Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Printable Version

+- Forums (http://india-forum.com)
+-- Forum: Indian Politics, Business & Economy (http://india-forum.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=6)
+--- Forum: Strategic Security of India (http://india-forum.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=18)
+--- Thread: Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism (/showthread.php?tid=807)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-03-2004

You need a subscription to access this article, i believe.

The word games have begun already. But we in the Indian subcontinent are long acquainted with these games.When a terrorist is a Muslim he is automaticallly a militant. of course it is never explained what he is militant about and of course it is never explicitly stated that these socalled brave and courageous militants are also almost always killers of women and children. the unfortunate but unavoidabe consequences of a coflict in the words of the good CEO from across the border. Unavoidable , my dear general ? all it would take is a word from you Herr General and the killing of women and children would stop.

Godhara and its aftermath is now invariably referred to as a pogrom by our homegrown leftists but it is never explained why in a pogrom hundreds of policemen are killed or that several hundred Hindus were killed. But i forget Killing of Hindus doesnt count. it matters only when Muslims are killed. Otherwise how to explain the fact that the initiating event in Godhara is hardly ever mentioned.

So the moral equivalence goes on, something that Europe is only just discovering. But we have been used to facing this moral equivalence from our long and lugubrious history. We are told, that history does not matter and neither does it matter that the greatest and most massive holocaust was committed during the last seven centuries. What matters is only the present. But what of the present ? The present where 400,000 Hindus have been driven out of otheir homes in their own country . The same present where the Hindu population of pakistan has been decimated from 5 million to nothing. The same present where Hindus in Bangladesh are systematically being eliminated. But in the word games we play the current violence in the subcontinent is all the fault of hindu nationalists such as Atal behari Vajpayee. So the moral equivalence goes on and the word games will continue to be played with gusto and with total disregard for the truth.

The more important consequence of the fecklessness of the US president in fighting the real enemy, is that the war on terrorism has become a mockery. Ameerica is continuing to pay a heavy price for its embrace of the terrorists in Pakistan, just as it paid a heavy price on 9/11 for an act committed in part by those who were initially trained by the US CIA.

Kudos to Garry kasparov for bringing attention to the subtle propaganda being waged to portray the killers and perpetrators of the violence as the victims.

QUOTEOriginally posted by Amber G.in the other forum

Stop the Moral equivalence

BY GARRY KASPAROV
Wednesday, May 19, 2004 12:01 a.m.

QUOTEIt is said that to win a battle you must be the one to choose the battleground. Since the Abu Ghraib abuses were revealed, the battleground has been chosen by those who would blur the lines between terrorists and those fighting against them. The Bush administration has contributed to the confusion with its ambiguous "war on terror." You cannot fight a word. You need targets, you need to know what you are fighting for and against. Most importantly you must have beliefs that enable you to distinguish friend from foe.
While al Qaeda may not have a headquarters to bomb, there is no shortage of visible adversaries. What is required is to name them and to take action against them. We must also drag into the light those leaders and media who fail to condemn acts of terror. It is not only Al Jazeera talking about "insurgents" in Iraq, it is CNN. Many in Europe and even some in the U.S. are trying to differentiate "legitimate" terrorism from "bad" terrorism. Those who intentionally kill innocent civilians are terrorists, as are their sponsors.Â No political agenda should be allowed to advance through terrorist activity. We need to identify our enemy, not play with words.

The situation is worse in the Muslim world.Â Calling the terrorists "militants" or "radical Islamists" presupposes the existence of moderates willing to confront the radicals. Outside of Turkey, it is very hard to find moderate clerics who will stand up to Islamist terrorists , even though the majority of their victims are Muslim. In Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr has been murdering his religious opposition and using armed gangs to establish political rule. He appears immune to anything resembling condemnation. We know that his militia receives outside support--and where would it come from other than Syria and Iran?

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-03-2004

This is a dated article. I post it because there is a substantial section of the US polity which is uneasy at the idea of a powerful India and will use all their persuasive power to prevent it from happening.

The U.S. âWar on Terrorâ and East Asia
By James Reilly

QUOTESouth Asia: Expanded Arms Sales to an Unstable Region
Once the dust settles from the current India-Pakistan dispute and the al-Qaeda manhunt in Pakistan subsides, the U.S. appears poised to dramatically expand its arms sales to South Asia. These sales, justified to "keep the military balance," will introduce more arms into this volatile region, and may well encourage China to build up or sell more arms to Pakistan to further "balance" against India.

Now that President Bush has convinced Congress to lift sanctions on arms sales to Pakistan, it is likely that the U.S. will provide arms as a reward for its critical support in the war in Afghanistan. One Pakistani defense official recently said, "We want the kind of relationship the U.S. has with Egypt in terms of weapons sales." For starters, this means the Pakistanis would like delivery of the 28 F-16 fighters purchased in the 1980s, but never delivered due to U.S. concerns about their nuclear program.

