But Obama! Americans Are Not "Compassionate" Nor "Generous" Toward Iraqis, Afghanis, Somalis
By Jay Janson
04 June,
2008
Opednews.com
Candidate Barak Obama's victory speech in St. Paul was ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent wonderful. Since most of the television watching world heard it, perhaps no need to review the best parts of it. It was consistent with the change Obama has been speaking to all year long.
There were, however those few instances where Obama apparently felt obliged to be 'politically correct' in referring to unchanged some corporate media intentional distortions of historical facts which for their continuous replay have come to be taken as the God's honest truth in mainstream American folk lore.
If America is to change successfully under the future administration of an intelligent, moral and both socially and academically well-educated President Obama, we will not be harkening back to the behaviors of two of the past presidents Obama referred to as models yesterday evening. Both were exceedingly pro-status quo, not change.
Harry Truman is credited by historians with the creation of the present National Security State and reneging on Roosevelt's promise of freedom for the colonial populations of the third world. Under Truman we firebombed and atom bombed civilian populations.
Truman backed the cruel dictatorship of the colonels in Greece, brought a fresh French army back into Vietnam to take the place of the Vichy French and Japanese armies that our ally Ho Chi Minh had helped us defeat. Truman and Churchill, and not Stalin alone, were the architects of a brutal cold war fought in dozens of colonies and former colonies on three continents a cost of millions on lives. The bloody heritage of this, for us, a cold war, was anything but cold for a billion Africans, Asians and Latin Americans, and stares out at us from the their present conditions of poverty, hunger and misery today.
Likewise was there no need for Obama to hail the example of President Kennedy in a speech about change. Though our corporate media has made the image of a young handsome leader, cut down by an assassins so beloved that towns, streets and plazas bear his name all around the world, the truth is Kennedy’s promise went unfulfilled.
Kennedy's very first act was to give the two most important cabinet posts to Republicans. From the beginning, JFK waffled on civil rights. Kennedy backed the Mobutu dictatorship upon the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and gave the go ahead to the CIA managed invasion of Cuba, both continuations of Eisenhower’s secret plans which caused great loss of life for Cubans and had horrendous results for millions of Congolese reaching through and up and into our time. In Vietnam he also was no agent of change. He approved the strafing and bombing of the rebellion in the delta of South Vietnam, and okayed the overthrow and murder of Ngo Dinh Diem, the dictator Ike had arranged to head up the division of Vietnam, to be replaced by a series of generals.
Maybe one day Obama will be secure enough in the approval rating of that great silent and ignorant voting majority that he will be able to dare to curtail the covert murderous criminal activities of that supremely un-American and unconstitutional international monster of corporate interests, our CIA. Then he might be able to acknowledge what we alternate media journalists quote from the recently released secret files of the CIA regarding Kennedy's immoral acts.
And while we can understand that Obama is being gracious when he repeats the obligatory fable of McCain's great military service to his country in bombing poor little Vietnam in a war America lost, we must never tire to repeat that the Vietnam war was an atrocity perpetrated on an innocent poor agrarian colonial population, shameful for America, and of near holocaust homicidal proportions as suffered by millions. This will help Obama, not hurt him.
See
OpEdNews, Saturday, March 22, 2008
McCain Shot Down by Heroic Vietnamese Defenders in Shameful US War
& Defeat
(Years before Airman McCain began his 23 bombing runs, Ike had admitted
Ho Chi Minh was a hero to his countrymen and would have won an all-Vietnam
election with 80%+ had he (Ike) not blocked it. Well before McCain's
1st bombing mission, Rev. King Jr. had angrily condemned U.S. genocide,
and Muhammad Ali had refused to go. Was McCain taken in then, and
now as well, by war propaganda? McCain, an anti-hero or heartless
dumbbell?)
Change is Obama's denouncing the war of occupation of Iraq as never having been justified. However, hailing the war on terrorism as he does as real is no change at all from what we have from gotten from Bush and the imperialists, congress and the media. The daily Associated Press reports of body counts of suspected Taliban, a Taliban still the governing of much of Afghanistan, a government once supported by Reagan, is just so much unnecessary murder. No longer any pretext given that it is leading to the arrest of Osama bin Laden.
Informed Americans look to our safety from al Qaeda by undercutting the reasons for its continuing to attract more recruits to fighting us. We certainly expect that Obama thinks our way and is merely forced to play along, until elected, with lies so firmly media-embedded in the public's consciousness.
Peace loving America's take heart from Obama's words that his party will never use the "bludgeon of patriotism" in his campaign. And Obama saying "Americans are compassionate and generous" by nature is something we can see Obama leading us in, but our job as dissidents is to remind everyone, that a political speech notwithstanding, the abjectly disinterested, appalling, nearly inhuman, American indifference to the killing of foreigners in their own lands, too often in their very own homes for being 'in harms way' of U.S. occupying forces is now legendary.
Americans have to this day shown zero compassion and zero generosity toward the Vietnamese we so wantonly slaughtered. Likewise have we rarely heard a word of mention of the Iraqi and Afghan civilian deaths nor the pleas of both of the legislatures of the very governments we set up, asking us to desist from killing their civilians in air strikes; neither on the floor of Congress nor in the media.
We shall await Obama calling attention to the Afghan legislative body having asked for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, amnesty for all fighters of all sides and negotiations with the former Taliban government, as reported just one day last year by Associated Press and a few newspapers.
There is little doubt that those of us who dissent from leaving the roots of suffering throughout the planet, namely capitalism and imperialism, unchanged, while calling for change within its onerous applications to humanity at large, will feel the need to keep a low profile and not be outspoken during Obama's run for the presidency against a representative of heartless military expansionism at the expense of the innocent and nearly defenseless populations of third world nations.
However it would be a mistake for progressives to wait until after
the election to criticize Obama when he feels it necessary to kowtow
to the ignorance of the voting public and repeat the deceptions promoted
in conglomerate media, which portend frighteningly to keep the system
intact in all its iniquity.
As that wise old folk-singer and anarchist Utah Phillips said in answer to Amy Goodman's question about whom to support in the election. "The Democratic Party is the only organization which is capable of changing the worst aspects of the system we live under and one has to support it." But then he added that when one comes out of the booth after voting, its back to working for real freedom and humanity.
In the meantime, before the election, we have to point it out when Obama is not heeding his own agenda for change. That will help him and help him make changes.
Speak out on America's failures so we can help Obama avoid unnecessary 'politically correct' untruths that make change difficult!
