More Reasons to be Fearfull

US Army Contemplates Redrawing Middle East Map to Stave-off
Looming Global Meltdown

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".


According to an American source with high-level access to the US
military, political and intelligence establishment, Western
policymakers are in no doubt that the world faces the imminent
convergence of multiple global crises. These crises threaten not only
to undermine the basis of Western power in its current military and
geopolitical configurations, but also to destabilize the entire
foundations of industrial civilization.

The source said that the latest petroleum data indicates that "global
oil production most likely peaked two years ago." This is consistent
with the findings of respected geologists such as leading oil
depletion expert Dr. Colin Campbell, who in the late 90s predicted
that world oil production would peak in the early 21st century. "We
have come to the end of the first half of the Oil Age," said Dr.
Campbell, who has a doctorate in geology from the University of
Oxford and more than 40 years of experience in the oil industry.
Similarly, Kenneth Deffeyes, a geologist and professor emeritus at
Princeton University, estimates the occurrence of the peak near the
end of last year.

The source also said that leading US financial analysts privately
believe that "a collapse of the global banking system is imminent by
2008." Although the warning is consistent with the public findings of
other experts, this is the first time that a more precise date has been
estimated. In a prescient analysis drawing on highly placed financial
sources, US historian Gabriel Kolko, professor emeritus at York
University, concluded in late July that:

"All the factors which make for crashes � excessive leveraging, rising
interest rates, etc. � exist... Contradictions now wrack the world's
financial system, and a growing consensus now exists between those
who endorse it and those, like myself, who believe the status quo is
both crisis-prone as well as immoral. If we are to believe the
institutions and personalities who have been in the forefront of the
defense of capitalism, and we should, it may very well be on the
verge of serious crises."

The source also commented on the danger posed by rapid climate
change. Although most conventional estimates suggest that global
climate catastrophe is not due before another 30 odd years, he
argued that the multiplication of several "tipping-points" suggested
that a series of devastating climatic events could be "triggered within
the next 10 to 15 years." Once again, this is consistent with the
findings of other experts, most recently a joint task-force report by
the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Center for
American Progress in the US, and the Australia Institute, which said
in January last year that if the average world temperature rises "two
degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing
in 1750 before the industrial revolution", it would trigger an
irreversible chain of climatic disasters.

(Duende wonders: is this what childless Condee Rice was referring to
as the 'birth pangs' of a new Middle East?)

Hanan wrote: She tried to, as usual, gobble up more than she could chew and became constipated.

 Well said Hanan ....  Really good .. I liked it....

Kashif