Much was made of the near 300 lives the Nigerian bomber nearly extinguished on Christmas 2009. But interestingly and painstakingly, no mention is ever made of the many hundred of thousands of lives extinguished by our Nobel Peace Laureate's drone bombings of soft targets or the hearts and minds darkened on the ground in Afghanistan, the region, and the world.
The only voices worth hearing are the saber rattlers. They loathe a civilian trial for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber and son of a prominent Nigerian banker, because they loathe fundamentally democracy.
And while the blow back blows, Obama signals a tightening of airport security. While Afghan bleeds, the president fiddles with some high-tech junk equipment.
To add insult to this injury, the List of Countries continues, Cuba being the strangest among them. But maybe Cuba is illustrative.
Why Cuba?
Cuban terrorism goes back to its 200,000 troops sent to assist Angola in the 1970's and 1980's against Apartheid South Africa incursions. Secy of State Henry Kissinger warned Cuba to stay out of the conflict. The Carter Administration followed suit. Reagan iced the cake in March 1982 by labelling Cuba, because of this war, a state-sponsor of terror.
Angola wanted to be free not only of imperial Portugal but also of racist South Africa. Angola did not want to become another East Timor, which following the pullout of Portugal in the mid 1970's was invaded by US-backed Indonesia.
Angola didn't ask the USA because the USA was Apartheid South Africa's best friend, next to the UK. Recall that both US president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher labelled Nelson Mandela a "terrorist."
The US funded, trained, and supported the apartheid regime.
But the vicious, white racist apartheid regime was not put on any US terror list. It was not admonished by successive US or UK administrations to pull back, tone down, hold free and fair elections (if you think the US cares about free and fair elections, just looks at Iraq and Afghanistan ... hell, look at the US itself). The US armed the racists and blockaded Cuba.
Cuba troops moved in, and South Africa was driven back, and for this crime against world order it is listed as a state sponsor of terror.
Knowing this might be enough to look at the other countries on the list. What are their crimes?
Revealingly, not one imperial power is on the list. The list comprises a Who's Who of the Colonial World. This is really disciplined stuff, because a look at just the post-WWII record shows the UK, France, and the USA blood spill of civilians, sabotage of elections, assassinations, infiltrations of labor and human rights groups, and right up to unthinkingly training a Afghan Mujahadeen in the very methods it now uses against its teachers, the USA and its boys and girls in uniform.
One can glean from this atrocious record that former colonies who lift their heads are terrorists, and the Western forces who massacre them are liberators.
But the saber rattlers, who keep to a narrative that, say: they want to kill us because they hate our freedoms. This is kept on the public plate, as if it makes any sense.
The only security measure Obama the president and Obama the Peace Laureate should consider is what the Afghans want ... and what the Syrians want. The Jordanians want. The Saudis want. The Pakistanis want. The Egyptians want. This is approximately an end to Western support of its brutal, Dark-Aged dictators and a full pull out of US and "coalition" troops.
No comments:
Post a Comment