Barack Obama has Been an 'Unspeakable Disgrace' (L'Hebdo, Switzerland)
"To see the great American democracy, so badly damaged
since the attacks of September 11, 2001, elect as its head a representative of
an ethnic minority, was in itself a promise of a brighter tomorrow. Obama
appeared to be liberal: torture, Guantanamo, the obsession with security, the
shameful methods of Dick Cheney, would soon be no more than a sad memory. ...
What disappointment awaited such liberal hopes! An absolute disgrace. ... A
complete disgrace. ... An unspeakable disgrace. ... A monumental disgrace!"
How
beautifully eloquent was Barack Obama's State of the Union speech - the man is
a talented orator - but it was also an opportunity to see the degree to which
his presidency has failed.
When he became the 44th President of the United
States in November 2008, it was so widely believed he would walk on water and "multiply the loaves"
that he was immediately surrounded by devotees and won the Nobel Peace
Prize. Questions were raised as to whether he deserved it for anything but to acknowledge
that he wasn't George W. Bush - a distinction that proved short-lived.
To see the great American democracy, so badly
damaged since the attacks of September 11, 2001, elect as its head a
representative of an ethnic minority, was in itself a promise of a brighter tomorrow.
Obama appeared to be liberal: torture, Guantanamo, the obsession with security,
the shameful methods of Dick Cheney, would soon be no more than a sad memory.
What disappointment awaited such liberal hopes!
Guantanamo was not closed. It appears that in passing, Obama mentioned in his
speech that it could be this year. For a promise made five years ago, this is
hardly brilliant. The America of the Fifth
Amendment - that of Miranda v. Arizona
("you have the right to remain silent, anything that you say can and will be
used against you"), continues to torment prisoners who don't know why they
were imprisoned and have no right to habeas corpus. An absolute disgrace.
Torture - sorry, enhanced interrogation - seems
to have been banned, but who knows how many waterboardings still occur? And what
prevents the henchmen at Guantanamo from
discreetly "lending" a prisoner to a "friendly" government for
however long it may take for him to be tortured by specialists and make a
confession? A complete disgrace.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner allows serial murder
by the most vile of methods: drones, those killing machines that spy on real or
imagined terrorists until the moment when a pilot, ensconced in an armchair in
Texas and sipping Coca Cola, presses a button that commands a missile to
explode amid a group of innocents, accompanied by a cynical "goodbye
motherfuckers." An unspeakable disgrace.
Leaving for the Middle East to deliver his fine
rhetoric - thinking he would charm his interlocutors like they were simple Oklahoma voters, Obama went from failure to failure: he didn't understand the Arab
uprisings and he left the Libyan factions to kill his diplomats. A monumental
disgrace.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
With the collection of billions of pieces of
data and the eavesdropping on the telephone calls of "allied" leaders
continuing unabated, the security frenzy lives up to the worst days of the Bush
era, and in response to indignant Americans, the president offers his usual
recipe: sweet talk.
Domestically, he has proven incapable of working
with a Congress he doesn't like, and which feels the same about him. Unlike
Lincoln who cajoled his opponents, haggling and maneuvering to secure the
abolition of slavery, Obama's strategy for dealing with Congress has proven -
again - non-existent: rhetoric, hot air, bluster, and nothing else. Now we see
the results: the law on health insurance which was so poorly negotiated - and
not by him, either, as he didn't want to get his hands dirty - is going from
bad to worse. Immigration reform has stalled, and despite a series of massacres
in schools and theaters, the president was unable to pass a moderately
restrictive law on firearms.
Reduced to ranting about the middle class, as
he did the other day, he is committed to "defending" them - with his
eye on this autumn's elections. He has lost sight of the fact that no one gives
the slightest credence to anything he says. Even his most devoted supporters
are turning away, defecting in their tens of thousands to join the Hillary
Clinton clan. It is she who carries the aspirations of 2016.
Barack Obama has been the president of
unfulfilled hope.
