Rumble in the Jungle: The AFRICOM Boondoggle

[bemildred]

The government's assaults on our common sense, our wallets, and our dignity are becoming so numerous that one is hard pressed to keep up. The media pivot like a herd of wildebeests from one scandal to the other – from illegal wiretapping, to torture, to mercenaries, to saber rattling in the Persian Gulf, to $4 billion lost at Homeland Security, to $9 billion stolen in Iraq.

Amid such a blur of perfidy, major events that portend disaster in the future can slip by with barely a notice by the media, by Congress, or by the public at large. For example, does one voter in a hundred know that the Department of Defense has quietly activated a new regional military command? Just type in the acronym "AFRICOM" into a search box, and the reader will find a DOD website that presents the new United States Africa Command, in the same boosterish manner that Microsoft rolls out a new operating platform.

According to the site, "U.S. Africa Command will better enable the Department of Defense and other elements of the U.S. government to work in concert and with partners to achieve a more stable environment in which political and economic growth can take place. U.S. Africa Command is consolidating the efforts of three existing headquarters commands into one that is focused solely on Africa and helping to coordinate US government contributions on the continent."

In other words, more meddling, more fishing in troubled waters, more displacement of traditional diplomacy with militarized "shaping of the environment," more armed, buzz-cut boy scouts playing roughly the same role Graham Greene's "Quiet American" played in Southeast Asia. Oh, yes, and oil in the Gulf of Guinea.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/werther.php?articleid=12056

[IndyOp]

1. .

[bemildred]

2. Munch on that, eh? nt

[flashl]

3. I knew the "o" word was in there somewhere

AFRICOM also represents a God-sent opportunity for both our major political parties to find new worlds to conquer. The GOP, being a subsidiary of Big Oil, is fairly licking its chops at West African oil, although how a bunch of armed social workers would "stabilize" a basket case like Nigeria is not clear, given the unfortunate precedent of Somalia.