Avoiding Icebergs

Time passes. Another ostensibly progressive American President fills the air with words of hope and progress. More time gets wasted.

I will pass the time by speaking as clearly and plainly as I can, in later postings, about some specific issues raised by our audacious leader. Here are two important issues you can waste your time on, now.

The first issue is the contradictory nature the speech’s geography, Egypt. Americans are notorious for not being well-schooled in geography. Be assured that Arab listeners to the speech fully understand the resonance of the country that surrounds the Suez Canal.

Hosni Mubarak has been its elected President since his appointment in 1981, after the murder of Anwar el-Sadat. Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq for 24 years with the imprimatur of elections. Mubarak has ruled for 28 years under similar election rules. Gamal Mubarak, Hosni’s second son, may succeed his father under the well-known rules of hereditary democracy.

The second issue is the contradictory nature of this president. We once had another president like BHO: JFK. The latter’s confident call to young Americans resonated, then too, and we hoped for change from the first president born in the 20th Century. The trail of ruins JFK left included assassinations, assassination attempts, secret operations designed to subvert other countries, the expansion of an unnecessary war in Vietnam, and other recklessness Empires promote. JFK was the first American president we deified. His was the first Imperial Presidency. He lied about a missile gap with the Soviets to get elected. Only a few extreme right-wingers surpassed his Cold War rhetoric.

The country was ruled competently under JFK and he began to soften on civil rights issues, even though as a Democrat he was as committed as FDR to retaining the solid south. We can give him credit, though, for keeping us from a shooting war with the Soviets over the Berlin Wall and Cuba missiles crises.

I cried like the schoolboy I was at his death and shuddered in horror through the bloody decade that ensued. My participation in marches and demonstrations, the time spent in jail for peaceful protest, was wasted. All the people who, like myself, dissented against the American Empire were just passing time.

BHO is not changing course, as a careful reading of his speech can confirm. His ship of state is just more adept than the last at clearing the rhetorical icebergs.