Obama's Middle East and N. Africa

I have come to believe that my country, the United States of America, is two-faced. We tend to have great values, such as human rights, but tend to act toward other countries, and sometimes against our own people, in a completely contrary manner. I mentioned before that the Native Americans used to say, especially in those "Westerns" of my younger days, that the white man speaks with forked tongue. The Native Americans certainly experienced first hand our contrariness.

In their post for CODEPINK's blog, PINKtank, Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of both CODEPINK and Global Exchange, and Charles Davis, an independent journalist, seem to be saying the same thing about President Obama's major speech on May 20 at the State Department regarding the Middle East and North Africa. We speak of and commend non-violence, but act in a completely different manner.

Here are some excerpts ~

**Given that President Obama daily authorizes the firing of hellfire missiles and the dropping of cluster bombs in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, it was awful odd seeing him wax eloquent this week about the “moral force of non-violence” in places like Egypt and Tunisia. But there he was, the commander-in-chief of the largest empire in history, praising the power of peaceful protest in countries with repressive leaders backed by his own administration.

Were we unfamiliar with his actual policies – more than doubling the troops in Afghanistan, dramatically escalating a deadly drone war in Pakistan and unilaterally bombing for peace in Libya – it might have been inspiring to hear a major head of state reject violence as a means to political ends. Instead, we almost choked on the hypocrisy.

* *Yet even for all his talk of human rights and how he “will not tolerate aggression across borders” – yes, a U.S. president said this – Obama didn’t even feign concern about Saudi Arabia’s repressive regime invading neighboring Bahrain to put down a pro-democracy movement there. In fact, the words “Saudi Arabia” were never uttered.

**The president also didn’t deviate from his policy of “unshakable” support for Israeli militarism, typified by his administration’s efforts to safeguard the Jewish state from accountability for its war crimes in Gaza – crimes that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead – and his determination to hand an already wealthy nation more than $3 billion a year in military aid, even as it flaunts the “peace process” and colonizes ever more Palestinian land. 

**Obama’s remarks on the killing of Osama bin Laden were likewise delivered with a complete lack of self-awareness. Describing the latter as a “mass murderer,” Obama – who since taking office has the blood of hundreds of Afghan and Pakistani civilians on his hands – said bin Laden’s philosophy of using bloodshed to achieve desired political changes had been discredited “through the moral force of non-violence” that has swept the region. 

You can read the full post here:  Obama Should Follow His Own Advice on the ‘Moral Force’ of Non-Violence | PINKtank.


Somehow: May Peace Prevail in the Middle East and North Africa. May Peace Prevail in United States Foreign Policy.

Quotes on Egypt and the Middle East

Yesterday I read two poignant pieces regarding Egypt and the Middle East.


The first one was the Monday forum on religion in USA Today. That piece was In Changing Egypt, Where Will Faith Fall? by Stephen Prothero. There Prothero based his piece on the thought of the twentieth century Protestant theologian, Rheinhold Niebuhr.


I give a quote from Prothero that I especially noted and  with which I certainly agree:

My prayer for America in our new age of digital politics — an age in which a tweet is worth far more than a thousand spoken words, and the "Google Guy" Wael Ghonim seems to wield as much power as (or more than) a head of state — is for some combination of modesty, exertion and wisdom.

I hope that our leaders will be modest enough to see how (and how often) what we have done or left undone in the Middle East has backfired on us. We have spent trillions of dollars and spilled untold blood in a seemingly endless effort to bring democracy, American style, to Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet Egyptians — citizens of a nation with more people than Iraq and Afghanistan combined — won the right to write their own future in just 18 days and with little to no U.S. help.

