President Obama has presided over policies that have resulted in horrific war crimes against civilians (mainly children), a corrupt corporatocracy, and a dragnet surveillance state. Yet in a last ditch effort to preserve his legacy, he is pursuing policies that will pacify the public’s view of his crimes, which are no different than most other presidents before him regardless of political party. We must realize that he will only pursue legacy policies up to the point it upsets his masters in the banking industry that installed him in office, just like most other presidents since Woodrow Wilson (who got elected on the promise to the bankers to sign the income tax and Federal Reserve Act into law). The argument given by Obama apologists leading up to the 2012 re-election was that if we re-elected him he would end the wars, the surveillance, the corporate/banking collusion, and the erosion of the Bill of Rights. The line must be drawn at dead children. This is the commander in chief and he had every ability to stop these atrocities in a timely fashion. It is very important that we as a people distinguish between pragmatism and compromise. Being against the bombing of children is not being a purist; it is being human. Being a pragmatist means that the bombing can stop immediately, but it may not be possible to withdraw the skeleton of the empire overnight due to buildings, military bases, and more, let alone reconciliation for the countries we have obliterated. Compromise is saying that we can wait until 2016 or 2020 to stop killing children, which is code for ‘war will never end’ due to the spineless nature of public officials who have misused the public’s trust. Obama’s Crimes & Obama’s Apologists President Obama did not hesitate to maintain, expand, and worsen the crimes of George W. Bush. Obama extended the drone program to Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Libya, and Somalia. Tens of thousands of children died in the Somali famine, which occurred around the time of the ramping up of drone attacks by the President. Did Obama-apologists really think that in order to defeat Romney, Obama needed to kill children in order to get a small fraction of the neoconservative population, such as Bill Kristol, who praised Obama as a ‘born again neocon’ days after advising him on Libya? To quote hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco, did Obama ‘not say s—’ on the bombardment of Gaza with Operation Cast Lead only to get re-elected? The answer to those questions is no. Those notions are absurd. It is very easy for Americans, who even among the poorest of the poor are better off than 90% of the planet, to play politics with the lives of others. A mother in Gaza is never thinking “I can surely wait until 2016 or 2020 for Americans to get their house in order to stop killing our children.” While America plays games with two-party politics, we come across as spoiled and ignorant of the consequences of both parties’ consent to imperialism. War crimes cannot be repented or made up for. Surely, war criminal politicians are stuck with the job, since 90% of Congress was re-elected in 2014, and we would all love for them to admit their mistakes and cease the war crimes indefinitely, but that doesn’t mean that even if they stop the war crimes they shouldn’t be held accountable. By all means, they should get due process and jail time if convicted so the world can move forward in peace while military contractors collect unemployment benefits. We’re stuck with President Obama until 2013-2017, regardless that he should not be forgiven for his war crimes of 2009-2012. The apologists promised he’d use his re-election mandate to really fulfill his 2008 campaign promises, but did he? No! Police militarization, Edward Snowden revelations, closing down the office tasked with closing down Gitmo, the Boston Bombing, the NDAA, renewal of the PATRIOT Act, prosecution of whistleblowers and WikiLeaks, blank check for the CIA to justify its drone strikes & kill list, prosecution of Aaron Swartz, a witchhunt against journalists, crackdowns on Occupy Wall St., foreign aid to Israel, funding of ISIS/al-Nusra rebels, foreign aid to other despotic regimes (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt), Monsanto Protection Act, ongoing war on medical cannabis, immunity for the Federal Reserve & big banks, and a hefty laundry list of offenses continued past the alleged mandate of re-election. The only tragically ironic silver lining is that this has awoken many on the left to the notion that the Democratic Party will not save them and we have much deeper and sinister systemic problems in our world. Malcolm X called it “an international, Western power structure.” (Cont.) mintpressnews/MyMPN/obama-cant-undo-war-crimes-legacy-politics/1803/
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 22:34:04 +0000
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