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Obama's Afghanistan Decision
Dear President Obama,
Thank you for being an empathetic model of manhood and further, for bringing that quality into the American Presidency. But how do you explain those dead Afghani and Pakistani daughters, mothers, sons and fathers, killed by US forces since you took office, to your own daughters who you want to develop the kind of empathy you have. You are teaching them how to understand the suffering of others. In Ghana you took them to the slave port and said that you wanted them to "engage in the imaginative act of what it would be like if they were snatched away from Mom and Dad and sent to some place they had never seen before." You want them to identify with the suffering of others, "And get them to - to make sure that they are constantly asking themselves questions about whether they are treating people fairly and - and whether they are examining their own behavior and how it affects others."
You have shown how empathy does not conflict with strength, how it enhances rather than diminishes leadership. In this country, you have faced down the health insurance industry from the memory of how your mother suffered at their hands. At the same time, you bring your empathy together with the power of your leadership when a woman at one of your health care forums tells you through her tears of how her insurance company is denying her life-saving treatment. We saw you go to her as you asked her to come forward to you, and watched you embrace her telling her that she was not alone.
As you are making your decision on the fate of Afghanistan and Pakistan, I ask you, are the people there any less deserving of your empathy? When you took office you escalated the U.S. war in Afghanistan and allowed it to expand in Pakistan. By the end of June, over a 1,000 Afghani civilians were killed, 261 alone in the month of May. In other words, more than one-third of the number of people killed in the Al Qaeda attack on the US in 9-11-2001 are dead since January of this year in order to keep America safe, even though they had nothing to do with fighting then or when they died. And with the increase our bombings have caused in recruits to the Taliban, America is not more safe.
While you were telling Americans that you wake up every morning and go to sleep every night thinking of how to keep America safe, you were denying that safety to the families of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. President, you know that the empathy that you so highly value cannot be selective. When you engage it for some, say Americans, and refuse it to others, like Afghanis and Pakistanis, you are telling the world that only Americans lives are of value and that everyone else's lives can be put at risk to protect American lives.
Still you have not lost your empathy or respect for the lives of people in countries the US bombs and attacks. On May 9, in a rare gesture of an American President, you apologized to President Karzai when he met with you in Washington a few days after the US military killed an estimated 140 Afghanis in Farah, 94 of them girls under the age of 18 who had gathered in a compound to take shelter from the fighting. Some villagers said the strikes hit an area which the Taliban had already left and where there was no fighting. You apologized but you did not stop the bombing. In fact, drone strikes on Pakistani villages three days later in South Waziristan killed 8 people. Four days after that, US forces killed 25 civilians in a village in North Waziristan. None were Taliban, none were Al Qaeda. And the drone attacks continue, weekly, daily sometimes.
How will your decision on troop levels and military plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan reflect what you are teaching your daughters about the value of human life? Will you show them the petitions from the women of Afghanistan brought to you by Medea Benjamin from Code Pink? Will you explain to them that Afghan women have asked that you disarm the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Northern Alliance, none of whom have the support of the people?
In your April speech in Islamabad you said that you "have no sympathy and no patience for people who go around blowing up innocent people." If you engage the same kind of empathy you are teaching your daughters with the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, you will see that in their daily experiences of US bombings and drone attacks they see the US attacks in the same light that you see the terrorists who attacked the US.
Against a US force of 68,000 troops in Afghanistan before you make your announcement in a few days, Senator John Kerry, when he returned from Iraq last month, told us that there were not more than a thousand hard-core Taliban in Afghanistan. Women in Afghanistan estimate that there are not more than 100. The rest are boys and men who cannot find work, who are angry over the US bombing and occupation of their country, who are driven to fight back against the US military who killed their parents or their children.
How difficult would it be to announce a plan to disarm those "reconcilables" as General Patraeus calls them? To disarm not rearm! Rather than negotiating with the Taliban to sell out women's rights as Hammid Karzai has done, why not pay those fighters who are not hardcore terrorists to go home and restock their shops or rebuild their farms. Then withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan allowing them to protect their people and their country from the small number of hardcore terrorists remaining?
You have expressed your pain and sorrow in phone calls to families of American soldiers who have lost a son or daughter, a husband or wife. But what about the soldiers still there in combat? If you are truly pained by the loss of American soldiers in this war, bring those who are still there in combat home and give them the support to put their lives back together.
Mr. President, it is frightening to look at your advisors and see mostly hawks who are proponents of unending war. From your Vice President to your Secretary of State and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you have surrounded yourself with people who dismiss the cost of human life in war in favor of war. They have left us with the blood of over a million Iraqis on our hands. We do not expect empathy from your Generals whom came to their prestigious ranks through the military whose job it is to kill and destroy. They coldly speak of killing civilians as "collateral damage" as if it is not killing, as if human life outside of the United States is as significant as paper clips.
