by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Barack Obama has become the Great Interventionist, eclipsing George Bush, who only wished he were good at it. Not satisfied to have outdone half of the previous presidential tag-team, Obama takes on Dick Cheney for the title of Great Prevaricator (specializing in tall tales that start big wars). It’s a deadly game. “By claiming that a foreign government was involved in contracting with Mexican drug dealers to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the administration has made a clear case for war against the Iranian government.”
Freedom Rider: Iran in Obama’s Cross Hairs
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“It was just another example of a plan which would not have existed had it not been instigated by an informant.”
While the nation’s attention has been focused on the Occupy Wall Street movement, new dangers for this country and for the world have been created by the Obama administration. The president has made it clear that America’s interventionist path has not changed direction one bit. If anything, he has done what once would have seemed impossible, accelerating that direction more than his predecessor ever hoped.
In a period of just five months, Barack Obama has assassinated Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki without charge or trial. He attempted to kill Libyan president Moammar Gaddafi the same weekend of the bin Laden assassination. Ronald Reagan also tried to kill Gaddafi, but gave up after one attempt and decided not to spend any effort on regime change in Libya. Obama has out Reaganed Reagan by overthrowing Gaddafi and, along with his NATO partners, waging a war against a civilian population to place a puppet government in charge in Tripoli. Once again he has succeeded in making right wing dreams come true in ways that Republicans did not dare.
The al-Awlaki killing was all the more egregious because the victim was an American citizen. No matter. The president asserts that he has the right to decide if Americans should live or die. The constitutional law professor sees no need to even make his killings look legitimate by seeking indictments. He tells us that al-Awlaki plotted attacks or inspired attacks and we are supposed to believe it and be quiet.
“Obama has out Reaganed Reagan by overthrowing Gaddafi and, along with his NATO partners, waging a war against a civilian population to place a puppet government in charge in Tripoli.”
Not content to act the part of the planet’s self-appointed executioner, Obama is taking actions and making statements which give the impression that he intends to take military action against Iran. Dick Cheney must be very jealous. Last week the administration claimed that yet another terror plot was being fomented on American soil before it was foiled in the nick of time by the FBI.
Of course, it was just another example of a plan which would not have existed had it not been instigated by an informant. The FBI continues in its sorry history of concocting crimes, all of them outrageous, but this has broader and more horrible implications.
By claiming that a foreign government was involved in contracting with Mexican drug dealers to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the administration has made a clear case for war against the Iranian government. The calls for more inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities and for even tighter sanctions are just the beginning. Lest we forget, the occupation of Iraq was preceded by a year long campaign for political and public support.
Already, the British government has stated its belief in this preposterous supposed plot. The foreign secretary opined, presumably with a straight face, that the alleged plot “would appear to constitute a major escalation in Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism outside its borders.”
“There is no justification for our government, and by extension American citizens, to kill Iranians.”
It is monstrous that such an obviously ludicrous scenario is being treated as true by the corporate media in this country, and by America’s allies. If Obama chooses to bomb Tehran and Isfahan, Democratic as well as Republican senators and congress members, the corporate media, and pundits regarded as “serious” people will all applaud him. Supporting mass murder will become the sine qua non for any journalist who wants to keep access with the White House, or any political candidate who needs to raise a lot of money. Progressives who marched against the occupation of Iraq will find reasons to demur if Obama goes on the path of mass murder.
For many years, this commentator and many others have been warning that Iran is under threat of American intervention. We may seem like the boy who cried wolf in the old children’s story. These warnings are not created out of thin air. They arise from careful study of this nation’s history and the Obama administration’s patterns of behavior.
Should such an action take place, it must be made clear that it is a crime. There is no justification for our government, and by extension American citizens, to kill Iranians. They are no threat to us and have a right to live without fear of being killed should an American president deem it expedient.
Hopefully that country is not as weak and defenseless as Iraq and Libya. The writing is on the wall and doesn’t look pretty. Remember, the boy in the story was eventually telling the truth. The wolf did show up and it acted as wolves always do.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.
The Israeli army has intensified attacks on hospitals as part of the new operation, which aims to displace the entire population of Gaza.
The Trump administration opens a new ICE detention center in New Jersey’s biggest city and a hub for immigrant communities, earning a bold response from immigrant rights organizers.
In this week’s segment, we discuss the modern history of Black politics in the city of Newark, New Jersey, after the death of a long-serving former mayor and the arrest and brief detention of the…
Our guest is Craig Mokhiber. He is an international human rights lawyer and former director of the New York Office of the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights. He stepped down from that…
Lawrence Hamm, of the People’s Organization for Progress (POP), joins us from Newark, New Jersey, to talk about Black politics in that city. The late Sharpe James was mayor for a record-setting 20…
