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21 June 2012
By Margaret
Kimberley
"Barack
Obama was certain that news of his personal ‘kill
list' would benefit his chances of being re-elected,
and he was not wrong."
What can one say about
people who continue to support war criminals among
their elected representatives? It is easy to blame the
presidents and the Congress and the media for endless
war and rising body counts around the world. They are
indeed responsible for promoting mass killing as an
acceptable, indeed beneficial means of living among
the world's people.
It is true that Americans
have far less input into their government's decisions
than they seem to think. They play a very small role
in choosing elected officials, including the
president. The power of money means that rich people
and corporations call the shots to a greater extent
than citizens of a so-called democracy are willing to
admit.
But the people do still
have the right to their own opinions. We can proclaim
what we do and do not like. When the president feeds a
story to the New York Times which proclaims that he
gladly accepts responsibility for killing people, he
believes that said story will increase his support
among voters.
That is what Barack Obama
did last week. His advisers sat down with New York
Times reporters in order to tell the world that he
decides who will live and who will be blown to bits by
drones in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Somalia. The
Obama marketing juggernaut knows that the killer
president image can only be helpful in a country so
certain of its right to be violent.
The anniversary of his
assassination of Osama bin Laden was celebrated and
turned into an argument for a second Obama term in
office. Nor was the gloating limited to the president
and his campaign team. His supporters were also beside
themselves as they made the case for the killer
president, using his navy seal hit as one more reason
to love Barack Obama.
"The
Obama marketing juggernaut knows that the killer
president image can only be helpful in a country so
certain of its right to be violent."
Condemnation should not
just be directed towards Barack Obama and his henchmen
and women, but at the American people too. Americans
love to make war and revel in their nation's military
superiority. Politicians surmise, correctly, that
being on the side of war is a surer path to victory
than working for peace.
To be sure, there is
better fundraising to be had for the hawk than for the
dove, but there is also a visceral level of support
for invasion, occupation and drone strikes. The oldest
and strongest form of propaganda in this country is
the belief that white America has the right to
dominate everyone else on the earth, and as president
Obama functions as the whitest man in the country. The
siren song of Manifest Destiny outlived the 19th
century and is still alive now in the 21st.
It has been called many things, anti-communism during
the Cold War, and the war against terror now, but it
all amounts to the same thing.
We are told to fear the
communist, or militant Islam, or whatever the enemy du
jour happens to be. The end result is the same from a
people who are convinced of their own goodness and
paradoxically their right to have their violent way in
the world. It is never very difficult to get support
for killing and maiming among people who think
themselves morally superior.
If anything Americans are
morally inferior to people in the rest of the world.
Barack Obama was certain that news of his personal
"kill list" would benefit his chances of being
re-elected, and he was not wrong.
"The
oldest and strongest form of propaganda in this
country is the belief that white America has the right
to dominate everyone else on the earth, and as
president Obama functions as the whitest man in the
country."
He solved the problems
presented by Guantanamo by not taking any prisoners at
all. He just kills people and any innocent bystander
is labeled as a militant, all so that the president
can look good and the people in his country can feel
good. According to the well orchestrated story, the
president even invokes theological theories of just
war, as he pours over a "nominations" list of those
marked for death.
These revelations did not
cause outrage or inspire people to take to the
streets. It was left to the usual suspects who are
truly progressive and proudly leftist to point out the
evil inherent in a president who thinks he should be
judge, jury and executioner.
It seems that our
president is a totally amoral psychopath, and the
revelation of his condition has not hurt his
popularity. Apparently the president governs
psychopaths too, because too few of them will say or
do anything to oppose his commitment to breaking the
law, violating the Constitution, and the word of the
god he claims to believe in.
The evil is not limited
to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but can be found on Main
Street U.S.A. just as easily. Obama is giving most
Americans exactly what they want, a world living in
fear of them.
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)BlackAgendaReport.com. |
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