The Son of Africa claims a continent's crown jewels

The Son of Africa claims a continent's crown jewels
20 October 2011
On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In 
the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for 
"self-defence", says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.

Obama's 
decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising", even "weird". It is none of these things. It is the logic of American 
foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the 
influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which 
President Nixon called "the region's richest hoard of natural 
resources... the greatest prize". Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. 
 Like all America's subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin 
America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self 
defence" or "humanitarian", words long  emptied of their dictionary 
meaning.

In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is 
to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord's resistance Army 
(LRA), which "has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of 
men, women and children in central Africa". This is an accurate 
description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the 
United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the 
CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence 
leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that 
installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa's most venal tyrant.

Obama's other justification also invites satire. This is the "national security of the United States". The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 
years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has few than 
400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national security" 
usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something 
Washington wants. Uganda's "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already 
receives the larger part of $45 million in US military "aid" - including Obama's favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war 
against America's latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab 
group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, 
distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories.

However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that 
which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of 
self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General 
David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official 
American "threat". When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant 
secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe 
the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, 
"Asymmetric threats ... asymmetric threats". These justify the 
money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest 
military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, 
China takes the mantle.

Africa is China's success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring 
roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil 
fuels. With Africa's greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi 
was one of China's most important sources of fuel. When the civil war 
broke out and Nato backed the "rebels" with a fabricated story about 
Gaddafi planning "genocide" in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 
workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that 
allowed the west's "humanitarian intervention" was explained succinctly 
in a proposal to the French government by the "rebel" National 
Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, 
in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya's gross national oil 
production "in exchange" (the term used) for "total and permanent" 
French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in 
"liberated" Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: 
"We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural 
resources!"

The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its 
imperial partners heralds a modern version of the "scramble for Africa" 
at the end of the 19th century.
Like the "victory" in Iraq, 
journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy 
and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph 
of a terrified "pro-Gaddafi" fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, "celebrate". According to General Petraeus, there is now a war "of perception... conducted continuously through the news media".

For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the 
continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, 
fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now 
Uganda, South Sudan and Congo,  provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks 
cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, 
American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 
special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s "defence 
strategy" plan, America simply wishes to rule the world.

That 
this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the  "Son of Africa", is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in 'Black Skin, White 
Masks', what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.
http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/the-son-of-africa-claims-a-continents-crown-jewels