OBAMA: LOFTY ORATORY AND BLOODY DEEDS

OBAMA: LOFTY ORATORY AND BLOODY DEEDS

On May 23, 2013 President Obama gave a lofty speech in which he finally seemed to be grasping the reins of control of government to reduce our military excesses. In it he described his intention to "sharply curtail the unmanned aerial vehicle killing program" and close up Guantanamo.  Or did he say that?  The truth is that the"Obama kill list" and drone program were beginning to look like domestic political liabilities.   It is a program which Obama radically expanded and made more secretive and world wide (and deadly) upon taking office.  (The British Bureau of Investigative Journalism says drone attacks in Pakistan have killed up to 3,549 people since 2004 including up to 890 civilians.) But it is clear his "drone war" has been a success only the way General Westmorland's "Vietcong  body counts" were a "success" in the  Vietnam War era.  Counting up dead enemies may have bolstered the President's short term domestic political agenda, and staved off Republican attacks, but in the end were and remain a brutal sign of America's inability to win decisively and a mark of futility and ultimate failure. Just tally up the cost to benefit ratio.  Trillions of dollars in expenditures and what are the benefits?   We all know it...we are leaving Afghanistan with our tails between our legs one way or the other.   But no politician wants to admit it.

But only a few days after this high flutin' misleading example of Obama's golden throated oratorical skills and obscurantisms, the CIA conducted deadly strike on June 7, in North Waziristan, killing nine people...presumably one or more "terrorists" among them. But who knows who was killed.  We're they women and children? What was  their ages, sex, or actual political affiliations--or if they had any?  Furthermore, this deadly drone strike occurred only a few days after Pakistan's newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had specifically requested  in his post election speech that the USA respect his nation's sovereignty and desist from any further drone strikes.   Perhaps the strike was a mistake?  Or it was planned before Sharif made his request and being in the "drone pipe line" the attack took place anyway. But it was not intended as a slap in the Pakistani's PM face.   Sharif vociferously complained and the UN initiated an investigation.  Some in the UN noted disconcertedly that the authorization for use of force by the US was getting stale, it was issued twelve years ago under the Bush administration.

Then as if ignoring Obama's speech, Sharif's plea, and the UN objections,  on July 3, 2013, the CIA hit a compound in a market town of Miranshah in the northwest part of Pakistan in Waziristan with multiple war heads killing 17 or 18 people belonging to the Haqqani network.  The Haqqani clan are nationalists and islamists who oppose foreign intervention in Afghanistan. Ironically, they were nurtured and armed by the CIA in the 1980s insurgency against the Soviet Union.  Their contact with the Taliban make them our "enemies" today.   They are certainly no existential threat to the USA and are concerned with simply getting us to leave Afghanistan. That is what we all seem to want. But how will Sharif respond to this obvious hard slap in the face. To an ally whom we actually need to help us extricate ourselves from this mess. Perhaps Sharif will close off the vital passes into Afghanistan again?

But the question remains, what was President Obama's intentions in this attack? To send a message to Sharif, who was democratically elected and who championed the idea of limiting US intervention in its northern border region and who strongly opposed the CIA use of drones against its citizenry.  Sharif is a new man who replaced the former Prime Minister Ali Zadari who was much more compliant to US pressure. It was during Zadari's administration in which the number of drone attacks surged and large numbers of Pakistani civilians were killed.    Was this last attack a way to get Sharif to back down? Or is Obama simply not in control?  Or more likely is he simply acting like a normal Washington pol...saying one thing to his base and doing just the opposite to satisfy the powerful elites in the military-industrial-complex (MIC) to whom he is both financially and politically  obligated.  Obama, who at one time seemed to be our last best hope, seems today in the early part of his second term, sad to say, on the road to a failed presidency. As his actions, decisions and motivations are slowly revealed by the likes of  Snowdon, Assange and Wikileaks the glittering robes of myth are falling away to expose a man who could not rise above his roots as a small time Chicago politician.  He has essentially kept the course of his failed predecessor.  He has not wrested the great spokes of the wheel of the ship-of-state from Bush. His face is darker, his smile is brighter but his countenance is beginning to look a lot like our former VP Cheney. This is a sad commentary on our modern way of politics. Who can progressives support?

Get the picture?

rjk