Crosspost with CounterPunch.org
December 11-13, 2009
"The right to invade any country as we see fit."
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
A friend down the coast here in California called Wednesday to say that her mother, 95, had fallen, cracked her ribs, got a cough and told her daughters, “That’s it. I’m checking out.” She’s given up eating. I remembered all the arguments I’d had down the years with the old lady – a perennial optimist about Democrats when it came to assessing the likelihood that Carter or Clinton or Obama would ever actually serve up the progressive banquets they’d pledged on the campaign trail.
“Tell your mother that at least she won’t have to put up with me saying ‘I told you so, about Obama.’” Her daughter gave a deep, sad sigh. She too has been a loyal liberal Democrat all her life and now, she said, Obama’s breaking her heart. So many high hopes, and there’s a man accepting the Peace Prize with one hand, while signing deployment orders with the other, sending 30,000 more young soldiers to Afghanistan.
Imagine having one’s foot on the lip of the great abyss, dimly hearing the radio in the kitchen playing snatches of the appalling drivel served up by Obama in Oslo. “Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.”
Obama was in peak form as self-righteous blowhard, proclaiming that “America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.”
As his words hang in the air, captives of the Empire are being kidnapped and rendered to Bagram and other dungeons and tortured, all the while with no legal standing as “enemy combatants”. Stand naked in a cold cell, waiting for the next beating from your interrogators and listen to Obama being piped through the PA at max volume, right after ‘Born in the USA’ (sorry, Birthers): “We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place… So let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.”
McCain loves the speech. Sarah Palin loves the speech. But that doesn’t mean Obama’s Oslo address was a Republican speech. When it comes to invoking “just wars” Republican presidents can go through the motions, but they haven’t got their hearts in it. Who needs to talk about justice as you drop high explosive and scrawl Death to Ragheads on the side of the bombs? When you want a just war, whistle up a Democrat who can talk with a straight face about installing democracy in the Balkans. After eight years of Bushian crudities the Empire needed an upgrade in its salespitch, which is why we have Obama. Back at the time of the medieval crusades, the Western kings used to take Holy Communion from their Archbishops before heading east to battle Islam and scour the land for booty. I thought the ceremony in that austere hall in Oslo was a straight lineal descent – and then pledged his holy war.
There have been yelps, but I detect a certain caution on the left, a certain reluctance to toss Obama on the dung heap where he belongs. Often it’s simple self-preservation. A great many nominally left organizations are dependent on liberal non-profit foundations whose executives are swift to cancel grants to those swerving from commitment to the Democratic cause and to the White House. Rather than confess to these coarse inhibitions, the progressives murmur about the lot of Afghan women, the monstrous Taliban, and sit on their hands. And they too see nothing wrong with Obama’s endless pledges to kill Bin Laden – a commitment that aroused ecstasy in Congress last week when General McChrystal told the Senate Armed Services Committee last Tuesday that the world can not defeat al Qaeda until Osama bin Laden is captured or killed.
As Pierre Sprey remarked in the hearing’s wake, “It’s clear to me that, although Gen. McChrystal’s credentials in the assassination business are impeccable, his assassination-based grand strategy is a shameless crib from that great strategic innovator, the USAF’s Col. Worden (e.g., “decapitation of the enemy’s leadership”–by air power, of course). Quibbles over authorship aside, victory through assassination is a brilliant grand strategy for America: it’s cheap, particularly at a time when we’re a bit strapped; it’s politically irresistible to a nation raised on Terminator 2 and Tupac; and, for the defense intellectuals, it offers wonderfully clear cut measures of success. And, empirically speaking, it’s got a great track record. Look how well a single well-conceived execution worked out for Pontius Pilate, the High Priests of the Second Temple, and the Roman Empire.”
Here’s a president who can’t even toss the progressives the one peanut a year they need to keep them happy. Obama’s refusal on the eve of Thanksgiving here ago to sign the U.S. on to the landmine ban was the breaking point for many.
The American Medical Association, mentioned by Clancy Sigal here earlier this week had a study reckoning that an estimated 24,000 people, mainly civilians, are killed or ripped apart by landmines and “unexploded ordinance” (cluster bombs) each year across the world. Mostly the victims are the rural poor, many of them children. As a senator, Barack Obama voted for the ban; as President, he’s against it. Looking at the AMA Report’s numbers it’s a safe bet to say that somewhere in the world, even as Obama invoked Martin Luther King and the peacelovers, some kids the same age as his own two daughters were killed or crippled by a landmine.
