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By Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret KimberleyDuring the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama went to great lengths to deny rumors he was then or ever had been a Muslim. He certainly proved he was telling the truth with his abysmally offensive speech to the “Muslim world.”
Team Obama certainly knows how to make very little seem like quite a lot. Obama’s speech in Cairo was a case in point. It was nothing more than standard American propaganda, full of lies about this country and its ally Israel, and notions of exceptionalism and superiority towards people of color.
Barack Obama seems to think that Muslims are stupid, stupid enough to accept invasions and occupations without complaint if an American president shows up and quotes from the Koran. America is the most violent nation on earth and poses the greatest danger to world peace. Israel runs a close second.
Israel continues to steal Palestinian land, and to wall off Palestinians into a hellish occupation. One million Gazans are kept in an open air prison, prevented from fleeing whenever Israel chooses to start another killing spree. Outsiders, including the world’s media, are not allowed to chronicle their suffering or even bring them food and medical care.
Yet Obama’s speech said nothing about American backed Israeli violence. The only group instructed to eschew extremism and violence was the Palestinians. “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.” If Obama really believed that violence is wrong and doomed to failure, United States troops would be gone from Iraq and Afghanistan. American drones would not be on the prowl in Pakistan, bringing death to the civilian population. “It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus.” Israeli bombs killed 1,400 in Gaza, including many children, and blew up many old women on buses and elsewhere.
While Muslims were expected to listen to drivel, Israelis brazenly tell Obama what they have told all his predecessors. They will do what they want, whether Washington approves or not. Obama was informed that Israel will continue building settlements on Palestinian land, claiming that approval from the Bush administration gives them carte blanche to do so. In any case, Obama’s weak effort to appear evenhanded is a joke to anyone who is paying close attention. The complete absence of criticism of Israel and nonsensical descriptions of Palestinian “dislocation” prove the much talked about speech was nothing more than the latest Obama marketing extravaganza.
The world knows that presidents are lying when they claim to promote democracy. While the greatly demonized Iranian president is in a closely contested electoral fight, Egyptian president for life Hosni Mubarak used his security forces to keep Egyptians off the streets during the speech. He couldn’t risk allowing any public expression of dislike for his latest Oval Office sugar daddy. Before the Cairo visit, Obama was in Saudi Arabia and praised its dictatorial king as a man of “wisdom.” True democracies are threatened by American power, yet dictators are praised.
The contradictions of Obama’s speech are so obvious that it is hard to believe he intended to reach only a Middle Eastern audience. He was also speaking directly to Americans. Obama’s ascendancy and the reaction to his policies makes it clear that very few people in this country are interested in changing anything of substance. Even most progressives want a president they can like more than they want a president who will bring the change they claim to have wanted so badly.
When Obama inevitably escalates his wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan or attacks Iran, he will have a group of willing accomplices. The people who should challenge him will instead go along with more American state terror and point to his speech in Cairo as a reason. They will remember him praising Arabic numbers and saying nice things about Islam and happily justify yet another reason to surrender. Actually they will do worse than surrender, they will assist him in making the case for continued violence perpetrated by their country.
Professor As’ad AbuKhalil knew the truth about the “new beginning” before Obama spoke even one syllable. “Who cares about what Obama will say or not say? I mean, why should people care about what the visiting White Man (yes, as soon as you run for the American presidency you assume the role of the White Man regardless of the color of your skin) will preach to Egyptians and Muslims? I await that speech the way I await sequels to Rocky movies.”
AbuKhalil is wrong about one thing. It is far more logical to await a sequel in a bad movie franchise than to hang on to the words of a president of the United States.
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