The Herald
By Reason Wafawarova
ON August 3, US President Barrack Obama was hosting what Washington called "Young African Leaders" and what captured media attention the most for this overly inflated non-event was what Obama had to say about one small Southern African country that is causing the entire West sleepless nights, Zimbabwe.
This is what Obama said: "I’ll be honest with you; I am heartbroken when I see what has happened in Zimbabwe . . . Mugabe is an example of a leader who came in as a liberation fighter and — I’m just going to be very blunt — I do not see him serving his people well."
Barrack Obama has shown very little more than a celebrated "black man" just too happy and satisfied to be the United States President — all for the historical significance of it, and nothing more.
On November 18, 2009, Obama publicly admitted that he had failed to close the notorious US torture base, Guantanamo Bay, saying it was "technically difficult" to do so.
This is despite the fact that on January 21, 2009, a day after he assumed the US presidency, Obama’s first signature was appended to a directive for the closure of Guantanamo by January 2010.
His directive and signature were both dismissed as child play by those who hold real power in American politics and nothing the matter has since happened to the US torture base.
If Barrack Obama had a heart that could break, it must be broken over his failures to close Guantanamo, to pull out US troops from Iraq, let alone stop the war there, and his dismal failure to defeat the resolute Taliban in Afghanistan, another needless bully war of occupation.
He also has the massive BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill to break his heart over, especially considering that nothing more than watching has happened with this disaster.
What Obama did not tell his listeners, or more precisely his rented crowd of young Africans, was what exactly "has happened in Zimbabwe".
He did not tell the young Africans what has happened in Zimbabwe is defiance of Western hegemony, a defiance of US political benchmarks, and a thwarting of the imperial goals over which he presides as president.
In February 1991, George Bush Senior made a very revealing statement about the US foreign policy and Washington’s idea of world order.
It was towards the end of the first Gulf War, when he said proudly that there is a "new world order" that the US is establishing and the main principle of this new world order is "what we say goes".
The principle of "what we say goes" was rubbished by Zimbabwe’s revolutionary land reclamation programme of 2000, and George Bush Junior tried in vain alongside Tony Blair to stop the process.
Recently the United States, Canada and Australia tried to stop Zimbabwe from selling her diamonds from Chiadzwa by trying to abuse the Kimberly Certification Scheme and Zimbabwe simply threatened to flood the market with diamonds outside the Kimberly process and the threat made the United States climb down and accept the Kimberly certification of Zimbabwean diamonds.
Even the 2003 invasion of Iraq did not work out quite as expected, not as effectively as the first invasion. Bush Junior, Colin Powell and others made it very clear to the United Nations that either they could go along with the US plans to invade Iraq or they would be, as it was put, "irrelevant".
It was put even more brazenly by Washington’s UN ambassador John Bolton who simply said: "There is no United Nations".
So when the US chooses to have the UN’s acquiescence, then the world body can go along with the world’s leading superpower. Otherwise the United Nations simply does not exist. This is the principle of "what we say goes".
Of course, the invasion of Iraq was undertaken against overwhelming international opposition. There were international polls taken and outside Israel and India, there was practically undetectable support.
The support did not go over 10 percent anywhere in Europe but the principle of "what we say goes" still prevailed. The US marched into Iraq with the UK, Australia and a few others in tow; regardless of massive resistance from the majority of the people in each of the countries that took part in that invasion.
Some people attributed the stance to the personal arrogance of George W. Bush and they said only him could be capable of such crass extremism. While Bush was most certainly a nasty character in a class of his own, the reality is the invasion of Iraq was not an unusual occurrence in the world of Western hegemonic affairs and in the politics of imperialism.
The invasion is understandable on the part of a superpower that has overwhelming military force, incomparable security measures, a huge economic base, and barely any rivals in the world.
So Iraq had no Soviet Union to stop its invasion and the US did as they wished in the absence of the traditional Cold War threat.
But even after the invasion, the US could not exactly do a "what we say goes" as the Iraq insurgents came after the occupiers with the determination of a people that fully understood the gravity of their humiliation and oppression. They managed to kill an estimated 5 000 US soldiers and the Americans have been stuck in that war since 2003.
This is the kind of business that breaks the hearts of US presidents and this is exactly what has broken the heart of Obama — the defiance by lesser people to the "what we say goes" doctrine. Zimbabwe stands guilty of failing to do the will of the empire, and US ambassador Charles Ray got the true vibe of Zimbabwean defiance when President Mugabe declared that Obama and his Chicago Boys can as well "go to hell" where there is more hope of achievement than trying to determine the affairs of Zimbabwe.
The major part of the US war in Vietnam was waged against South Vietnam and North Vietnam was more of a sideshow.
However, the protests within and outside the US were largely about North Vietnam, even from the majority members of the peace movement.
Declassified Pentagon documents show that the bombing of North Vietnam was planned in meticulous detail, where to bomb, where to spare and when to do what.
There is nothing in those documents about the bombing of South Vietnam, as Noam Chomsky noted at a lecture at Lexington, Massachusetts
No comments:
Post a Comment