The AP reports today:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – "Opening a mission to write a new chapter on Islam and the West, President Barack Obama consulted Wednesday with the Saudi king "in the place where Islam began," prelude to a high-stakes speech in Egypt meant to ease long-held Muslim grievances against the United States."
But he shouldn't have to travel thousands of miles to foreign shores asking for something already staring him in the face, like a tsunami wall of reality heading right for us. Even the birds and wild beasts of the field have the natural understanding to escape its wrath. More of my rant under the fold....
We will never have peace or security with the Muslim world, or with other nation in the civilized world, as long as:
>>>We continue the Bush Caligula strategy of pre-emptive, elective wars of aggression in the name of "spreading democracy".
>>>We continue to use torture, and the argument "it works" as a cloak for all of our crimes!
>>>We continue to use death squads such as the Wolf Brigade, to terrorize, to murder, and to subjugate a sovereign nation that was never at any time any imminent threat to us, never attacked us on 9/11, or had no prior links to al-Qaeda-at least until we helped recruit them to come to Iraq and fight us!
>>>We refuse acknowledgement that Bush committed flagrant atrocites, war crimes and crimes against humanity, in violation of and in open defiance of almost every international law, protocol, convention, and domestic US statute still on the books today--and as long as the US Constitution stands, they are still the laws of this land!
>>>We "turn the page before reading the page" and insist on "looking forward", giving the most egregious war criminals since the Third Reich, a get-out-of-jail free card, a pass, and a virtual de facto lifetime pardon. Not the first congressional discovery or probable cause hearing, no appointment of a Special Prosecutor on Bush's many war crimes, war profiteering, on using weapons of mass destruction such as white phosporus and napalm bombs, flamethrowers, strafing and machine-gunning hospitals and schools, their religious mosques, and laying waste to whole towns and cities! And creating a humanitarian nightmare of mammoth proportions!
Over 1.4 million Iraqis slaughtered in the name of over 935 well-documented lies, lies, and more lies--who will never see their homelands again, or never taste the brand of so-called freedom all of us take for granted as American citizens.
No, we promised them freedom and delivered the sword! Over 4 million widows who will never see their husbands or the fathers of their children, and in many cases their children themselves. Over 2 million orphans who will never know their parents or see their faces again!
Not the vetting that we expect and demand nothing less towards a Cabinet appointee-or one for our Supreme Court! A bound and gagged, censored American "free press" will never be allowed to show the "BEFORE" and "AFTER" photographical evidence of the unforgivable, unconscionable, desolation that we have wrought on the nation that used to be sovereign!
And all of the banks of the world don't hold enough money to ever compensate the Iraqi people for the incalculable pain and suffering we rained upon their heads in the form of bombs and bullets.
Liberators-or murderers?
Liberators-or masters?
Bush made the sly remark once, that "America cannot rely on our oceans to protect us from the terrorists". And most Americans believed that Bush was most assuredly right when he proved to the world beyond any shadow of a doubt, that ALL OF THE OCEANS OF THE WORLD WERE NOT ENOUGH TO PROTECT THE IRAQI PEOPLE FROM BUSH'S WEHRMACHT!
If President Obama really wants to lead America into a true era of peace and reconciliation with the rest of the world, the Constitutional scholar can begin by looking into the mirror as one with a conscience, who holds the truth in one hand and the sword of justice with the other; and by listening to the voices of reason-at home. FIRST.
He should start by restoring the Constitution and rule of law-not enabling the rule of men. He should immediately hold the Bush regime and ALL of his congressional enablers accountable, culpable for every vile, heinous, despicable deed they committed in all of our names--and let the chips fall where they may!
He should close Guantanamo and the rest of the archipelago of offshore American gulags which are nothing short of the "flagship"(sic) of American exceptionalism and imperialism! They are the best recruiting tools for rallying the enemies of America, and not only do they anger them with furious aims of revenge, and embolden them, but they have already caused the losses of thousands of our brave troops who think they are fighting an honorable war.
But their is NO HONOR in torture! No HONOR in murder or for profit murder-for-hire! NO HONOR in an imperialism fueled by the lust for their territory, their oil, and their blood!
And all the silver-lined, sleak-tongued, sweet-sounding, "music-to-their-ears"-but "bayonets to their bowels", speeches read from all of the teleprompters in the world, mean absolutely nothing, as long as President Obama allows the carnage to continue for even one more hour of one more day! Before he talks the talk of peace, he better make sure he intends to walk the talk of peace. Or that's all it is. Like clouds without rain, they are just talk!