Once the U.S. opens the arms spigot for Pakistan, India will certainly demand its share of U.S. weaponry. Already U.S. ambassador Robert Blackwill has promised the Indians, "We are at the beginning of a very important arms sales relationship." If U.S. diplomats do manage to encourage India to stand down in the current dispute with Pakistan, part of the carrot they proffer will likely be expanded arms sales.

For China, South Asia is an area of great strategic importance. The border dispute that led to the 1962 war between China and India remains unresolved. The region also borders the Chinese provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang, where China continues to struggle against separatist movements. Nor are China's fears fully unrealistic. Recently a Taiwanese magazine disclosed that the U.S., Taiwan, and India have for years jointly run a listening post based in India to monitor the PRC's military movements in the region.

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-03-2004

I wonder what the fate of these meetings will be under the new dispensation. The Congress might tend to view this as a BJP thingy and distance themselves from such meetings. I hope not , plus you get a free junket to wherever. Foreeign policy should be kept out of the clutches of partisan politics. We can only hope, but old habits die hard.

JINSA Holds Second U.S.-India-Israel Conference on Counter Terrorism

QUOTEThe Indian delegation featured Prof. M.D. Nalapat, director of the School of Geopolitics at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education; V. Adm. K.K. Nayyar, former vice chief of the Indian Navy; B. Raman, the former head of the counter-terrorism division of India's external intelligence agency; Lt. Gen. R.K. Sawhney, former director general for Military Intelligence, and; Dr. Jagdish Shettigar, head of the Economics section of India's ruling BJP Party.

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-04-2004

Kaushal,

This whole "War on Terrorism" is a big scam, as far as I am concerned.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are the Sepitc Tanks from where Terrorist Mosquitoes breed, and yet they are ignored.

Whethere it is the GOP, Democrats or even Independent Third Parties, no one views the above two countries with any required degree of harshness.

One can forgive the negligence with regard to KSA, as the OIL prices have a disproportionate impact on the US (and World) economy, but what is the excuse for ignoring Pakistan? The US congress has passed the MNNA status to Pak without any hiccups. I mean $100k were wired to Mohd. Atta's a/c from a Paki (well known and documented fact) and they are in fact, rewarded for this? What does that say for US credibility?

Bin Laden is alive and kicking, everyone knows he has been in Pakistan for 4+ years (nay, "in the reigon b/w Pakistan and Afghanistan"), yet no body has the testicular fortitude in the US to do anything about it.

Because they do not want to, that is the only logical conclusion.

War on Terror is nothing but a tool to get States Hostile to the US to mend their ways (Libya) or face death (North Korea, Iran and Syria).

The need for a multi-polar world, now, more than ever is felt acutely. Absolute Power has corrupted the powers that be in the US absolutely.

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - acharya - 06-04-2004

http://www.journalofastrology.com/USA%20De...ing%20years.htm

Rahu 11 September 2004

A fearful stock market crash and terrible US losses can lead to a decision to use more dangerous weapons.

It will go on like this till the antardasha is over Saturn ending 13 August 2007).

Sometime towards the end of 2007, when Saturn will have crossed Magha nakshatra in Simha, the war will begin to show some visible abatement. But Rahu will take some more years to reach Dhanu to give to USA a breather. The final experience of it all for USA will be much worse than its Vietnamese misadventure (1956-74).

What will be the likely consequences of all this ? Drawable inferences are.

1) USAâs position as a super power in an unipolar world will have suffered its worst damage. China in the meantime will begin to rise to occupy position as the most dreaded world power. (will be discussed later)

2)World view of Islam as a religion will undergo a very unfavourable change as has been said by a US Senator thus" âThere is no such thing as peaceful Islam,ââ Lind said. ââIslamics cannot fit into an America in which the first loyalty is to the American Constitution"

3) What will be the assessment made of USA being described as world as worldâs biggest terrorist state is left to the readers to judge. Read what Chomsky has to say.

Kolkata, Oct. 22. (PTI): Noted thinker Noam Chomsky today said India would gain "nothing" by supporting the US offensive in Afghanistan but get a "kick in the face" if it came in the way of Americaâs interests.

Describing the US as the "worldâs biggest terrorist State", the self-confessed anarchist said following the September 11 attacks in his country, it was carrying on a "worse" kind of terrorism on Afghanistan."

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Hauma Hamiddha - 06-08-2004

saudi brew

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-08-2004

folks listen carefully to this program.
CIA and ISI and how the prez was petrified for seven long minutes before even contemplating any action. Was he waiting for father above to give him a call for action?

FreshAir

[QUOTE] Investigative Journalist James Bamford

Bamford is the former investigative producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. He's the author of the bestsellers Body of Secrets and The Puzzle Palace. He's also written investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. His new book is A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies.

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-19-2004

Saudi militants behead American captive

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Bhootnath - 06-19-2004

> Saudi militants behead American captive

As an Indian , I am not really sad abt this, though I dont celebrate it either.

