U.S. African and Mideast Policies: War As Foreign Aid and Regime Change As Democratic Transition

Former political prisoner Dhoruba Bin Wahad recently penned an excellent essay breaking down whats going on in Mali, Congo and the Middle East.. he also challenged the type of stances many of us have taken with respect to these regions that are embroiled in conflict… To support his essay we interviewed him so he can expand upon his analysis. In true form Dhoruba pulled no punches.. Peep what he has to say..

Hard Knock Radio Interview w/ Dhoruba speaking on African and Middle East Policies

U.S. African and Mideast Policies: War As Foreign Aid and Regime Change As Democratic Transition

by Dhoruba Bin Wahad

Africans in the Diaspora are in a crisis of conscience searching for what it means
to be “African centered” or Pan-African, and citizens of Racist Nation-states
with histories of Imperial domination. We are confronted today with “New Age
Imperialism” where national elites collaborate to oppress the poor and hungry
of the planet rather than wage war with each other over the control of strategic
resources. This global convergence of interests has found its natural opposition in
the international character of the Muslim Ummah.

The US and Race based Democracy – “Democratic Fascism”.

In the U.S. where over 2.5 million American citizens are locked away in prison
and another 15 plus million owners of major “felony” convictions, the African-
American population and other national “minorities” of non-European background
are subjected to a contrived system of fascism masquerading as “democracy” –
a political and social system of police and corporate control, a police state with
unprecedented power (after 9/11 terrorist attacks) that employs a “National
Security” rationale to conceal its crimes of “rendition”, torture (enhanced
interrogation), indefinite detention, and targeted assassinations . Like most modern
“national-security” states, U.S. policies are most closely associated with its perceived
“national interests” primarily involving access to strategic resources and “trade”.
The West’s bogus advocacy of supporting individual freedom by supporting
“Democratic regime change” in its former colonial territories mask not only their
own internal inequalities based on race, religion and gender, but conceal the often
violent cooptation of legitimate revolutionary people’s movements that oppose
entrenched oligarchies, Autocrats, while marginalizing and demonizing Islamic
based anti-imperialist forces across Africa and Mid-East. Islam has replaced the
specter of “communist global domination” as the foremost threat to global Finance
Capitalism and Western global domination. That the West’s perceives opposition to
neo-imperialist diplomacy in secular dimensions, characterizing this opposition as
the “clash of civilizations) is not without historical basis.

Up until the overthrow of the western stooge Shah Reza Palhavi of Iran, a strictly
Islamic based mass movement had never overthrown a modern non-secular
Nation State backed by the Western Imperial powers. Needless to say the Iranian
“revolutions” sent shock waves throughout the region and shook regional Sunni
comprador classes (Oil Sheikdoms) across the region to their reactionary roots. But
to the masses of Muslims on the streets of Arab capitals the Iranian revolution was
a ray of hope – but its Shia dimension served the US and Europe’s historical fallback
tactic of divide and conquer . We now see how effective the West’s early divide and
conquer strategy of containment has been and how it has the region tittering on the

brink of war. Many Arab Sunni rulers, with US blessings, covertly intensified their
alignment with the European settler-state of Israel to contain Iranian geopolitical
influence even as Israel gears up for military strikes against the Islamic Republic. US
and NATO troops are stationed in Muslim lands, military bases across the Mid-
East are designed to project Western military power into the region. All this a
consequence of US divide and conquer fear tactics in the region.

With the support for US militarism abroad (war on terror) a fundamental principle
of both the Right wing and “moderates” in the US congress , it is little surprise
that white American politicians are also major supporters and instigators of anti-
Islamic fervor both inside and outside the US. Because the ramifications of “the
war on terror” has disproportionately affected the immigrant Muslim population
in the US (African-American Muslims have lived under religious, racial, and
political repression for decades) U.S. military and diplomatic actions in Arab
countries of North Africa, Iraq, Syria, as well as in Pakistan and India have all been
characterized as unique, untypical resistance or an “Arab Spring”. This definition of
uprisings across Muslim North Africa by the western media and westernized Arab
intellectuals are aimed at one thing. Dividing the Muslim Ummah along racial and
historical lines, while isolating African Muslims from the general process of Pan-
African unity and democratization.

The use of the contextual term “Arab Spring” to characterize the mass uprising of
NORTH AFRICANS against the rule of despotic Arab elites is purposely and artfully
crafted to discourage sub-Saharan Black Africa and its Muslim populations from
emulating their North African counterparts while appealing to the “Anti-Arab”
sentiments among many Pan-Africans and within the Black Diaspora. ECOWAS
and the African Union’s recent support of French military intervention in Mali and
as US surrogate in Somalia, and else where on the African continent are testimony
to how eagerly Africa’s political elite are utilizing the “West’s war terror” to secure
their positions and prop up their power while ignoring persecuted and marginalized
Muslim minority populations.

In countries like Nigeria the US is on the ground
supporting the Christian dominated government’s “anti-terrorist actions” in the
North of the country against an Islamic insurgency. In Somalia, the US drone war has
spilled over into neighboring countries, like Eritrea, Al-Yemen and has led to tribal
unrest in Northern Kenya. While the US and its European Allies seemed appalled
by the Muslim insurgencies in the North of Mali (consistently failing to mentioned
that this crisis was long in the making and connected to the Western European’s
deposing of Libya’s Ghadaffi and the silent collusion of Black Africa’s leaders) both
the US and Europe are neither horrified or outraged by events in the Eastern Congo.

