Afghanistan: Permanent Occupation Planned
Obama lied. Permanent occupation planned.
by Stephen Lendman
Replicating post-WW II occupations is planned. Sixty-seven years after war's end, US troops still occupy Germany, Japan and Korea. They're part of America's growing empire of bases.
Status of forces (SOFA) agreements establish the framework under which US forces operate abroad.
The Department of Defense Technical Information Center calls them agreements "that defines the legal position of a 'visiting' military force deployed in the territory of a friendly state."
They delineate "the status of visiting military forces (and) may be bilateral or multilateral. Provisions pertaining to the status of visiting forces may be set forth in a separate agreement, or they may form a part of a more comprehensive agreement.""These provisions describe how the authorities of a visiting force may control members of that force and the amenability of the force or its member to the local law or to the authority of local officials."
"To the extent that agreements delineate matters affecting the relations between a military force and civilian authorities and population, they may be considered as civil affairs agreements."
Occupied countries get little choice. Pentagon officials draft provisions. They're largely one way.
In his book, "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic," Chalmers Johnson explained SOFAs as follows:
"America's foreign military enclaves, though structurally, legally, and conceptually different from colonies, are themselves something like microcolonies in that they are completely beyond the jurisdiction of the occupied nation.""The US virtually always negotiates a 'status of forces agreement' (SOFA) with the ostensibly independent 'host' nation."
They're a modern day version of 19th century China's "extraterritoriality" agreements. They granted foreigners charged with crimes the "right" to be tried by his (or her) own government under his (or her) own national law.
