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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.
80 Comments so far
Show All"What do words of peace and cooperation mean from us when.. we still torture-only Muslims?"
Obama would get a far more valuable response from Muslins Worldwide
IF OBAMA PROSECUTED THOSE AMERICANS involved in the Republican's Muslim Torture Program.
That alone would make a huge difference.
Muslims will not believe him if
Obama Does Not Prosecute the
Americans that Tortured THEM!
TORTURE IS A FEDERAL CRIME
SEE http://tinyurl.com/besdd3
If you do nothing else for your Country today,
SIGN THE PETITION To Prosecute Them For Torture
http://ANGRYVOTERS.ORG
I am very grateful to Chris Hedges for putting matters in proper perspective.
I knew we were screwed during the primaries, when the favorite technique of Obama supporters was to call their fellow Democrats racists.
There has been a coup within the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has been taken over by some bad sorts--the Obama Democrats.
The important thing about Obama Democrats is that they hate other Democrats and are willing to do anything to hurt their fellow Democrats.
By contrast, they are terrified of Republcans and would never touch a hair on a Republican's head. This should tell you something about why it's all gone south.
The Obama contingent have moved Democratic Party headquarters to Chicago, which is nicely emblematic. Their candidate has already destroyed several key progressive goals--publicly-financed elections, for example. They have virtually guaranteed a Jeb Bush Presidency in 2012.
Swine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNy7z_mlA7E
Mr. Obama still has a 68 percent approval rating. Facts don't matter; feelings do.
The people love Mr. Obama.
Obamanation....at times it makes me physically ill to be a part of it.
The place to make comments about this article and so many others is at the White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ and at your congresscritters's websites. And don't be shy--do it daily, or even several times a day since there is so much wrongdoing to comment about. Share your indignation with them--they much more than us need to read your comments. I often use the comment box here to formulate a rough draft of my message, then copy and paste it into the politico's website's comment box, and then make whatever minor modifications needed.
Repeat over and over until it sinks the f#@k in, which it clearly hasn't:
"Frankly, they own the place." Senator Durbin was referring to the banksters who own our government, but what he really meant was the banksters and Big Military and Big Energy and Big Etc.
So, there's an election held for the position of President of The Place owned by Big Everything. BO wins - and now officially works for The Owners, who really didn't care who won because they only allowed contenders who understood whom they'd be working for if victorious.
And anyone who continues to be shocked/surprised/disappointed that BO is doing exactly what The Owners are telling him to do are as naive as the majority of Americans who will only ever believe that we're #1 and always good and always right and always doing God's work no matter what.
if you don't want to vomit, skip this, a segment of a "dialogue" b/n chris matthews & evan thomas comparing obama to God, after the cairo speech:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Evan Thomas is editor at large for Newsweek magazine. Evan, you remember '84. It wasn't 100 years ago. Reagan and World War II and the sense of us as the good guys in the world, how are we doing?
EVAN THOMAS: Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God. He’s-
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
THOMAS: He's going to bring all different sides together.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Obama is most definitely not God.
Eric Clapton is God.
Sorry, pal, but Hugo Chavez is God.
And Clovis is onto something--Hendrix was close....
Actually I'm waiting for the Second Coming of Hendrix.
Rush L's T.
This is a good example of the deification of an American president, in this case Barack Obama, by representatives of the American mainstream media. The are also, unfortunately, the same people who in all likelihood endorsed the Bush administration assertion, which is now carried over into the present regime, that a very tall, bearded man from the Middle East was somehow able to coordinated the attacks on 9/11 and was also able to outwit the most heavily armed country with the most sophisticated defenses systems on Earth. Our less than intrepid media are not exactly stellar examples of speaking truth to power by challenging their less than credible statements.
Or that he lectured Muslims- who had nothing to do with the Holocaust- about the poor Jews who suffered in the Holocaust past while silent on the brutality of Israel now.
