US President George Bush would like us to believe he is about to liberate the Afghan people from the tyranny of the Taliban. He's promised US$320 million worth of humanitarian aid, some of which is to be air-dropped into Afghanistan — once the Taliban's air defence sites have been destroyed.
"While we strongly oppose the Taliban regime, we are friends of the Afghan people", said Bush, hypocritically ignoring the fact that the Afghan people would not be suffering under that brutal regime if not for the Washington, which helped train, arm and finance the mujaheddin during the Afghan civil war.
However, Bush's "first war of the 21st century" only begins with the Afghanistan intervention. According to the British Observer, Washington is considering "expanding the war beyond Afghanistan to include similar incursions by special ops forces — followed by air strikes by the bombers they would guide — into Iraq, Syria and the Beqaa Valley area of Lebanon, where the Syrian-backed Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters that harass Israel are based".
"In Iraq", the article added, "any site suspected of being a chemical weapons facility or proliferation plant ... would be bombed, in an escalation of the almost weekly current harassment of Iraqi installations by British and US fighter jets...
"Sources even said that operations could be mounted with permission from governments in semi-hostile nations ... such as Algeria and Sudan. Special US units could be deployed in conjunction with domestic troops against terrorist cells in allied Western countries, notably Britain, Germany, France and Spain."
The so-called "hawks" in the Bush administration haven't hidden their objectives, and have been given the "green light" after September 11.
Vice-president Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, along with former US ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, have signed an open letter to Bush urging an all-out war for US global dominance. The letter was issued by an influential right-wing think tank called Project for the New American Century, to which Cheney, Rumsfeld and other Bush administration appointees belong.
The Project for the New American Century was established in 1997 to promote "American global leadership". Its stated objectives reveal the US war plans:
"America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.
"Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:
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- we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
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- we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
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- we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
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- we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
"Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next."
This is the outlook of the people who run the government of the richest, most powerful state in the world.
Of course, such global imperial ambitions on the part of the US rulers are nothing new. In 1941, Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life and Fortune announced in a Life editorial the coming of the "American Century". He called on the US capitalist ruling class and its government officials "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit".
US Secretary of State James Byrnes, in similar fashion, told General Henry Arnold in 1945: "What we must do now is not make the world safe for democracy, but make the world safe for the United States."
Soon after he became president in 1945, Harry Truman made it clear that he intended to follow Luce's call, confiding to a visitor to the White House "that the Russians will soon be put in their place; and that the United States would then take the lead in running the world the way the world ought to be run".
These expectations were frustrated for nearly 50 years by the industrial and military strength of the Soviet Union. With its demise, the US rulers believe they can finally "run the world" the way they want to. Bush's September 20 speech to the US Congress made it clear that this is the ultimate goal of "Operation Enduring Freedom".