OBAMA ACCUSES HIMSELF OF
TERRORISM By Manuel E. Yepe A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. Nearly two years ago, in November, 2012, Barack Obama made some remarks that today would seem unconceivable coming from him. The President of the United States said that “there is no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” Obama’s statements, of course, were designed to act as cover and protection for the Zionist settler state of Israel as it launched and continues to launch violent campaigns of slaughter and extermination against the Palestinians. Thus, Obama reiterated his position by stating that the United States supported Israel in its “right to defend itself” against “missiles landing on people’s homes and potentially killing civilians.” This referred to the Palestinian acts of protest against the occupation of their territories by Israeli settlers. In an article published on the Activist Post website October 6, the prolific American writer on international political issues, Brandon Turbeville, noted that “even leaving the Israeli question aside, and while neglecting to point out that, at the time of the statement, Obama’s own government was involved in the bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and had just concluded the bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, one might fast forward to 2014 as the United States rains down bombs on sovereign Syrian soil.” Following its illegal and immoral attacks on the Syrian people which have produced alarming amounts of civilian casualties within only a matter of days, the United States recently announced that it is “relaxing” its policy on civilian killings in Syria. Indeed, the White House is now backing away from claims that it will only use lethal force where there is a “certainty or near certainty” that no civilians will be killed. The reports of significant civilian casualties as a result of U.S. airstrikes in the following days were the first indication that the Obama administration was ignoring its own rules in the war on terror.” “Yet the reality is that the United States has never been worried about civilian casualties, neither during the tenure of this President or that of the last. Any pretense to the contrary is naiveté at best,” writes Turbeville. Similarly, drones are touted for their surgical precision and laser-guided targeting system, yet they have killed civilians in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and more notably in Pakistan, which has been the subject of over 390 covert drone strikes since 2008. Although, according to independent investigative journalist's estimates, 710 civilians had been killed by drone attacks, Amnesty International claims the number of civilian casualties in Pakistan alone can be as high as 900. Arriving at an accurate number is extremely difficult, but when human rights groups are able to go into the affected areas and investigate individual strikes, the number of civilian casualties is always substantially higher than what was reported by the government, which counts all men of military age as enemy combatants and never identifies a single civilian among the dead men of that age range. In other words, when civilian casualties become too obvious in the eyes of the public, or too politically damaging, the answer is to change your semantics and the wording of policy so that the casualties disappear from the radar screen of public opinion. While any unintentional killing of Syrian civilians by the Assad government was presented to American audiences as premeditated slaughter against innocent people, American airstrikes continue to be presented as manna from heaven, designed to rid the world of Islamic terror and brutal dictators at the same time. Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Somalians, Yeminis, are acceptable casualties. Israelis are not. Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Somalians, and Yemenis are required to accept “missiles landing on people’s homes and potentially killing civilians” without resistance. Israel can act with impunity. Thus, Barack Obama, while setting the international standard for response to bombing a sovereign nation and killing its civilians by his statement regarding Israel’s so-called safety, in essence, openly stated that the United States is guilty of terrorism, a claim that few of its victims will argue with. Obviously, this presidential statement means very little in the way of actual policy. Hypocritical proclamations and even outright lies serve only to mask the true agenda lurking underneath. Informed observers already know this. Those who take such statements seriously have much to learn,” concludes Turbeville October 15, 2014. |
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