You have shown us that we can expect empathy from you, except in war. Will you close that gap? If you have not turned over the Executive Authority of this country to the Generals as your predecessor had, as it appears that you did when you took office in January, we will expect your decision on troops in Afghanistan to be reflected in your empathy for Afghanis and Pakistani as well as for American soldiers.
We are awaiting your decision on troop levels for Afghanistan. More precisely, we are waiting to see if you or the Generals are running this country as they have been since 2001.
In closing, Mr. President, before announcing your decision, please think hard and long from that place of empathy within you of what it would feel like to receive that call telling you the fate of one of your daughters, the kind of call that far too many Afghanis have received about their boys and girls who are with them no longer.
With respect,
Kathleen Barry, Ph.D.
- Posted in
55 Comments so far
Show AllIt is clear that the rulers of this land barely even pretend anymore to be responsive to its citizens.
If President Obama pursues the Afghan folly, he's finished.
Mr. Obama, May 2009:
"For the first time since 2002, we are providing the necessary resources and strategic direction to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
"Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates."
I suggest yet again that speaking to Mr. Obama about 'war in Afghanistan' is futile, because Mr. Obama and the rest of the government and the military are dealing with an altogether different war.
I suggest that Progressives speak about the same war that Mr. Obama does.
I suggest that we use our own term for that war, and I suggest DAFT.
I suggest throwing stones at our DAFT war in entertaining ways to gain public attention for our efforts to end this madness.
In the arduous and long climb to the pinnacle of either the political or the business world, the honest, principled, and altruistic are weeded out. All the baggage of moral considerations weighs such individuals down as their competitors, climbing without such burdens, surge ahead using all means necessary (given the social/political/economic environment they must operate in, which usually means they must pretend they still bear these burdens). Anyone should be able to see clearly by now that Obama discarded his baggage long ago, if indeed he ever carried any.
Sioux Rose
KIVALS: Whether as a result of your posts in this forum or otherwise, you seem to be morphing from lawyer into philosopher-novelist. I think you have LOTS of material and a fine mind for rendering it into a creative format. Do you see this prognosis bearing fruit?
Sioux Rose, thanks for your kind words. To answer your question, in my entire adult life I have been like this. Before I went to law school, I was a Ph.D. student in Computer Science in Artificial Intelligence (before that, an undergraduate CS major and Math and Psychology minor, who had started reading and become obsessed with philosophy in his early teens), which I lost interest in as I discovered that the best opportunities appeared to be MIC-related. After I began working as an attorney, I wrote, in the early 90s, a philosophical science fiction novel about a future two-tiered world of haves and havenots where terrorism is rampant and an unfortunate turn of events leads to likely human extinction. I only did a rough draft though, and never had the patience to polish it. I had hoped to go back and polish it one day, but after 9/11 I thought the terrorism focus might seem a bit trite and worn. So maybe after I retire in a few years I will try again, though not likely before then. But thanks for your encouragement.
You're very right, BUT voters can make a difference. F.e., when Dennis Kucinich was prohibited or banned from participating in (six) Dem. Party presidential candidate debates last year, if the Dem. Party voters, regardless of choosing Obama or Clinton, instead of Kucinich, all or in majority numbers demonstrated honourable character and dedication to the Constitution, as well as moral principles, then they would've stampeded and pressured the Dem. Party leadership to oppose this (unofficial but unfortunately effective) ban. They would've demanded that he be present to debate on equal grounds with Obama and Clinton and could've made this happen.
The voting mass has this ability, so voters need to shed their severe [lack] of civic and Constitutional responsibility to become true and honourable voters and citizens. 'The People' has enough power to defeat the ruling corporatocracy that, so far, and for as long as the majority of voters continue to irresponsibly allow it, control the government of the USA; certainly the White House, Congress and Senate, the CIA (ops anyway), and other high-level parts of the government, anyway.
Until voters become [responsible] and, therefore, truly intelligent, however, you'll remain right about how the political system works. It's up to The People to change, correct this rogue government, and The People can achieve this.
Nicely stated list of humanistic values that Obama clearly does not share with the left. Well done.
When did the "empathetic model of manhood" show itself? In the 2004 Kerry-boosting warmongering keynote speech, in the toadying to power and acceptance of legal bribes in the 2008 campaign, in the general silence on every moral matter while in the Senate, or in the backstabbing of every constituent group (save corporate paymasters) that has come after the election?