 The second piece yesterday I especially noted was by CODEPINK co-founder, Medea Benjamin who had attended protests in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt and while in Madison, Wisconsin to discuss her time in Egypt, attended the protest in Madison over collective bargaining rights for public workers. Her piece entitled, "From Cairo to Madison: Hope and Solidarity are Alive" was published in both CODEPINK's blog, PINKtank, and The Huffington Post. Benjamin noted that there was solidarity between the two protests. In Egypt there had been signs in solidarity with the workers in Madison and in Madison there were signs noting the protests in Egypt.  She included this:

Egyptian engineer Muhammad Saladin Nusair, the one whose photo supporting Wisconsin workers went viral, now has thousands of new American Facebook friends. He wrote in his blog that many of his new friends were surprised by his gesture of solidarity, but he was taught that “we live in ONE world and under the same sky.”

“If a human being doesn’t feel the pain of his fellow human beings, then everything we’ve created and established since the very beginning of existence is in great danger,” Muhammad wrote. “We shouldn’t let borders and differences separate us. We were made different to complete each other, to integrate and live together. One world, one pain, one humanity, one hope.”

Two Regions

I am still keeping an eye on the protests in the Middle East and North Africa while pulling for the people of those countries. I continue to pray for Freedom and Peace for all there. Democracy would probably be good for the region, too, but it would have to be a grassroots version and not one of our making. It also may take awhile to concoct. In trying to visualize the region, I found the map above that I thought might help others also. (You can click on it to view it better.)

I am also keeping an eye on what is happening in my home state of Kentucky whose General Assembly (legislature) is now in session. 

I am particularly interested in the eastern part of the state with its especially destructive brand of coal mining known as mountaintop removal (MTR).

This is really not that far off from what is going on in the Middle East and North Africa. In the Lexington Herald-Leader this morning, satirical columnist Larry Webster said that in the mountains the coal company Massey Energy is referred to as "Ole Massa." The coal companies have ruled Kentucky and especially its eastern portion dictatorially for years. They own both the legislature and the governor.

Kentucky writer Silas House  had an op-ed in the New York Times this morning in which he said:

The news media and the rest of the country typically think of mountaintop removal as an environmental problem. But it’s a human crisis as well, scraping away not just coal but also the freedoms of Appalachian residents, people who have always been told they are of less value than the resources they live above.

I also pray for Freedom and Peace for those in Kentucky and its eastern mountains. Democracy in Kentucky would be good, too.

People Power

I am very excited about the non-violent victory yesterday in Egypt of the protestors in Cairo's Tahrir Square and other areas of that country against the now-deposed pharoah, Hosni Mubarak. I watched with amazement the goings-on in Tahrir Square with its benevolent atmosphere. I congratulate the people of Egypt and continue prayers on their behalf for the flowering of freedom, democracy and peace.

I have also been entranced and excited by the sit-in that began yesterday in Kentucky's governor's office. Fourteen people. members of a group calling itself Kentucky Rising, are occupying for the weekend the office of Governor Steve Beshear due to their disagreement with him over mountaintop removal and the environmental degradation caused by coal mining. Monday is the annual I Love Mountains Rally at the capitol sponsored by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. (You can read the KFTC blog on the sit-in here.)

Yesterday did seem to be a kind of Power to the People Day. I trust and hope that the Power of the people of Egypt and of those of Kentucky Rising may be truly manifest.

Uprising in Egypt

I am following the protests in Egypt while praying and hoping. I have not had much chance to post heretofore.

On Feb. 4, though I never read the advice column anymore, I happened to notice in Dear Abby the Thought for the Day which seems apropos: "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." -Anne Frank

I trust that Egypt will turn out for the better, but whatever happens I know that Egypt, the Middle East or the world will not be the same. It is now a new game plan especially for the Middle East.

I believed that 9-11 should have been the wake-up call for a new U.S. foreign policy. I guess there is always hope that it can start here. The U.S. needs to get away from supporting dictators and corrupt regimes who rule against their own people and against our own values. "White man speaks with forked tongue," the Native Americans said. We need to practice what we preach as another saying goes. Human rights are not just for Americans. I have said before that it is not naive to have a foreign policy based on the Golden Rule.

May Freedom, Justice, and Peace Prevail in Egypt. I Declare World Peace. Power to the People.