by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret KimberleyPresident Obama talks excellent Bush-speak, a language he becomes more fluent in each day. Mouthing Bushisms, Obama told a television audience “it is in the ‘vital interests’ of the entire country to maintain the cycle of endless warfare.” Members of the once arrogant and smug Progressives for Obama must confront their own roles in playing this great trick on the world.
Freedom Rider: Progressives Still Love Obama
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“Michael Moore and Tom Hayden assisted Barack Obama in lying about his intentions and motives.”
Most Americans, regardless of political party affiliation, believe in the right of the state to control their lives and those of people around the globe. It is a sad commentary that such retrograde ways of thinking persist in the 21st century and it is especially sad when so-called progressives care as little about the rights of their fellow human beings as do conservatives. Those beliefs have been on truly terrifying display ever since President Barack Obama announced his plan to escalate war against the people of Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama appeared on national television a la George W. Bush, and mouthed Bushisms almost word for word. He claimed that America doesn’t want an empire when it keeps expanding the one it already has.He claimed that it is in the “vital interests” of the entire country to maintain the cycle of endless warfare. Before an audience of West Point cadets, a Bushesque backdrop par excellence, he told the world he planned to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and accelerate the killing.
Liberals and progressives responded to the president’s speech the same way they respond to every other Obama policy decision. Most went along or made excuses for him. They made no attempt to analyze in any serious way or to question the premises upon which American foreign policy decisions are made. They may have expressed some small misgiving about the number of troops or the timetable for the killing to last, but very few have said that this escalation is wrong or that Obama should be opposed.
“Obama claimed that America doesn’t want an empire when it keeps expanding the one it already has.”
Like their countrymen, liberals believe in the inherent goodness and superiority of their nation and its government, a belief with absolutely no basis in historical or current reality. No people on earth have ever benefited from American interventions and Afghans are no exception. They have been killed in drone attacks and by bombings. The heroin trade flourishes far more than it ever did before the American occupation. Just as with the equally unlucky Iraqis, Afghans would send the United States packing if they could.
Former Obama supporters such as Tom Hayden and Michael Moore have rightly condemned the president’s plan and been met with scorn and ridicule. Both men are in a peculiar situation. They should be commended for their opposition to occupation, but their specious reasoning for supporting Obama in the first place should not be forgotten, and their still strong support for a corrupted Democratic Party should not be ignored. Moore’s exhortation to Obama doesn’t deserve the withering criticism it has received because it was frankly rather sad. “When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some.” Moore lowered his expectations and Obama met them.
While Black Agenda Report and others engaged in critical analysis of the Obama campaign and made the case for true movement politics, Moore and Hayden assisted Barack Obama in lying about his intentions and motives. They were not merely naïve, they chose to spread the noxious doctrines of empire and occupation openly espoused by Obama and became willing partners to the policies they now oppose.
“No people on earth have ever benefited from American interventions and Afghans are no exception.”
Black Agenda Report explained it all while Obama was still a candidate:
“Is Obama a liar? Of course he is. As a gifted orator, a superb word-smith, Obama's slickness is purposeful - he means to fool people! However, so did many of the progressives that supported Obama, knowing perfectly well that his carefully chosen words were designed to hide more than they revealed. Such progressives lent their reputations to discourage criticism of Obama from other Leftists, or from the ‘expectant’ rank and file. Therefore, they are guilty of offenses against truth.” – BAR, July 8, 2008.
Tom Hayden remains irrelevant even as he attempts to throw off some of his shackles. Hayden still maintains a belief in the inherent goodness of Barack Obama and his intentions despite the lack of any justification for such loyalty. “This is not like the previous conflict with Bush and Cheney, who were easy to ridicule. Now this orphan of a war has a persuasive advocate, a formidable debater who will be arguing for support from the liberal center--one who wants to win back his Democratic base.”
