January 16, 2013 "Information
Clearing House" -A simple twist of fate has set President Obama's second
inaugural address for January 21, the same day as the Martin Luther King Jr.
national holiday.
Obama made no mention of King during the inauguration four years ago -- but
since then, in word and deed, the president has done much to distinguish himself
from the man who said "I have a dream."
After his speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963,
King went on to take great risks as a passionate advocate for peace.
After his inaugural speech in January 2009, Obama has pursued policies that
epitomize King's grim warning in 1967: "When scientific power outruns moral
power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men."
But Obama has not ignored King's anti-war legacy. On the contrary, the president
has gone out of his way to distort and belittle it.
In his eleventh month as president -- while escalating the U.S. war effort in
Afghanistan, a process that tripled the American troop levels there -- Obama
traveled to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. In his speech, he cast
aspersions on the peace advocacy of another Nobel Peace laureate: Martin Luther
King Jr.
The president struck a respectful tone as he whetted the rhetorical knife before
twisting. "I know there's nothing weak -- nothing passive -- nothing naive -- in
the creed and lives of Gandhi and King," he said, just before swiftly implying
that those two advocates of nonviolent direct action were, in fact, passive and
naive. "I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats
to the American people," Obama added.
Moments later, he was straining to American warfare: past, present,
future. "To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism
-- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of
reason," Obama said. "I raise this point, I begin with this point because in
many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no
matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of
America, the world's sole military superpower."
Then came the jingo pitch: "Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is
this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for
more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our
arms."
Crowing about the moral virtues of making war while accepting a peace prize
might seem a bit odd, but Obama's rhetoric was in sync with a key dictum from
Orwell: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present
controls the past."
Laboring to denigrate King's anti-war past while boasting about Uncle Sam's past
(albeit acknowledging "mistakes," a classic retrospective euphemism for carnage
from the vantage point of perpetrators), Obama marshaled his oratory to
foreshadow and the killing yet to come under his authority.
Two weeks before the start of Obama's second term, the British daily The
Guardian noted that "U.S. use of drones has soared during Obama's time in
office, with the White House authorizing attacks in at least four countries:
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is estimated that the CIA and the
U.S. military have undertaken more than 300 drone strikes and killed about 2,500
people."
The newspaper reported that a former member of Obama's "counter-terrorism group"
during the 2008 campaign, Michael Boyle, says the White House is now
understating the number of civilian deaths due to the drone strikes, with
loosened standards for when and where to attack: "The consequences can be seen
in the targeting of mosques or funeral processions that kill non-combatants and
tear at the social fabric of the regions where they occur. No one really knows
the number of deaths caused by drones in these distant, sometimes ungoverned,
lands."
Although Obama criticized the Bush-era "war on terror" several years ago, Boyle
points out, President Obama "has been just as ruthless and indifferent to the
rule of law as his predecessor."
Boyle's assessment -- consistent with the conclusions of many other policy
analysts -- found the Obama administration's use of drones is "encouraging a new
arms race that will empower current and future rivals and lay the foundations
for an international system that is increasingly violent."
In recent weeks, more than 50,000 Americans have signed a petition to Ban
Weaponized Drones from the World. The petition says that "weaponized drones are
no more acceptable than land mines, cluster bombs or chemical weapons." It calls
for President Obama "to abandon the use of weaponized drones, and to abandon his
'kill list' program regardless of the technology employed."
Count on lofty rhetoric from the inaugural podium. The spirit of Dr. King will
be elsewhere.
Norman Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is co-founder of
RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
Follow Norman Solomon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/normansolomon
Take Action - : Ban Weaponized Drones from the World: Meticulous researchers
have documented that U.S. drones are killing many innocent civilians in
Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Drones are making the world less stable and
creating new enemies. Their remoteness provides those responsible with a sense
of immunity.
By Norman Solomon