OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: Will Obama Policies Bring Real Change for the Muslims?

Richard Holbrooke

US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke is a hawk and is currently part of the neoconservative organization, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). He has co-authored a statement with the extreme hawk and Neocon, Dennis Ross that openly threatens military action against Iran. Holbrooke has also been part of the-National Endowment for Democracy-that advocates "regime change". Holbrooke is also part of the "Council for Foreign Relations" which is the bastion of the influential Israeli lobby.

Richard Holbrooke, is best known as the architect of the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended three years of war in Bosnia. According to BBC, nicknamed "the Bulldozer," Holbrooke has gained a reputation for confronting warring leaders to get them to come to the negotiating table. These skills will be tested again in his new role as US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Holbrooke has long served as one of the most ruthless American diplomat, going all the way back to his early days in the Foreign Service in Vietnam. He came to public notice as the leader of the US diplomatic team at the 1995 talks on the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, held in Dayton, Ohio, that concluded with a US-imposed settlement in the civil war in Bosnia.

Tellingly, in his encouragement of ethnic cleansing by the Croatian regime of Franjo Tudjman, which drove a quarter million Serbs out of the Krajina region of southern Croatia in a 1995 offensive, Holbrooke could deservedly face war crimes charges. He later boasted, in his memoir of the Dayton talks: "Tudjman wanted clarification of the American position. He bluntly asked for my personal views. I indicated my general support for the offensive ... I told Tudjman the offensive had great value to the negotiations. It would be much easier to retain at the table what had been won on the battlefield than to get the Serbs to give up territory they had controlled for several years."

Holbrooke was fully aware at the time of the Dayton talks that the Croatian Army was carrying out atrocities against the Serbs, and was later quoted saying, "We 'hired' these guys to be our junkyard dogs because we were desperate. We need to try to 'control' them. But this is no time to get squeamish about things."

Clinton said that Holbrooke's mandate would be to "coordinate across the entire government an effort to achieve United States' strategic goals in the region." These goals have little to do with the remnants of Al Qaeda hiding out in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The real focus of the intervention, under Obama as much as under Bush, is to establish the United States as the principal power in the oil-rich region of Central Asia.

A pipeline from the Dauletabad gas field of Turkmenistan through to Herat and Qandahar then Multan in Pakistan and on to the Indian Ocean remains a strategic goal for Washington. Caspian Sea oil and gas are the near-equivalent in potential value to the Persian Gulf resources, but surrounded by Iran and Russia. A pipeline from Azerbaijan reaches through Georgia to end on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, but in a time of crisis Russia could easily seal it off. The international contract for pipeline construction was signed shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but work has not been feasible because the construction site is largely under Taliban control. The desire the area around Qandahar for this purpose is probably a factor in the troop increase.

According to Prof. Gary Leupp of Tufts University, Holbrooke will argue that more needs to be done to stop attacks on Afghanistan from Pakistan, and will justify the continuing U.S. policy of violating Pakistan's sovereignty with missile attacks. "Holbrooke will engineer Afghan President Karzai's ouster, work with Gen. David McKiernan to make Afghanistan the center of the "war on terror," try to pacify the country enough to build a pipeline. Meanwhile, he'll keep the pressure on Pakistan to go after the Taliban, even as the Taliban and their supporters and imitators proliferate, while the U.S. continues to bomb Pakistan, insulting its national pride, violating international law, outraging its legislators, provoking official protests and mass demonstrations."

It was pretty clear that Obama has accepted the Bush doctrine that the United States can bomb Pakistan freely. On January 23, the third day of this office, President Obama gave the go-ahead for the twin US missile strikes against targets in Pakistan's FATA region that killed 21 innocent civilians. Since August, of the 38 drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed nearly 150 people.- The militants have responded by killing dozens of alleged US spies in the area.

Dennis Ross

President Obama told Al-Arabiya that the US would in the next few months lay out a general framework of policy towards Tehran. "It is very important for us to make sure that we are using all the tools of US power, including diplomacy, in our relationship with Iran.... As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.- "

Obama had been expected to appoint former ambassador Dennis Ross, president Bill Clinton's special Middle East envoy, to a third post that would handle US relations with Iran. But Ross's aggressive campaign for the post, as well as his close association with key groups that make up the Israel Lobby, appears to have incited a backlash among key Obama advisers, reportedly including Clinton herself, that may have delayed his appointment, according to Jim Lob.

Dennis Ross, an Iran baiter, has supported the war on Iraq-which Obama has opposed. Ross has also served with the-pro-Israel think tank,-Washington Institute for Near East Policy-(WINEP) as well as with the-Jerusalem-based "Jewish People Policy Planning Institute" (JPPPI).

Dennis Ross has co-authored the report-"Meeting the Challenge: US Policy towards Iranian Nuclear Development." This report alludes to an Iranian nuclear program that has been debunked by the CIA National Intelligence Report (Nov 2007) that said that the Iran nuclear program was on hold. The report calls for the military encirclement of Iran, pressure on Iran to abrogate its nuclear programme and thus leading to its logical extension where "war becomes inevitable."

To borrow Prof. Gary Leupp, "by appointing Dennis Ross, Obama is sending the Iranian leaders a clear message. He is associating himself with the most extreme alarmist positions currently articulated, including those of Norman Podhoretz."

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