Our Killer President
By Arthur Silber
January 10 2013 "Information Clearing House" - The killer said:
“Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been
taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,” the president fired
back at an impromptu news conference at the White House.
>
>“Or whoever’s left out there,” he added. “Ask
them about
that.”Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames.
Watch More News Videos at ABC | Technology News | Celebrity News
Watch the video. It's instructive, particularly Obama's expression when he
adds, "Or whoever's left out there." He speaks of murder, yet the words are
breezy and casual: this is a murderer so used to killing that he talks of his
past and future victims interchangeably, and in terms of approximation. Just
"whoever's left out there." He wants to be sure you know he'll order all of
them killed in time. His face is expressionless, the eyes dead. This is a man
without a soul in any healthy, positive sense. He murders -- and he's proud of
it.
More than a million innocent Iraqis were murdered as the result of the United
States' criminal war of aggression on that country. Obama has heralded
America's "success" in Iraq as "an extraordinary achievement."
The continuing murders in Pakistan and Afghanistan
are so numerous and so
regular that they barely
merit notice for more
than a few days, at least as
far as the United
States government and most
Americans are
concerned. Over the recent
Thanksgiving weekend,
the United States government murdered at least 25 Pakistanis. (NATO and the
U.S. government are indistinguishable in any matter of importance, in any
matter of murders of this kind.) Pakistan is deeply angry and unhappy. The
United States government and Obama are concerned only to the extent that
Pakistan's unhappiness might interfere with the U.S.'s intention to dominate
and control that part of the world. The U.S. government and Obama aren't
particularly upset about the murders, but about the strategic problem that
might result from the murders.
On the same weekend: "Six children were among seven civilians killed in a
NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Thursday." The
story has already fallen into the well of forgetfulness. It must be the case
that incidents like this occur at least once a day given the number of
military operations ordered by the Murderer-in-Chief and carried out by those
who follow his orders. Perhaps only one innocent person is killed. "Only" one.
Perhaps we should ask "whoever's left out there" what that one loss signifies.
Earlier in November, there was this story:
Last Friday, I met a boy, just before he was assassinated by the CIA. Tariq
Aziz was 16, a quiet young man from North Waziristan, who, like most
teenagers, enjoyed soccer. Seventy-two hours later, a Hellfire missile is
believed to have killed him as he was travelling in a car to meet his aunt in
Miran Shah, to take her home after her wedding. Killed with him was his
12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan.
>
>Over 2,300 people in Pakistan have been killed
by such
missiles carried by drone aircraft such
as the Predator
and the Reaper, and launched by
remote control
from Langley, Virginia. Tariq and
Waheed brought
the known total of children
killed in this
way to 175, according to
statistics
maintained by the organisation I work
for, the Bureau
of Investigative Journalism.
>
>...
>
>Unless the CIA can prove that Tariq Aziz posed
an imminent
threat (as the White House's legal
advice
stipulates a targeted killing must in
order for an
attack to be carried out), or that
he was a key
planner in a war against the US or
Pakistan, the
killing of this 16 year old was
murder, and any
jury should convict the CIA
accordingly.
These are only a few of the stories we know about, and only from a very brief
period of time. Countless other murders take place all over the world, and we
can only gather the dim outlines of what is occurring. This is not to mention
numerous lesser acts of cruelty and violence, many of which will alter lives
in searing ways, for all the desolate years to follow.
Consider:
Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now,
say that 70 times and you're done... for the day. Without the knowledge of
the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking
operations in a majority of the world's countries.
>
>...
>
>Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the
Washington Post
reported that U.S. Special
Operations
forces were deployed in 75 countries,
up from 60 at
the end of the Bush presidency. By
the end of this
year, U.S. Special Operations
Command [SOCOM]
spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told
me, that number
will likely reach 120. "We do a
lot of
traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan
or Iraq," he
said recently. This global presence
-- in about 60%
of the world's nations and far
larger than
previously acknowledged -- provides
striking new
evidence of a rising clandestine
Pentagon power
elite waging a secret war in all
corners of the
world.
>
>...
>
>In 120 countries across the globe, troops from
Special
Operations Command carry out their
secret war of
high-profile assassinations,
low-level
targeted killings, capture/kidnap
operations,
kick-down-the-door night raids,
joint
operations with foreign forces, and
training
missions with indigenous partners as
part of a
shadowy conflict unknown to most
Americans. Once
"special" for being small, lean,
outsider
outfits, today they are special for
their power,
access, influence, and aura.
No minimally decent human being would choose to have anything whatsoever to
do with a government which systematically engages in acts of this kind. This
is true of anyone who is part of the national governing apparatus, or wishes
to be. It is most especially true of anyone who wishes to become president.
Even if a person declares his or her absolute commitment to ending all of
this, it is impossible for one person to do it. The massive bureaucracy of
death which carries out these acts was erected over decades; all such
bureaucratic monstrosities take on lives of their own. It will not be
dismantled by a single individual overnight, or even in a matter of months or
probably years. That means the murders will go on.
It may be that at some point this machinery of death
will be brought down
comparatively quickly. If that
happens, it will not be
the result of one person's
actions, but of
calamitous events on a momentous
scale: widening war,
catastrophic natural disasters,
widespread financial
collapse, and/or massive social
unrest and violence. In
the meantime, a reverence
for life demands that
we see the Death State exactly for what it is -- and walk away to the fullest
extent we can.
That is not the course Barack Obama chose. He wanted
to be, he now is the
Murderer-in-Chief. He is proud of his achievement.
Thus, the words I wrote over five years ago continue
to hold a relevance and
meaning that fill me with
the deepest despair. I
desperately wish that I had
never had cause to
compose this passage, and that I
did not feel compelled
to repeat it now:
If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer -- a murderer who is sane and
fully aware of the acts he has committed -- can remain steadfastly convinced
of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of
remorse, you should not wonder any longer.
>
>The United States government is such a murderer.
It conducts its
murders in full view of the
entire world.
It even boasts of them. Our
government, and
all our leading commentators,
still maintain
that the end justifies the means
-- and that
even the slaughter of hundreds of
thousands of
innocents is of no moral
consequence,
provided a sufficient number of
people can
delude themselves into believing the
final result is
a "success."
>
>...
>
>We can appeal all we want to "American
exceptionalism," but any "exceptionalism" that
remains ours is
that of a mass murderer without
a soul, and
without a conscience. ... It is
useless to
appeal to any "American" sense of
morality: we
have none. It does not matter how
immense the
pile of corpses grows: we will not
surrender or
even question our delusion that we
are right, and
that nothing we do can be
profoundly,
unforgivably wrong.
Arthur Silber blogs at powerofnarrative.blogspot.com
See also - Misplaced Secrecy on Targeted Killings: For years, President
Obama has been stretching executive power to claim that the authorization to
use military force against Al Qaeda gives him the unilateral authority to
order people killed away from any battlefield without judicial oversight or
public accountability — even when the target is an American citizen.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33583.htm
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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