The Changing Face of American Empire

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http://www.alternet.org/world/changing-face-american-empire




They looked like a gang of geriatric giants. Clad in smart casual attire -- dress shirts, sweaters, and jeans -- and incongruous blue hospital booties, they strode around “the world,” stopping to stroke their chins and ponder this or that potential crisis. Among them was General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a button-down shirt and jeans, without a medal or a ribbon in sight, his arms crossed, his gaze fixed. He had one foot planted firmly in Russia, the other partly in Kazakhstan, and yet the general hadn’t left the friendly confines of Virginia.

Several times this year, Dempsey, the other joint chiefs, and regional war-fighting commanders have assembled at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico to conduct a futuristic war-game-meets-academic-seminar about the needs of the military in 2017. There, a giant map of the world, larger than a basketball court, was laid out so the Pentagon’s top brass could shuffle around the planet -- provided they wore those scuff-preventing shoe covers -- as they thought about “potential U.S. national military vulnerabilities in future conflicts” (so one participant told the New York Times) . The sight of those generals with the world underfoot was a fitting image for Washington’s military ambitions, its penchant for foreign interventions, and its contempt for (non-U.S.) borders and national sovereignty.


A World So Much Larger Than a Basketball Court

In recent weeks, some of the possible fruits of Dempsey’s “strategic seminars,” military missions far from the confines of Quantico, have repeatedly popped up in the news. Sometimes buried in a story, sometimes as the headline, the reports attest to the Pentagon’s penchant for globetrotting.

In September, for example, Lieutenant General Robert L. Caslen, Jr., revealed that, just months after the U.S. military withdrew from Iraq, a unit of Special Operations Forces had already been redeployed there in an advisory role and that negotiations were underway to arrange for larger numbers of troops to train Iraqi forces in the future. That same month, the Obama administration won congressional approval to divert funds earmarked for counterterrorism aid for Pakistan to a new proxy project in Libya. According to the New York Times , U.S. Special Operations Forces will likely be deployed to create and train a 500-man Libyan commando unit to battle Islamic militant groups which have become increasingly powerful as a result of the 2011 U.S.-aided revolution there.

[GMR Transcription]

1. The Changing Face of American Empire

HI,
Great post. Thank you for posting this information about the Changing Face of American Empire.Keep on posting such information.




Thank you once again..

[tama]

2. How It Could Happen

Fiction by JMG:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.fi/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-one-hubris.html

[leveymg]

3. Interesting, well constructed, and all-too-plausible scenario.

[tama]

4. Can't wait for the last part... :)

[leveymg]

5. What's in the shipping crates? . . .