The “Obama Bomb”, like a Missile flying without guidance

Obama’s Bombs
By As’ad AbuKhalil – 2 September, 2013 – Angry Corner – Al Akhbar

The Syrian people are holding their breaths. And if you read Western media and believe their correspondents in … Beirut (who are surrounded by March 14 supporters who are members of the same Saudi coalition with the Syrian exile opposition), then the Syrian people – who have been receiving bombs from the Syrian regime, the Syrian armed opposition and Israel – are eager for more bombs from Barack Obama to fall on them. The West never intervenes and never invades and never enslaves and never colonizes without invoking high moral values. Why should this time be different? We knew that both John Kerry and Obama would invoke high moral views and feign outrage. They want us to believe that they just could not stomach watching scenes of carnage in Syria. But why did their stomach not turn when they watched scenes of carnage of the US-funded Egyptian army? And what about Bahrain and Palestine? But the list is too long.

But Kerry was more audacious. He stumbled upon new adjectives for Bashar: a “thug and murderer.” But why did Kerry have intimate one-on-one meetings with the thug and murderer, and why did he have private family dinners with the thug and murderer and his wife? Western governments often pretend that they never knew that their allies and friends were committing human rights abuses until they decide to take a stand for reasons that have nothing to do with human rights abuses.

But Obama drew a line in the sand and created a red line and is now compelled by virtue of imperial hubris and machismo to bomb. Not that Obama has stopped bombing. Thus far, Obama has bombed Mali, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the list is growing. The man who faulted Bush for launching a “dumb war” (his language carries no sense of idealism, of course), is about to launch another “dumb war” by his own terminology. A sign of typical American imperialist arrogance is the insistence that the US can manage to keep an attack or a war of aggression “limited.” The US engagement in Lebanon between 1982 and 1984 was supposed to be limited until it got out of hand and until Reagan declared – not an end to the US involvement – but a mere “re-deployment” of US troops (and the US troops were never re-deployed back in Lebanon since.)

US media typically cheer any president who is about to launch war on another country. In the 30 years that I have lived in the US, I would say that US media consistently support military interventions by a sitting president with the exception of interventions in Latin America. When it comes to US interventions in Latin America, some in the US establishment media raise questions and express skepticism. But that is not the case when a US president declares war on Middle East or African countries. There you see liberals and conservatives in agreement. Nicholas Kristof (the patronizing columnists for The New York Times who fancies himself as a modern Indiana Jones-type who goes on a white horse to formerly-colonized lands to rescue native women from bad native men) sounds very much John McCain when it comes to Syria. For some reason – call it Israel – there is no right and left, Republicans or Democrats, when it comes to the Middle East. …more