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Is
U.S going the U.S.S.R way?
Romeet
K WATT
United
States of America has 37,000 troops, more than 90 installations
scattered across the length and the breadth, in South Korea under a
mutual defence treaty. Nevertheless, the presence has long been a
source of antagonism for communities near the military bases.
On
June 13, 2002, a U.S. armoured vehicle hit and killed Shin Hyo-soon
and Shim Mi-seon, both 14, who were walking on the shoulder of a
road while on their way to a friend's birthday party in the northern
city of Uijeongbu in South Korea. Since then there has been a
growing sense of anti-Americanism gaining momentum, not that the
phenomenon is new, but what has angered the Koreans is that the two U.S.
soldiers, Walker and Nino, have
been let go by a special American military court.
This
incident has led to a renewed call for the removal of all U.S.
troops from the Korean peninsula. Of the 500 or so crimes committed
by off-duty American soldiers, less than 1 percent of the cases have
made it to Korean courts. The rest have been handled by America’s
military courts, with many of the soldiers receiving only warnings
or community service.
The
nature and conduct of Americans by way of its foreign policy over
the previous half-century, focussing particularly on the decade
after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 needs to be put in
perspective to understand the current trends that are emerging in
the post-cold war, uni-polar world-order. The
scheme of things that will unfold in the twenty-first century will
no doubt be driven by the retribution from the later half of the twentieth
century – consequences of the cold war, and crucial American
decisions forming the nucleus of this anger, and reprisal.
In
the present context, the on the warpath approach adopted by the
Bush-regime, calling for a regime change in Iraq does in no way come
as a big surprise. What has rendered the task difficult in the
present state of affairs are the repercussions, that the U.S -- down
the line -- is likely face from radical Muslim groups for invading a
Muslim country like Iraq.
Otherwise,
if one assumes a more pragmatic approach, the other member of what
America describes as ‘evil axis’ or ‘rogue states’,
North-Korea, is not alleged to possess chemical and biological
weapons (as in case of Iraq) but has a full fledged nuclear
programme going on, right under the noses of the Americas; of course
with the clandestine support from an able ally of America in its
global war against terrorism – Pakistan!
Incidentally,
Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq, was armed and backed to the
hilt by the Reagan administration so long as he was at war with
Khomeini's Iran, however, presently it is ironical and amusing that
all of these men who were once listed as “assets” of America's
key covert services organization are at the receiving end once their
utility of serving American interests has come to an end.
Since
the Gulf War the United States has steadily maintained around
thirty-five thousand troops in Saudi Arabia. Devoutly Muslim
citizens of that kingdom see their presence as a humiliation to the
country and an affront to their religion. Dissident Saudis have
launched attacks against Americans and against the Saudi regime
itself. It is in this context that one needs to examine the renewed
attacks on the military facilities in the country in which scores of
American soldiers have been killed.
Should
the present American and Saudi Arabian establishments pursue its
present policies, it is most likely that the Saudi monarchy will be
overthrown and, a fundamental and anti-American government would
more likely assume power in Riyadh. But the American foreign policy
remains unchanged, instead of withdrawing from a place where a U.S.
presence is only making a ‘dangerous’ situation ‘worse’, US
of A continues to overlook the obvious.
The
United States, even after the decade of the demise of its cold-war
foe U.S.S.R continues to deploy awesome military might worldwide
that for its adversaries only an “asymmetric strategy,” to
borrow an expression from the Pentagon dictionary, has any chance of
success.
Osama
bin Laden, the leading suspect as mastermind behind the carnage of
September 11, was propped up by CIA like so many other extreme
fundamentalists among the Mujahideen
in Afghanistan from at least 1984, including building in 1986 the
training complex and weapons storage tunnels around the Afghan city
of Khost where bin Laden trained many of the 35,000 Arabs.
Bin
Laden's Khost complex was the one that at President Bill Clinton's
orders was hit on August 20, 1998, with cruise missiles in
retaliation for bin Laden's attacks of August 7, 1998, on the
American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. For once the CIA knew
where the targets were since it had built them.
The
retribution against the U.S is a fall out of ill-conceived,
short-term, invariably illegitimate U.S. covert actions intended at
overthrowing foreign administrations or assisting initiate state
terrorist operations against target populations. The people of
American are unlikely to know what was done in their name,
but those on the receiving end surely do — including the people of
Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959-60), Congo (1960), Brazil
(1964), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961-73), Laos (1961-73),
Cambodia (1961-73), Chile (1973), El Salvador and Nicaragua (1980s),
Iraq (1991 to the present), and very probably Greece (1967), to name
only the obvious cases.
The
American bombing operations of recent decades in Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia, Iraq, Serbia, and Kosovo will almost certainly produce
unintended negative consequences throughout the Islamic and
underdeveloped worlds.
Moderate
Muslim governments, especially in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and
Pakistan, will almost certainly face growing internal dissent and if
the recent trends in the concluded elections in some of these states
are an indication, the task of America becomes all the more
difficult with the emergence of radical anti-America bandwagon.
In
the opinion of a leading expert on the American foreign policy, U.S
is embarked on a path not so dissimilar to that of the former Soviet
Union a decade ago. He observes: “It collapsed for three
reasons—internal economic contradictions, imperial overstretch,
and an inability to reform. In every sense, we were by far the
wealthier of the two Cold War superpowers, so it will certainly take
longer for similar afflictions to do their work. But it is nowhere
written that the United States, in its guise as an empire dominating
the world, must go on forever.”
The
calamitous proceedings of the first year of the new millennium not
only casts serious doubts on United States's self-pronounced role as
‘very important nation’ and ‘only remaining superpower’ but
also raises serious reservations and new perils for other
establishments that were suddenly asked by the American President,
George W Bush whether they were ‘for’ or ‘against’ the
United States ‘war on terror.’
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