Fwd: [Marxism] Emissions of Evil From the Oval Office

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Speech Defect: Emissions of Evil From the Oval Office 	
Written by Chris Floyd
Wednesday, 01 September 2010 10:47

On Tuesday night, Barack Obama gave a speech from the Oval Office
on Iraq that was almost as full of hideous, murderous lies as the
speech on Iraq his predecessor gave in the same location more than
seven years ago.

After mendaciously declaring an "end to the combat mission in
Iraq" -- where almost 50,000 regular troops and a similar number
of mercenaries still remain, carrying out the same missions they
have been doing for years -- Obama delivered what was perhaps the
most egregious, bitterly painful lie of the night:

     "Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United
States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility."


"We have met our responsibility!" No, Mister President, we have
not. Not until many Americans of high degree stand in the dock for
war crimes. Not until the United States pays hundreds of billions
of dollars in unrestricted reparations to the people of Iraq for
the rape of their country and the mass murder of their people. Not
until the United States opens its borders to accept all those who
have been and will be driven from Iraq by the savage ruin we have
inflicted upon them, or in flight from the vicious thugs and
sectarians we have loosed -- and empowered -- in the land. Not
until you, Mister President, go down on your knees, in sackcloth
and ashes, and proclaim a National of Day of Shame to be marked
each year by lamentations, reparations and confessions of blood
guilt for our crime against humanity in Iraq.

Then and only then, Mister President, can you say that America has
begun -- in even the most limited, pathetic way -- to "meet its
responsibility" for what it has done to Iraq. And unless you do
this, Mister President -- and you never will -- you are just a
lying, bloodsoaked apologist, accomplice and perpetrator of
monstrous evil, like your predecessor and his minions -- many of
whom, of course, are now your minions.

I really don't have anything else to say about this sickening
spectacle -- which is being compounded in Britain, where I live,
by the sight today of Tony Blair's murder-tainted mug plastered on
the front of the main newspapers, as he makes the rounds pushing
his new book, doling out "exclusive interviews" full of crocodile
tears for the soldiers he had murdered in the war crime he
committed and the "great suffering" of the Iraqi people which,
goodness gracious, he never foresaw and feels, gosh, really bad
about. All this laced with venomous comments about his former
colleagues -- those who, like Gordon Brown, sold their souls to
advance Blair's vision of aggressive war abroad and corporate
rapine at home -- along with, of course, earnest protestations of
his God-directed good intentions, and his unwavering belief that
killing a million innocent human beings in Iraq was "the right
thing to do." Pol Pot could not have been more blindly
self-righteous than this wretched moral cretin.

I will say again what I have said here many, many times before:
What quadrant of hell is hot enough for such men?

Words might fail me, but wise man William Blum has a few that put
the "end of combat operations in Iraq" in their proper
perspective. Let's give him the last word here [the ellipses are
in the original text]:

     No American should be allowed to forget that the nation of
Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed
state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with
one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the
government, killed wantonly, tortured ... the people of that
unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools,
their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their
neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their
careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their
physical health, their mental health, their health care, their
welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance,
their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their
past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half
the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison,
internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil,
water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most
awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for
children to pick them up ... an army of young Islamic men went to
Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more
militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East,
Europe and Central Asia ... a river of blood runs alongside the
Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put
back together again.


II. Same Question, Same Answer
The piece below was written in the first few weeks after the
invasion. Its scene is the same Oval Office where Barack Obama
spoke last night. And the choice offered to the leader in this
piece is the same one that Obama has been offered -- and his
decision has been the same one taken here, not only for Iraq, but
for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and many other places
around the world.

     The Karamazov Question
     Variation on a theme by Dostoevsky

     A man appeared in the doorway of the Oval Office. He wasn't
noticed at first, in the bustle around the desk of the president,
where George W. Bush was preparing to announce to the world that
the "decapitation raid" he had launched on Baghdad a few hours
before was in fact the beginning of his long-planned,
much-anticipated invasion of Iraq.

