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Hold Your Applause
Did they play Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim world in the prison corridors of Abu Ghraib, Bagram air base, Guantanamo or the dozens of secret sites where we hold thousands of Muslims around the world? Did it echo off the walls of the crowded morgues filled with the mutilated bodies of the Muslim dead in Baghdad or Kabul? Was it broadcast from the tops of minarets in the villages and towns decimated by U.S. iron fragmentation bombs? Was it heard in the squalid refugee camps of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians live in the world's largest ghetto?
What do words of peace and cooperation mean from us when we torture-yes, we still torture-only Muslims? What do these words mean when we sanction Israel's brutal air assaults on Lebanon and Gaza, assaults that demolished thousands of homes and left hundreds dead and injured? How does it look for Obama to call for democracy and human rights from Egypt, where we lavishly fund and support the despotic regime of Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest-reigning dictators in the Middle East?
We may thrill to Obama's rhetoric, but very few of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are as deluded. They grasp that nothing so far has changed for Muslims in the Middle East under the Obama administration. The wars of occupation go on or have been expanded. Israel continues to flout international law, gobbling up more Palestinian land and carrying out egregious war crimes in Gaza. Calcified, repressive regimes in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are feted in Washington as allies.
The speech at Cairo University, which usually has trucks filled with riot police outside the university gates and a heavy security presence on campus to control the student body, is an example of the facade. Student political groups, as everyone who joined in the standing ovation for the president knew, are prohibited. Faculty deans are chosen by the administration, rather than elected by professors, "as a way to combat Islamist influence on campus," according to the U.S. State Department's latest human rights report. And, as The Washington Post pointed out, students who use the Internet "as an outlet for their political or social views are on notice: One Cairo University student blogger was jailed for two months last summer for ‘public agitation,' and another was kicked out of university housing for criticizing the government."
The expanding imperial projects and tightening screws of repression lurch forward under Obama. We are not trying to end terror or promote democracy. We are ensuring that our corporate state has a steady supply of the cheap oil to which it is addicted. And the scarcer oil becomes, the more aggressive we become. This is the game playing out in the Muslim world.
The Bush White House openly tortured. The Obama White House tortures and pretends not to. Obama may have banned waterboarding, but as Luke Mitchell points out in next month's issue of Harper's magazine, torture, including isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation and force-feeding, continues to be used to break detainees. The president has promised to close Guantanamo, where only 1 percent of the prisoners held offshore by the United States are kept. And the Obama administration has sought to obscure the fate and condition of thousands of Muslims held in black holes around the globe. As Mitchell notes, the Obama White House "has sought to prevent detainees at Bagram prison in Afghanistan from gaining access to courts where they may reveal the circumstances of their imprisonment. It has sought to continue the practice of rendering prisoners to unknown and unknowable locations outside the United States, and sought to keep secret many (though not all) of the records regarding our treatment of those detainees."
Muslim rage is stoked because we station tens of thousands of American troops on Muslim soil, occupy two Muslim nations, make possible the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, support repressive Arab regimes and torture thousands of Muslims in offshore penal colonies where prisoners are stripped of their rights. We now have 22 times as many military personnel in the Muslim world as were deployed during the crusades in the 12th century. The rage comes because we have constructed massive military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and established basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The rage comes because we have expanded our military empire into neighboring Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It comes because we station troops and special forces in Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And this vast network of bases and military outposts looks suspiciously permanent.
The Muslim world fears, correctly, that we intend to dominate Middle East oil supplies and any Caspian Sea oil infrastructure. And it is interested not in our protestations of good will but in the elemental right of justice and freedom from foreign occupation. We would react, should the situation be reversed, no differently.
The brutal reality of expanding foreign occupation and harsher and harsher forms of control are the tinder of Islamic fundamentalism, insurgences and terrorism. We can blame the violence on a clash of civilizations. We can naively tell ourselves we are envied for our freedoms. We can point to the Koran. But these are fantasies that divert us from facing the central dispute between us and the Muslim world, from facing our own responsibility for the virus of chaos and violence spreading throughout the Middle East. We can have peace when we shut down our bases, stay the hand of the Israelis to create a Palestinian state, and go home, or we can have long, costly and ultimately futile regional war. We cannot have both.
