The Obama Lie

So, we must be over a month into the Barak Obama presidency.  A lot of hope and a lot of optimism, right?

Last night I watched Obama sign into law his new ‘stimulus’ package to revive the US economy.  Heady stuff – but I won’t go into that right now. Instead I am thinking about a different matter: a short news bulletin on Friday last which reported that a drone aircraft had dropped two missiles in a remote area of Afghanistan.  It seems that the missiles, according to reports carried by CNN and others, killed at leat twenty people.

By all accounts the targets of the attack were members of the Taliban AND it was claimed that two such ‘target’ Taliban members were actually killed in the attack. Well, I’m still okay at my mathematics, so that leaves how many? Let’s see now, two from twenty leaves eighteen – that’s right 18 – doesn’t it? That is, eighteen others, who were never targets, were also killed in the attack.  I have got that right, haven’t I?  Please get back to me if I did the calculation incorrect.

So, eighteen people murdered in cold blood, by two bombs dropped from pilot-less aircraft.   Is this the new era so?  The Obama era that was supposed to make such a difference.  And this is not to even get into the rights or wrongs of the state assassination of two suspected Taliban members.  You know old adage: who gives anyone the right to be judge, jury and executioner?

No, for the moment, I am just going to focus on the eighteen people that were killed.  Were they women, men, children?  Does anyone know?  Does Barak Obama know?  Or more to the point, did he know about this attack and about the possible collateral damage?  Well, what do you think?  Did Barak say it was okay to kill 18 people/ civilians as part of the operation to get the two Taliban activists.  And when you think about it, given that there is a strong chance that he did know, then what does it say about this new era?  I ask you?

We Bombed It And Bombed It …

‘We bombed it and bombed it and bombed it, and bueno, why not.’

This comment is attributed to an unnamed Franco staff officer and refers to the savage attack on the city of Guernica on April 26, 1937.   It is not clear how many died on that day during what was a watershed attack, regarded now by many as the first indiscriminate and purposeful aerial terror attack on a civilian population.  Estimates put the death toll at anywhere between 300 and 1650, with many more injured.

The quote comes to mind as we witness the brutal aerial and ground attack on the Gaza strip.  The overwhelming superiority of the Israeli forces and the military might they are able to bring to bear on what is a largely civilian population is in itself shocking.  The awful tragedy is our inability to do so little about it and to stop it.  We are unable to stop the aggressor in this case – since they are backed by the USA – and so the dreadful experience of Guernica is repeated.  My heart goes out to these peole at this time and what they must be going through…

I am reminded of the poem by Herbert Read called ‘Bombing Casualties in Spain’  and quote it here in solidarity with those suffering at this awful juncture in history:

Dolls’ faces were rosier but these were childrens

their eyes not glass but gleaming gristle

dark lenses in whose quicksilvery glances

the sunlight quivered.  These blench’d lips

were warm once and bright with blood

but blood

held in a moist bleb of flesh

not split and spatter’d in tousled hair.