Pentagon Puppetmasters in Africa

Barack Obama hasn’t used the phrase “war on terror” once since he took office about three weeks ago. Yet Obama’s use of drones to bomb the tribal regions in Pakistan a few days after taking office (thereby demonstrating his toughness) indicates continuity with Bush rather than real change.

This country still possesses more military power than all the other countries of the world combined. So even if just the rhetoric has changed, it raises many questions. The most important and urgent is this: What is the rightful use of force in a global society?

When White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs was asked in his first news conference whether Obama’s rhetoric signified a significant change in policy regarding the fight against terrorism, he quickly changed the subject after doing a disingenuous dodge.

“I asked [Gibbs] if the president had booted the war metaphor,” said David Corn of Mother Jones Magazine. “Not that I'm aware of,” Gibbs answered.” Then Corn added, “De-emphasizing the war metaphor would be a significant change…but the White House does not want to acknowledge it.”

It’s clear why Obama want to avoid the question, and have it both ways, since cable TV, especially Fox, would go ballistic. But it matters, and matters a great deal, whether the Obama Administration is going to continue to use the language and mentality of war in dealing with conflicts, genocide, and the terrorist threat. After all, under Bush and Cheney, the ‘we are a nation at war’ rationale was used to commit and cover-up all manner of sins, foreign and domestic.

America invaded a nation that was no imminent threat, destroyed its own international reputation, and nearly shredded its constitution ostensibly because 19 fanatics with box-cutters were able to plunge three planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. Now that the smoke has mostly cleared in Iraq, and the body parts have mostly stopped flying, it’s time to revisit the use of force.

The right of self-defense does not extend to preemptive wars (US/UK invasion of Iraq), or to slaughters in the name of restoring the status quo ante (Gulf War I), or to disproportionate response (Israel’s bombing of Gaza).

Gulf War I set the stage not only for Gulf War II, but also for the egregious paralysis of the international community in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and the Congo. Of course, it’s no accident of history that three of four of these genocides/ethnic cleansings are or were in Africa. But the stain and stench of war has been spreading to other places as well, including Chechnya, Georgia, and Sri Lanka.

For prosecuting Gulf War I, poetic justice for Bush Senior came in the form of watching his son become the worst president in American history by prosecuting Gulf War II. But that is cold comfort for those who want to see conflict diminished in our de facto global society.

In one last act of diabolical madness before leaving office, George W. Bush, who is revered in much of Africa, personally authorized the Pentagon’s new Africa Command to plan and pay for a raid by Ugandan forces against the unspeakably savage Lord’s Resistance Army.

The failed assault resulted only in stirring up a hornet’s nest, according to human rights groups, scattering the Acholi rebels into surrounding villages, whereupon they went on a raping, burning, and slaughtering spree. As the New York Times reported, “The Lord’s Resistance Army is now on the loose, moving from village to village, seemingly unhindered, leaving a wake of scorched huts and crushed skulls.”

In one village a ten-year-old girl lay comatose after being raped and shot through both legs, “bullet through bone.” “The people who did this are demons,” said her nurse Rosa Apamoto. There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of girls like this in Central Africa’s regional cauldron of evil.

And what does the U.S. military say? “We provided insights and alternatives for [the Ugandan military]…but their choices were their choices…in the end, it was not our operation.” Of course not, since the unleashers of demons always wash their hands clean of the blood they drill in hell. Bush Junior’s last act of guilt expiation in Uganda outdoes his father’s in Somalia.

As for the Ugandan military, it declined to discuss American involvement, saying only through a spokesman, “There was no way to prevent these massacres.”

With a new president who rode a tide of ‘change’ to office, will the most powerful nation on earth show respect for nascent international law? The use of force by states in the global society urgently requires codified norms and principles, and America must support them.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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