Obama, whose embrace of American imperialism is as naive and destructive as that of George W. Bush, is the newest brand used to peddle the poison of permanent war. We may not see it. But those who bury the dead do.
- Posted in
80 Comments so far
Show AllNicely stated. Keep the fires burning Chris...
"soaring rhetoric"? please. and obama's not naive and i doubt we are "only torturing muslims."
other than that, and don't forget somalia, more flaming bullets of bullseye truth from hedges.
(and are we propping up egypt b/c of oil? indirectly, sure, as everything is related to oil. but isn't our mubarak support more directly to quash an immediate source of tension w/israel?)
Very sobering.
Oh, I see it. Amerika is a people killer and, a dream killer. No, I haven't died physically, nor has anyone in my family. But I've been burying my dreams for years. When they don't take your body, they still take your dreams.
KILLING MACHINE!
The Muslim world may also be outraged by the fact that as terrible as the terrorists are, they recognize that they and Osama bin Laden have been made patsies, first by the Bush administration and now by the current government in power. What are the chances that a very tall bearded man living in a cave thousands of miles away in Afghanistan would have been able to coordinate the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and would have somehow known that NORAD, the FAA and the United States Air Force would have been stymied on that particular day? How did these fearsome terrorists manage to overcome the most expensive and sophisticated defense system on the planet? Why has no hard evidence even been produced by any United States government concerning bin Laden's involvement in 9/11 [as evidenced by the FBI's refusal to place bin Laden on its Most Wanted List in connection with 9/11]? When asked by the Taliban to provide proof of bin Laden's involvement of 9/11, Bush was unable to do so. Undoubtedly many Muslims are aware that to this date no evidence has ever been produced by the US linking bin Laden to 9/11.
The Arab population probably realizes that the Obama administration has no intention of ever conducting an open and honest investigation, unlike the Kane-Hamilton Commission, of what actually occurred on 9/11/01. In all likelihood they understand that it is far easier to demonize and to make scapegoats of foreign terrorists than it is of rooting out the domestic terrorists that were behind the attacks of 9/11.
I watched Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' again recently. I recommend everyone rewatch it too. It's almost more relavent today than when it came out.
Kane Jeeves
Besides Moore's film, I would also recommend at least two DVDs on this subject:
* Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11
* Loose Change Final Cut
Both of these documentaries do outstanding jobs in exposing the myths and falsehoods that have sprung up concerning the events of 9/11.
"Zeitgeist" also dedicates about a fourth of its 90 minutes to the implausibility of the official story.
The unpleasant truth, from Chris Hedges.
Meet the new boss, he's the same as the old boss.
Might even be worse than the old boss.
Already is in some ways, like civil liberties.
Thanks, Liberals. NOW will you please vote third party?
Oregoncharles
NO, they cannot do that! The two-party party will run someone "against" Obama who "doesn't make eye contact!" Or someone who calls Obama, "that one." Or chooses for his/her running mate a rightwing wolf killer. In other words, someone to scare them. The two-party R-faction might even run someone who advocates endless wars. Can't have that!
He's definitely worse in the sense that they have the same policies (you're right that Obama is even more extreme in some ways), yet Bush wasn't popular, whereas Obama is immensely popular. He even has liberal supporters who will spend the next 4 years "waiting to see if Obama becomes a progressive, you know, like FDR". When the election comes, they'll admit they were wrong, and in the same breath, tell us to re-elect Obama so we don't wind up with a (gasp) Republican.
Obama is a dyed in the wool neoconservative of the Straussian school. He is firmly entrenched in the "Chicago School" of economics. He is a shill, a phony, just one more totally corrupt Chicago politician. I spit on him.
"just one more totally corrupt Chicago politician"
. . . alas, you repeat yourself.
Wanderer, "will you please vote third party?" Your courtesy dovetails w/, I recall an intellectual bent...nice.
Hell. Yes. I've done a straight 180. I am a shapechanger, and fast, amorphous only inviolate in a couple of principles, but I screw up the applications, and voting for bo was a f-up.
CD, articles and threads helped me learn. Funny, today I spoke to a very well informed man lauding bo's speech-now I know what some mean by "obamabot," blind.
3rd party. Si, Sire.
barackstar, as previously posted, while you continue to slide, hopelessly out of control, down the slippery slopes of deception, it will be a great pleasure to see your ridiculously and obscenely bought and paid for administration come to its HOPEfully one-termed sorry-assed existence.
mr. hedges proves, once again, to be one of the most brilliant analysts of our country's currently dire situation.