My fellow citizens cutting across various strata have been through similar massacers nobody shows any concern, but for occasional mumbo jumbo when USA wants Indian Soldiers to cut their loses.

When NDA lost , I actually in some corner of my heart had a sigh of relief , that now we *may not* succumb to pressures of Buffoons Bush & Blair.

Spin > A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies.

Spinrao , funny isn't it , how Stiff Upper Lip Johann & Dr Tim have gone on vaccation , may be searching for elusive WMD!

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-20-2004

Halford Mackinder coined the phrase Geopolitics.

He (Paul Kennedy) feels that the US establishment is already running for cover in Iraq. But if India were one-tenth as steadfast as the US is that would be still a great improvement

Critical Analysis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The pivot of history. The US needs to blend democratic ideals with geopolitical wisdom
By Paul Kennedy
Jun 21, 2004, 23:16

QUOTEThis year marks the centenary of a remarkable article, The Geographical Pivot of History, published in the Geographical Journal and written by Sir Halford Mackinder, the founder of the school of geopolitics. Geopolitics may be defined, crudely, as the influence of geography upon politics: how distance and terrain and climate affect the affairs of states and men. Because of geography, for example, Athens was a thalassocracy - a sea empire - whereas Sparta was a land power. Eighteenth-century Britain, as an island, enjoyed the freedom of the seas; eighteenth-century Prussia was ringed by foes on all sides. One of the US's current great advantages is that, in contrast to Prussia then or Russia today, it has no great powers on its borders.,,

Already the neo-cons are running for cover, and some conservative critics are calling the whole Iraq affair misconceived and bungled. Though the administration will vigorously deny it, the state department, the national security council and the Pentagon must each be searching for an exit strategy. The worms are turning, very fast. Even if President Bush clings on in office after November's elections, many of his supporters in the Senate and house may have been swept away.

But those who would rejoice at such an outcome ought to bear in mind Mackinder's second concern. A US democracy that rejects Rumsfeldian imperial overstretch in the Middle East is also one that may be nervous of engagements elsewhere; that blocks security council resolutions for fresh peacekeeping and peace-enforcement missions, however much needed; that declines to help deal with genocide in Africa. The pendulum could indeed swing too far. And the consequences for all of us, but especially war-torn communities, could be severe.

Ever since 1945, US leaders have shouldered the responsibility of walking a fine line between doing too little and doing too much in world affairs. Drifting in either direction brings dangers and critics. It seems, though, that the Bush administration plunged a little too readily into large military interventions along Mackinder's rimlands; and yet it is also true that an equally serious predicament awaits if the US public and politicians overreact and decline to assume the responsibilities called for by their country's world position. The last thing we need is a US repeating its policies of 1919. What we really need is a US that can recapture its attitudes and policies of 1945, and blend democratic ideals with geopolitical wisdom. Is that really impossible?

Â· Paul Kennedy is the Dilworth professor of history and director of international security studies at Yale University. His books include The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Hauma Hamiddha - 06-22-2004

The eastern front is brewing

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-22-2004

List of countries involved in major or mini Islamic war
Asia-
India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Srilanka, Bangla Desh, Thailand, Indoneisa, Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Syria, Spain

Africa
Nigeria, Kenya

Rich/Western/East bloc nation-
USA, Canada, UK, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Romania. Poland

Looks like begining or we are already fighting World War III

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-23-2004

US gets cosy with Taliban's point man

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - acharya - 06-24-2004

2004
Empire of Denial
Filed under: foreign affairs
My old housemate has devised a new and terrifying myth of power

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 1st June 2004

No one could have called ours a raucous household. The passions of our first two years at university were spent, and we were now buried in our books. My work, as usual, was quixotic and contradictory (studying zoology by day, writing a terrible novel by night), Niallâs was focussed and unrelenting. He was charming, generous-spirited and easy to live with, but I think it is fair to say that everyone was frightened of him.

Itâs not just that my housemate knew his subject better than his contemporaries, and knew where he wanted to take it. He also knew how to do it. While the rest of us were fumbling with bunches of odd-shaped keys, trying to jam each of them into the lock in turn, the doors kept swinging open for him. Niall Ferguson is now professor of history at New York University, and rapidly becoming one of the most celebrated intellectuals in the United States.

After university we retained an occasional friendship, during which we never quite engaged with each otherâs politics. I havenât seen him for three or four years, and Iâm not sure what weâd talk about today. Our views, which were never close, have now polarised completely. We find ourselves on opposite sides of what will surely be the big fight of the early 21st century: global democracy versus American empire.