Obama could have tossed the peanut through the bars, and ratified the ban. The liberals would have cheered and then Obama could have told Rahm Emanuel to pass the word along to Congress that he’d much prefer the legislators not ratify his decision.
But Obama’s too chicken to risk a gesture like that. What people are suddenly realizing is that with Obama there is a absolute disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality. Is it cynicism? My own feeling is that Obama has spent so much of his life putting on the various acts necessary to get ahead in the world of powerful, rich white people that deception and self-deception have become innate and instinctive, several steps beyond crude manipulation. You could always tell when Bill Clinton was hamming it up. His face would redden slightly with the effort of contrived emotion.
Obama’s moralizing kitsch is a far smoother brand of cant. As Laura Flanders remarked here last week, he can say, as he did in his Afghan War speech at West Point, “Our union was founded in resistance to oppression,” then smile at his wife, descendant of oppressed slaves.
He has a picture of Muhammad Ali above his desk. On November 19 he wrote a tribute to Ali in USA Today praising “The Greatest” for “his unique ability to summon extraordinary strength and courage in the face of adversity, to navigate the storm and never lose his way.”
Did Obama feel any disconnect between this tribute to the most famous draft resister in US history and the fact that at the very moment he was approving his speech writer’s work on the piece for USA Today he was pondering drafts of a speech announcing he was widening the war in Afghanistan?
Dave Zirin, a fine sports writer, put it well in a piece he wrote called “Message to Obama – You Can’t Have Muhammad Ali”:
“Would that Muhammad Ali still had his voice. Would that Parkinson’s disease and dementia had not robbed us of his razor-sharp tongue. Maybe Muhammad Ali has been robbed of speech, but I think we can safely guess what the Champ would say in the face of Obama’s war. We can safely guess, because he said it perfectly four decades ago:
‘Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.’”
Every day now I meet sad and angry people in this progressive part of northern California, furious at themselves at having believed in Obama, at a time in those early primaries and fundraisers last year when he needed them to believe. They kept on believing through most of this year, even as Obama threw one pledge after another out the window. After the landmine sell-out and the 30,000 deployment they’ve got nothing to hold on to, though many of them will stay with Obama till the end, particularly the blacks, holding on to the straightforward assumption, as Kevin Alexander Gray put it here last Wednesday that “He‘s doing the best he can under the circumstances– those ‘circumstances’ being white people.”
Maybe the 95-year will slip away, also feeling that Obama is doing the best he can “under the circumstances” of the American Empire, leaving younger, less blithe spirits with the thought that the sourest truth about Obama is that he’s not doing the best he can “under the circumstances”, that in fact he’s really a sleazeball.
Any president has the power to do something decent once in a while, even if it’s declaring a marine sanctuary, which was Jimmy Carter’s last act as president. Bill Clinton finally offended Hollywood liberals by refusing to pardon Leonard Peltier, something he could have done at of the stroke of the same pen he used to sign the pardon for Marc Rich, the billionaire crook fugitive from justice. Hollywood is still with Obama. If he was shot tomorrow, someone Hopes die hard, but Obama has done a superlative job of assassinating them with all due dispatch.
Dateline: October 19, 2009
A Gale Of Spring Air – Barbara Plett And The President
Editor’s Note: The following is an exchange between British media watchdog editors from Medialens, and the BBC. You will see that the British media establishment shares most if not all of the imperial values and capitalist biases that pollute American journalism. And that merely calling them out on their “sins” leads absolutely nowhere. There’s no common ground between a radical, liberated view of the world, and one that, however sophisticated, continues to be that of a witting servant of careerism and the status quo. When dealing with these people it’s helpful to keep in mind that, overwhelmingly, the visible echelons of the international media establishment are smug jackasses, and that as is true with all jackasses (of the human kind) it’s nearly useless to try and correct their “misperceptions.” This is an encrusted layer that can only be swept away by revolutionary gales.
On September 24, we wrote to the BBC’s Barbara Plett:
Dear Barbara Plett:
Barbara Plett
“New US President Barack Obama set the stage with a sweeping speech announcing America’s re-engagement with the UN. Coming after the winter years of the Bush administration, this was a gale of spring air.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8272081.stm)
By contrast, the “quixotic colonel”, Gaddafi, “embarked on a diatribe that rambled on for an hour-and-a-half.”