If an abhorrent policy is well articulated by Hayden’s standards then apparently it is not so abhorrent after all. Why does Hayden ridicule Bush and Cheney but not the man who continues their policies? Where on earth does he get the idea that Obama is in any way interested in the Democratic Party’s base of supporters? Hayden and his ilk are far too easily impressed and even in opposition mode prove themselves to be utterly useless. “To be clear: I'll support Obama down the road against Sarah Palin, Lou Dobbs or any of the pitchfork carriers for the pre-Obama era.” After giving sound reasons for opposing the Afghanistan policy, Hayden then proceeds to say that he will support Obama if Republicans keep saying mean things about him. He would be a lot happier now if he had supported a true peace candidate like Cynthia McKinney in the 2008 election.
“Hayden and his ilk are far too easily impressed and even in opposition mode prove themselves to be utterly useless.”
While some liberals managed faint praise because the president promised the war would not be open ended, his cabinet and the military have been contradicting what the Obamaites claim to have heard their dear leader say.
Gen. David Petraeus: "There's no timeline, no ramp, nothing like that."
National Security Adviser James Jones: "It is not a cliff. It is a glide slope. And so certainly, the president has also said we are not leaving Afghanistan."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates: "Well, first of all, I don't consider this an exit strategy. And I try to avoid using that term. I think this is a transition."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "We're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline."
Not that the words from the horses’ mouths will matter very much. Moore and Hayden will still sing the president’s praises and Afghans and Americans will keep dying. There are still Progressives for Obama, and the world is much worse off as a result.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.
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Liberals and progressives responded to the president’s speech the same way they respond to every other Obama policy decision.
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The noble savage
i see obama as the latest and greatest manifestation of the virulently racist but somehow eminently left wing/liberal ideology of the 'noble savage'. 'progressives' see obama through the lens of this ideology, surrounded by the halo lent to him by this ideology - they don't see him as a real person, and if they did, they'd be sick over it.
The noble savage
i see obama as the latest and greatest manifestation of the virulently racist but somehow eminently left wing/liberal ideology of the 'noble savage'. 'progressives' see obama through the lens of this ideology, surrounded by the halo lent to him by this ideology - they don't see him as a real person, and if they did, they'd be sick over it.
The noble savage
i see obama as the latest and greatest manifestation of the virulently racist but somehow eminently left wing/liberal ideology of the 'noble savage'. 'progressives' see obama through the lens of this ideology, surrounded by the halo lent to him by this ideology - they don't see him as a real person, and if they did, they'd be sick over it.
Time
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Stop relating Obama to MLK, Jr. there is no lineage
By Ernest A. Canning on 12/7/2009 1:34PM
Beyond Afghanistan
Applying the Lessons of 'Beyond Vietnam'...
Guest essay by Ernest A. Canning
"Somehow this madness must cease."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam" April 4, 1967.
On Jan. 18, 2010 our nation will observe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, commemorating the extraordinary life of an intellectual and moral giant. The corporate media will fill the airwaves with excerpts of his uplifting August 28, 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech in which Dr. King called upon us to judge one another by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin. And, during that same holiday, the corporate media can be counted upon to ignore his April 4, 1967 "Beyond Vietnam" speech just as they have every year since the first Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 1986.
Why? Because the egalitarian principles enunciated in "I Have a Dream" challenged only the now (largely) defunct Jim Crow regime.
While de facto, race-based economic inequality stubbornly remains as a vestige of slavery and Jim Crow, the elimination of de jure segregation posed no threat to the stark economic inequality created by an increasingly brutal form of U.S. capitalism and imperialism. It was the brutal reality of corporate Empire which led Dr. King, in "Beyond Vietnam," to describe his own government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" --- a point which exposes the hypocrisy in that same government's celebration of the life of a man singularly devoted to non-violence.
If you have not read "Beyond Vietnam" in its entirety, you should. If you have, you should read it again, for Dr. King's message is as applicable today as it was then.
Particularly, as we deconstruct the empty words used by our Harvard-educated President to justify an escalation of what Robert Scheer aptly describes as a "War of Absurdity," and as we look "Beyond Afghanistan"...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7476
Psssst... "hush" .. we are busy winning "hearts and minds"
Dead Afghans don't count, only the deaths of "our heroes," as if killing Third World citizens in the name of militarism and corparatism is "heroic."