His new book and television series, Colossus, is an attempt to persuade the United States that it must take its imperial role seriously, becoming in the 21st century what Britain was in the 19th. âMany parts of the worldâ, he claims, âwould benefit from a period of American ruleâ.(1) The US should stop messing about with âinformal empireâ, and assert âdirect ruleâ over countries which ârequire the imposition of some kind of external authorityâ. But it is held back by âthe absence of a will to power.â(2)

Colossus, like all Niallâs books, is erudite and intelligent. The quality of his research forces those of us who take a different view to raise our game. He has remembered what so many have chosen to forget: that the United States is and has always been an empire: an âempire in denialâ. He shows that there was little difference between the westward expansion of the founding states and the growth of âthe great land empires of the pastâ. He argues that its control of Central America, the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Middle East has long had an imperial character. He makes the interesting point that the US found, in its attempt to contain the Soviet Union, âthe perfect ideology for its own peculiar kind of empire: the imperialism of anti-imperialismâ.(3)

But he asks us to remember only in order to persuade us to forget. He seeks to exchange an empire in denial for an empire of denial.

He forgets those who are always forgotten by empire: the victims. He remembers, of course, that Saddam Hussein gassed his political opponents in Iraq. He forgets that the British did the same. He talks of the âgenuine benefits in the form of free tradeâ(4) granted by Britain to its colonies, but forgets the devastating famines this policy caused in India (he is aware of Mike Davisâs book Late Victorian Holocausts (5), but there is no sign that he has read it). He writes of the âinstitutions, knowledge and cultureâ bequeathed to the colonies (6), but forgets that Britain, as Basil Davidson showed (7), deliberately destroyed the institutions, knowledge and culture (including the hospitals and universities established by educated West Africans) of the colonised.

He forgets too that there was a difference between the interests of the British empire and those of its subject peoples. He writes of the massive British investments in ârailways and port facilitiesâ and âplantations to produce new cash crops like tea, cotton, indigo and rubberâ(8) as if we seized the land, exploited the labour and exported the wealth of the colonies for the benefit of the natives.

Strangely, for one who knows empire so well, Niall also either forgets or fails to understand the current realities of Americaâs informal rule. He dismisses the idea that the US wishes to control Middle Eastern oil reserves, on the grounds that the US is already âoil-richâ.(9) Itâs not just that oil production peaked in the United States in 1970. The US government knows that if you control the diminishing resource on which every other nation depends, you will, as that resource dries up, come to exercise precisely the kind of indirect rule that Ferguson documents elsewhere. While brilliantly exposing Americaâs imperial denial, he takes at face value almost every other story it tells about its role in the world. He accepts, for example, that the US went to war with Iraq because âits patience ran outâ when Saddam Hussein failed to comply with the weapons inspectors (10). Thereâs not a word about the way in which the US itself undermined and then destroyed the inspection missions.

When you forget, you must fill the memory gap with a story. And the story that all enthusiasts for empire tell themselves is that independent peoples have no one but themselves to blame for their misfortunes. The problem faced by many African states, Niall insists, âis simply misgovernment: corrupt and lawless dictators whose conduct makes economic development impossibleâ.(11) âSimplyâ misgovernment?

This is a continent, let us remember, whose economies are largely controlled by the International Monetary Fund. As Joseph Stiglitz has shown (12), it has used its power to run a virtual empire for US capital, forcing poorer nations to remove their defences against financial speculators and corporate theft. This is partly why some of the poorest African nations have the worldâs most liberal trade regimes. It is precisely because of forced liberalisation of the kind Ferguson recommends that growth in Sub-Saharan Africa fell from 36 per cent between 1960 and 1980 (when countries exercised more control over their economies) to minus 15 per cent between 1980 and 1998 (13). The worldâs problem, Niall contends, is that the unaccountable government of the poor by the rich, which already has had such disastrous consequences, has not gone far enough.

The timing of all this is, of course, appalling. As the US has sought to impose direct imperial rule in Iraq, it has earned the hatred of much of the developing world. But we should never underestimate the willingness of the powerful to flatter themselves. Unaccountable power requires a justifying myth, and the US government might just be dumb enough to believe the one that Niall has sought to revive. My old friend could get us all into a great deal of trouble.

But even he doesnât really seem to believe it. His book, above all, is a lament for the opportunities the US has lost. It is, he admits, so far from finding the will to recreate the British empire that the world could soon be left âwithout even one dominant imperial power.â(14) What better opportunity could there then be to press for global democracy?

George Monbiotâs book The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order is now published in paperback.
www.monbiot.com

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - acharya - 06-24-2004

/4/2004
Apocalypse Please
Filed under: religion
US policy towards the Middle East is driven by a rarefied form of madness. It?s time we took it seriously.

US policy towards the Middle East is driven by a rarefied form of madness. It?s time we took it seriously.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 20th April 2004

To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the stateâs Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.1

The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; âany mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of gunsâ should be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences.2 Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the âscreaming and near fistfightsâ began.

I donât know what the original motion said, but apparently it was âwatered down significantlyâ as a result of the shouting match. The motion they adopted stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that Arab states should be pressured to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism.3 Good to see that the extremists didnât prevail then.

But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israelâs occupation of the rest of its âBiblical landsâ (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the Antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to earth.

What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all âtrue believersâ (ie those who believe what THEY believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.

The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000 three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there)4, sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/European Union/France or whoever the legions of the Antichrist turn out to be.

