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Pentagon Psalmists’ return to Asia Pacific
by Atul Bhardwaj on 14 Jun 2012 16 Comments
Last week, Leon Panetta, Pentagon’s chief hit-man was in Asia, signaling ‘Broken Arrow, Broken Arrow!’ This bogey was meant to gather gullible Asian leaders, persuading them to come to the aid of the American empire in grave danger of being overrun by China. ‘Broken Arrow’ was a code reserved by the American forces in the Vietnam War to signal extreme danger to their positions.  Panetta’s appeal for help has had such an impact that great strategy pundits from India, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia Australia, Japan, South Korea and others have joined Pentagon psalmists’ chorus - chanting imprecatory prayers - predicting disgrace and shame to the Chinese.


Post 9/11, the world was introduced to a similar imprecatory number against Islam. A little over a decade ago, Bush had stood up to tell the world about the ensuing ‘clash of civilizations’. Now all that war on terror lies buried under the cacophony of Osama’s death pronouncement and the din of ‘Arab Spring’.

The latest American mantra pivots around the Oceans in Asia Pacific region. Dr John Chipman, Director General and Chief Executive, IISS says, “one of the most important subjects in the Asia‑Pacific is the idea of protecting maritime freedoms and the acceptance that this is an international and global role, not only a regional and particular role.”

Fresh words are being woven and new alliances are being sewn together; only to pull wool over Asian eyes. Dangerous needles are being pricked into Asian minds to prove that their salvation lies in preventing China from uprooting the treasure tower embedded in the South China Sea. Scarborough Shoal - a disputed territory between China and Philippines – is now the chief reason for Asia to be “in a state of strategic flux.” As Sanjay Baru tells us, America is “seeking to provide an element of stability to this flux, and inject a measure of certainty to an uncertain world.”

Today, Panetta talks about shifting an additional 10% of American forces to Indo-Pacific than what it has committed in the Atlantic. Towards the fag end of their empire in Asia, British too had tried to use huge forces at their disposal to protect “the crescent of land that stretched from Bengal, through Burma, the Southern island. It was hinterland of the Straits of Malacca, one of the greatest arteries of oceanic trade that separates the Indian Ocean from South China Sea.” (Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars: The end of Britain’s Asian Empire, 2008). Bayly and Harper also tell us that during these years the Americans used to make fun of the British South East Asian Command (SEAC) under Lord Mountbatten as nothing but an acronym that stood for “Save England Asian Colonies”.


Today, America finds itself in British shoes. It is paranoid about the longevity of its empire. It’s declining money power and reduced ability to spend on military is making it seek military hardware and manpower from within Asia-Pacific. It is playing the same old game and making sure that Asians are once again buffoon(ed) into fighting against each other.

It is a paradox that in the era of advancing life expectancy, the collective memory of the human being is on the decline. It is only sixty years ago, Panetta’s predecessors had entered Asia pacific with an atomic bang, making the Japanese experience the horrors of weapons of mass destruction and colonization.

Just prior to dropping of the atomic bomb, the communist cadres in South East Asia and British Indian army soldiers were used as cannon fodder to defeat the Japanese colonial designs. And all they got in return for fighting the Japanese was a fresh tranche of brutal British imperialism.


By 1946 Japan had been mollified and the threat of communism was the new clarion call on which Asia was to rotate. How does one forget the US role in ensuring the division of Korea and the use of ‘Agent Orange’ in Vietnam? They used Soviet Union in WW II only to make it an enemy. Islam was used against godless communism and then made into a dreaded monster after 9/11. They used China in the Cold War and now China is the enemy. This is an endless game that can no longer be brushed aside in terms of, “there are no permanent friends or enemies, but permanent interests in international relations.”

The people of Asia must expose this farce and say that there is only one permanent interest - not to
expose global poor to wars initiated at the behest of the leech-like descendants of Rockefeller and Rothschild. The people must come together to prevent their younger generations from being used once again in frivolous wars. Wars indulged in by these banking monsters representing 1% of the global population. For this tiny minority, war is a necessity. They will create reasons to display their masculinity and keep the global 99% in a perpetual state of shock and awe. Thus, there is no use blaming Americans, now we know the real culprits behind the wars.

For these global elite, the multitudes are expendable earthworms and cockroaches. Nations and Gods are all strategic commodities to be used and thrown away like disposable crockery. Protection and perpetuation of property rights is all they live for and make us die for. They will not change; let us at least, not allow ourselves to be used.

The author is a retd. Naval officer; he edits the quarterly magazine Purple Beret
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