{"id":36879,"date":"2012-07-30T00:01:22","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T07:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=36879"},"modified":"2014-12-30T15:35:41","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T22:35:41","slug":"team-america-world-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/07\/team-america-world-police.html","title":{"rendered":"Team America: World Police"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Africa Edition!<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an odd question: Is it possible that the U.S. military is\u00a0 present in more countries and more places now than at the height of the\u00a0 Cold War?\u00a0 It\u2019s true that the U.S. is reducing its forces and giant\u00a0 bases in Europe and that its troops are out of Iraq (except for that\u00a0 huge, militarized embassy<\/a> in Baghdad).\u00a0 On the other hand, there\u2019s that massive ground<\/a>, air, and naval build-up<\/a> in the Persian Gulf, the Obama administration\u2019s widely publicized \u201cpivot\u201d<\/a> to Asia (including troops<\/a> and ships), those new drone bases<\/a> in the eastern Indian Ocean<\/a> region, some movement back into Latin America (including a new base<\/a> in Chile), and don\u2019t forget Africa, where less than a decade ago, the\u00a0 U.S. had almost no military presence at all.\u00a0 Now, as TomDispatch\u00a0 Associate Editor Nick Turse writes in the latest in his \u201cchanging face of empire<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 series, U.S. special operations forces, regular troops, private\u00a0 contractors, and drones are spreading across the continent with\u00a0 remarkable (if little noticed) rapidity.<\/p>\n

Putting together the pieces on Africa isn\u2019t easy.\u00a0 For instance, only the other day it was revealed<\/a> that three U.S. Army commandos in a Toyota Land Cruiser had skidded off\u00a0 a bridge in Mali in April.\u00a0 They died, all three, along with three\u00a0 women identified as \u201cMoroccan prostitutes.\u201d\u00a0 This is how we know that\u00a0 U.S. special operations forces were operating in chaotic, previously\u00a0 democratic Mali after a coup by a U.S.-trained captain<\/a> accelerated the unraveling of the country, leading more recently to its\u00a0 virtual dismemberment by Tuareg rebels and Islamist insurgents.\u00a0\u00a0 Consider this a sample of what Nick Turse calls the U.S. military\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cscramble for Africa\u201d in a seamy, secretive nutshell.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s another question: Who decided in 2007 that a U.S. Africa Command<\/a> should be set up to begin a process of turning that continent into a\u00a0 web of U.S. bases and other operations?\u00a0 Who decided that every Islamist\u00a0 rebel group in Africa, no matter how local or locally focused, was a\u00a0 threat to the U.S., calling for a military response?\u00a0 Certainly not the\u00a0 American people, who know nothing about this, who were never asked if\u00a0 expanding the U.S. global military mission to Africa was something they\u00a0 favored, who never heard the slightest debate, or even a single peep\u00a0 from Washington on the subject.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is inexplicable\u2013if you assume you live in a functioning democracy.\u00a0 If you assume you live in a\u00a0state governed by a nearly unaccountable class of Caesaroligarchs\u2013a fusion of corporate and state power whose incestuous relationship is devoted to amassing more power and wealth for themselves\u00a0and who increasingly regard the rest of us (us=humans, not merely American citizens) as prey, it\u2019s not too hard to understand how something like this has happened.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like they want us to know or understand what they are up to.\u00a0 Hence, the bipartisan support for giving the Prez power to murder and indefinitely detain anybody he likes.\u00a0 Hence, embrace and expansion of the worst of Bush era contempt for the Constitution by Obama.\u00a0 Hence, the declaration that \u201ceverywhere is the battlefield\u201d and the expansion of police state powers here at home.<\/p>\n

Partisans on both sides need to figure out that Your Guy doesn\u2019t care about you.\u00a0 He cares about Mammon and Power.\u00a0 And those are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller elite who see you as, at best, useful, at worst, disposable, and always, as edible.<\/p>\n

Jesus loves you.\u00a0 Caesar and Mammon: not so much.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa Edition! Here\u2019s an odd question: Is it possible that the U.S. military is\u00a0 present in more countries and more places now than at the height of the\u00a0 Cold War?\u00a0 It\u2019s true that the U.S. is reducing its forces and giant\u00a0 bases in Europe and that its troops are out of Iraq (except for that\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[187,188],"class_list":["post-36879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-against-idols","tag-the-peoples-democratic-national-security-state-of-heaven"],"yoast_head":"\nTeam America: World Police<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Africa Edition! 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