Obama’s Speech Against Terrorism

by Jeff Siddiqui

President Obama’s speech was just great today, he spoke resolutely, looking presidential, moral and protective of the USA.

Most Americans would have felt proud that their president was standing up for justice, against Gitmo, against terrorism and unwaveringly for the United States.

That is, until we realize that the man before us is a lawyer and is excellent at selecting words so that most people believe they are hearing what they want to hear. This was a speech where we heard a lot, but most of the sounds were of Obama tap-dancing around real issues, saying he had nothing to do with things that he had everything to do with and we were…ARE…expected to lap it all up as God’s own truth. As Groucho Marx once said, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

Today, Obama is leading the “War!” against Muslims in a manner that would make the brutalities of King George The Worst, look like kid’s stuff. Under Obama, slaughters of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and a host of other countries are measured in wholesale terms. Well, actually, they are not measured at all because Obama’s administration has bullied every country into accepting the slaughters of their own people without a word and nobody keeps track of how many people…how many men, women and children are killed on any given day. The victims’ lives are valued so little that mere appearance and mere presence in a certain setting is enough to rain down a shower of missiles that wipe them out of existence.

Let’s take a look at just some main points from his speech at the National Defense University …

Taking a page from his predecessor, Obama declared the beginnings of victory by saying, “Today, the core of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on a path to defeat”, but the tragic fact is that the forces of fanaticism are at their highest standing all over the world, especially among Muslims. While Obama might want to limit their definition by call them all “Al-Qaeda”, they are in fact, fanatics who are convinced that the US is waging an intense war against Islam (they are not alone in believing this). Disparate as they are, their common hate for what the US is doing, unites them in purpose and they continue to use all means at their disposal, to oppose and counter-attack.

America may think it is winning the “War!”, but in fact, it is ducking and running by declaring the removal of troops from Afghanistan in 2014. The Taliban there are waiting so they can move in as soon as the last US soldier leaves Afghanistan, probably with Karzai and his entourage in tow. As one of the Taliban once said, “You have the watches, we have the time”.

The United States has destroyed all semblances of order in every Muslim-majority country they have entered, from Pakistan to Somalia and the vacuum is being rapidly filled by some of the most vicious and intolerant fanatics, people who will attack their own as well as the US and its so-called, “Coalition of the Willing”. I am afraid the mayhem has only just begun.

Obama justifies his extensive use of drones by suggesting that the people killed are those who could not be captured alive, that they were actively involved in violence. He suggested not only that the drone slaughters are justified, he suggests that the US is better for it and it is all legal. That last point is certainly accurate because laws are simply what a majority population wishes to impose on the nation, laws have nothing to do with Justice except by pure chance.

According to the new definitions created by the US, “suspects” are fair game for the drones and proof of guilt is not necessary, especially since the nation whose people are being killed, does not ask for any evidence of guilt on the part of the victims. Then the US has further refined the definition to say that anyone who is in the vicinity of the “suspect”, must be a terrorist supporter and thus, also fair game so now, there are no innocent lives being taken at all. Finally, the US has defined a “Signature Strike” where person or group that fits a certain profile, is fair game for a drone attack. Thousands of people have been murdered by American drones, without any pressure for accountability, not from the unwilling host country, not from any nation of the so-called, “Judeo-Christian Family of Civilized Nations” and certainly not from the American public. And the wholesale killing by US drones and US Special forces continues as if there were no tomorrow.

It is all very legal…

Then came the obfuscation of the murders of Anwar Al-Awlaki, his 16-year old son, his editor and another unnamed person, all US citizens.

Al-Awlaki is supposed to have actively participated in the planning of many violent attacks on US soil, why is this coming out only now? Why was this not disclosed when he was murdered? Why was this not disclosed before he was murdered and why were these “facts” not used to initiate a trial of his crimes to at least establish that due process was carried out?

To be sure, Al-Awlaki was loud and clear about his opposition of the US and its activities in Muslim-majority countries and to be sure he did encourage people to take action against the US. But Al-Awlaki did not, to the best of my information, “take part in the planning” of attacks against the US. The fact is that the US did not like Al-Awlaki becoming popular among the impressionable who then also hated what the US is doing; Al-Awlaki had to be silenced and the facts could be developed later…and they were.

The President…our President, said that no US citizen (apart from Al-Awlaki) was killed except by accident. That is like saying that I am being checked at an airport for the fourth time, purely because of a “random check”. Sure, now pull the other one!