Africa, A War Zone Without End

Nearly 3 million people have died in Congo in a four-year war over Coltan, a heat-
resistant mineral ore widely used in cellphones, laptops and playstations and
other strategic minerals. Eighty percent of the world’s coltan reserves are in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. Often dismissed as an ethnic war, the conflict in the
Congo is really over natural resources sought by foreign corporations —
diamonds,tin, copper, gold, but mostly coltan”

In an article titled “Why the U.S. Won’t Help”, a Nairobi newspaper explained, ‘Right
from the days of the Cold War, Western governments have been comfortable
with a situation in which African regimes squandered meager resources on the
instruments of war, borrowing from the West to finance domestic consumption. The
war in the Congo and the countries involved in it are a case in point’… In 1998, the
State Department licensed commercial weapons sales by U.S. manufacturers to sub-
Saharan Africa worth up to $64 million, on top of the $12 million in government-to-
government deliveries that year. These figures have quadrupled since 1998 and the
region is no closer to stability than it was when Patrice Lumumba was assassinated
by the US, French and Belgians in 1960s.

The hypocrisy of the US and Europe asking Africa’s political elite to develop and
democratize while cutting levels of non-military international aid and increasing
weapons and military training to the continent’s Armies does not seem to have
registered with African-Americans, neither those (Pan-Africans) who claim
solidarity with the current crop of African leaders, or those elected to public office.
This lack of outspoken opposition to US militarization of Africa, especially under
the Obama administration is inexcusable and attributable to the uncritical and
unprincipled support of the Obama regime by African-Americans. Moreover,
Obama’s policy of destabilization and “democratic regime change” of governments
it is at odds with suggest that there is little real commitment to developing human
resources and a new “partnership” with Africa, the U.S. needs to redirect the focus
away from strengthening military capacity, coopting ethnic and national elites and
more toward promoting human development in Africa.

END

Glen Ford: Susan Rice’s Political Legacy-‘Genocide in Africa on Her Watch’

Hard Knock Radio logoOver the past couple of weeks there’s been a lot of controversy surrounding UN Ambassador Susan Rice. She’s been under fire, accused of misleading the American public about the circumstances that led up to the slaughter 4 Americans including Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya on September 11th of this year.

Hard Knock Radio weighed in on this issue with an insightful conversation featuring long time journalist Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report….He breaks down the political legacy of Rice and whats she’s been about long before most of us were introduced to her via the work she’s done under President Obama..

click the link below to listen to the HKR interview w/ Glen Ford on Susan Rice

Susan Rice

Susan Rice

As you listen to the interview here’s a little bit of background. ..Rice was the point person on Sunday morning talk shows in the days that followed those attacks, where she emphatically explained that attacks was the result of enraged Muslims reacting to an obscure anti-Muslim Youtube movie produced in the US. Below is one of those TV appearances she made that has now become the basis for this recent controversy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxf77xQ_NLU

Since that interview, we have come to know that the official story is it was in fact an act of terror carried out by Al Qaeda operatives. Many have questioned how Rice was so off on her assessment. It’s been determined that the intelligence around the Benghazi attacks being the work of terrorists at the time Rice spoke, was classified information. It was kept classified as to not tip-off the assailants. That realization has not calmed President Obama’s political rivals including Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have come out swinging, threatening to block Rice’s anticipated nomination to be the next Secretary of State.

John McCain

John McCain

The crassness of McCain and Graham along with right-wing political pundits has led many to see their harsh criticisms of Rice as racially motivated political sour grapes. This in turn has led to many women’s groups and civil rights organizations circling the wagon determined to back Rice to the hilt. That in turn has led to many overlooking or remaining unaware of Rice’s political legacy.

Long time journalist Glen Ford has been following the career of Susan Rice for over 15 years. He’s well aware of her track record and the roles she played when she worked under Bill Clinton all the way up to now. In our Hard Knock radio interview (HKR) Ford gives a very detailed no holds bar breakdown of Rice and the type of impact she and the policies she’s championed have had on countries like Rwanda, Sudan,  Somalia, Libya and the Congo.

When asked what word comes to mind when he here’s the name Susan Rice, Glen Ford responded ‘Genocide’.  In a recent column penned by Ford titled A Second Wave of Genocide..he notes;

Susan Rice has abetted the Congo genocide for much of her political career. Appointed to President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council in 1993, at age 28, she rose to assistant secretary of state for African affairs in 1997 as Rwanda and Uganda were swarming across the eastern Congo, seizing control of mineral resources amid a sea of blood. She is known to be personally close to Rwanda’s minority Tutsi leadership, including President Paul Kagame, a ruthless soldier trained at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and mentored by Ugandan strongman (and Reagan administration favorite) Yoweri Museveni, who is believed to have pioneered the use of child soldiers in modern African conflicts.

GlenfordFord also writes:

Rice is widely credited with convincing Obama to launch NATO’s bombing campaign for regime change in Libya. She parroted false media reports that Muammar Gaddafi’s troops were raping Libyan women with the aid of massive gulps of Viagra, refusing to back down even when U.S. military and intelligence officials told NBC news “there is no evidence that Libyan military forces have been given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas.” Yet, Rice said not a word about ethnic cleansing and racial pogroms against black Libyans and sub-Saharan African migrant workers, including the well-documented erasure of the black city of Tawergha.

In our interview Ford describes Susan Rice as some one who is more hawkish and ‘thuggish’ then Condoleezza Rice who served under George Bush. He notes its an act of betrayal for Black leadership to back her nomination in lieu of her track record. Ford notes many have reacted to in such a way that perceived racial comments are more important to push back on than the genocide of millions of people in Africa on Rice’s watch. You can peep the interview by clicking the link at the beginning of this article