Naderites and others are a bunch of panty wetting crybabies. Not even in his 6th month in office, faced with a finacial crisis nearly as large as the great depression, two wars and an international reputation that was in the gutter, you expected Obama to snap his fingers and have everything perfect by January 31, 2009?
The President has only limited power and must work with Cognress and the Courts. regardless of what Bush may have thought, we do have a constitution with a speration of powers. Working with Congress does mean comprimises and horse trading, not demanding Congress does X or else.
Lets publish this article after a year is up and see where the economy is, where the jobless numbers are, etc. Otherwise the progressive camp is going to isolate itself from an administration that would have listened to it.
As for the Nadarites, where is Nadar?
Waaaa! Waaaa!
Starting with the first month and now approaching the 6th, is there not a campaign promise or policy from a "finacial crisis nearly as large as the great depression, two wars and an international reputation that was in the gutter", that Obama has not flipped on as he continues on in Bush's shoes?
But instead of acknowledging that, instead of recognizing that, it goes back to the default position of attacking Nader.
So, I ask, supposedly progressive authors of these articles are always advocating that it is us--we who must act, demand, force Obama, when we still have these partisan apologists crawling across the floor on their knees to kiss the hem of Obama's robes.
wow, such an intelligent, cogent and insightful post. Have you taken polsci 101 yet? Still in high shcool? did you read the article?
""We may thrill to Obama's rhetoric, but very few of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are as deluded.""
************************************************************
I don't thrill to anything obama has to say as his actions have proven his continuation of previous administrations corporate agendas that will only ensure more strife the world over and nothing new here either about obama's continuing of corporate america's imperial wars and expansion which is why I did not vote for him.
It will be interesting to follow the 2012 election day results and how obama will miraculously win again just as w & dick did in 2000 and 2004, because obama has been a good dog and has not bitten the hand that feeds him.
I rather consider obama at the least a disappointment of being the first black president that turns out to be just the samosamo rag as the preivous, he just happens to be black, a big 'winning' smile and can rhetorically hypnotize people into accepting the imperial BS his masters adhere to over the world.
Let us not forget, when it comes to securing the resources of the Caspian Sea, one will quickly realize how pesky Russians or their allies (regardless of faith) will become the focal point of US aggression in the turn of a hat.
The US uses religion as but one tool, and inevitably will secure plenty of Muslims as fodder for its Central Asian and Caucasus domination tour. It happened before, it can/will happen again.
Chris Hedges, Robert Fisk, Ali Abunimah et al. analyses hit the nail squarely on the head. Too bad we don't see these high-quality articles on the MSM.
"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."
Who knew the extent of the damage potential of voting lesser evil in 2008? Had Nader received 15% of the vote business as usual would be much more risky for Saintly O'Bamba.
Had the people given Nader 15%, the people would be more empowered today, louder, maybe even kicking the doors down. But maybe the people didn't want change. Maybe they only wanted new SUVs.
Re Kernelz June 8th, 2009 11:16 am,
who implies that Obama is "...is trying to follow our country`s laws and the Constitution."
This assertion is demonstrably false.
Praise be to Chris Hedges. Unlike our president, he cuts to the chase.
How can Obama expect to delude the Moslem and American people with his well crafted and delivered lies when his track record is so poor. If it wasn't so sad and threatening it would be almost a laughabe performance.
I didn't think that we would ever see a double speaker better than little Bush, but Obama is much more effective. He has bought the program and is officially one of the Bildenburg boys.
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.
Nicely stated. What AIPAC always skips over is the fact that radical Islamic movements did not exist prior to the occupation of Palestine in 1967. The Islamic Brotherhood did not exist, Hamas did not exist, and the numerous spin offs had not been born yet. It was only after years of oppression, torture, and forced imprisonment through occupation forces, that these movements took hold as a positive response against the terror being inflicted on the Palestinians.
Remember the massacre of the Shatila refugee camps?
Israel was created (at least in part) on the terrorist activities of a Jewish group calling themselves the IRGUN. Manacham Begin was Prime Minister during the Carter years was himself a high ranking member of the this terrorist organization prior to entering politics.
