Hold Your Applause

[balantz]

Published on Monday, June 8, 2009 by TruthDig.com
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090608_hold_your_applause/

Hold Your Applause

by Chris Hedges


Did they play Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim world in the prison corridors of Abu Ghraib, Bagram air base, Guantanamo or the dozens of secret sites where we hold thousands of Muslims around the world? Did it echo off the walls of the crowded morgues filled with the mutilated bodies of the Muslim dead in Baghdad or Kabul? Was it broadcast from the tops of minarets in the villages and towns decimated by U.S. iron fragmentation bombs? Was it heard in the squalid refugee camps of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians live in the world's largest ghetto?

What do words of peace and cooperation mean from us when we torture-yes, we still torture-only Muslims? What do these words mean when we sanction Israel's brutal air assaults on Lebanon and Gaza, assaults that demolished thousands of homes and left hundreds dead and injured? How does it look for Obama to call for democracy and human rights from Egypt, where we lavishly fund and support the despotic regime of Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest-reigning dictators in the Middle East?

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The expanding imperial projects and tightening screws of repression lurch forward under Obama. We are not trying to end terror or promote democracy. We are ensuring that our corporate state has a steady supply of the cheap oil to which it is addicted. And the scarcer oil becomes, the more aggressive we become. This is the game playing out in the Muslim world.

The Bush White House openly tortured. The Obama White House tortures and pretends not to. Obama may have banned waterboarding, but as Luke Mitchell points out in next month's issue of Harper's magazine, torture, including isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation and force-feeding, continues to be used to break detainees. The president has promised to close Guantanamo, where only 1 percent of the prisoners held offshore by the United States are kept. And the Obama administration has sought to obscure the fate and condition of thousands of Muslims held in black holes around the globe. As Mitchell notes, the Obama White House "has sought to prevent detainees at Bagram prison in Afghanistan from gaining access to courts where they may reveal the circumstances of their imprisonment. It has sought to continue the practice of rendering prisoners to unknown and unknowable locations outside the United States, and sought to keep secret many (though not all) of the records regarding our treatment of those detainees."

Muslim rage is stoked because we station tens of thousands of American troops on Muslim soil, occupy two Muslim nations, make possible the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, support repressive Arab regimes and torture thousands of Muslims in offshore penal colonies where prisoners are stripped of their rights. We now have 22 times as many military personnel in the Muslim world as were deployed during the crusades in the 12th century. The rage comes because we have constructed massive military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and established basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The rage comes because we have expanded our military empire into neighboring Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It comes because we station troops and special forces in Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And this vast network of bases and military outposts looks suspiciously permanent.

The Muslim world fears, correctly, that we intend to dominate Middle East oil supplies and any Caspian Sea oil infrastructure. And it is interested not in our protestations of good will but in the elemental right of justice and freedom from foreign occupation. We would react, should the situation be reversed, no differently.

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Obama, whose embrace of American imperialism is as naive and destructive as that of George W. Bush, is the newest brand used to peddle the poison of permanent war. We may not see it. But those who bury the dead do.

© 2009 TruthDig.com

[RufusTFirefly]

1. Chris Hedges -- well-known Rove-loving Freeper troll

Not!

K & R

[balantz]

2. Yep

You got me with that one!

:+

[ThomCat]

3. Right. It was more pretty words, from a president known for pretty words.

And we already know that his words often don't really mean anything. They just sound nice.

The real test is what he does, not what he says. Anyone really intelligent will look past the words, treat them sceptically, and check out what he's doing. What do we find?

1. He said that the torture stopped but the the torture continues, as this article states
2. and he let the wars continue,
3. and he let the persecution of Muslims continue,
4. and he let the Prosecution of Muslims continue in Extra-Judicial military tribunals instead of real courts,
5. and he hides the evidence of what we're doing (including the known photos of torture) instead of coming clean with the transparency he keeps trying to claim credit for
6. and he defends Bush's power grabs in court and cover up for them
7. and he retains Bush's spy powers, and refuse to say whether he's using them
8. and he breaks repeated promises to the left wing base and the LGBT community, that were important forces in getting him elected

He's a sweet talking politician, but the sweeter he talks the more carefully you have to check his words against his real actions.

[reggie the dog]

4. how long should I hold my apllesauce?

[quickesst]

5. I wonder what the "critics"....

...were doing during the primaries. Sticking their fingers in their ears while screaming loudly LALALALALALALALALALALALALAL so as to not let reality seep into the fantasy they were creating around an historical election? The obvious answer is a resounding "YES WE WERE!". Legitimate criticism is one thing, but.....

" Obama, whose embrace of American imperialism is as naive and destructive as that of George W. Bush, is the newest brand used to peddle the poison of permanent war. We may not see it. But those who bury the dead do."

....whiney-ass bitching, pissing, crying, and moaning is quite another. I hope the level-headed among Obama's critics are astute enough to tell the difference. Thanks.
quickesst

[zalinda]

8. Some were criticizing but they were silenced

by the the bellowing of Obama supporters. Were you here for the primaries? Obama supporters must have been online almost 24 hours a day, posting the praise of Obama and shouting down any praise for another candidate or criticism of Obama. Any one not supporting Obama was attacked verbally over and over again. I have never seen such vitriol on a forum, or in any other political election.

And even now, Obama critics are verbally attacked. He could have solved a lot of problems if he had put the Bush administration on trial for war crimes, let those go that were in Guantanamo with an apology and cash, and resolve, for the record, to get out of the middle east. None of which has happened. He took on the path of Bush.

zalinda

[Senator]

12. We were fighting against Impeachophobia.

Including http://talkingimpeachment.com/blog/Hall-of-Shame-Inductee----Barak-Obama.html">Obama's rather severe case.

We had little interest in the trivial euphemedia distraction of Hillobamania, because we were level-headed enough to not buy into the fantasy that there was a dime's worth of difference between the two. (Or are you suggesting that a woman president would not be equally "historical?")

And we are also astute enough to tell the difference between "screaming loudly LALALALALALALALALALALALALAL " and trying to logically refute that quote by simply saying it's "whiney-ass bitching, pissing, crying, and moaning."

Again, not a dime's worth.

--

[TBF]

6. K&R n/t

[balantz]

7. Kick

[followthemoney]

9. Kick n/t

[FiveGoodMen]

10. K&R

[waiting for hope]

11. K&R for Chris Hedges ..

I have always appreciated his articles.

[balantz]

13. Where are all the dedicated on this one I wonder? n/t