What kind of happy pills are CommonDreams wiberwal/pwogwessive columnists on, and where can I get some?
"When did the "empathetic model of manhood" show itself?"
Maybe during the primaries, when Obama's supporters called Hillary and her fans the C word, over and over and over again?
If you still believe in Obama, then you might just as well write to Santa Claus.
===
"Top NATO Military Brass Meet Behind Closed Doors
Realities Collide at Halifax “War Conference”"
by Anthony Fenton, IPS, Nov 23 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16256
I posted an excerpt of much of the article in a post for the following article.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/25-6
Sorry, BS Soldier-in-Chief!
I am sick of hearing that the wars in either Iraq or Afghanistan are "to keep the American people safe".
All that is being "kept safe" by the bloody occupations of two nations (neither having harmed America now or ever) are the profits of the war profiteers.
The American People's greatest threat is despotic corporate owned government. Who will be safe when they finish emptying the treasury, depleting /polluting natural resources, and driving both the cost to live and the employment deficit to heights heretofor unknown.
Keep us safe indeed!
Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live
Not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, either. See the article I provided a link for further above and read about the USA not only militarising in Colombia, but also Honduras, now; and that this is supposedly to provide security for the Americas. Really? MY ASS (rear cheeks, if you prefer this more PC language)!
Not only in those two countries, but also other Asian countries, Africa, South America, Mexico, and also Canada, the latter two countries at least with NORTHCOM, "sister" project of SOUTHCOM, AFRICOM, CENTCOM, the Pacific COM, whatever it's called, and ... I don't know if there are any others, but it's still GLOBALLY scoped. They're looking at the Earth through a wide, full spectrum lens.
Regarding U.S. militarisation in Honduras, now, I referred to the wrong article. The one in my post further above mainly or only is with respect to the war in Afghanistan, including some quotes from the Canadian Defence Minister and U.S. Senator McCain regarding Malalai Joya and what she's been saying. The article about Honduras is the following one.
"SouthCom: Washington Develops its Operations in Soto Cano Airbase in Honduras",
by Arnold August, Nov 23, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16252
QUOTE:
According to a November 17 press release, Harris Corporation, an international communications and information technology company, was awarded the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom) Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems operations and maintenance program for Joint Task Force (JTF) Bravo at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras. This five-year task order contract has a base year plus four one-year options and is valued at $38 million -- including all options.
This critical infrastructure program supports the Commander of JTF-Bravo -- the Commander of all U.S. military operations in Central America in the execution of SouthCom's strategy to build Partner Nation Capacity. It is intended to bolster security, stability and prosperity in the Americas. This responsibility, according to the press release, encompasses:
- Advancing new visions of the U.S. Government and institutions of the region.
- Reducing sources of conflict and tension.
- Promoting partnership in times of need.
- Empowering initiatives to thwart narcotics trafficking and other transnational threats.
Harris is an international communications and information technology company serving government and commercial markets worldwide. Headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, the company has approximately $5 billion of annual revenue and more than 15,000 employees -- including nearly 7,000 engineers and scientists.
As the Honduran people are developing their struggle to boycott the fraudulent November 29 elections and in favor of a Constituent Assembly, Washington is already arrogantly stepping up its post-November 29 program. For imperialism, it is business as usual, irrespective of the positions, sacrifices and feelings of the vast majority of people in Honduras.
This latest decision under the Obama Administration provides the people an opportunity to see once again what constitute the “new visions of the U.S. Government and institutions of the region”. They are not new, but the same imperialist vision of domination and interference by the US in the entire hemisphere south of the Rio Grande. The only thing that is new is the appearance with the goal of having the peoples of the region and the world accept the old policies but disguised in new rhetoric.
As far as the above-stated goal of “reducing sources of conflict and tension”, if the US was really interested in this, President Zelaya would have been reinstated a long time ago; the repression by the US trained military in Honduras and Micheletti would not only have been stopped, but the guilty would have been tried and punished for the crimes committed against the people of Honduras.
However, after all, this is the same Washington which recently concluded the agreement with Columbia for the establishment of the seven military bases there.
END QUOTE
At this point, there is far too much groveling in this on-your-knees imploring piece.
I can barely get through it.
" More precisely, we are waiting to see if you are the Generals are running this country as they have since 2001". Kathleen Barry, sounds like you are still being conned by the other Barry. #1. The Generals and the MIC have been running this country for a long time before 2001. #2. What in the hell are you still waiting for, may I ask?
