[D66] US plans buildup in Persian Gulf to offset Iraq withdrawal

[Antid Oto]

US plans buildup in Persian Gulf to offset Iraq withdrawal
By Bill Van Auken
31 October 2011

The Obama administration and the Pentagon are preparing for a major military
buildup in the Persian Gulf to offset the troop withdrawal from Iraq and prepare
for new wars in the region.

US officials, diplomats and military commanders cited by the New York Times in
an article published Sunday indicated that the new deployments could include the
stationing of combat brigades in Kuwait, across the border from Iraq and within
easy striking distance of Iran, as well as “sending more naval warships through
international waters to the region.”

The existence of these plans have surfaced in the wake of President Barack
Obama’s October 21 announcement that all US troops occupying Iraq will be
withdrawn from the country before the end of this year.

While the Obama administration and its apologists have presented this planned
withdrawal as the fulfillment of the Democratic president’s campaign promises
about ending the Iraq war, and even as a turn toward peace in the region, it is
nothing of the kind.

In point of fact, the December 2011 withdrawal deadline was set by the Bush
administration in a Status of Forces Agreement negotiated with the US-backed
regime in Baghdad in 2008. Both the Bush and the Obama administration, along
with their clients in Baghdad, sought to negotiate a new deal that would have
allowed up to 20,000 US troops to remain in the country, classified as
“trainers” and “advisers.”

These negotiations fell apart, however, over the inability of the Iraqi regime
to obtain parliamentary approval for the legal immunity of US troops demanded by
the Pentagon. Given the deep-going anger of the Iraqi people over the horrific
war crimes committed by US forces and the loss of over one million Iraqi lives
since the invasion of 2003, no major Iraqi party was prepared to identify itself
with support for impunity for the American military.

Behind the scenes, negotiations continue between Washington and the Iraqi
government over maintaining US support for the Iraqi security forces.

US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon met Saturday in Washington with his
Iraqi counterpart Falah al-Fayyadh to discuss how these ties will be maintained
after the planned withdrawal. According to a White House statement, the two
officials “reaffirmed the common vision of a broad, deep strategic partnership
between the United States and Iraq as embodied in the Strategic Framework
Agreement.”

The White House spokesman added that the two officials “committed to develop
additional mechanisms to establish a continuous strategic dialogue between the
United States and Iraq.”

Washington is by no means abandoning its bid for dominance over Iraq. It plans
to leave behind a force of some 5,500 private security contractors as a
mercenary army under the control of the US State Department, together with some
16,000 civilians employed by the US government and based at the largest US
embassy on the planet.

And, a report released Sunday by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction (SIGIR) quotes the Iraqi military’s chief of staff, Lieutenant
General Babaker Zebari, as saying that Iraqi security forces will not have the
capacity to defend the country’s airspace and borders until sometime between
2020 and 2024 “without assistance from international partners.” Clearly, the
implication is that the US will remain a dominant military force in Iraq,
including crucially through air power, well after the withdrawal deadline.

Nonetheless, the contingency plans revealed by the Times Sunday signal that
Washington is preparing for a far wider war in the region in the wake of any
troop withdrawal from Iraq.

New targets for US aggression include both Syria and Iran. The statement made by
President Barack Obama following the grisly October 20 murder of Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi included a thinly veiled threat that Syria was in US and NATO’s
sights for an exercise in regime change similar to the one they have carried out
in Libya.

The seriousness with which the Syrian regime has taken these threats was
reflected in an interview published Sunday by the British Telegraph with Bashar
al-Assad. The Syrian president warned that a Western intervention in Syria would
unleash an “earthquake” that would shake the region and threaten the eruption of
“tens of Afghanistans.”

The United Nations has estimated that as many as 3,000 Syrians have died in the
unrest that has swept much of the country since last March. The Syrian
government has claimed that 1,100 soldiers and police have been killed in
clashes with anti-government gunmen.

Targeting Syria for aggression would represent a prelude to an even bigger war
against Iran, which Washington sees as one of its main rivals for hegemony in
the two strategic energy-rich regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.
Having failed in two immensely bloody and costly wars over the past decade—in
Afghanistan and Iraq—to secure its dominance over these regions, US imperialism
has by no means given up its predatory aims. The failure of these two wars only
creates a more powerful impulse for a third, against Iran.

Washington is pursuing a strategy of escalating provocations against the Iranian
regime, expressed most recently in its floating of an extremely improbable
“terrorist plot” that supposedly implicated Teheran in a conspiracy to contract
a Mexican drug gang to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US. At the same time, US
diplomats are touring Europe in an attempt to drum up support for imposing
sanctions against Iran’s central bank, a sweeping economic embargo that would
rise to the level of an act of war.

“With an eye on the threat of a belligerent Iran, the administration is also
seeking to expand military ties with the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation
Council—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and
Oman,” the Times reports. It adds that the White House and the Pentagon are
“trying to foster a new ‘security architecture’ for the Persian Gulf that would
integrate air and naval patrols and missile defense.”

In other words, Washington is attempting to cobble together an anti-Iranian and
counterrevolutionary military alliance based upon US collaboration with the most
reactionary monarchical regimes in the region. Such a military pact would be
directed at suppressing any further uprisings by the Arab masses, as the
sheikdoms of the GCC themselves carried out against the masses in Bahrain, and
at providing a base for US military aggression against Iran.

According to the Times report, these preparations are already well advanced,
with the results of negotiations on the size of the US combat forces to be
deployed in Kuwait “expected in coming days.”

Undoubtedly a major concern in Washington is the stability of these Gulf state
allies themselves. Saudi Arabia, the linchpin of US counterrevolutionary
strategy in the region, has itself been shaken by unrest in its predominantly
Shi’ite oil-producing eastern province. And an unusually frank profile of the
desert kingdom was posted by Al Jazeera recently, declaring that the corrupt
monarchy’s “octogenarian line of successors recalls the final years of the
Soviet Union, when one infirm leader after another succeeded to power for a
brief period of inert rule.”

Also contributing to the buildup towards a new war are domestic political
considerations within the US. Obama has come under fire from the Republicans
over the Iraq withdrawal announcement, with Republican Senators demanding
hearings on its implications. Threatening military action against Iran is no
doubt seen within the right-wing leadership of the Democratic Party as an
effective means of countering such criticism.

More decisive, however, are concerns over the mounting social unrest within the
US, which has found its initial expression in the Occupy Wall Street protests
that have broken out across the country. The American ruling elite sees a new
militarist adventure as a means of diverting the escalating class conflict
within America itself.

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/gulf-o31.shtml