If Americans have to kill thousands of Afghanis to show their "goodness," the "truth and the light" than so be it. That's the White Man's Burden under the banner of American Exceptionalism. We must tame those savages, the "other" by hook or crook. Goddamnit it's for their own good and the good of "civilization." Meanwhile, as OBushco, gather's up his hardware in Oslo, the "surge" or ESCLATION, or blood-letting has already started. "Let the games begin."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/afgh-d10.shtml
Afghanistan massacre on eve of Obama’s surge
By Bill Van Auken
10 December 2009
With the first elements of 30,000 additional US troops set to arrive in Afghanistan next week, the massacre of as many as 15 civilians in a US raid has heightened fears that the Obama administration’s so-called surge will spell a dramatic rise in bloodletting.
The killings took place in eastern Laghman province in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Gulzar Sangarwal, the acting head of the provincial council, reported that 13 civilians were killed in the raid on the village of Armul, including one woman. Local villagers reported 15 killed, including children. Reuters news agency said its correspondent had seen the bodies of a woman and 12 men, several of them teenagers.
Local authorities have blamed the killings on US Special Forces troops.
The deaths triggered an angry protest that ended in still more killings. According to Reuters, some 5,000 villagers marched on the provincial capital of Mehtar Lam chanting slogans denouncing the US occupation, the puppet government of President Hamid Karzai and the provincial authorities. The crowd shouted “Death to America, Death to Obama and Death to Karzai” as they marched through the town.
The villagers carried the bodies of the civilians slain in the US raid, laying them in front of the provincial governor’s house. (Hint: These are the same "provincial governors" the extremely smart people in the W.H. and defense establishment hope to glean away from the nebulous "Taliban")
Soldiers from the Afghan National Army opened fire with live ammunition in an attempt to disperse the crowd, reportedly killing two demonstrators outright and mortally wounding two others, who died in the local hospital. (Don't you just love transplated democracy in action, reminds me of Kent State)
Outrage over the killings spread to the neighboring province of Nangarhar, on the border with Pakistan. Pajhwok Afghan News reported that 3,000 students from Nangahar University occupied the main highway linking Kabul and the provincial capital of Jalalabad for hours on Wednesday, chanting slogans denouncing the US-led occupation and the Karzai regime and burning American flags. A US military column attempting to move down the highway was forced to turn back to Jalalabad."
Mind you, a good ol fashion massacre is a very effective way to build "legitimacy" with the US and the "Afghan Gov" aka "the Mayor of Kabul" and his drug mafia, to win "hearts and minds." ( Maybe the Special Forces shot up these people because the stole a few bricks of opium or cut out the middle man?) Mmmm.
Onward Christian Soldiers....fighting the "good war, " not the "dumb war," but the "dumber than dumb war."
Question: Was that Obama or St. Augustine in Oslo picking up the "Noble Piece-of-Ass Prize?" This M. F.r is reaching new heights as a propagandist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_War
Hayden and Moore need to sit
Hayden and Moore need to sit their politically correct, poser asses down. NOW they call out Obama? Too little, too late mofos. Hayden, Moore and the rest of their ilk are a major reason the corporment (govt + corporations) has brought the nation and world to disaster. Their failure to call out and expose those who need such aids and abets the high crimes and misdemeanors of the powers that be.
I don't know what kind of voodoo Obama is using but it's some powerful stuff. He's enacting every ill advised legislation and policy the right wing ever dreamed of but could never get passed. Despite all this, there are still a shitload and a half of left leaners totally enamored of the man. The same f*%kers who ranted and railed for 8 years about Bush and Cheney are now silent enuchs while Obama continues his Bush-like presidency and pisses on every damn thing these lefty losers "hoped" he'd "change."
Progressives are mentally defective
Outside of literal limousine liberals at Huffington Post, who believes Obama on anything? Obama has unleashed disaster capitalism on all of us and endless war for resources on the whole planet.
http://www.circusgiganticus.com/run-with-the-hunted/