Keith Harmon Snow
September 9th, 2012.
"From the 1980s to today, an elite group of Western intelligence operatives have backed low-intensity guerrilla warfare in certain African ‘hotspots’. Mass atrocities in the Great Lakes and Sudan can be linked to Roger Winter, a pivotal U.S. operative whose ‘team’ was recently applauded for birthing the world’s newest nation, South Sudan. Behind the fairytale we find a long trail of blood and skeletons from Uganda to Sudan, Rwanda and Congo. While the mass media has covered their tracks, their misplaced moralism has simultaneously helped birth a new left-liberal ‘humanitarian’ fascism. In this falsification of consciousness, Western human rights crusaders and organizations, funded by governments, multinational corporations and private donors, cheer the killers and blame the victims–and pat themselves on the back for saving Africa from itself. Meanwhile, the “Arab Spring” has spread to (north) Sudan. Following the NATO-Israeli model of regime change being used in Central & North Africa, it won’t be long before the fall of Khartoum.See article here.
The fantasy is one of human rights princes and policy ‘wonks’ in shining armor and the new kingdom of peace and tranquility, democracy and human rights, that they have created. That is what the United States foreign policy establishment and the corporate mass media–and not a few so-called ‘human rights activists’–would have us believe about the genesis of the world’s newest nation, South Sudan.
... This is classic low-intensity warfare, and it is combined with modern propaganda, psychological operations, electioneering, and ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ promotion by means of the distribution of large sums of cash, the purchasing of local agents and the commodification of civil society through punishment and reward.
The recent “Arab Spring” uprisings in Khartoum signal further destabilization by the U.S. and its allies. The SPLA have been armed and are being prepared to complete the mission of regime change in Sudan. It happened the same, slightly differently, in Rwanda.
This is how the United States of America, Canada, Britain, our European allies, and Israel, have carved a ‘newly independent state’ out of the formerly autonomous sovereign nation of Sudan. This is how the same western alliance used low-intensity warfare to bring disaster capitalism to first Uganda, then Rwanda, and then the Congo. Wonkfare in America, warfare in Africa. It is time to issue indictments."
*****
Comment: This is a compelling read. You will need time to wrap your head around the levels of duplicity the US, its allies, and its civilian "wonk" establishment of academics, journalists and religious evangelicals, among others, are collectively perpetrating on the continent.The article reminded me of an angry comment made at a recent dinner party in Portland after I called Obama a murderous Uncle Tom in reference to his Africa foreign policy.
The comment was tinged with not too little insinuation that my presence in the US should be couched in a step and fetch (servile) awareness of the US' humanitarian role in shaping my African identity and life. It came out like this:
"You should be grateful the US fought to free you in South Africa."Really?
And there I was thinking that folks like Luthuli, Sobukwe, Biko, Tambo, Mandela, my pops, my moms, the Arch, and a whole grip of ordinary folks fought tooth and nail for my freedom while the US openly supported the racist apartheid government deep into the 80s.
I am not surprised by this kind of unconscious bullsh*t even when it comes out of the unmoored mouth of someone who should know better.
Snow's article above instructively points to the manner in which the misinformation about what the US does in Africa is normalized, or made "commonsense" for its citizenry in Gramscian terms.
When the murderer in the White House writes his post-presidency autobiography he will not mention that his sellout ass declared war on a sovereign African nation, killed its leader, and forced illegal regime change.
He will also not mention that he oversaw the seizure of farm land from poor and indigenous peoples via complicit state leases with post-colonial stooges he propped up all across the African continent.
OK, so before you get ready to tell me how evil Gaddafi was please save your energy - that is not the point.
The point is that the US has routinely been a regressive force in African politics for as long as it has existed; that is, from the time it enslaved Africans through its colonialization of what is Liberia today and onward to the Cold War and now its militarization strategy via AFRICOM (re-colonization in the name of security).
In these terms it is an unconscious stretch for any African American supporter of Obama (any supporter really) to sit in Portland complaining bitterly that whites are gentrifying black neighborhoods and to do so absolutely ignorant of what the US/Obomber is doing to re-colonize Africans and Other skins elsewhere.
And we are not free.
Onward!
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