The United States is planning to maintain significant military presence in the Middle East going forward, including 13,500 US troops in Kuwait, to help maintain hegemony over the region, according to a new congressional report released Tuesday.
The study by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee examined the US relationship with the six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman – and followed up on earlier stated plans to surge the US presence in the region after Washington was forced out of a remaining military force in Iraq in December of last year.
The failure to agree with the Iraqi government on the legal grounds for a contingent military force in Iraq was a huge blow to Washington, which desperately wants to maintain control over the region amid fast-paced change.
As the New York Times reported in October, the Pentagon has long been planning “to bolster the American military presence,” including “sending more naval warships through international waters in the region.” To counter Iran – the one country left in US Central Command without U.S. military bases and a subservient client state, “the administration is also seeking to expand military ties with the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council.”
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said he envisions about 40,000 troops stationed in the Middle East region following the reluctant withdrawal from Iraq. The US is also cutting the military presence in Europe, leaving about 68,000 going forward. Obama is also in the process of surging US military presence in Asia-Pacific.
The Senate report explores ways the US can leverage its financial and military aid to control events in the region for its own interests. One country that stands out is Bahrain, which Washington views as a strategic asset and a counter to Iran. Bahrain has been committing serious human rights abuses against its citizens, as US money and weapons continue to flow to the dictatorship there.
The report says the US “should not be quick to rescind security assurances or assistance in response to human rights abuses but should evaluate each case on its own merits.”
The US approach toward the Middle East has not changed since the end of WWII, and maintaining a presence and propping up obedient dictatorships is essential to Washington’s enduring aim of hegemony. As a Top Secret National Security Council briefing put it in 1954, “the Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,” as it “contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world” as well as “essential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.”
Look people we said that from the beginning that: US and NATO hand in hand after the Balkan war are after militarizing – occupying the entire Middle east and Central Asian country close to Caspian Sea. The matter started with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and their succeeded war in dividing Yugoslavia, that was the start. Afghanistan and Iraq is the beginning for rest of the plan presented to Bill Clinton by Paul Wolfowitz and his gang of five back in 1990. Conquering the northern Persian Gulf from Lebanon to Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and if possible even Pakistan, the regime change and stopping at nothing is the agenda, in South of Persian Gulf the US and NATO controlling the UAE, Yemen and other nation in the area, or having a proxy wars helped by Saudis and Turkey in African Horn country. Libya war is just the beginning for US and NATO to continue with their falsified democracy creating more wars in north and east African nation, wake up America and EU people, you are witnessing the third world war, it is not a dream is real, the agendas are the same as 1940s the colors and names are changed.
I love articles that tell the truth and inform the reader. The admission that the US is “propping up obedient dictatorships” clearly shows that the regime in Washington is controlled by pathetic liars who constantly babble about human rights and democracy.
World War II ended decades ago, so why are we still occupying many countries? Don’t the leaders of those countries have a sense of honor and dignity not to allow themselves to be occupied? I guess not, because Washington is also an occupied territory after Palestine.
How do you maintain "a sense of honor and dignity" and still accept the bribes that fill your Swiss accounts.
USA imperialists are really good in making hegemony: Virtually any country is in danger to be devided regionally or has hard clashes between everything that is useful to be used as difference or reason for fights between Arabs, the religions, the ethnic groups, the social classes, races … anything without exception.
So if you ask for reasons of conflicts between humans, do not forget the origin of this.
US-organized revolutions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=lpXbA6yZY-8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr2XyIKHX1k
– what happens in Syria: search "us army unconventional warfare"
USA works this way: Source: Training Circular No. 18-01, US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School; 30 Nov 2010 Special Forces Unconventional Warfare:
"There is another type of warfare—new in its intensity, ancient in its origin—war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat, by
infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy
instead of engaging him. It preys on unrest."
'
source: Special Forces Unconventional Warfare
US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, search: USArmy-UW.pdf
or "INTRODUCTION TO UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE (UW)
1-1. The intent of U.S. UW efforts is to exploit a hostile power’s political, military, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and sustaining resistance forces to accomplish U.S. strategic objectives."
Even the unity of Syria and their loved president Assad is in danger because of endless hate-creating lies about him on all arab dictator TV channels:
Huge majority for Assad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt9A5rMqEDM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYlgDXP411w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYQkUl-xwH0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSb0lxFcMn0
the real "brutal dictator": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8P6860vIiA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc4ZZ-yXaOQ
Again very strange, that in the first overview of the executive summary so much importance is given to the arms sales there ! Is "security" only US arms sales? It looks like defense industry has written this report or dominates the government.
It is clear that there is much buying power, but why arming extreme Islamists dictator regimes, that virtually got the task from USA to take down less extremists arab countries. When they all are extremists unification is not far.
But I guess this is the short sighted capitalist profit thinking – as in China, which was due to cheap labor developed with huge western capital and technology to the new powerful enemy within two decades because of a Chinese government that was able to give investors by political decisions anything they wanted: workforce, education, infrastructure – an industrial service no western government can deliver, because they already have been robbed out by their capitalists and are disabled by private property law, to make any effective country wide decisions.
Pfff… lots of rhetoric but not a lot of logic, You are confusing "capitalism" with "crony capitalism".
"an industrial service no western government can deliver, because they already have been robbed out by their capitalists"
Here's the heads up:
1) Government do not deliver industrial services. They are actually incapable of doing so,
2) Governments are not robbed by capitalists. They are the robbers. They rob the captive taxpayer in order to shift money to tax feeders (aka. state employees), fire up boondoggles and voter capture schemes (like so-called healthcare and social security) or else order goods from entities with huge lobbying power.
Read up on the basic principles here: http://mises.org/daily/5752/The-Fascist-Threat
In short, trading war materials for Middle-East oil, this is the best money maker man has ever known.
Balderdash! We are in the MidEast for one reason and one reason only (and if your first guess is oil, you are wrong). The answer is that we are there to aid and abet Israel and its need to steal land and to dominate its neighbors.
"This land is moine, gawd gave this land to me
I know, gawd gave this land to me!
And though I'm just a man, when you are by mein side
Wid the help of Gawd I no I can be strong.
And walk this lovely land alone …..
etc etc etc
– Ferranti and Teicher out by the dumpster at Wynn's in Vegas.
Always fascinating to watch 'democracy' at work in the American client states.
.
"Welfare Client State"
The second world war was never finished, the second world war was the continuation of the first so the third world war openly needs to start sooner or later, thus far the world war three is conducted in secrecy for last 25 years by US and NATO. The first world war was about dominating the world energy, same as the second world war and to opening new market for Hitler and his racist vulture capitalism social political system, the US and EU – England are doing the same now as we speak. Wake up America and European people you are still at war and been at wars for last 60 years.
Military surge across the Middle East, the rest of Africa and Asia Pacific. Woo hoo! Calligula has spoken. The Empire has gone mad!
The U.S. has become a purely military power. Wars cost money. We won't talk about the loss of human life because that has no meaning to the Congress!! Where will all this money come from for endless war and how long will it continue to flow? Does Rome come to mind?
Surge.
Yep, worked great last time.
And the Russkies are reported (in Haaretz) to be planning 'massive' maneuvres with their Spetznaz forces, Chinese Shaolin Monk baby-killers and the Iranian Republican Guard bashi-bazouk division in SyrIa of all places. 90 000 strong – the distaff side of the Ghaddafi caper, or so we're told.
If sounds more like an opportunity for that Armorgeddon thing-a-ma-jig.