Draft GPUS Platform Amendment Africa

SECTION TITLE: AFRICA

"Africa" is, to most of the world, the continent bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean, but, to the U.S. Pentagon, it is "Africa" as conceived by AFRICOM, the US. Africa Command. AFRICOM does not include Egypt, a U.S. client state and one of the world's largest recipients of U.S. military aid. Egypt, despite being on the African Continent, is included in CENTCOM, the U.S. Middle East Command, because it neighbors Israel.

The U.S. is the only nation in the world that divides the world into seven "commands," with a general heading each; William "Kip" Ward, an African American, is the Army General heading AFRICOM. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created AFRICOM, the most recent of the Pentagon's seven commands, on February 7, 2007. Rumsfeld's successor, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and President and Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama both support AFRICOM.

In December, 2007, 11 months after the creation of AFRICOM, Africa superseded the Middle East as a source of U.S. oil imports.

The U.S. government's foreign policy in Africa is first and foremost the projection of military force through AFRICOM, despite diplomatic amenities and foreign aid distributed to the Pentagon's military allies. These include Uganda and Rwanda, whose soldiers serve as U.S. proxies on the continent and beyond.

AFRICOM exists, by its own claim, "to fight terrorism," but, in reality, to secure Africa's oil and other natural resources, which include food and mineral inputs demanded by industrial sectors in the U.S. and its Western, Anglophone allies. Those industrial sectors include the U.S.A.'s unparalleled military industrial sector, which relies particularly on the mineral resources of the Katanga Copper Belt in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and northern Zambia.

AFRICOM does not secure African resources in the interest of U.S. and other Western citizens, but in that of a multinational, Western, corporate elite.

GREEN SOLUTIONS

1. End the Pentagon's projection of military force in Africa.

2. End all covert U.S. operations in Africa, which now continue to rob African people of their lives and natural resource wealth.

3. Support fair trade, local economies, local food and power production, and mass transit, in the United States, not only for the sanity and survival of U.S. citizens, but also to reduce consumption and environmental pollution, and weaken the multinational corporate motives behind the scramble for Africa’s resources, now secured by covert operations and proxy war.

4. Stop training, arming, advising, and propping up African dictators like Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame.