A showdown is brewing between Republicans and Democrats over the Iraq War once again. The Bush administration is stirring the pot once again by negotiating an agreement with the “sovereign” Iraqi government to place U.S. military troops and bases permanently on Iraqi soil despite strong objections from many Democrats.
A common flaw in U.S. foreign policy is the politicization of foreign assistance. Whether Republican or Democratic, U.S. administrations allow narrowly defined “national interests” – instead of needs, priorities, and realities in a given country – to dictate foreign assistance. As a result, foreign aid often backfires, undermining long-term U.S. interests and fueling instability, conflict, and violations of core human rights standards. Nowhere is this truer than in Central Africa’s Great Lakes Region. Today, President George W. Bush supports corrupt, illegitimate regimes that will either cooperate in the Global War on Terror, provide U.S. companies access to vital natural resources, or both. If history is any indication, this infusion of wealth and military training is likely to be disastrous for the people of Africa.
Since the closure of its military bases in the country in 1991, the United States has incrementally regained, transformed, and deepened its military presence and intervention in the Philippines. The manner in which the United States has attempted to re-establish basing in the Philippines illustrates its attempts to radically overhaul its global offensive capabilities to become more agile and efficient while overcoming mounting domestic opposition to its presence around the world.
In February 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would create a new military command for Africa, to be known as the Africa Command or AFRICOM, to protect U.S. national security interests on the African continent. Previously, control over U.S. military operations in Africa was divided between three different commands: European Command, which oversaw North Africa and most of sub-Saharan Africa; Central Command, which had responsibility for Egypt and the Horn of Africa; and Pacific Command, which administered the Indian Ocean and Madagascar.
Someone should erect a monument in Pristina to Slobodan Miloševic as the godfather of the new country. If he had not abolished Kosovar autonomy, practiced a form of apartheid for a decade, and rounded it off with a brutal episode of ethnic cleansing and mass murder, Kosovo would not likely have declared independence on February 17. Nor would its European neighbors and indeed so many of the most important countries of the world have recognized its independence so promptly.
Think of the top officials of the Bush administration as magicians when it comes to Iraq. Their top hats and tails may be worn and their act fraying, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Their latest “abracadabra,” the president’s “surge strategy” of 2007, has still worked like a charm. They waved their magic wands, paid off and armed a bunch of former Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists (about 80,000 “concerned citizens,” as the president likes to call them), and magically lowered “violence” in Iraq. Even more miraculously, they made a country that they had already turned into a cesspool and a slagheap — its capital now has a “lake” of sewage so large that it can be viewed "as a big black spot on Google Earth" — almost entirely disappear from view in the United States.
A central aspect of President Bush’s trip to Africa is the promotion of neoliberal trade policies and foreign direct investment as a path to “empowerment” and a “culture of self-reliance and opportunity.” The president has explicitly rejected “the paternalistic notion that treats African countries as charity cases, or a model of exploitation that seeks only to buy up their resources.”
As President Bush embarks on his journey to Africa, he is looking to secure his legacy in part through his administration’s development initiatives on the continent. One of those initiatives is the administration’s support for expanded debt relief for the continent.
President George W. Bush is already grabbing headlines with his latest self-congratulatory album, PEPFAR: True Leadership, and his accompanying farewell promotional tour across Africa. Between February 15 and 21, he will travel to the countries of Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia to promote this musical swan song – a concept piece that highlights his supposedly groundbreaking leadership in the fight against global HIV/AIDS. As with Bush’s previous productions, this latest record will frustrate music lovers with serious lyrical flaws that illustrate the ineffectiveness of the U.S. response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.
If the whole body is a heart, then the woman who steps out of the car with Texas plates to yell at the silent peace vigil is a heart overlaid with hate