American Grand Delusions

Why the Testimony of General Petraeus Will Be Delusional

by Tom Engelhardt
Yes, their defensive zone is the planet and they patrol it regularly. As ever, their planes and drones have been in the skies these last weeks. They struck a village in Somalia, tribal areas in Pakistan, rural areas in Afghanistan, and urban neighborhoods in Iraq. Their troops are training and advising the Iraqi army and police as well as the new Afghan army, while their Special Operations forces are planning to train Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in that country’s wild, mountainous borderlands.

Their Vice President arrived in Baghdad not long before the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched its recent (failed) offensive against cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the southern oil city of Basra. To “discuss” their needs in their President’s eternal War on Terror, two of their top diplomats, a deputy secretary of state and an assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, arrived in Pakistan — to the helpless outrage of the local press — on the very day newly elected Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani was being given the oath of office. (”I don’t think it is a good idea for them to be here on this particular day… right here in Islamabad, meeting with senior politicians in the new government, trying to dictate terms…” was the way Zaffar Abbas, editor of the newspaper Dawn, put it.)

At home, their politicians have nationally televised debates in which they fervently discuss just how quickly they would launch air assaults against Pakistan’s tribal areas, without permission from the Pakistani government but based on “actionable intelligence” on terrorists. Their drones cruise the skies of the world looking for terrorist suspects to — in the phrase of the hour — “take out.” Agents from their intelligence services have, these last years, roamed the planet, kidnapping terrorist suspects directly off the streets of major cities and transporting them to their own secret prisons, or those of other countries willing to employ torture methods. Their spy satellites circle the globe listening in on conversations wherever they please, while their military has divided the whole planet into “commands,” the last of which, Africom, was just formed.

As far as they are concerned, nowhere do their interests not come into play; nowhere, in fact, are they not paramount. As their President put it recently, “If strategic interests are not in Iraq — the convergence point for the twin threats of al Qaeda and Iran, the nation Osama bin Laden’s deputy has called ‘the place for the greatest battle,’ the country at the heart of the most volatile region on Earth — then where are they?” (And you could easily substitute the names of other countries for Iraq.)

Their President makes a habit of regularly telling other countries what they “must” do. “At the same time,” he said recently, “the regimes in Iran and Syria must stop supporting violence and terror in Iraq.” It’s especially important to him and his officials that other nations not “interfere” in situations where, as in Iraq, they are so obviously “foreigners” and have no business; no fingers, that is, are to be caught in other people’s cookie jars. Their Vice President made this point strikingly in an exchange with a TV interviewer:

“Q: So what message are you sending to Iran, and how tough are you prepared to get?
“Vice President: I think the message that the president sent clearly is that we do not want them doing what they can to try to destabilize the situation inside Iraq. We think it’s very important that they keep their folks at home.”

A range of other countries, all with a natural bent for “interference” or “meddling,” must regularly be warned or threatened. After all, what needs to be prevented, according to a typical formulation of their President, is “foreign interference in the internal affairs of Iraq.”

None of this advice do they apply to themselves for reasons far too obvious to explain. Wherever they go — sometimes in huge numbers, usually well-armed, and, after a while, deeply entrenched in bases the size of small towns that they love to build — they feel comfortable. They are, after all, defending their liberties by defending those of others elsewhere. Though there are natives of one brand or another everywhere, they consider themselves the planet’s only true natives. Their motto might be: Wherever we hang our hats (or helmets) is home.

Continued>>>
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/04/8079/