by Joe Mowery
Dissident Voice
January 19, 2011
It is tragic that six people lost their lives and many more were wounded by a fanatic in Arizona. Indiscriminate killing is a terrible thing. There is no way we can truly comprehend the motives behind this act, nor appreciate the full extent of the pain and heartache suffered by those affected. But behind the pathos surrounding this crime is an ugly truth. Though we profess indignant sorrow for those who died at the hands of a madman in Arizona, we willfully ignore the deaths of innocents which occur every day as a result of our own government’s foreign policies.
When those who support our imperial wars become victims of aggression themselves, they need to examine their role in the acceptance of brute force as a tool of foreign policy. Ours is a nation which glorifies violence. It is taken for granted that our government has the right to kill with impunity. Our President has even declared he can assassinate anyone, including U.S. citizens, whenever he deems it necessary. Yet when a similar mindset results in violence more close to home, when it impacts us directly, we become outraged. Representative Giffords, the primary target of the recent attack in Arizona, is a supporter of war. She has voted to fund the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the so-called war on terror. As a proponent of global violence herself, she should not be surprised when this heritage of belligerence touches her life and the lives of those around her.
Last weekend, 15,000 people flocked to a stadium to listen to Barack Obama tell us how important it is that we speak to each other, “…in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” They were listening to a war criminal preaching hypocrisy. Like every U.S. President for the last 100 years, Obama has ordered the deaths of uncounted numbers of innocent people. He targets whole families and communities using deadly robot drone aircraft. He is the current steward of one of the most far reaching and destructive empires on earth, and we are his enablers. Our Pentagon doesn’t even know how many military bases we have on the planet, and most of us don’t care to ask.
Read the rest here.
Comment: I have read some of the liberal drivel that applauds President Obama for his humane and conciliatory reaching-out across the divides in the US.
All I can say is that while any decent human being would lament what happened in Arizona there was not one word of lament from Tom about his drone murder(s) of innocents in Pakistan.
Who cries for the young children the US murders even as the President orders up another platitudinous speech to his 'insulated' nation?
Not too many is my thinking.
It is an insult to call for sanity and peace among the flock while you murder innocents elsewhere in their name and for the 'cause' of peace.
Obama is George Bush except he is proving to be worse.
They (most Americans) never learn because they can't step out of their insularity to see the larger picture.
Mowery is right to call out this duplicity. He is, however, wrong about the 'madman' who killed in Arizona. Wrong because he like most Americans are too quick to consign brutal acts of this kind to the closet of madness.
It is too easy and convenient to just call this murderer mentally ill and allow the larger dysfunction behind his brutality to be obscured.
This fool is a symptom of what is wrong in the US. He is not just a figment of a mad imagination.
Onward!
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