Obama, give the NOBEL to someone who earned it''''''''''''''''
You need not worry, giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama won't discredit the prize much more than it's already been discredited. Plenty of warmongering "intellectuals" have been given the NPP and several of them cheered on the war on Kosovo, Yugoslavia and Serbia in 1999, which, when they did, I blasted away about this in a Web forum or two, saying these NPP winners aren't about real peace at all, they're frauds, and that the NPP was therefore junk, worthless. And it is that. Truly deserving people don't need the NPP to be who they are. It adds nothing to their profiles and activism. Instead, it's the real, deserving winners who unfortunately give credit to this worthless piece of deceitful garbage, the NPP. Truly deserving people should always publicly reject the NPP when it's awarded to them, on the grounds of principle and knowing the prize is even more often given to warmongers, etcetera. The NPP is just more imperialist, etcetera, fraud and deception.
Due to this reason, it's fitting that Obama receives the prize; as long as we keep in mind that it's a piece of imperialist garbage only used to try to deceive us. Giving the prize to Obama is [proof] of this being true about the NPP.
Kathy Kelly, who's certainly been deserving and nominated at least two times, never was given the NPP. It's a good thing too; she shouldn't let her name and activism be used to try to mask the deceitful imperialist nature of the NPP and the Nobel Committee.
That's IMO, of course.
With that said, it's not wrong to denounce every time the NPP is given to a clearly undeserving person. I've denounced the NPP plenty of times and see nothing wrong with doing so. Instead, when we realise that something being done or already done is Wrong (capital 'W' wrong), then we should denounce it publicly. Doing this can help to alert people who haven't yet arrived at the same realisation, and if our denunciation is mistaken, then we might get useful feedback that'll help us to be better informed, which is not possible when we're silent. But there's no doubt about it, the NPP irrefutably, provably is bogus imperialist garbage used to try to deceive us. Some deserving people have been given the NPP, but fewer than the winners who are warmongers, etcetera, and the latter is the aspect that really matters most of all. If the NPP was retracted from these clearly undeserving people, then this would give the Nobel Committee honour, but it doesn't retract the NPP after giving it to warmongering, etcetera, fiends; therefore, there's no real honour when the NPP is given to a deserving person, whose activism will still be learned about, the knowledge of it will spread, and it will continue to inspire other people of good will, or conscience, and actions. The NPP really does nothing for the deserving winners and nominees.
And that again is IMO, again of course.
Obama's NPP puts him in the same class with Henry Kissinger.
Yes, and Kissinger is one serious example of what I posted about, but there unfortunately are many enough other rogues who were given the NPP. Stephen Lendman had an article posted at www.globalresearch.ca last month about Obama being given the NPP and he specifically referred to two or three deserving people who were nominated, but didn't receive the NPP; including Kathy Kelly. From what I vaguely recall of the article today, there's a considerably greater number of definitely undeserving people who weren't only nominated, but who also received the NPP, than there have been for deserving people receiving the prize.
"October Surprise: Peace Prize to a War Criminal", by Stephen Lendman, Oct 12, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15636
At the start of the article, he provides a list of undeserving people and organisations, and while I agree with him about most of these, including that Al Gore was undeserving (he, in my own view, always sided with continuous U.S. war crimes against Iraq, with criminal Clinton conduct, censored or mostly unreported in corporate media anyway, vis-a-vis Haiti and President Aristide, and other crminal Clinton Admin. conduct, national and foreign policies, just being another political opportunist and profiteer), I'm not sure about Jimmy Carter. If what I've gathered from some videos with Russ Baker on his new book, "Family Of Secrets: ...", is accurate about Jimmy Carter, then what I gathered from the few videos I've viewed so far with Russ Baker, Jimmy Carter was not responsible for everything bad that happened during his Presidency and which we normally would think the President is responsible for. Russ Baker says that both Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, who, however, was a war criminal, were both blamed for things or failures, wrongs (whatever) that they weren't really responsible for. Both would've been too non-compliant, disobedient, for the controllers of the U.S. government and Presidency; and since that strategically needs to be kept secret, the non-compliant President is framed, blackballed, ... blamed for serious failures or breaches that voters are brainwashed about, to get them to believe that the President was really responsible and is therefore guilty.
I haven't read Russ Baker's book and this would be necessary to learn everything that he's found out about the Jimmy Carter administration. Did Russ Baker find that Jimmy Carter was innocent in terms of all of the criminal things that occurred during his administration and which we'd expect to be of the administration's and, therefore, President's command, or at least with the President's knowledge and agreement; or was he innocent of only some of these criminal acts? In the latter case, which of the crimes was he innocent of, and which was he guilty of? These types of questions would need to be answered, along with proof for the answers, before I could give a firm opinion on whether I think Jimmy Carter deserved the NPP or not. Didn't he act criminally regarding the Panama Canal, or was he the President who wanted or planned to agree to return control of this area to Panama; or did he have nothing to do with this topic or issue? I don't know enough about his presidency to be able to say whether, or not, he deserved to be awarded the NPP.
