[Peace-discuss] Obama's Special Pleading

[C. G. Estabrook]

President Obama's speech tonight was at once childish and chilling.  He managed 
to use a phrase that he's frequently used before -  "take out," in the sense of 
kill - twice; he had the Orwellian effrontery to say - between two invocations 
of the assassination of Osama bin Laden - "We are a nation that brings our 
enemies to justice while adhering to the rule of law"; and the repetition of 
another of his favorite terms, "targeting," indicates his continued reliance on 
assassination as practiced by those troops upon whom he asks God's blessing, in 
his rather surprising conclusion.

That blinding bit of double-think displays his contempt for the public whom he 
has to cozen, as does his predictable beginning with " 9-11." That awful 
counter-attack to a generation of American exploitation of the Mideast was 
neither the reason nor a justification for the decade of torture, murder, and 
destruction that successive US administrations have visited upon the people of 
the Middle East and North Africa. The US has instead insisted continually since 
the Second World War that it will control the greatest energy-producing region 
of the world, as an advantage over our economic rivals in Europe and Asia.

But Obama thinks that Americans can be persuaded to accept transparent lies. (He 
obviously doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks - the propaganda is for 
home consumption.)  He thinks that they can be mollified by the US government's 
constant  excuse for killing people in the Middle East ("stopping terrorism") 
sufficiently to ignore its real reason for doing so; and he thinks that he can 
convince them not to object too much to war from the Maghreb to the Indus 
Valley, and from Central Asia to the Horn of Africa - war that is clearly not in 
their interest.

Only if Obama can "Scare hell out of the American people" (as Senator Vandenberg 
advised President Truman to do at the outset of the Cold War) with the threat of 
terrorism, can he get them to continue to allow him to wage that war - a war 
that creates the very terrorists whom it is supposed to defeat.

Barack Obama tonight attempted to forestall criticisms of his war policy from 
"Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish 
and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise 
depositary of the public interests"  (as his predecessor Thomas Jefferson said). 
Two-thirds of the country oppose Obama's war (although two-third of the Congress 
supports it, in our spavined democracy). They must be pacified if the war is to 
continue...

Obama must have forgot - if he ever read - Jefferson's strange prayer: "I 
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot 
sleep forever" - as he arranges to take out more people whose lands have oil.

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