     A woman fussed with the president's hair, which had been
freshly cut for the television appearance. A make-up artist dabbed
delicate touches of rouge on the president's cheeks. Another
attendant fluttered in briefly to adjust the president's tie,
which, like the $6,000 suit the president was wearing, had arrived
that morning from a Chicago couturier. As for the president's $900
designer shoes – which, as a recent news story had pointed out
playfully, were not only made by the same Italian craftsman who
supplied Saddam Hussein with footwear, but were also the same size
and make as those ordered by the Iraqi dictator – they had been
carefully polished earlier by yet another aide, even though they
would of course be out of sight during the broadcast.

     In addition to all of this activity, the president's
political advisors and speechwriters were also making last-minute
adjustments to the brief speech, while giving the president
pointers about his delivery: "Keep your gaze and your voice
steady. Project firmness of purpose. Confidence, calmness,
character. And short phrases, lightly punched. Don't worry, the
breaks and stresses will be marked on the teleprompter."

     It's little wonder that no one saw the man as he advanced
slowly to the center of the room. He stood there silently, until
the sense of his presence crept up on the others. One by one, they
turned to look at him, this unauthorized figure, this living
breach of protocol. He was, in almost every sense, non-descript.
He wore a plain suit of indeterminate color; his features and his
skin betrayed no particular race. He had no badge, no papers; how
had he come to be here, where nothing is allowed that is not
licensed by power?

     Then, more astonishing, they saw his companion: a
two-year-old girl standing by his side. A mass of tousled hair
framed her face; a plain red dress covered her thin body. She too
was silent, but not as still as the man. Instead, she turned her
head this way and that, her eyes wide with curiosity, drawn
especially by the bright television lights that shone on the
president.

     A Marine guard reached for his holster, but the man raised
his hand, gently, and the guard's movement was arrested. The aides
and attendants stepped back then stood rooted, as if stupefied,
their ranks forming a path from the man at the room's center to
the president's desk. The president, brilliant in the light, alone
retained the freedom to move and speak. "Who are you?" he asked,
rising from his chair. "What do you want?"

     The man put his hand tenderly on the back of the girl's head
and came forward with her. "I have a question for you, and an
opportunity," the man replied. "I've heard it said that you are
righteous, and wish to do good for the world."

     "I am," said the president. "I wish only to do God's will, as
He in His wisdom reveals it to me. In His will is the whole good
of the world. What is your question, what is your opportunity? Be
quick; I have mighty business at hand."

     The man nodded. "If tonight you could guarantee the good of
the world – peace and freedom, democracy and prosperity, now and
forever; if tonight, you could relieve the suffering of all those
who labor under tyranny and persecution, all those who groan in
poverty and disease; if tonight, you could redeem the anguish of
creation, past and future, now and forever; if tonight, you could
guarantee such a universal reconciliation, by the simple expedient
of taking this" – here the man suddenly produced a black pistol
and held it out to the president – "and putting a bullet through
the brain of this little one here, just her, no one else: would
you do it? That is my question, this is your opportunity."

     With firmness of purpose, the president grasped the pistol
and walked around the desk. With confidence, calmness, and steady
hand, he pressed the barrel to the girl's head and pulled the
trigger. Her eyes, which had grown even wider with her smile at
the approach of the nicely dressed man and his rosy cheeks, went
black with blood in the instant shattering of her skull. Her body
spun round from the force of the shot – once, twice, three times
in all – then fell, her mutilated head flailing wildly, in a heap
on the floor of the Oval Office.

     At that moment, the man faded, like a dream, into
nothingness. The aides and attendants, unfrozen, stepped back into
their tasks. The room was again a whirl of activity, like a hive.
The president – the dematerialized gun no longer in his hand –
strode confidently back to his chair. He winked at a nearby aide
and pumped his fist: "Feel good!" he exulted.

     The speech went off without a hitch. The hair was perfect,
the voice steady, the phrases short and lightly punched. No one
saw the blood and bits of brain that clung to the president's $900
designer shoes; they were, of course, out of sight during the
broadcast.

     First published in The Moscow Times on April 20, 2003.

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