Al Gore and the others Stephen Lendman lists, except for the people he later and clearly refers to as deserving, did and do not deserve the NPP. And the list of those people and organisations in the article is not complete, I believe. Stephen Lendman speaks of the undeserving Medecins Sans Frontieres, aka Doctors Without Borders, and he's evidently right about the founder, but MSF also committed Wrongfulness (capital 'W') in Haiti following the Feb. 29, 2004, military coup by the U.S., Canada and France, and during all of the many bloody attacks committed by the psychopathic police these governments put in power there, as well as the reinforcing criminal UN "peacekeepers" there. MSF did some rather criminal reporting on the situation there, from what I recall having read from [reliable] reporters on or about this situation.
Anyway, and as previously said, I perceive the NPP and Nobel Committee as just another imperialistic operation and deception, for the most part anyway; and that part weighs more heavily than the little that remains of good with worthless institution. The founder, mister Nobel, spent his whole or nearly whole life as just another imperialist, ... elitist too. In his last days, instead of establishing the Nobel Committee, he should have just repented and asked for forgiveness, and then moved on silently. Instead, he elitistly had to establish another imperialist institution; and even if that wasn't his intention, he should've been intelligent enough to realise that it's what would happen with the institution and then intelligently choose to not establish the damn thing.
Humanity has absolutely no need of awards, trophies, etcetera. It's all unnecessary and often is just a bunch of nonsense, when not much worse. It's good to learn of good works people provide and this can be inspirational, hopefully will be; but we only need to learn about them and what they do and say. We have no need for any institutions to pretend to give honour to people of good conscience and conduct; absolutely no need for this.
God does NOT care at all for titles, trophies, etcetera. What He cares about is [good] conscience and conduct, actions. That's all; nice and simple.
Lastly, and as an old saying goes, we need to beware of wolves disguised in sheep's clothing.
Dear President Obama,
Thank you for being an empathetic model of manhood . . .
Once again, I appeal to someone out there for a mop. I just hurled!
Mordechai: I had a very similar reaction!
As I recall, during his campaign, Obama's intent was always to escalate the war in Afghanistan. In fact, he labeled Afghanistan "the good war."
It was one of the main reasons, but not the only reason, that I did NOT vote for Obama!
Good, because there were a lot of reasons to not vote for Obama, while the same applies to Hilary Clinton and John McCain.
If the millions of Americans who were fooled and voted for Obama thinking he was a progressive reformer are not burning mad now then there is something seriously awry in the American psyche. I for one think that there is indeed something fundamentally wrong in the American psyche. I think that we have allowed ourselves to be turned into passive zombies during the past few decades. Is there any fight left in us at all? Is there no possibility of forming a militant mass movement to oppose the corporatist takeover of the country? Are we going to continue in our masochistic posture as the corporatists continue to heap abuse on us in the form of harmful health care legislation and unwanted war? I was looking through photographs taken by Fred McDarrah in "Anarchy, Protest, and Rebellion: And the Counterculture that changed America" earlier today showing the vitality of the country in the late 50's to early 70's. What happened to us? How did we become so passive in the face of multiple outrages?
The erstwhile citizens have been transformed by modern psychology and technology into little 'profit centers' and nothing more.
The chances for any effective political action stemming from anger, or anything else, has passed the vanishing point.
This war will be another setback for the empire and the great Obama will have fallen from his pedestal. He will probably start another easier war in order to regain popularity in the great tradition of american politics.
It's astonishing that someone with a PhD (I know, there are thousands other examples) can be naive enough to prattle on senselessly about Obama's "empathy" simply because he staged that character trait a few times for theatrical effect. Good Lord, does this woman really fall for such transparent antics? Taking his daughters to Ghana and intoning a few cliches about what they need to learn about treating defenseless people while he's busy drone bombing them into oblivion and preparing to send in more troops to waste as many as possible in order to "finish the job," is light years beyond hypocrisy. It's wholesale barbarism masked by lies learned during the lyingest administration in US history, the Cheney-Bush era of lies, murder, illegal wars, and more lies every fucking day it went on. Obama is continuing in that proud tradition. To say this prick has an ounce of "empathy" for anyone on the receiving end of US imperial interests would qualify as the apex of naivete and willful ignorance.
