As his words hang in the air, captives of the Empire are being kidnapped and rendered to Bagram and other dungeons and tortured, all the while with no legal standing as “enemy combatants”. Stand naked in a cold cell, waiting for the next beating from your interrogators and listen to Obama being piped through the PA at max volume, right after ‘Born in the USA’ (sorry, Birthers): 'We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place… So let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.'
McCain loves the speech. Sarah Palin loves the speech. But that doesn’t mean Obama’s Oslo address was a Republican speech. When it comes to invoking “just wars” Republican presidents can go through the motions, but they haven’t got their hearts in it. Who needs to talk about justice as you drop high explosive and scrawl Death to Ragheads on the side of the bombs? When you want a just war, whistle up a Democrat who can talk with a straight face about installing democracy in the Balkans. After eight years of Bushian crudities the Empire needed an upgrade in its salespitch, which is why we have Obama. Back at the time of the medieval crusades, the Western kings used to take Holy Communion from their Archbishops before heading east to battle Islam and scour the land for booty. I thought the ceremony in that austere hall in Oslo was a straight lineal descent – as Obama accepted his wafer, in the form of the prize -- in this modern age a substantial check – and then pledged his holy war."
"There have been yelps, but I detect a certain caution on the left, a certain reluctance to toss Obama on the dung heap where he belongs.And they[the progressives] too see nothing wrong with Obama’s endless pledges to kill Bin Laden – a commitment that aroused ecstasy in Congress last week when General McChrystal told the Senate Armed Services Committee last Tuesday that the world can not defeat al Qaeda until Osama bin Laden is captured or killed.
As Pierre Sprey remarked in the hearing’s wake, “It's clear to me that, although Gen. McChrystal's credentials in the assassination business are impeccable, his assassination-based grand strategy is a shameless crib from that great strategic innovator, the USAF's Col. Worden (e.g., "decapitation of the enemy's leadership"--by air power, of course). Quibbles over authorship aside, victory through assassination is a brilliant grand strategy for America: it's cheap, particularly at a time when we're a bit strapped; it's politically irresistible to a nation raised on Terminator 2 and Tupac; and, for the defense intellectuals, it offers wonderfully clear cut measures of success. And, empirically speaking, it's got a great track record. Look how well a single well-conceived execution worked out for Pontius Pilate, the High Priests of the Second Temple, and the Roman Empire.”
"Here’s a president who can’t even toss the progressives the one peanut a year they need to keep them happy. Obama’s refusal on the eve of Thanksgiving here ago to sign the U.S. on to the landmine ban was the breaking point for many.Mostly the victims are the rural poor, many of them children. As a senator, Barack Obama voted for the ban; as President, he’s against it. Looking at the AMA Report’s numbers it’s a safe bet to say that somewhere in the world, even as Obama invoked Martin Luther King and the peacelovers, some kids the same age as his own two daughters were killed or crippled by a land mine."
". . .What people are suddenly realizing is that with Obama there is a absolute disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality. Is it cynicism? . . . Obama has spent so much of his life putting on the various acts necessary to get ahead in the world of powerful, rich white people that deception and self-deception have become innate and instinctive, several steps beyond crude manipulation."
"Any president has the power to do something decent once in a while, even if it’s declaring a marine sanctuary, which was Jimmy Carter’s last act as president. Bill Clinton finally offended Hollywood liberals by refusing to pardon Leonard Peltier, something he could have done at of the stroke of the same pen he used to sign the pardon for Marc Rich, the billionaire crook fugitive from justice. Hollywood is still with Obama. If he was shot tomorrow, someone – maybe even Oliver Stone -- would rush to make a movie saying Obama was killed by the Pentagon because of his pledge to pull the troops out of Afghanistan two years from now."
With Love and Kindness,
THE HATMAN
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