As for our own Dear Leader:
“After the Libyan leader finally sat down, an indignant Mr Brown changed his speech to defend the founding principles of the UN.”
Jolly good show! And the Iranian president:
“Mr Ahmadinejad himself didn’t mention Iran’s nuclear programme in front of the assembly, nor did he seem distracted by walkouts to protest his denials of the Nazi Holocaust, and what many see as his fraudulent re-election. In typical style he lambasted Israel and the West for double standards, failed ideologies and imperial interventions.”
This reads like a spoof of Big Brother-style thought control. Through an unsubtle mix of swoons and snarls we’re told who are the ‘good guys’ and who the ‘bad guys’. The BBC insists its journalism is carefully balanced with all personal opinions omitted – but this is not journalism, it is propaganda.
Sincerely
David Edwards
Plett replied on October 6:
Dear Mr Edwards:
Apologies for the lateness of my response, I started to reply last week but have been distracted by demands on both work and domestic fronts. With regards to your comments that my article amounted to unsubtle propaganda that delineated the “good guys” and the “bad guys:”
In essence, I was writing about what three world leaders had to say on the opening day of the General Assembly, how they presented themselves on the world stage, and how they were received. I was not suggesting that any of them delivered the objective truth, the piece was meant to convey what was said from the point of view of the speaker. Given your complaint, I can see it might have been helpful to signpost more clearly.
But to clarify:
Gaddafi made some points that resonated with the audience, but his presentation was rambling and often incoherent. It was received with a mixture of curiosity and irritation, tending towards the latter as his speech wound on Ahmadinejad’s objective was to criticise the west of double standards (on nuclear issues), failed ideologies (capitalism and corruption) and imperial intervention (invasion & occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan). That was the main thrust of his speech to the General Assembly
Obama’s objective was to announce that America was re-engaging with the UN. I think it is fair to say the General Assembly broadly welcomed that. That’s what I meant by a gale of spring air: there was a palpable sends of relief to have a US president prepared to work through rather than against the UN. For sure this will be in pursuit of national foreign policy objectives, but that is the same for all members.
A final comment on “good guys” and “bad guys:” It is a fair point that stains on the US record (ie launching what the UN regarded as an illegal war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib etc) should also be mentioned if one is to accuse Gaddafi of oppressing the opposition and Ahmadinejad of fraudulent elections. The qualification I would make is that Ahmadinejad and Gaddafi were personally implicated in abuses against their own people, whereas Obama was not present at the time of the Iraq invasion and has campaigned for a US withdrawal. Also as I mentioned earlier, the piece was about personalities, not about states or state policies.
Best regards,
Barbara Plett
We replied on October 19:
Dear Barbara:
Many thanks for such a lengthy and thoughtful response; it’s much appreciated. You write:
“In essence, I was writing about what three world leaders had to say on the opening day of the General Assembly, how they presented themselves on the world stage, and how they were received.”
You claim you were writing about how the three world leaders “were received”. But you wrote that Obama’s words were “a gale of spring air”, full stop. You +then+ added that Obama had been given “a warm reception” by UN members. The first comment expressed your own opinion – it was the kind of impassioned, personal endorsement of Obama that is continually being made by mainstream journalists. Likewise, you wrote that Gaddafi “rambled on”. You did not write that UN members +felt+ that Gadaffi had rambled on. You then focused on the Iranian leader’s alleged sins and noted that he “lambasted Israel” in “typical style” – again, your personal, derogatory assessment.
You write further:
“It is a fair point that stains on the US record (ie launching what the UN regarded as an illegal war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib etc) should also be mentioned if one is to accuse Gaddafi of oppressing the opposition and Ahmadinejad of fraudulent elections. The qualification I would make is that Ahmadinejad and Gaddafi were personally implicated in abuses against their own people, whereas Obama was not present at the time of the Iraq invasion and has campaigned for a US withdrawal.”
You say that Obama has “campaigned” for a US withdrawal. But he is the president of the United States. He is the commander-in-chief of the occupying force. He doesn’t need to campaign; he has the power to order an immediate withdrawal. He is therefore directly accountable for maintaining an illegal occupation that since 2003 has resulted in the deaths of more than one million people. Worth mentioning, one would think, but such a comment is inconceivable in a BBC report.