I think she meant it rhetorically. Diplomacy in context is not the same as naivete. Speaking well of an obvious rat bastard is a subtle way to call attention to the gap between your praise and his character. If you don't shame your target in his own eyes (Obama may be beyond shame), at least you shame him in other's eyes; like Marc Antony calling Brutus an "honorable man", etc.
Either that or believing all that kum-ba-ya stuff helps the poor woman sleep at night.
Is there some way to seize some part of the remnant Obama campaign organization and return it to is original mission of "hope" and "change"? Are any of the rank and file ready yet to do this? Have they had enough yet of their arrogant, charming, "empathetic" warmonger former candidate?
Thousands volunteered, millions participated and quite a few very smart, savvy, idealistic young people actually got paid to get this guy elected. Were the staffers just in it to build their resumes? Of the millions who understandably, if unwisely, put their hopes in Barack Obama, do any see the extent to which their hopes and dreams have been systematically crushed? I'm ready but I don't know where to start.
Suggestions?
I hope the President's daughters read this and ask him a few questions. This forthright article is as good as the President's hypocrisy is disgusting. In its sweetness, this article confronts hypocrisy quite well. I do think the President has empathy—for some—and disregard others, just as the article suggests.
"I do think the President has empathy—for some—and disregard others, just as the article suggests."
You're clearly right. You only 'think' that about him. You certainly don't know that about him, so you clearly are only thinking he's as you said. And I don't think I'd waste time thinking the same thing about him. The thought might cross my mind, but I'd let it quickly pass, or linger, whichever happens; if and when it does happen. It might have happened once, so far, but am not sure if it's happened that many times, yet; once.
Instead, whenever a war criminal and regular, frequent liar as he is says anything that seems nice, expect deception; and notice hypocrisy.
Dear Kathleen Barry, Ph.D.,
Please see a psychiatrist. Your willfull denial of reality and wholesale swallowing of a propaganda caricature of President Obama and his outlook on life and his family is harmful to your mental health. The inevitable switch to reality will cause you to appear to have BPS (borderline personality disorder).
This is not a joke. Get help so you don't hurt yourself or others. Being a p.h.d. exacerbates mental health problems due to the vested interest in the status quo held by top beneficiaries of our corrupt system. When they see what, in reality, this system rewards, they realize they're vaunted title is a meaningless exercise in false pride. The resulting depression can be severe and lead to suicide.
Only those p.h.d.s without integrity are unaffected.
BPS? I don't follow your train of thought. It's kind of dangerous (and telling) when one throws around words or terms they do not fully understand. If you agree or disagree with Ms Barry, just say so! I'm not going to explain it here what a Borderline Personality D/O is because it won't be a teaching moment. It's best you look up the term in DSM-IV TR under code 301.83. That way, you're more likely to retain what you read in the manual. Besides, Ms. Barry raised Obama's actions in a rhetorical frame rather than telling him straight up that a surge in Afghanistan is being promulgated by a hypocrite who allows hawks, who have bat s!!t for brains, to do his thinking for him.
People who exhibit a third grade mentality should not consider themselves to be qualified to accuse a PhD of BPS.
I disagree to some extent, for there are some PhDs who are certainly respectable as persons and in their PhD fields, both. The problem is that many PhDs are quacks, sociopaths, warmongers, psychopaths, and other bad character traits. Getting academic accreditation, degrees, is not about psychological or socio-psychological evaluation and passing it. Schools give degrees to the worst despots of human history. Harvard maintains its relationship with psychopaths like mister Dershowitz, among other psychopaths, warmongers, liars, PhD idiots, etcetera; but Harvard isn't alone. There are very bright, sound, down-to-earth sane and intelligent, ... people who haven't more than high school diplomas, and there are many university and college graduates from the different levels of degrees offered in these establishments who are quacks, idiots, lack common sense, are sociopathic, etcetera; but there are some sane and intelligent people who graduate from these establishments without these having degraded the personal qualities these people had before entering these levels of academia.
It's not the school or what's learned that makes the person, but the person who makes or doesn't make real good of what he or she has gained for knowledge and skills, and who can make the schools credit-worthy, instead. I disagreed with him on a number of topics and issues, but one thing former Pope John Paul II was right about is when he said that it's not the job that gives dignity to the person performing it, but, instead, the person gives dignity to the job he or she performs, which, I'll add, also gives or brings dignity to the employer. The employer can help give dignity to an employee, or for an employee to gain dignity, but only if the employer has dignity to begin with. If the employer lacks dignity, then it's hypothetically possible for a dignified worker or employee to help correct this situation for the employer; if the employer accepts this, of course.