Obama talks about even handedness in his speach. Let's call him on it. It would, for example, be even handed to pull US aid to Israel if they don't pull back from illegal settlements. It would be even handed to call upon Israel to give up its Nukes if Iran will forsake development of thier's. Who even dreams we could see moves like this from Obama. Nobody is being fooled-except perhaps some partisan and gullible Americans.
tammons: Unfortunately the "partisan and gullible Americans" who are fooled by Obama's "moves" are very largely those "professional intellectuals" who long since drank the Kool-aid of belief in Obama's infallibility.
Right on Chris! Nice to see some sober analysis for a change.
"We can have peace when we shut down our bases, stay the hand of Israelis to create a Palestinian state and go home."
Yes, if we do these things we can also have funds for public education, health care for all and environmental protection. Our tax funds could be used to put Americans to work to rebuild our own nation.
If we had a democracy this could happen. If our elected officials cared a hoot for what their constituents want we could have peace and prosperity....but we don't and we won't.
"Our tax funds could be used to put Americans to work to rebuild our own nation."
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. I've read of estimates for the financial bailout ranging from 8 trillion to 12 trillion dollars. That's several years worth of U.S. tax revenues according to the government's projections, which you can find at:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=203
Note that the tax revenues listed there include individual and corporate income taxes, along with social security and excise taxes - the works.
Our country's tax revenues are now under the control of Wall Street and the bankers, who are not known for their magnanimous and beneficent love of the working people.
Justice would require that we return to the '40s, and the U.S. NOT be instrumental in establishing Israel where it is, and, feeling guilty about ignoring the Shoah, establish it in Delaware, so WE'D have to deal with Delawarean refugee camps.
How does it look for Obama to call for democracy and human rights from Egypt, where we lavishly fund and support the despotic regime of Hosni Mubarak . . .
I don't think many people in that part of the world took his speech very seriously. What they see the United States doing there and what we are largely shown through the MSM here are polar opposites. They have to live with the consequences and we live with the lies and propaganda.
MORDECHAI,
It seems to me just about the only people around the world who took Obama's speech seriously were the brain-dead American zombies and their jailkeepers of the corporate media.
one forgotten cause of the first world war was germany's intention to build a rail line from berlin to baghdad
hitler, during the second world war, tried but could not exploit the caspian basin for its oil and natural gas
now pax americana has made its bid - propaganda aside, as chris points out, to secure the whole shooting match
chomsky has noted that even if america was 100% oil free in its economy it would still be there doing what it is doing becasue controlling who gets the oil is the prime determinant
parsing obama's double speak and lies is as tired (already) as parsing bush's
chris has summarized the scenario in this rather short peice because its not rocket science
it's notable that no one evens bothers to prop up the old canard about spreading democracy and freedom in iraq and afghanistan
that doesn't even pass the giggle test anymore as the alien vampire dershowicz might say
the other unmentioned aspect of the afghani situation is the heroin
us troops now guard the poppy fields and transit routes that -praise god -allow the heroin consumtion of the european youth to be at an all time high, pardon the pun
Our 'leaders' are hopelessly caught in their web of deception. The only people with the power to cut through these webs are us, the people, we are the only hope. As I was saying back in 08 before the elections for our president happened, if we want certain terms (such as an end to wars) in exchange for our leaders terms in office, it would need to be a legal document.
Our leaders must in our day and age be bound legally to the peoples will. They no longer have the kind of moral education that would otherwise bind them.
I think this is a simple reality, that mirrors all legally binding contracts in today's day and age.
If we vote minus such guarantees, we in the end become ultimately responsible.
But who knows if collectively we want an end to war, perhaps our government represents the people, and the people have become what the government is, a war machine, war being the purpose, war being the end.
Yes Chris, the country is still in a mess thanks to an eight year dictatorship of the Bush bunch. It is a little difficult for anyone who is not God to straighten things out in a few months, especially if he is trying to follow our country`s laws and the Constitution. Give Obama and the Dems a chance for a year or two and then see what we have, it may be better than you think. Remember how the Bushies lied to the American people and they ate it all up and gave him free rein to wreck the country.