Al-Awlaki’s son was sitting outside a café when a missile blew him to smithereens…along with a dozen bystanders, I am sure. If the killing of this boy was a “mistake” then why was there no apology issued by the White House or, by anyone else? Should we assume that the killing of a Muslim US citizen does not even deserve an acknowledgement?

What about the other two American Muslims also killed by “mistake”?

So many mistakes and the White House cannot even bring itself to remark on such a rash of mistakes, cannot even order the drone strikers to be more careful?

Obama would like us to believe that “feeding the hungry in Yemen and building schools in Pakistan” is all that it takes to build “reservoirs of good will”. This is certainly true when this happens in isolation, but when the US is feeding the hungry on one hand and killing their relatives on the other, we cannot be so naive as to expect any gratitude or goodwill among those people.

There is the pretense that we are helping the movement in the Arab spring while keeping the forces of extremism away. In fact, the US dithers so much and for so long when a people rise up against their (US supported) tyrants that extremists step in to fill the vacuum with their own armed men and by that time, it is too late for the US to do anything to keep fanaticism from taking over the country.

As for “working to promote peace between Palestinians and Israelis”, all the US is doing is dancing the same meaningless dance again and again. American support for Israel is unquestioning and totally blind, deaf, dumb; Israel is never wrong and the Palestinians are never right. Of course, this may have something to do with the immensely powerful, pro-Israel Jewish Lobby (which does not exist!) and the blind, acquiescent support for Israel by most Americans Jews, which translate into career-ending reality for any politician who is not a supporter of the Jewish state. Today, it would be a very gullible person who actually believes the US is doing anything at all, to help an Israeli-Palestinian “dialogue” that aims to bring about a just solution to the situation there.

“The best way to prevent violent extremism is to work with the Muslim American community -” Hello! The Muslim American Community??!! How about the Jewish and Christian American “Communities” who have also been involved in extremely serious and violent activities?

No doubt, a Freudian slip that gives away the fact that when it comes to violence, we Muslims are the sole and prime suspects and the main convicts. The term “Homegrown” is also used almost exclusively against Muslims in fact, it has become a code word for Muslims in the West… “Irregardless”, as they say in America, of the cold facts that there are more “homegrown” terrorists who are NOT Muslims, than there are terrorists who are Muslim.

As far as protecting civil liberties, imprisoning Muslims, deporting them, having them tortured by proxy states (a different set of the Coalition of the Willing), that horse has left the stables long time ago; the targeting of Muslims has become such a norm that it is almost a prerequisite to promotion in our FBI and other law-enforcement agencies. It has become such a norm that Islam and Muslims are routinely described as the greatest threat to the US and to the West, in training sessions of the military, the FBI the Police and other agencies in the US. It has become such a norm that for the past three years, the US Congress has passed and the President (yes, Obama) has signed into law, the NDAA that orders the military to imprison any Muslim they believe, is s supporter of terrorism…without charges, without trials…forever. Naturally, it would be an international scandal if the US actually had a law that named a group (Muslims) as a target, but the definition of who can be “detained” by the military is crafted so narrowly and specifically, that a non-Muslim would have to fight hard to get included in the military prison alongside the “suspect” Muslim inmates.

Okay Mr. President, I applaud your condemnation of keeping Gitmo open, but I notice you did not mention the fact that there is actually no evidence of violence, let alone terrorism, against over 90% of the Gitmo prisoners. I applaud the fact that you say you are committed to closing Gitmo but Congress won’t let you, but what about the fact that Gitmo prisoners are being tortured daily when they are being force-fed by untrained soldiers who shove injury-causing tubes down the nasal passages of the hunger-strike prisoners, in order to feed them? With the flick of a wrist, you can put a stop to the privations and tortures of the prisoners, but you remain immobilized.

What Congressional Act is stopping you from this action? You are the President and the Commander-in-Chief, are you not?

You speak well, Mr. President. You certainly sound great to people who are desperate to hear how great our country is… “irregardless” of facts. But the bottom-line is that you are leading a massive slaughter against Muslims in many countries, you are trampling on the rights of Muslims in this country and while you say you are doing everything to protect American and Americans, you are actually working hard to create more enemies of this country than ever before and the “Americans” you say you are protecting, do not include us Muslims.

The sad irony is that no Republican believes a word you say, few Muslims believe anything you say and Democrats for the most part, have nothing but a traditional position that forces them to support you.

Please visit Jeff Siddiqui’s blog Penjihad’s Blog at http://penjihad.wordpress.com/