Look out Syria... Obama doesn't pussyfoot around like Bush did... yo asses be next...
What “withdrawal” means for an empire
As troops pull out of Iraq, Obama plans more combat forces elsewhere in the Middle East
By David Sirota
Last week here at Salon, we had a good back and forth about whether America is an empire, and why even pondering that question is so taboo. Quite serendipitously, our debate came just before this big report in the New York Times over the weekend:
The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait…
In addition to negotiations over maintaining a ground combat presence in Kuwait, the United States is considering sending more naval warships through international waters in the region.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/world/middleeast/unit...
Indefinite military occupations of resource-rich regions is one of the hallmarks of empire — indeed, if we saw another country do that, we would almost certainly refer to it as an unacceptable imperial move. Of course, the justification of the Obama administration’s announcement doesn’t hew to the standard lexicon of imperialism; it applies our modern newspeak in an attempt to promote the fallacy that the United States acts only out of selfless benevolence.
There’s lots of talk, for instance, about regional “stability” — a buzzword designed to downplay democratic ideals and rationalize America’s continued support of the brutal dictatorships that serve as our client governments. We’re also hearing the old War on Terror tropes about how we must stay in the Middle East indefinitely and not show weakness by supposedly cutting and running. We’re not an empire, these voices insist. It’s just that “the complete withdrawal of our forces… is likely to be viewed as a strategic victory by our enemies!” as 12 Republicans write in a absurd new letter.
Read more:
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/what_withdrawal_means_f... /