Obama has escalated wars from south Asia to the Horn of Africa. In July, John Pilger reported in the New Statesman that since Obama had taken office US drones had killed 700 civilians in Pakistan (http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=545). A month earlier, in a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN Special Investigator Philip Alston called the United States’ reliance on pilotless missile-carrying aircraft “increasingly common” and “deeply troubling.”
(http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/06/04/drone.attacks/)
In July, one of Britain’s most senior judges, Lord Bingham, said that drone attacks were so “cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance”. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/top-judge-use-of-drones-intolerable-1732756.html)
US drone attacks on Pakistan are almost certainly illegal under international law. Under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the US is entitled to self-defence only when it preserves “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations” (http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter7.shtml). Pakistan is clearly not engaged in an attack on the United States.
You could have mentioned some or all of these issues (and many others) in balancing your comments on Ahmadinejad’s “denials of the Nazi Holocaust, and what many see as his fraudulent re-election”. Instead, we were left with the standard BBC depiction of a world divided up between the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’, between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This kind of propaganda has terrible consequences in yet again preparing the public mind for bloodshed.
Best wishes
David
The Limits Of Influence – Jeremy Bowen And The Superpower
The BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Jeremy Bowen, similarly practices a version of ‘balanced’ reporting that betrays the truth of the murderously unbalanced Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We wrote to Bowen on September 24:
Dear Jeremy:
You write:
“Mr Netanyahu’s refusal to do as he was asked has been an embarrassing, even humiliating reminder of the limits of America’s influence over Israel, a close ally which receives billions of dollars of US military aid and lashings of political support.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8271715.stm)
The reality, as even your comment must lead us to conclude, is very different – the ‘failure’ was a humiliating reminder of the limits of peace activists’ influence over an American political class that bankrolls and arms the Israeli aggressor. The idea that America is a neutral peacemaker in this war of conquest, wringing its hands in frustration, is a lie. Norman Finkelstein made the point:
“But who gave the green light for Israel to commit the massacres? Who supplied the F-16s and Apache helicopters to Israel? Who vetoed the Security Council resolutions calling for international monitors to supervise the reduction of violence?…
“Consider this scenario. A and B stand accused of murder. The evidence shows that A provided B with the murder weapon, A gave B the “all-clear” signal, and A prevented onlookers from answering the victim’s screams. Would the verdict be that A was insufficiently engaged or that A was every bit as guilty as B of murder?”
Best,
David
Bowen replied the same day:
Interesting argument – except that the individual most humiliated by Israel’s refusal was the man at the summit of the political class, the President hinself.
Yes, the Gaza war was greenlighted by his predecessor. You’ll remember Israel ended its main operation just as he took office. Had Mr Bush still been in office the issue of a freeze would not have arisen.
What has changed is the definition of what’s in the interests of the US.
I don’t think I suggested the US was a neutral peacemaker. It’s simply Pres Obama defines his country’s interests differently to Pres Bush, by identifying a peace settlement as a US national priority. Otherwise he wouldn’t need to bother doing what he’s doing.
Thanks for writing
Yours
Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East Editor
We wrote again on the same day:
Dear Jeremy
Thanks. On the Gaza attack, the US was a participant throughout – that’s been the norm since 1967. As for the “embarrassing” reminder, why on earth should Netanyahu agree to ending settlement growth (in accord with Israel’s commitment in the Road Map) after Obama has stated clearly that there won’t even be a slap on the wrist – he won’t go as far as Bush I – if Israel continues to build?
On Gaza again, you’re missing the point. Bush gave the green light. Obama agreed. That’s why he said not one word about it, claiming that there was only one President (which didn’t stop him from commenting on many other issues). As Israeli sources make clear, the Gaza operation was very carefully planned throughout. It was planned to end just as Obama came into office, as a favour to him, so that he could continue to fail to say a word about the US-backed crime. Which is what happened.
On settlement growth, Obama is just repeating what Bush II said (and what’s in the Road Map that Bush II signed) – and, importantly, he’s not even going as far as Bush I. That aside, the issue of settlement growth is hardly more than a device to obscure real issues – namely, the settlements themselves are all illegal, all constructed by the US-Israel in ways that undermine any realistic hope for Palestinian self-determination.
Best
David
