Yes we can expand AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command! Yes we can contain China; yes we can secure the oil, natural gas, uranium, biofuels, hydropower, agricultural and mineral wealth of the African Continent. Yes we can! I'll send Hillary! Yes we can! I am not only the first African American President; I am also of half African parentage, and I have an African name. I am Barack Hussein Obama and I became president in January 2009, one year and one month after Africa surpassed the Middle East as a source of U.S. oil imports. Yes we can!
Yes we can! I have welcome in Africa that the Chinese, for all their cash, can but dream of. Yes we can!
I wish it were otherwise, but, unless Americans opt out of that "we" and insist that Obama's election mean something better for Africa, then yes we can, and yes we will.
"We" can't stop China, but we can contain China, with Barack Obama, who is now the object of adulation all over Africa, and, with AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, and its military bases all over the Continent. In D.R. Congo, we can covertly organize and manage more African proxy wars to secure that nation's vast natural resource wealth, in the heart of Africa.
The corporate press has been dutifully reproducing the U.S. State Department's publicity about Hillary Clinton's mission to address "gender based violence" in D.R. Congo, and, to urge democracy in Kenya, Nigeria, and Angola, but Bloomberg, like most of the business press, got straight to the point in "Clinton Seeks U.S. Africa Gains as China Expands Oil Purchases."
"Clinton said the U.S. plans to expand trade and investment with Angola and is looking at ways to cooperate more closely with the Chinese on economic development in Africa.
China has extended more than $5 billion in credit to Angola, by the State Department's calculation. In 2008, the U.S. Agency for International Development gave Angola $40 million in assistance."
And:
"Clinton came to Angola, which surpassed Nigeria as the largest African producer of crude oil in July, in a nod to the country's growing prominence in the hydrocarbon sector. Even with its enormous resources, the country of 17 million needs investment in infrastructure, coaxing on transparency and an alternative to Chinese investment, U.S. officials and analysts say."
Five billion in Chinese credit is 125 times the U.S.A.I.D.'s $40 million last year, but Barack Obama is president, AFRICOM is expanding, and Hillary Clinton was, according to Bloomberg, be the first U.S. Secretary of State to spend a night in Angola.
In 2003, George Bush's Secretary of State, Colin Powell, failed to win Angola's support, as a temporary member of the UN Security Council, for the Iraq War.
Clinton outlined the Obama State Department's stance towards Africa, at the outset of her trip, in Nairobi, Kenya, in her speech to the 8th Forum of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum. And, despite her now famous hissy fit in response to a question about what Bill Clinton thought of China in Congo, she is channeling her husband, and Reverend Rick Warren, Bill Gates, Cindy McCain, and other American leaders, including Barack Obama, who point to Rwanda and Rwandan President Paul Kagame as a model for Africa:
"And their leaders, led by President Kagame, believed in policies based on evidence and measurable results, including a nationwide emphasis on family planning, cross-cutting partnerships with donors and NGOs, a greater premium on professionalism in the government and the health sector."
Both Sweden and the Netherlands have cut foreign aid to Rwanda for its human rights abuses, and for its covert war on neighboring D.R. Congo, but Hillary Clinton mentioned neither.
Nor did she mention Spanish Investigative Judge Andreu Merelles indictment, on February 6, 2008, of 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against Rwanda's own civilian population, most of all against its ethnic Hutu group, and against the neighboring people of Eastern Congo.
Nor did she mention the military base, and U.S. military advisers in Kigali, Rwanda, 30 miles from Rwanda's border with Eastern D.R. Congo, which the U.S. began building in 1994, after Paul Kagame, then Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's intelligence chief, moved across the Ugandan border to take power in Rwanda, and English, rather than French, became Rwanda's dominant European language.
Rwanda, the model that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have put forward for Africa, is often identified as the Israel of Africa, with reference to the tragedy of 1994, which the world came to know as "The Rwandan Genocide," even though the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda ruled that it was not genocide. And, even though Spanish Judge Merelles's now charges Kagame and Kagame's government with genocide against the Hutu, though he has stated that he will not indict Kagame so long as Kagame remains Rwanda's sitting head of state.
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