The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their efforts. The Antichrist is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi Annan, Javier Solana, Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi.5 The Walmart corporation is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), because it wants to radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the Mark of the Beast.6 By clicking on www.raptureready.com, you can discover how close you might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the maximum five points (the EU is debating its constitution, there was a freak hurricane in the South Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its leaders), but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate decline in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the Antichrist (both of which score only two).

We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that between 15 and 18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings.7 A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure included 33% of Republicans.8 The best-selling contemporary books in the United States are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series, which provide what is usually described as a âfictionalisedâ account of the Rapture (this, apparently, distinguishes it from the other one), with plenty of dripping details about what will happen to the rest of us. The people who believe all this donât believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death.

And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the co-author of the marvellously-named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing campaign finance reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset that âthere is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking.â9

So here we have a major political constituency â representing much of the current presidentâs core vote â in the most powerful nation on earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelations (9:14-15) maintains that four angels âwhich are bound in the great river Euphratesâ will be released âto slay the third part of men.â They batter down the doors of the White House as soon as its support for Israel wavers: when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and never mentioned the matter again.10

The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, itâs a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters donât get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.

George Monbiotâs book The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order is now published in paperback.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.harriscountygop.com/sections/sdconv/sdconv.asp

2. eg. Committee on Resolutions, Harris County Republican Party, 27th March 2004. Final report of
Senatorial District 17 Convention. http://www.harriscountygop.com/sections/sdconv/sdconv.asp

3. ibid.

4. Paul Vallely, 7th September 2003. The Eve of Destruction. The Independent on Sunday.

5. eg. http://www.raptureready.us

6. eg. http://www.raptureready.com/rap16.html (note: 5 and 6 are rival sites)

7. Megan K. Stack, 31st July 2003. Houseâs DeLay Bonds With Israeli Hawks, Los Angeles Times; Matthew Engel,
28th October 2002. Meet the new Zionists. The Guardian; Paul Vallely, ibid.

8. Donald E. Wagner, 28th June 2003. Marching to Zion: the evangelical-Jewish alliance. Christian Century.

9. Leader, 1st August 2003. DeLayâs Foreign Meddling. Los Angeles Times.

10. Jane Lampman, 18th February 2004. The End of the World. The Christian Science Monitor.

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - acharya - 06-25-2004

> While there might be foreign elements among them and they may be operating
> against American forces in Afghanistan, in my view that is what they are:
> opponents, of a governmental policy; not enemies, not insurgents, not
> terrorists.

Thank you Zulfikar for circulating the article.

Brigadier Shaukar Qadir is right.

General Musharraf claimed that he had a mandate from the people on the basis of a presidential election held when he was in uniform and was the only candidate. No one agreed with him; his legitimacy in power was suspect. He has since secured a vote of confidence from the parliament that does buttress his legitimacy but his insistence on staying in uniform puts a question mark on it once again.

That he has employed the Pakistan Army to hunt the opponents of American presence in Afghanistan - the very people we supported and helped when they were resisting Soviet occupation - makes General Musharraf extremely unpopular and the question mark over his legitimacy has reappeared. That he calls the Afghans who resist American occupation 'terrorists' and the Pakistanis who help them 'miscreants' is self-fulfilling.

His decision to use force against them has reinforced their legitimacy and increased their popularity and robbed him of both. Wana operation is causing destabilisation of the country unprecedented in its scale. It is times General Musharraf reviewed the situation because the policy of uncritical obedience of America is dangerous for Pakistan. His decision undermines the respect of the people the armed forces must enjoy if they are to perform their role properly; it puts his own life and that of hundreds of thousands of servicemen all over Pakistan in peril. Even the power of America has failed to secure the submission of Iraqis. The Afghans brought the Soviet power to its knees. The armed forces operating without the support of the people always prove to be powerless. So have they in Wana.

+ Brigadier Usman Khalid +
Director London Institute of South Asia

P.S. The situation in Karachi is quite different. The wise politicians of Sindh have always realised that they can frustrate the menace of MQM only with the help of the armed forces and the majority people of the Punjab. It is the Sindhi nationalists among them, who neither have patriotism nor wisdom, who undermine them.

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Bhootnath - 06-25-2004

quote:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally posted by Alok Niranjan:
speaking of books, any gurus here care to elaborate on this Mr. Anonymous dude of the CIA?

out the six reasons he has listed for why OBL hates America, one of them is "American support of suppression of muslims in Russia and India" ...

on the flip side, he says that if America believes that it is right to pursue said six policies, it should win the war without being squeamish and going for the kill ... i.e., more indiscriminate bombings and wider set of targets (countries?) ...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Acharya > replied ...

By supporting democracy and secularism inside India , US is indirectly helping India to remain a multicultural country which the Islamists want to change. The long term plan of the islamists is to create the moghul version of the empire and TSP is the main force behind it. Byt supporting India , US is blocking the aims of TSP and Islamists.