(Some employers care about popularity, but not really about dignity. We can measure the popularity of Microsoft, but can hardly guage its dignity. When it comes to Linux, however, we can measure the popularity of it and, particularly, of the many different distributions of it (novices not knowing the difference); but we can also considerably guage its dignity, such as when doing this based on all of the very qualitative and free contributions many people have made to or in, for the development of this overall computer platform; Linux itself, the core, and the many distributions of it, that is. This is an added mention only to spice up this post a little, say. Otoh, perhaps it is a good example of what I was talking about, above. Oh well, take this either way.)
"The problem is that many PhDs are quacks, sociopaths,war mongers,psychopaths and other bad character traits.". True but this also applies to many DD's!
I haven't a clue what a DD is.
Doctors of Divinety.
Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace
I didn't know the story, so just looked it up and read it at Wikipedia. Very funny, and a fitting wish for an event that would be great if it worked today. But the warmongering leaders of today, heh, they might just tell the women that if they refuse to provide sex until the wars are stopped and reconcilliation happens, then the male war makers and supporters might all head off to the Bohemian Grove to have sex with each other, there, instead. I don't really know that they do that there, but some people say that it's part of the ongoings there and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it is. After all, we're talking about awfully, extremely perverted people, and they're the only kind of people who go to the BG; when speaking of the elites who go there, anyway. It takes extreme perversion to command wars of aggression, destroy countries, massacre, murder millions of innocent people, to constantly lie to the public about the reasons for launching the wars and then lying about why the wars supposedly need to continue; when it's all for ... RACKET, profit and based on unending lies, suppression, etcetera.
The latter, the fact that the play with Lysistrata was only a play, not an event that happened outside of fiction, and the fact that many women have supported these totally criminal wars of today when hardly anyone remains who isn't aware that the war on Iraq was based on lies and distortions willfully stated and concocted leaves that women wouldn't be able to stop these wars any more today than in the past; except in a play, a fictional story.
It's a funny story and it must've been a funny play, though; if it was well acted, anyway.
do not question the NOBLE PEACE PRIZE WINNER! Dissent = racism
What the hell is this tripe?
You cannot have a rational discussion when one of the parties is not willing to be truthful. The democratic party has been lying for so long, yet people constantly think that they can talk to them in a rational manner because maybe this time they aren't lying (Charlie Brown syndrome).
What is more psychotic? The Obama/Bush lies, or the people who constantly get suckered time after time?
Dear Kathleen Barry Ph.D.,
So?
President Obama
no need for us on the left to attack the good doctor. her tone is more conciliatory than obama deserves, but she clearly perceives that obama's words and actions are not in synchrony. "i would hear you, mr president , but the sound of your actions is drowning out all your words". she gets it. her fault lies only in being too nice.
and i almost forgot to ask why there aren't at least two democrats up in new hamphire laying the groundwork for a run against obama in the 2012 democratic presidential primary? right now is still too late!
Now I'll comment specifically on the article, which I haven't yet done; just starting to read it now.
The empathy she speaks of Obama displaying in Ghana might possibly be just an act to try to get his daughters to believe their father is a good, kind man, while he knows he's speaking in very hypocritical terms and is actually lying to his daughters. Maybe he's not dishonest in the words spoken to his daughters in Ghana, but if he isn't, then he's suffering from psychosis or some other emotional or psychological disorder.
When the author speaks of his empathy regarding victims in the U.S. and of the U.S. health insurance racket industry, his words and act that the author refers to could be just another stage act, instead of truly sincere.
Wherein the author says, "When you took office you escalated the U.S. war in Afghanistan and allowed it to expand in Pakistan", I think she's mistaken. Obama didn't just allow the war to expand into Pakistan, he's the C-in-C and expanded the war into Pakistan. Of course the President is not [the decider], he works to obey the "special interest" groups controlling the government of the USA and its White House administration; but, nevertheless, he's the official C-in-C and if he sincerely disagrees with the dictates of the people controlling the government, then he should demonstrate courage and honour, denounce these criminal actions and plots, and accept the consequences for doing this. His oath is to the Constitution and the U.S. Bill of Rights, not to be servant to or of "special interest" groups, so he has to make a choice; to be traitor and war criminal, or to act with honourable courage and honesty. He chooses the former.
His empathy is, pragmatically speaking, worthless, hot air, empty, ..., and, therefore, deception.
He has adopted another Bush-Cheney administration rule, the one declaring that everyone who questions the 9-11 attacks and the bogus 9-11 Commission inquiry report is "terrorist". He's thereby again a hypocrite and liar, and very dishonourable for a President, or simply member of the body politic of the USA.
