At the
very moment when the Democratic Party President Barack Obama reiterated in his
inaugural address that the United States “must be a source of hope for the
poor” and will “support democracy from Asia to Africa,” giant U.S. C-17
aircraft were carrying French troops into Mali, where Washington a year before
had put in power Captain Sanogo, trained in the U.S. by the Pentagon and CIA,
exacerbating Mali’s internal conflicts.
The
speed with which France launched the operation, ostensibly to protect the Mali
from the advance of Islamic rebels, shows that it had long since been planned
by France’s Socialist Party President Francois Hollande. The immediate
cooperation of the United States and the European Union, which also decided to
send military specialists to Mali to carry out training and command functions,
shows that it was planned jointly with Washington, Paris, London and other
capitals.
The
Western powers, whose multinational corporations vie with each other to grab
markets and sources of raw materials, come together when their common interests
are at stake, such as those in Africa endangered by popular uprisings and
Chinese competition.