----------------

How is US supporting democracy & secularism in India Acharya ?

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-27-2004

First I read this article:

Pipelines or pipe dreams at
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jun2004-daily/2...004/oped/o4.htm

Then I dig a little more and find this article.

Part One of a two-part series Players on a rigged grand chessboard: Bridas,

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Argentine oil company Bridas, led by its ambitious chairman, Carlos Bulgheroni, became the first company to exploit the oil fields of Turkmenistan and propose a pipeline through neighboring Afghanistan. A powerful US-backed consortium intent on building its own pipeline through the same Afghan corridor would oppose Bridas' project.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Coveted Trans-Afghan Route

Upon successfully negotiating leases to explore in Turkmenistan, Bridas was awarded exploration contracts for the Keimar block near the Caspian Sea, and the Yashlar block near the Afghanistan border. By March 1995, Bulgheroni had accords with Turkmenistan and Pakistan granting Bridas construction rights for a pipeline into Afghanistan, pending negotiations with the civil war-torn country.

The following year, after extensive meetings with warlords throughout Afghanistan, Bridas had a 30-year agreement with the Rabbani regime to build and operate an 875-mile gas pipeline across Afghanistan.

Bulgheroni believed that his pipeline would promote peace as well as material wealth in the region. He approached other companies, including Unocal and its then-CEO, Roger Beach, to join an international consortium.

But Unocal was not interested in a partnership. The United States government, its affiliated transnational oil and construction companies, and the ruling elite of the West had coveted the same oil and gas transit route for years.

A trans-Afghanistan pipeline was not simply a business matter, but a key component of a broader geo-strategic agenda: total military and economic control of Eurasia (the Middle East and former Soviet Central Asian republics). Zbigniew Brezezinski describes this region in his book "The Grand Chessboard-American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" as "the center of world power." Capturing the region's oil wealth, and carving out territory in order to build a network of transit routes, was a primary objective of US military interventions throughout the 1990s in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Caspian Sea.

As of 1992, 11 western oil companies controlled more than 50 percent of all oil investments in the Caspian Basin, including Unocal, Amoco, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Pennzoil, Texaco, Phillips and British Petroleum.

In "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" (a definitive work that is a primary source for this report), Ahmed Rashid wrote, "US oil companies who had spearheaded the first US forays into the region wanted a greater say in US policy making."

Business and policy planning groups active in Central Asia, such as the Foreign Oil Companies Group operated with the full support of the US State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA and the Department of Energy and Commerce.

Among the most active operatives for US efforts: Brezezinski (a consultant to Amoco, and architect of the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1970s), Henry Kissinger (advisor to Unocal), and Alexander Haig (a lobbyist for Turkmenistan), and Dick Cheney (Halliburton, US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce).

Unocal's Central Asia envoys consisted of former US defense and intelligence officials. Robert Oakley, the former US ambassador to Pakistan, was a "counter-terrorism" specialist for the Reagan administration who armed and trained the mujahadeen during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. He was an Iran-Contra conspirator charged by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh as a key figure involved in arms shipments to Iran.

Richard Armitage, the current Deputy Defense Secretary, was another Iran-Contra player in Unocal's employ. A former Navy SEAL, covert operative in Laos, director with the Carlyle Group, Armitage is allegedly deeply linked to terrorist and criminal networks in the Middle East, and the new independent states of the former Soviet Union (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrghistan).

Armitage was no stranger to pipelines. As a member of the Burma/Myanmar Forum, a group that received major funding from Unocal, Armitage was implicated in a lawsuit filed by Burmese villagers who suffered human rights abuses during the construction of a Unocal pipeline. (Halliburton, under Dick Cheney, performed contract work on the same Burmese project.)

Bridas Versus the New World Order
Much to Bridas' dismay, Unocal went directly to regional leaders with its own proposal. Unocal formed its own competing US-led, Washington-sponsored consortium that included Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil, aligned with Saudi Prince Abdullah and King Fahd. Other partners included Russia's Gazprom and Turkmenistan's state-owned Turkmenrozgas.

John Imle, president of Unocal (and member of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce with Armitage, Cheney, Brezezinski and other ubiquitous figures), lobbied Turkmenistan's president Niyazov and prime minister Bhutto of Pakistan, offering a Unocal pipeline following the same route as Bridas.'

Dazzled by the prospect of an alliance with the US, Niyazov asked Bridas to renegotiate its past contract and blocked Bridas' exports from Keimar field. Bridas responded by filing three cases with the International Chamber of Commerce against Turkmenistan for breach of contract. (Bridas won.) Bridas also filed a lawsuit in Texas charging Unocal with civil conspiracy and "tortuous interference with business relations." While its officers were negotiating with Pakistani and Turkmen oil and gas officials, Bridas claimed that Unocal had stolen its idea, and coerced the Turkmen government into blocking Bridas from Keimir field. (The suit was dismissed in 1998 by Judge Brady G. Elliott, a Republican, who claimed that any dispute between Unocal and Bridas was governed by the laws of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, rather than Texas law.)

