 180 degrees, claim to have been on the side of the people all along, erase the past, and then make whatever moves are possible to restore the old system under new names. That succeeds or fails depending on the circumstances.
Obama’s call to Mubarak for an orderly transition over the next seven months to some kind of reformist government is nothing but a cynical ploy by the US puppet masters to rearrange the furniture and window dressing in its Middle East torture chamber/garrison. The notion that all the outstanding painful grievances of the people can be addressed merely by the installation of a few moderate individuals, such as Mohammed El Baradei (he who has lived comfortably in Vienna for years), points only to Washington’s incorrigible arrogance and ignorance towards the masses. Do these neocolonialists not get it? Their day is over.
Unlike the era of FDR, war will not get the economy moving. The U.S. has been engaged in the longest war in our history in Afghanistan, still has tens of thousands of troops and mercenaries in Iraq and is expanding the war in Pakistan. Wars are not creating the kind of WW II war economy as the methods of war have changed. At a cost of $1 million borrowed dollars per troop per year in Afghanistan the war is a drain on the economy not a stimulus.
The sitting American president, senators, house representatives, the corporate media and their think-tanks uniformly challenged the visiting Chinese president as their guest to their own turf with the latter’s “human rights” issue. It seems first and foremost the host people look coward and then very much hypocritical.
Tunisia and the IMF’s Diktats: How Macro-Economic Policy Triggers Worldwide Poverty and Unemployment
More generally, “the harsh economic and social realities underlying IMF intervention are soaring food prices, local-level famines, massive lay-offs of urban workers and civil servants and the destruction of social programs. Internal purchasing power has collapsed, health clinics and schools have been closed down, hundreds of millions of children have been denied the right to primary education.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Famine, op cit.)
When Eisenhower warned in this farewell address of the “potential” for the “disastrous rise of misplaced power”, he was referring to the danger that militarist interests would gain control over the country’s national security policy. The only reason it didn’t happen on Ike’s watch is that he stood up to the military and its allies.
This new century will indeed be an interesting one. The prospects of a new global war are increasing with every accelerated military adventure. The primary antagonist in this theatre of the absurd is without a doubt, the United States. If the world is headed for World War III, it is because America has made such a situation inevitable. One cannot preclude that for many global elites, such a result may be desirable in and of itself.