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New adventures in American imperialism

The Obama administration is currently assembling a constellation of secret drone bases in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as a new phase of its counterterrorism campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, according to U.S. officials.

Initial reports suggest that the new drone bases are being built simply as observation outposts, but each drone can be easily outfitted with Hellfire missles and satellite-guided bombs as the situation demands. Umanned surveillance is the order of the day for now, but one of the bases in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, will be used to house a small fleet of “hunter-killer” drones.

The CIA has flown many drones over the area using a base in Djibouti, the tiny African nation adjoining the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Now they are building their own airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so they can more easily deploy drones over Yemen.

This is how the U.S. chooses to win hearts and minds in the ME, and if they can discourage the sale of oil to other nationalities in other currencies while doing so, then so much the better.

The cables exposing the new American adventurism come courtesy of WikiLeaks. U.S. officials had asked to keep the new drone push secret, particularly the installation in the Seychelles, but then the government should understand by now that there are no secrets between friends and adversaries any longer, no matter the cost of open disclosure.

The real fear U.S. officials have is that Americans are now instantly privy to how threir tax money is being spent, and these days, when highways and bridges are crumbling, public education is imperiled and the American standard of living is in a full nose down position, the Pentagon is naturally concerned that their actions might not hold much public favor when drawn out from the under rocks and and exposed to the bright light of public scrutiny.

Whether one is for or against more aggressive military involvement in foreign lands is neither here nor there. Whether or not we wish to be spending down funds we don’t have on foreign escapades rather than supporting our own infrastructure and building a social environment more conducive to hiring workers and enabling industry is more to the point.

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