US programme and defenceless states?

By Mr. M F Karim Uttara, Dhaka
28 July 2005, 18:00 PM
Falcon Programme allows the US to strike any country that does not comply with its dictates to exercise its global economic and political domination. The US Congress passed ASPA (American service members protection act) that prohibits US security assistance fund and most of the military cooperation unless a country signs a bilateral immunity agreement with it, or rejects UN backed ICC (International Criminal Court). The US tried to reach such agreement with every nation on the planet. But the South America nations that ratified the ICC agreement have refused to grant the US the ASPA agreement. Except Columbia and Argentina, all South American countries are now on ASPA blacklist.

More striking yet has been the rise of a new kind of "People's Power"- a term used by Mr. Bush, that relates to former Soviet Republics that are crying for democracy and US friendship.

If Afghanistan was the USSR's Vietnam, Iraq may turn out to be America's. The greatest gamble of the Bush administration was certainly its "regime change'. With no end in sight, the draining Iraq War has made Bush's tunnel vision foreign policy a shamble. The war in Iraq and Abu Ghraib prison abuses have left the Middle East increasingly unstable; oil prices on the rise; dollar undermined; and US military desperately over-stretched.