Back to Kyrgyzstan

Another chapter in the new cold war chronicles?

by Justin Raimondo, April 09, 2010

"The headlines are trumpeting the latest revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and the average Joe or Jane is bound to ask: Why in the name of all that’s holy should anyone – even a foreign policy wonk – care about the fate of Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian former Soviet “republic” on the edge of nowhere?

Remember the “Tulip Revolution?” It was at the height of the necons’ short-lived triumphalism, when they and their echo chamber in the mainstream media were trumpeting our glorious “victory” in Iraq. In true Trotskyite style, the neoconservatives bragged that the “liberation” of Mesopotamia was ushering in a “global democratic revolution,” as their then- hero George W. Bush put it, with the US leading the way. The vaunted “color revolutions” in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine would spread throughout the world, and specifically the Middle East and Central Asia, sweeping all before them......

....In any case, the new government initially indicated Manas would be closed, and later reversed course, albeit with reservations. No doubt a long negotiating process will take place – with the issue of legal immunity of US troops, and not just monetary compensation, at the center of the discussion.

On this issue, the US imperialists cannot negotiate or give so much as an inch, because that, after all, is what having an empire is all about. America’s centurions are answerable to Washington alone: no satrap or protectorate can claim legal authority over them, or else they’re no longer our soldiers to command. Treaties granting US military personnel legal immunity from local prosecution are merely the application of the general principle animating US foreign policy, which is that America is and must be a law unto itself.

Given this, is it any wonder the family of Mr. Ivanov and many thousands of Kyrgyz are eager to see us go?"