In October 1995, with neither company in a winning position, Bulgheroni and Imle accompanied Niyazov to the opening of the UN General Assembly. There, Niyazov awarded Unocal with a contract for a 918-mile natural gas pipeline. Bulgheroni was shocked. At the announcement ceremony, Unocal consultant Henry Kissinger said that the deal looked like "the triumph of hope over experience."

Later, Unocal's consortium, CentGas, would secure another contract for a companion 1,050-mile oil pipeline from Dauletabad through Afghanistan that would connect to a tanker loading port in Pakistan on the coast of the Arabian Sea.

Although Unocal had agreements with the governments on either end of the proposed route, Bridas still had the contract with Afghanistan.

The problem was resolved via the CIA and Pakistani ISI-backed Taliban. Following a visit to Kandahar by US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphael in the fall of 1996, the Taliban entered Kabul and sent the Rabbani government packing.

Bridas' agreement with Rabbani would have to be renegotiated.

Wooing the Taliban

According to Ahmed Rashid, "Unocal's real influence with the Taliban was that their project carried the possibility of US recognition, which the Taliban were desperately anxious to secure."

Unocal wasted no time greasing the palms of the Taliban. It offered humanitarian aid to Afghan warlords who would form a council to supervise the pipeline project. It provided a new mobile phone network between Kabul and Kandahar. Unocal also promised to help rebuild Kandahar, and donated $9,000 to the University of Nebraska's Center for Afghan Studies. The US State Department, through its aid organization USAID, contributed significant education funding for Taliban. In the spring of 1996, Unocal executives flew Uzbek leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum to Dallas to discuss pipeline passage through his northern (Northern Alliance-controlled) territories.

Bridas countered by forming an alliance with Ningarcho, a Saudi company closely aligned with Prince Turki el-Faisal, the Saudi intelligence chief. Turki was a mentor to Osama bin Laden, the ally of the Taliban who was publicly feuding with the Saudi royal family. As a gesture for Bridas, Prince Turki provided the Taliban with communications equipment and a fleet of pickup trucks. Now Bridas proposed two consortiums, one to build the Afghanistan portion, and another to take care of both ends of the line. By November 1996, Bridas claimed that it had an agreement signed by the Taliban and Dostumâtrumping Unocal.

The competition between Unocal and Bridas, as described by Rashid, "began to reflect the competition within the Saudi Royal family."

In 1997, Taliban officials traveled twice to Washington, D.C. and Buenos Aires to be wined and dined by Unocal and Bridas. No agreements were signed.

It appeared to Unocal that the Taliban was balking. In addition to royalties, the Taliban demanded funding for infrastructure projects, including roads and power plants. The Taliban also announced plans to revive the Afghan National Oil Company, which had been abolished by the Soviet regime in the late 1970s.

Osama bin Laden (who issued his fatwa against the West in 1998) advised the Taliban to sign with Bridas. In addition to offering the Taliban a higher bid, Bridas proposed an open pipeline accessible to warlords and local users. Unocal's pipeline was closedâfor export purposes only. Bridas' plan also did not require outside financing, while Unocal's required a loan from the western financial institutions (the World Bank), which in turn would leave Afghanistan vulnerable to demands from western governments.

Bridas' approach to business was more to the Taliban's liking. Where Bulgheroni and Bridas' engineers would take the time to "sip tea with Afghan tribesmen," Unocal's American executives issued top-down edicts from corporate headquarters and the US Embassy (including a demand to open talks with the CIA-backed Northern Alliance).

While seemingly well received within Afghanistan, Bridas' problems with Turkmenistan (which they blamed on Unocal and US interference) had left them cash-strapped and without a supply.

In 1997, they went searching for a major partner with the clout to break the deadlock with Turkmenistan. They found one in Amoco. Bridas sold 60 percent of its Latin American assets to Amoco. Carlos Bulgheroni and his contingent retained the remaining minority 40 percent. Facilitating the merger were other icons of transnational finance, Chase Manhattan (representing Bridas), Morgan Stanley (handling Amoco) and Arthur Andersen (facilitator of post-merger integration). Zbigniew Brezezinski was a consultant for Amoco.

(Amoco would merge with British Petroleum a year later. BP is represented by the law firm of Baker & Botts, whose principal attorney is James Baker, lifelong Bush friend, former secretary of state, and a member of the Carlyle Group.)

Recognizing the significance of the merger, a Pakistani oil company executive hinted, "If these (Central Asian) countries want a big US company involved, Amoco is far bigger than Unocal."

Clearing the Chessboard Again

By 1998, while the Argentine contingent made slow progress, Unocal faced a number of new problems.

Gazprom pulled out of CentGas when Russia complained about the anti-Russian agenda of the US. This forced Unocal to expand CentGas to include Japanese and South Korean gas companies, while maintaining the dominant share with Delta.

