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U.S. government molds ‘mobile,
agile’ military
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Appointment of army chief promotes
role of Special
Operations forces
BY PATRICK O’NEILL,
(The
Militant)
U.S. defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld has announced that a
former head of Special Operations forces will
serve as the new chief of the U.S. army. The
appointment of retired Gen. Peter Shoomaker follows
the promotion of the special forces to a key role in
the military conquests of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rumsfeld has
been among the most outspoken champions of the
enhanced role of the Green Berets, Delta Force, and
Navy Seals in the U.S. military.
These moves are
further signs that a revolution is under way in the
organization of the U.S. military. They reflect the
U.S. rulers’ push for more mobile, less ponderous
armed forces ready to move rapidly to areas of
battle as U.S. imperialism needs.
The invasion
of Iraq was a victory for the approach of the
defense secretary and his supporters over their
critics in the government and military brass. In
that assault, U.S. Gen. Thomas Franks, the commander
of the operation and another Rumsfeld ally, relied
heavily on air power, laser- and satellite-guided
bombs, and a ground army that was numerically small
in comparison with the U.S.-led forces in the 1991
Gulf War. The U.S. and British units’ rapid advance
from Kuwait to northern Iraq in the face of a badly
led and demoralized Iraqi army silenced those in
Washington who said that the invading force was too
small and lightly armed and would get bogged down.
Franks, who
headed the U.S. Central Command recently and is
retiring this summer, is being replaced by Lt. Gen.
John Abizaid—dubbed the “Mad Arab” by his fellows in
the military brass—who also played a major role in
Washington’s conquest of Iraq.
Following
the war, U.S. president George Bush singled out the
Special Operations Command for particular praise.
Shoomaker headed the command for three years from
1997. He was stationed in Korea in the mid-1970s.
U.S. forces are redeployed
In keeping with the ongoing remolding of the
armed forces for more frequent and far-flung
aggression, U.S. officers have begun a significant
redeployment of their troops in Europe, Asia, the
Middle East, and the Americas on the pretext of
“fighting terrorism.”
The number
of U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany will fall from
almost 70,000 to as few as 15,000. Most will head
east to Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania.
That will
bring them closer to likely theaters of imperialist
intervention in the Middle East, Africa, and Russia.
“Why do we need a joint force to be in Germany,
where there’s nothing happening?” a senior military
official told the Los Angeles Times. “You
have to have troops close to ports and airfields
that are closer to the action.”
The total
U.S. forces in Europe were reduced from 300,000 to
around 100,000 in the decade following the end of
the Cold War.
In addition,
Washington is moving troops south from the so-called
demilitarized zone dividing the Korean peninsula,
which takes them out of range of north Korean
artillery in case of a military conflict with
Pyongyang. The Pentagon is also probing to establish
new bases in Australia, Singapore, and the
Philippines, in addition to Japan and south Korea,
where it has tens of thousands of troops.
Up until
recently, some 80 percent of the 1.4 million U.S.
troops were stationed in the United States, south
Korea, and Germany.
In the
Middle East, the U.S. military is pulling most of
its 5,000-strong force out of Saudi Arabia, while
reinforcing its presence in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain,
and now Iraq. Further east, thousands of troops are
in Afghanistan and some 1,500 have been stationed in
Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic.
Meanwhile, under Washington’s Plan Colombia, U.S.
forces have been deployed in a number of Andean
countries in Latin America under the guise of
combating the drug trade and terrorism. It’s an area
of the world where the volcano of the class struggle
is smoldering.
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