President Obama’s Legacy: Broken Promises, Sanctimonious Pronouncements, Endless U.S War Crimes Against Humanity
On the night of February 26–27, 1991, one of the most calculated and brutal massacres in war history occurred in Iraq on Highway 80, some 32 kilometres west of Kuwait city. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were retreating towards Baghdad after a ceasefire had been agreed and announced, when the still unpunished war criminal President George H. W. Bush (1989 – 1993) — a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency — ordered U.S. forces to slaughter the retreating Iraqis.
Consequently U.S.-led fighter aircraft of the coalition forces descended on the unarmed convoy and destroyed vehicles at the front and rear of the convoy so as to prevent any escape. Successive waves of aircraft then mercilessly bombed the trapped vehicles and their occupants into oblivion. After the carnage was over, some 2,000 mangled Iraqi vehicles along with the charred and dismembered remains of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers stretched for miles along what came to be known as the “Highway of Death.”
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“America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.”—U.S. President George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush’s high-minded hypocrisy — which in the best of American presidential traditions always fails to square with reality — was by no means different from that of either his predecessors or successors in the White House who, including his son the semi-illiterate President George W. Bush (2001 -2009), were also unabashed hypocrites and war criminals. The latest such example of American presidential betrayal was Barack Obama who during his campaign for the presidency and at the start of his first term, made numerous promises — thereby raising the hopes of the American people along with the rest of humanity — that were delivered with enticing but hollow slogans and soundbites such as “A New Beginning,” “Our Time for Change,” and “Yes We Can”: none of which had a hope in hell of being realised so long as the White House and bicameral Congress remained under the tight control of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading pro-Israel Jewish lobby group. \
(http://www.countercurrents.
Apart from a campaign promise to waste not a minute in brokering a Middle East peace, Obama in a 2010 address to the UN declared that
“when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that can lead to a new member of the United Nations, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine living in peace with Israel.”
Obama’s naivety in not knowing it was not U.S. President but AIPAC which dictated foreign policy was accompanied by more than 100 further periodic pledges including one to close the Guantánamo Bay prison facility at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba within one year; to hold accountable countless George Bush presidency civilian/military/intelligence officials who planned, authorised, or presided over the murder, rape, torture, unlawful execution, massacre and wrongful imprisonment of tens of thousands of mostly innocent individuals as part of the bogus “War on Terror”; to withdraw from Afghanistan by July 2011; and to prevent human rights violators from entering United States.
Needless to say the prospect of peace in the Middle East is about as likely as a kosher pig flying; the decades-long mirage of a two-state solution has all but disappeared with the continual chutzpah theft of Palestinian land for the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements; the Guantanamo Bay facility — where the majority of detainees have not been charged with any crime — remains conspicuously open; Bush-era war criminals were not prosecuted but instead protected and finally given immunity; American troops are still on the ground in Afghanistan where the killing of thousands of innocent Afghan men, women and children is casually written off as “collateral damage”; and as for human rights violators, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — amongst other sundry criminals — is a regular visitor to the country whose government Israel controls.
Furthermore — as a parting gift to the American people’s constitutional rights — and in the final hours before the Christmas holiday weekend, Obama quietly signed the 2017 National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) into law. Buried within the $619 billion military budget was a controversial provision establishing a national anti-propaganda centre which critics warned could threaten the “freedom of the press,” such as it is.
The Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, introduced by Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, establishes a Global Engagement Centre under the State Department which will coordinate efforts to “recognise, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United Sates national security interests.” This law will authorise grants to non-governmental agencies to help “collect and store examples in print, online, and social media, disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda” directed at the U.S. and its allies, as well as “counter efforts by foreign entities to use disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda to influence the policies and social and political stability” of the U.S. and allied nations.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”—The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Obama’s most serious failure, however, must be his administration’s unconditional support — apart from the recent last gasp abstention from UN Security Council Resolution 2334 regarding illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem — for a state which more than any other has tirelessly endeavoured to subvert Western democracy
(https://promosaik.blogspot.
Such undying American support for the “only democracy in the Middle East,” has been profusely provided despite the U.S. Department of State’s claims that “democracy and respect for human rights have long been central components of U.S. foreign policy,” and that “the protection of fundamental human rights was a foundation stone in the establishment of the United States over 200 years ago. Since then, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been the promotion of respect for human rights, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
(https://www.state.gov/j/drl/
While Israel’s historic subversion of Western democracy has been clearly evident to anyone with a modicum of intelligence, those in the mainstream media who supposedly champion the five core principles of ethical journalism — Truth and Accuracy, Independence, Fairness and Impartiality, Humanity, and Accountability — have left it to Al-Jazeera in a four-part series to reveal how the Israeli government was in the midst of a flagrant campaign to covertly influence Britain’s perception of Israel including discussions between an Israeli diplomat and a UK civil servant to “take down” anti-settlement British politicians such as UK deputy foreign secretary Sir Alan Duncan.
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Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit also revealed that Israel was influencing student, activist, and parliamentary groups in the UK by offering financial and strategic assistance in order to gather support among young organisers with a view to moulding British politics in favour of Israel. Such efforts also included targeting students to boost support for Israel as a counter to the BDS movement; having pro-Israel groups — such as the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) comprising 64 Jewish societies at British universities which received money from the Israeli embassy — attempting not only to influence the National Union of Students (NUS) presidency election, but also of trying to oust Malia Bouattia following her victory as the first Muslim president of the NUS to identify as a Black British; and sending “pluralist” Fabian Society think-tank analysts on paid trips to Israel.
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Israel’s Machiavellian subversion of democratic principles is by no means restricted to the UK and is rampant not only throughout the Americas and Europe, but also to varying degrees in other continents. So while hypocritical Western legislators with yellow streaks down their backs continue to subserviently prostrate themselves before pro-Israel Jewish lobbies and sanctimoniously condemn the “hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance” of those seeking justice for the Palestinian people, they — along with mainstream media whores — religiously avoid discussion of any negative aspects relating to Israel’s Apartheid crimes against humanity.
Such Israeli instigated censorship also works in concert with the hypocrisy of those who while wearing the mantle of pretentious moral superiority will nonetheless turn their backs on the reality of Israel’s Nazification as a Jewish state and its barbaric ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” —Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel (1928 – 2016), writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor.
While Obama may have recently ended his final State of the Union address on a note of optimism when he said “and that’s why I stand here confident as I have ever been that the State of our Union is strong,” the reality and actual extent of the nation’s malaise had already been confirmed by the election of a dangerous “grab them by the pussy” vulgarian whose clownish “you’re fired” credentials are more suited for lowbrow reality television shows, than for responsible democratic governance of the world’s only “Superpower.”
Nonetheless, the Donald “make America great again” Trump will continue being popular with all those Americans who are either partly or totally illiterate; cannot locate North America on a map of the world; and still believe that simply being American makes them exceptional.
Finally, though Obama did notch up some successes that would suggest he was a dove with an olive branch — the Iran nuclear deal and the opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba — he was actually a hawk who despite having pledged to end the wars of his predecessor George W. Bush, instead presided over U.S. military involvement in seven Muslim-majority countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen.
Moreover, he dramatically increased the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe with 2016 being “the Year of the Commando” during which U.S. special operators were active in 138 countries, or 70% of the world’s nations. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
(http://www.commondreams.org/
William Hanna is a freelance writer with published books the Hiramic Brotherhood of the Third Temple and The Tragedy of Palestine and its Children. Purchase information, sample chapters, other articles, and contact details at: (http://www.