Human rights groups began protesting Unocal's dealings with the brutal Taliban. Still riding years of Clinton bashing and scandal mongering, conservative Republicans in the US attacked the Clinton administration's Central Asia policy for its lack of clarity and "leadership."

Once again, violence would change the dynamic.

In response to the bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania (attributed to bin Laden), President Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan. The administration broke off diplomatic contact with the Taliban, and UN sanctions were imposed.

Unocal withdrew from CentGas, and informed the State Department "the gas pipeline would not proceed until an internationally recognized government was in place in Afghanistan." Although Unocal continued on and off negotiations on the oil pipeline (a separate project), the lack of support from Washington hampered efforts.

Meanwhile, Bridas declared that it would not need to wait for resolution of political issues, and repeated its intention of moving forward with the Afghan gas pipeline project on its own. Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan tried to push Saudi Arabia to proceed with CentGas (Delta of Saudi Arabia was now the leader). But war and US-Taliban tension made business impossible.

For the remainder of the Clinton presidency, there would be no official US or UN recognition of Afghanistan. And no progress on the pipeline.

Then George Walker Bush took the White House.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larry Chin writes for the Online Journal. He is a frequent CRG Contributor. Copyright Larry Chin, Online Journal 2002. Reprinted for Fair use only.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203A.html

***********************************************
Whaddya know?

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-28-2004

Oil, the Taliban and the Political Balance of Central Asia

The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia 
QUOTEThe Great Game today is about access to the regionâs substantial and largely underdeveloped reserves of petroleum and natural gas. The former Soviet Republics of the Caucasus region are also players in this story. Before the United States occupied Iraq and before Osama bin-Laden became a household dirty word, American foreign policy favored an economic plan to build an oil pipeline from post-Soviet Azerbaijan, through post-Soviet Georgia, to an Eastern Mediterranean port in Turkey. This pipeline, if built, might also transport oil from other friendly former Soviet Republics in Central Asia. The neighboring Russian Federal Republic, Peopleâs Republic of China, and Islamic Republic of Iran have not been consulted in the formulation of this plan. All three nations have since expressed muted hostility at American involvement in the region. The pipelineâs purpose would be to reduce or eliminate American/Western dependence on oil produced by the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. Most of the Caucasian and Central Asian nations do not have a history of hostility toward Israel and none of them are, or have been, members of OPEC. Both conditions are concentric to current American foreign policy.

U.S. support for Israelâs continued existence in the Mideast remains a mainstay of American foreign policy, but an energy policy linked to finding a reliable source of reasonably cheap fossil fuel is relatively new. OPECâs boycott of the sale of oil to the United States after the 1972 Yom Kippur War has made filling the gas tanks of American cars at agreeable prices a goal of American foreign policy and an achievement which any political party in the U.S. wanting to successfully run a presidential candidate would want to take credit for. Our current Chief Executive can offer his impression of Woodrow Wilson in preaching the expansion of American-style democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere all he wants to, but Lutz Klevemanâs interviews with Afghan, Russian, Uzbek, and other regional leaders indicate that something else is the primary motivation for American presence in the region. Such people believe that U.S.involvement in Afghanistan is neither about promoting democracy or stopping Al Queda. The Americans are believed to be in Central Asia for oil and, with respect to Afghanistan, the right of way for an oil pipeline. The United Statesâ supposed âdemocratic reconstructionâ of the national government of Afghanistan appears shallow in Klevemanâs reporting. Local warlords lack the systematic brutality of the Taliban, but remain very much in charge of their regions. With one group of Islamic fundamentalist thugs gone, another group of political muscle men now seem to be in charge. These local bosses refer to Afghanistanâs President Karzai as the âMayor of Kabul.â

East of Kabul, many of the Taliban and Al Queda fighters that our forces battled in the caves of the Hindu Kush are now welcomed and glorified in neighboring Pakistan. Much of Pakistan along the Afghan border is not controlled by Pervez Musharrafâs government in Islamabad. Pakistanâs Khyber Agency is in much the same situation as was Northern Mexico in the early twentieth century. Just as the national government in Mexico City was unable to offer the United States the head of Pancho Villa on a platter in 1916, Islamabad does not have the necessary power in the frontier region to offer up Osama bin-Laden to the American justice system. Elsewhere in Central Asia, the prospects for pro-American ideas and institutions are shown as not particularly bright. On the economic front, visions of a new American source of petrodollars range in the authorâs estimation from hard-choice deals to improbable fantasies in this part of the world.

Geopolitics And The War On Terrrorism - Guest - 06-28-2004

The Forging of 'Pipelineistan'QUOTE[Ed. Note: The need for major oil companies to monetize billions in investments in Central Asian oil fields has been cited frequently by FTW as one of the major motivations for U.S. complicity in the attacks of last September. Other motives have included economic control of an estimated $200 billion in cash generated by the opium trade from the region, geopolitical neutralization of potential threats to U.S. global dominance and, more recently, an apparently frenzied and progressively less coordinated effort to do whatever is necessary to sustain a failing U.S. economy.