It's good to see that in his first week in office Obama has not let
his liberal credentials get in the way of good old-fashioned
blood-spilling, sanctioning two CIA remote-control Predator drone
missile attacks in Pakistan that killed at least 22 people, most of
them women and children.
Let's remind ourselves how this all works: based on information
supplied by paid informants who often have their own motives for
filching on friends and neighbors, the CIA sends Predator drones to
gather "intelligence" --- in unvarnished English "information of
dubious quality" --- that is then used to target "insurgents",
"extremists", or "terrorists". The bombs or missiles ("smart" or
otherwise) are then loosed and the pieces (of human beings) fall where
they may --- a crisp example of "judicious projection of military
power" in Obama's words --- with the predictable effect of increasing
hatred for the United States and corresponding support for groups who
profess the same. Never mind that we are almost always conducting
such bombing within the borders of a sovereign nation against their
wishes, a crime against laws both domestic and foreign, illustrating
with clarity that our government has never bothered to follow the
dictates of our own Constitution (Article VI, Section 2) when imperial
prerogative is in question.
I'm also glad to see that Obama is reverting to prior practice and
directly supporting torture instead of doing it ourselves. The vast
majority of U.S.-sponsored torture, even under the Bush-Cheney regime,
is not done by Americans, it is usually supervised, funded, guided,
and protected by Americans, but Americans usually do not lay hands
directly on victims. George Bush changed the usual post-Vietnam
pattern and got our hands dirty, generating much shock and
embarrassment, not to mention widely publicized sordid photographs.
Obama has now laid down the law: we will go back to prior practice, in
which we fund and direct the crimes from arm's length --- we will
train, pay, arm, supply, and reward the torturers (usually in our
favored places of law-and-order such as Jordan, Syria, Pakistan,
Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, Guatemala, El
Salvador, Haiti, to name but a few), but we will not sully our hands
directly. U.S. proxy torture, always dwarfing that carried out in
Guantanamo, will continue unabated.
We should remember something very important about torture: it is of
use only to vicious outlaw governments who use it to teach a lesson of
unvarying application: oppose our thievery in any way and you will
suffer the same. The U.S. deigns to rule the world and uses torture
in this way, as it must, since torture victims a) are usually simply
innocents gathered arbitrarily who provide no useful information
whatsoever because they know nothing and will tell the torturer
whatever they want to hear; b) are related to or known by those who
oppose our imperial appropriation of their country's wealth, to whom
thereby the victim's torture, mutilation, and/or death will a useful
lesson; c) even if directly engaged in resistance to U.S. aims,
usually can provide nothing of value.
I won't even begin to get into his unqualified support for Israel's
murderous suppression and torture of Palestinians, an example of
"cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness" (Obama's
words, again) if there ever were one.
Of course, each of these examples is of a piece: terrorizing the world
to render it supple to our wants. Unfortunately for our imperial
leaders, the world is becoming increasingly difficult to bend.
Bill
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