A Retort to US Military Expansion in Africa: 'Dismantle AFRICOM'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/24-2



General Carter F. Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, gathers with Ambassador Thomas Dougherty and Burkina Faso Chief of Defense Honoré Traore at the close of a briefing on August 13, 2012. Ham met with the president and other senior leaders to discuss "security issues."

A Retort to US Military Expansion in Africa: 'Dismantle AFRICOM'
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Published on Monday, December 24, 2012 by Common Dreams

Policy experts and scholars familiar with Africa have a single cautionary word for the planned military expansion that would see deployment of US soldiers and drones in as many as 35 nations dotted across the continent in the coming year: Don't.

The announcement by AFRICOM commander US General Carter Ham—made under the familiar guise of 'fighting terrorism'—was presented most expansively earlier this month at a public colloquium at Brown University in which Ham argued that the US military would begin or expand operations in Mali, Sudan, Algeria, Somalia, and more than two dozen other countries.

Pushing back, however, other experts on Africa called for AFRICOM—which is tellingly not even based in Africa but in Stuttgart, Germany—to be dismantled not expanded.

According to some, the US Africa Command has merely served to increase resource exploitation and imperial expansion, instigate more violence in Africa, and intensified regional conflicts that have actually undermined the authority of regional organizations and the African Union.



unhappycamper comment: AFRICOM was created in 2007 by you-know-who. I'm sure it was part of Cheney's oil plans for Africa. Colonies are good; independence is bad.

We really need to take a time-out and revisit our global cop/superpower/peacekeeper/arms dealer roles in the world.