Print this and tape it to your refrigerator. Two years from now you'll quietly take it down and burn it. You will learn, as the rest of us suckers learned the hard way, about Obysmal and the suicidal course of the American Empire.
Kernelz
It does not take God or a god to stop the United States Air Force from dropping 500 lb. and 2000 lb. bombs on innocent Afghan civilians or making sure that drone missiles are no longer being rained down upon innocent Pakistani civilians. I seriously doubt if the Afghans and the Pakistanis want to give Obama a year in order to make sure that no more of their countrymen and countrywomen and children and grandmothers are being slaughtered by the US military nor, I would think, would the Iraqis want Obama to continue to keep American soldiers unjustifiably in their country.
Agent of hope and change? Not for the people in the Middle East who have continued to feel the sting and oppression of American imperialism which is now continued under a Democratic president named Barack Obama.
Sioux Rose
ERROLL: Well-said.
It seems to me that Hedges played down the U.S. war/occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He mentioned these rather "late" in this article, while pushing the Israeli agenda to front and center. In which conflict(s) did more die? He also did not mention the unmanned drones now targeting civilians and causing so much pain along the Afghan-Pakistan border. There are many and continuing sins against the Arab/Muslim world. Hedge's order of priorities as articulated in this article appears to be somewhat impaired.
well, iraq and afghanistan were covered somewhat in obama's speech, whereas the recent wars on lebanon and gaza were conspicously absent - thus the relative priority given to the topics by chris hedges, I'd say...
To Erroll June 8th, 2009 12:28 pm:
Yeah, not agent of hope, but double agent.
I am sorry Kernelz, but that is quite a naive and ignorant statement. Since you have posted almost the exact statements before they may not be serious either.
A quick summary of the current and historical context painfully reveals that D and R foreign policy in the last 5 or 6 decades is pretty much the same in substance. Only the window dressing and rhetoric are different. Our electoral system is corrupt to the bone, our big money campaign system is corrupt and the two-party duopoly is corrupt.
Let me ask those believers in a two-party duopoly: Would you trust the television market to two mega coroporations? Would you trust the automobile market to two mega-corportations? Would you trust the private health care insurance system to two mega-coroporations?
If you do you might want to enroll in an Econ 101 course: it explains market distortions and the concept of "collusion"
There is obviously systemic flaws that can be changed, you could abandon the electoral college, have public financing and even dissolve the senate but the fact is-half the electorate vote republican and of the half that vote democrat-most are conservative! With 2 parties, representatives are still free to vote independently. The battle is clearly to convince the public why they should vote progressives into congress-you don't need a third party to accomplish this. The right have their churches to organize for them. We need progressive scientists and economists to speak-up and of course celebrities of all kinds. You guys make it sound like the people are united, but most fell for the red-scare shit and think we don't understand economics.
No. Despite all the efforts at manufacturing consensus with socialist smears and marginalizing the evil liberals--the majority is actually progressive on the issues--from health care to gay marriage. This is key. Do NOT buy the spin that this is a Right wing country that promotes Right wing policy. That is the government and the rift between the government and the people grows wider every day with the government betraying the public interest.
I've seen the polls and some seem promising especially 30% youth for socialism.
If you're correct maybe Kucinich will do better next time, even if the media continue to disrespect him. He apparently thinks the party can be reformed.
Kernelz--
NO. The problem isn't that Obama can't clean up the mess already, it's that he's not even on the right road to doing so. The road he's on is down the Bush path. No difference. And check the torture pics and memos and Obama's position on them: torture is still OK. Maybe not waterboarding, but everything else. So is permanent imprisonment without trial. And that's just at Gitmo; at Bagram and all the other CIA black holes around the globe it's business as was usual in the Bush years.
And I don't want to hear that he can't do everything at once because he exploded that one himself a couple of months ago when he laughed and said that, yes, he could do more than one thing at once. That's why he has a huge WH staff, for God's sake! He's just another militarist, corporatist, AIPAC-fed, BigPharma/insurance-company-supported goon-in-office.
What is interesting to me is that he kept all his reactionary NeoCon tendencies--which many simply assumed he was positioning on to demonstrate toughness when Clinton tried to paint him as a weak CIC. Instead he dropped or reversed on everything else he ran on during his campaign that demonstrated the slightest improvement over the rest.
