Nafeez Ahmed: US Army Contemplates Redrawing Middle East Map

[reprehensor]

US Army Contemplates Redrawing Middle East Map to Stave-off Looming Global Meltdown
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nafeez_m_060831_us_army_contemplates.htm

by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

http://www.opednews.com

In a little-noted article printed in early August in the Armed Forces Journal, a monthly magazine for officers and leaders in the United States military community, early retired Major Ralph Peters sets out the latest ideas in current US strategic thinking. And they are extremely disturbing.

Ethnically Cleansing the Entire Middle East

Maj. Peters, formerly assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence where he was responsible for future warfare, candidly outlines how the map of the Middle East should be fundamentally re-drawn, in a new imperial endeavour designed to correct past errors. "Without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East," he observes, but then adds wryly: "Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works."

Thus, acknowledging that the sweeping reconfiguration of borders he proposes would necessarily involve massive ethnic cleansing and accompanying bloodshed on perhaps a genocidal scale, he insists that unless it is implemented, "we may take it as an article of faith that a portion of the bloodshed in the region will continue to be our own." Among his proposals are the need to establish "an independent Kurdish state" to guarantee the long-denied right to Kurdish self-determination. But behind the humanitarian sentiments, Maj. Peters declares that: "A Free Kurdistan, stretching from Diyarbakir through Tabriz, would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan."

He chastises the United States and its coalition partners for missing "a glorious chance" to fracture Iraq, which "should have been divided into three smaller states immediately." This would leave "Iraq's three Sunni-majority provinces as a truncated state that might eventually choose to unify with a Syria that loses its littoral to a Mediterranean-oriented Greater Lebanon: Phoenecia reborn." Meanwhile, the Shia south of old Iraq "would form the basis of an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf." Jordan, a US-Israeli friend in the region, would "retain its current territory, with some southward expansion at Saudi expense. For its part, the unnatural state of Saudi Arabia would suffer as great a dismantling as Pakistan." Iran too would "lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Baluchistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today's Afghanistan." Although this vast imperial programme could be impossible to implement now, with time, "new and natural borders will emerge", driven by "the inevitable attendant bloodshed."

As for the goals of this plan, Maj. Peters is equally candid. While including the necessary caveats about fighting "for security from terrorism, for the prospect of democracy", he also mentions the third important issue -- "and for access to oil supplies in a region that is destined to fight itself".

Continued...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_na...ontemplates.htm

[AlamoDemoc]

1. There is no doubt the Middle East is now a battleground for oil

There is no doubt the Middle East is now a battleground for oil and religion under Bush administration.

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. As if there ever was...nt

[AlamoDemoc]

6. I wish our elected Democrats on the hill

would fathom that we are in the middle east for cheap oil and that of crusade against Islam of popular sentiment in the United States.

[Igel]

3. Piffle.

The article was available long before early August (such is the printing business, in which August's events cannot possibly be reflected before November's journal, and then only if the events occur in early August).

And it's an interesting exercise. The ethnic cleansing spoken of, of course, would not be by Westerners. It would mirror what happened in parts of Europe in 1946.

Academics really should learn how to evaluate another's perspective. You'd think pounding the same nail with the same hammer with the same beat would get tedious after several years, and the hammerer would at least vary the beat.

[serryjw]

4. ONE of the most important articles

ever posted on DU..please read in it's entirety. Ahmed is my hero. I read WAR ON FREEDOM 3/02 after 9-11. If it wasn't for him, I may not be here at DU.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Great book.... bought it immediately after 911.... a real eye

opener then, essential for understanding just how these guys play the game.... two thumbs up for Ahmed

[serryjw]

7. You bet!

Have not read his other 2 books but will soon. He is a real truth teller.