While I agree with your implication that Israeli violence and injustice is often a primary cause and always an aggravant of Islamic radicalism, in actual fact the Muslim Brotherhood (not the "Islamic Brotherhood" as you call them) goes back to well before 1967, being born in Egypt under that name in the late 20s as the first modern expression of a politically militant Islam. Certainly Zionist colonization and its ethno-religious reasons of State, beginning in the late 19th century and thus predating the official founding of the Brotherhood, anticipate at the very least and no doubt have inspired aspects of all subsequent Islamic theocratic political expressions (Iran but also successful Islamist political movements from Hezbollah to the ruling party in Turkey), and Zionism's early terror attacks on "soft" targets clearly later served as a strategic model for Arab resistance movements from Algeria to Palestine. Zionism nevertheless was not a "primary cause" in the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood, strictly speaking. If instead you're referring Islamic Jihad and Hamas, Muslim fundamentalist groups that arose in the Palestinian territories (with the aid of Israel and the U.S., of course) as alternatives to the ineffectual Fatah party of Arafat, then, yes, these were formed post-1967. But the fundamental issues of the Israel-Palestine conflict were already in place well before 1967 and even before the founding of Israel. Israel's present continued colonization and settlement of lands occupied in '67 is merely a needless exacerbation of an already fundamentally unjust political process (Israel by its founding had already gone beyond the land "legally" assigned her by the U.N.), one that Israel might nevertheless have gotten away with, if not for her own greed and religious extremism, which have brought us to the current pass.
Hello clovis, you mention ,"Islamic Jihad and Hamas, Muslim fundamentalist groups that arose in the Palestinian territories (with the aid of Israel and the U.S., of course)". Would you exrapolate please?
The US & Israel aid Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other Muslim fundamentalist groups?
I know Arafat/Fatah take orders from Tel Aviv, but this further subterfuge...
Now Israel/US WERE behind the Shiite Mosque attack in Iran last week that killed 30, the attacks on the Shiite pilgrims in Iraq a couple of months ago, and more...
peace, thankyou.
It's a pretty well-known fact that Israel, with the U.S.'s blessing, aided and encouraged the Palestinian Islamist groups in the early going as a way to undermine the power and influence of Arafat's secular, Marxist Fatah movement. The move of course backfired on them, much the same way the U.S.'s nurturing of Osama and the Afghan mujahidin could be said to have backfired on us, even if you think, as I do, that there was some inside collusion in the 9/11 attacks. I also, like you, strongly suspect US/Israeli involvement in some of the major inter-religious bombings in Iraq, especially, for example, in the bombing of the Samarra mosque two or three years ago. That was a highly sophisticated job, with bombs planted inside the columns of the ancient building. In my opinion, a Muslim, no matter how sectarian or fanatic, is not going to blow up a very beautiful, important shrine like Samarra, which I think would be a source of pride to any Muslim, regardless of sect. Destroying it for the sake of sectarian strife that didn't even exist in Iraq before the U.S. intervention simply doesn't make sense, unless, like our political class and the MSM, you dehumanize Muslims and make them seem capable of anything.
clovis, thank you, got it. Your posts are concise & informative. My gut understanding of what is right & wrong in the ME is not matched by historical knowledge parallelling yours, ergo my thanks for your time, shared knowledge.
respectfully, joe
Many thanks, Joe. I appreciate your posts, too, for their frankness and honesty. And humor! God knows we need all of the above.
Astute analysis...! Well articulated...
Sioux Rose
NARCISSUS: Chilling observation. Well-stated.
Now I can't stand to listen to Obama any more than Bush.
I feel your pain.............
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!
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" ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
To Erroll June 8th, 2009 12:28 pm:
Yeah, not agent of hope, but double agent.
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...
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.
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.
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
Pun approved and seconded by this poster.
As usual, Hedges is right on target.
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.
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.
"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.
Right on Chris! Nice to see some sober analysis for a change.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
Very sobering.
"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?)
Nicely stated. Keep the fires burning Chris...