That swirling torque you feel is not the country slowly turning; it's what buoys all this swirling down the toilet:
--* More $ to the military, not less
--* No retraction from Iraq
--* Expansion in Afghanistan
--* Speeding expansion into Pakistan
--* Continued torture
Hey, there's more. This is not subtle.
Obama's soaring speeches are just soaring lies. When he speaks, I gag. Obama is for people like Bush was for people, only with more cloak and stealth. While Bush stumbled over his lies, Obama soars in them. Washington is the enemy of the people and the servant of wealth and empire. Obama is their stooge and an Uncle Tom of the first order. The more things change, the more things change for the worse.
"When he speaks, I gag."
That's one of my favorite comments so far.
It reminds me of a joke someone from Yugoslavia told me a long time ago that was popular in that country at the time:
Q. "What's the shortest known unit of time?"
A. "The time between the moment a politician starts to speak on television and the moment the viewers change the station."
If only American voters felt the same way.
What I find bizarre about Hedges' column are statements like "We may thrill to Obama's rhetoric". What? Obama's rhetoric is written by crazed Zionists, they do not hold back, they put it all in the speech. Obama begins his second paragraph by invoking the US holocaust, 9/11, and placing the blame on "Violent extremists (who) have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims.". The US is not extreme, even though it bombed the hell of of Iraq in 1990. The US is not violent even thought it bombed the hell out of Iraq in 1990. The Muslims are extreme. The Muslims are violent. This is insane rhetoric. I can't listen to it or Obama. What is wrong with Hedges? The fact that Muslims sat through, even applauded, this verbal onslaught is surreal.
OweBombya's rhetoric is much like Bush's when they talk about the terrorists...
They never mention WHO the actual finders and trainers of the terrorists are...
only referring to Al Qaeda or violent islamist extremists or people who hate our freedoms...
Folks... They are talking about themselves... The Banksters and MIC war profiteers and Spooks...
It was the CIA that created, trained, & funded al Qaeda for thirty years...
They are tools of empire... Just like our troops...
The Straussian Neoconservative Narrative demands eternal war and lying to the public in order to accomplish same. For this "we" require an eternal enemy. It used to be "the Russians". Now its "the terrorists" and more specifically "the Muslim terrorists". It must cost a lot of "black project" money, some of it acquired undoubtedly by opium/heroin sales by the CIA, to support and equip an eternal enemy. And, Obama is a Straussian Neoconservative out of "the Chicago School". (Actions speak louder than words.)
We shall have eternal war, because, for some, it is ENORMOUSLY profitable. Around 60,000 people worldwide, more or less a simple wild-assed guess, probably want this. But there are 6 BILLION of US who do NOT want this. While I am generally against violence, I can't help thinking about General Custer and other stories of lopsided odds. 6 billion versus 60,000. It ought to be an out and out bloodbath, an out and out slaughter. Of course it might cost a couple million of US our lives. So, who has the balls to fire the first shot? Not me. And that is a major problem.
Sioux
EKATON: One hope (possibility) is the mutiny from inside the MIC... many of these persons are exhausted from their recurrent "tours of duty," and probably some see that loved ones are not getting health care while others are being tossed from their homes. When enough of the citizenry feels the pain, the men in blue or in uniform may think twice about which way they are pointing their weapons. Cherish that moment!
Nah.
Not until the looting rich who Obama serves deplete our resources will we see any recognition of a slide. We can stop paying our taxes and they will send us to the local Gitmos. As long as Obama's masters are living large all is well in land of the free.
If you look to the third world tin pot dictaorships it becomes very obvious how the Elite keep the Military in line and willing to obey any orders.
They impoverish the population at large wherein a "Military Career" becomes desired as a means to keeping ones self and ones family out of poverty. You want health care and cant afford it? Join the Military. You want an education and cant afford it? Join the Military.
Some Unionist working for GM makes a better income then a person in the Military AND gets health care paid for? See that this no longer possible as the world "Globalizes" . Demand cutbacks in wages and benefits.
How may children of the auto-workers , seeing that avenue towards prosperity closed to them, will now sign up for the "war on terror" ?
Now I can't stand to listen to Obama any more than Bush.
I feel your pain.............
Sioux Rose
NARCISSUS: Chilling observation. Well-stated.