“Profound hypocrisy”
Brian Becker and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard wrote the ANSWER Coalition’s answer to U.S. President Barack Obama’s Thursday performance from State on the Middle East. Their headline — “Reality check: the profound hypocrisy of president Obama’s speech on the Middle East.”
Excerpt, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett
Champion of human beings?
OBAMA SPEAKs (values, belief, mendacity?):
“[R]epression will fail, tyrants will fall, and every man and woman is endowed with certain inalienable rights”
AC SPEAKS REALITY:
“The U.S. government whether led by Democrats or Republicans views the oil-rich Middle East through the lens of empire.” The United States operates to dominate and control a region possessing two-thirds of the world’s known oil supply. The U.S. does this by using “a network of proxy regimes, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, the Shah of Iran until his overthrow in 1979, and other regimes in the region — supplemented by tens of thousands of U.S. troops positioned on U.S. bases throughout the region, and on aircraft carriers.”
The United States “continues to finance a network of brutal client dictatorships, and it has funded the Israeli war machine and staged repeated invasions, bombing campaigns, and occupations against the people of the region.”
Who then should rightly be termed repressor, who the repressed?
OBAMA SPEAKs (values, belief, mendacity?):
“[G]reatest untapped resource in the Middle East and North Africa is talent of its people”
AC SPEAKS REALITY:
For decades, the “U.S. government has given billions of dollars and armed the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle East — a practice fully continued by the Obama administration.” The Mubarak regime “murdered more than 850 peaceful protesters” and, as it did so, “the U.S. government never cut funds to the Mubarak dictatorship.…” Since January 25 this year, “more than 5,000 civilians in Egypt have been convicted and jailed following trials conducted by the Egyptian military.” Despite “ongoing repression against the people, the United States continues to provide massive funding to Egypt’s military.”
Whose life is of value, whose life worthless?
Champion of “democracy”?
OBAMA SPEAKs (values, belief, mendacity?):
“Policy of the United States [will be] to promote reform across the region and support transitions to democracy”
AC SPEAKS REALITY:
U.S./EGYPT
The U.S. government targets “for invasion, economic sanctions and overthrow only governments in the Middle East that pursue policies that are independent of U.S. economic, political and military control.” The United States “never imposed economic sanctions on the Mubarak dictatorship and only came out publicly against Mubarak when the tide of revolution [became] irresistible.” The United States also “supports the brutal Saudi monarchy.”
U.S./SAUDI ARABIA
“The Saudi monarchy is the ultimate negation of democracy — depriving women of all rights, depriving workers of the right to form unions and depriving all sectors of the population of any right to free speech, assembly or press. There has never been an election in Saudi Arabia but the Saudi monarchy functions as a client of the U.S. government. As such it is not targeted for economic sanctions or ‘regime change ’as are the governments of Syria and Libya. The Bahrain monarchy likewise functions as a U.S. client and allows the U.S. Fifth Fleet to use Bahrain as its home port…”
U.S./IRAN
The U.S. CIA, along with its British counterpart in 1953 staged the overthrow of Iran’s democratic government and reinstated the Shah’s monarchy. … The U.S. only broke relations with the Iranian government when a populist national revolution overthrew the Shah’s dictatorship.
Champion of Nonviolence?
OBAMA SPEAKs (values, belief, mendacity?):
“The United States opposes use of violence and repression against the people of the region”
AC SPEAKS REALITY:
U.S./MUSLIM
Under the Obama administration, the United States “is involved simultaneously in the invasion, occupation, and bombings of four predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan.
President Obama’s immediate predecessor, George W. Bush — a huge “violator of the basic human rights of Arab people and perpetuator of violence in the Middle East” — who executed an illegal war costing the lives of more than one million people, “has not been arrested for the mass killings of Iraqi people but is treated honorifically by the Obama administration.”
The March 19, 2003, invasion was a war of aggression against a country and people who posed no threat to the United States or its people.
U.S./ISRAELI
“Israel’s war against the Palestinian people would be impossible without U.S. support…. The state of Israel is the “single biggest recipient of U.S. foreign aid [and Israel uses the annual] $3 billion to lay siege to the people of Gaza, continue the illegal occupation of the West Bank, and prevent the return of the families of the 750,000 Palestinians evicted from their homes and villages in historic Palestine in 1948. …
“Far from imposing economic sanctions [on the state of Israel], the Obama administration has promised Israel a minimum of $30 billion in military aid over the next 10 years — thus functioning as partner in occupation.… In the coming days, Obama will have private meetings with [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and will be a featured speaker at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference where he [President Obama] will undoubtedly reinforce the strong U.S.-Israeli military ties and U.S. financial support.”
The Israeli government “has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has accumulated 200 ‘illicit’ nuclear weapons. …
“The United States has thousands of nuclear weapons and remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.”
Champion of free speech, free press, human rights?
OBAMA SPEAKs (values, belief, mendacity?):
“Basic rights to speak your mind and access information… truth cannot be hidden… legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens”
AC SPEAKS REALITY:
The Obama administration has undertaken major campaigns — “more aggressive than any prior administration” — to criminally prosecute whistleblowers, to punish those who would inform the public, shed light on activities of the U.S. government, expose the truth of illegal government actions…
“Bradley Manning remains jailed with the threat of life in prison, having been held in brutal conditions that caused the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to seek an investigation.
“The Justice Department is working full tilt to find a way to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for disclosing government documents to the public — many of which expose the role of the United States in the Middle East.”
W |
HAT HAPPENS TO THE HEART OF A NATION WHEN THE INSTITUTION OF STATE LOSES ALL SEMBLANCE OF CREDIBILITY, when those who would lead are corrupt, mendacious, disingenuous?
Sources and notes
“Reality check: the profound hypocrisy of president Obama’s speech on the Middle East,” by Brian Becker and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, May 19, 2011, http://www.answercoalition.org/national/index.html
http://www.answercoalition.org/national/news/response-to-obama-middle-east-speech.html
Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)
Formed on September 14, 2001, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and prominent individuals and scores of organizing centers in cities and towns across the United States. Its national steering committee represents major national organizations that have campaigned against U.S. intervention in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia, and organizations that have campaigned for civil rights and for social and economic justice for working and poor people inside the United States. The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition on September 29, 2001, organized the first national demonstration against war and racism. The demonstration brought 25,000 people into the streets of Washington DC and 15,000 in San Francisco, http://www.answercoalition.org/la/pages/about-us.html
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition: www.answercoalition.org
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
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Britannica notes
Hosni Mubarak (Muḥammad Hosni Said Mubarak, Hosni also spelled Husnī), Egypt’s president from October 1981]
Benjamin Netanyahu (Benjamin also spelled Binyamin, byname Bibi, b. 21, 1949, Tel Aviv), Israeli politician and diplomat, served twice as his Israel's prime minister (1996–99 and 2009 –)
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