Wherein the author of the article says, "While you were telling Americans that you wake up every morning and go to sleep every night thinking of how to keep America safe, you were denying that safety to the families of Afghanistan and Pakistan", she forgets a little. If he cares about keeping the USA safe, then he must do as stated above; he must honourably demonstrate courage and cease to obey the dictates of the "special interest" groups that he has been accepting to be servant to or of. They are the greatest of all dangers for the USA and he accepts to work for them so that they can achieve their greedy and insane goals. For them, he presides, as C-in-C, in expanding U.S. militarisation, now adding this in Honduras, f.e. He and the "special interest" groups he serves represent the greatest danger to the USA that the USA could know or experience; not that he's at all the first to represent this, but he's the one who's wearing the title of President, today.
The rest of the paragraph the last quote is from is certainly and undeniably fine. The author is therein right. But she then speaks again as if she's in a position to authoritatively know that Obama's empathy is sincere and the author of the article is NOT in a position to be able to really know this. She's only going based on apparences and those often are deceptive; especially among elitist types or people. Among other examples is George Soros, who has started a foundation or two, or three, whatever the number is, and who provides funds to activist organisations, like for decriminalisation of drugs and ending the bogus drug war. These things appear good, but this is on the surface, for George Soros is also for spreading so-called western democracy and imperialism; just that he's taken a different approach to this than people like war hawks Bushes, Cheneys, etcetera, have, f.e.
Bill Clinton [apparently] did good things vis-a-vis Haiti, but it was only apparence. In reality, he was an extreme criminal towards Haiti and President Aristide.
The author might be guessing correctly about the little of examples that Obama provides for empathy, but the author of the article might also be allowing only apparences to be her guide about this. F.e., while Obama provided the apparence of empathy in Ghana, there may indeed be a very dark reality going on behind this and we evidently can't count on the corporate media to keep us very well informed about the dark things the U.S. and its elites do.
Like Dennis Kucinich said early into the presidential campaigns or just before they began last year, Obama speaks out of both sides of his mouth. This was true then and it remains true today.
Also, the author of the article, which has some appreciable content in it, for the author isn't totally mistaken in everything she says, when it comes to the wars, she only speaks of Afghanistan. That can be deceptive for readers who aren't adequately informed about everything or a lot that's going on. The U.S. isn't withdrawing from Iraq and the U.S. military is building up in the Persian Gulf, while simultaneously maintaining the hypocritical, hegemonious and criminal bullying and threats against Iran. The U.S. is militarising Colombia and Honduras, and we don't know that another South American country or two won't be added. Peru, f.e., could be added. The Obama administration continues the expansion of U.S. or its corporatocracy's empire, globally.
Clearly, Afghanistan, or that country and Pakistan, shouldn't be the only countries the author of the article refers to, and, again, Obama didn't allow expansion into Pakistan; he presided, as C-in-C, over real expanion into Pakistan and this hasn't diminished.
This completes my post just above this one.
I don't know the details about the present bill(s) for health care system changes in the U.S., but from what I've gathered from reader posts and a little from a few articles, what is presently proposed for bill isn't good. It's why the author of the article referring to Obama showing empathy towards the woman who complained about her situation strikes me as a little funny. According to the article, Obama told the woman she wasn't alone and held her in his arms. It could just be a stage act of deceptive kind, and telling the woman she's not alone could be a "politically correct" way of telling the woman she shouldn't complain, to stop her griping, that there are others like her and he doesn't plan to do anything to help them.
Again, he's another character who speaks out of both sides of his mouth.
I won't finish reading the article, having read about half of it. The author says a little that's accurate and well-stated, but just in the first half of the article, she ignores the fact that apparences are often about deception and that we, so far, don't have any real reason to believe Obama's ever truly honest when he says anything that strikes us as good, on the surface.
If he wants to be convincingly good, then he must demonstrate the honourable courage mentioned in the first part of this post, above.
But I disagree with flaming or insulting the author of the article. I don't think she merits such treatment.
Mike Corbeil:
But I disagree with flaming or insulting the author of the article. I don't think she merits such treatment.
================
Very well said ...and thanks for saying that.
there are some authors not everyone will agree with but I also think the author above doesn't deserve to be insulted. I think she was writing with genuine concern and in as truthful a manner as she could...and wrote the article well and meaningfully.
it's not so much about whether the information she talks about is "already known" - but that she gives us a new and fresh emphasis on many matters of concern that we all are very aware of - particularly with her subject matter:
OBAMA and what he is doing.
Snipped. Placed the continuation of my prior post incorrectly as a wholly separate one.