This diary entry is a close reading of President Obama's acceptance speech to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. In particular, I take close notice of the ideological values that underscore his decision to go deeper into Afghanistan, to support the status quo position on our war in Iraq and his failure to address the economic crisis in this country as ordinary people are experiencing it.
While he approached his audience with a humility and awareness of the debatable matter of whether he deserved this award and acknowledged the existence of international law -- sadly missing from Bush's reign of error -- his speech was a disappointment to many who had hoped for more.
This speech was nonetheless revealing, not only for what it said, but for what it presumed. In particular, Obama primordializes human warfare, valorizes 'just wars', conflates democracy with capitalism, and buys into the mythologies of neoliberalism, liberal imperialism, the notion of America as 'world's policeman', defender of all that is good in the world and other American supremacist fantasies. Please read on..........
Much has already been said about whether President Obama was deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize, but whether we agree with the decision or not, he won. As Juan Cole noted in his blog,
"Mr. Obama was clearly given the prize to encourage him in the direction of peace. It is the tragedy of the sole superpower that it is unconstrained by peers and so can launch wars of choice and shatter international law at will. It can be counseled but not blocked. He was awarded this honor as a counsel."
Fair enough, I would love to have seen him win this award. But I would rather it happened as a consequence of his foreign or domestic policy, not simply his election, remarkable and symbolically important though it was. He won the peace prize because of his explicit and implicit promises. He won the peace prize because – whether he likes it or not – he has inherited the legacy of Martin Luther King as a symbolic achievement of the civil rights movement, a movement with a deep history of non-violent political struggle. He won because the election of an African American to the US Presidency is itself a breakthrough achievement.
Unfortunately, as Cole underscored, Obama won the peace prize because he replaced the worst, most pathologically incompetent and dangerous president in US history: George W. Bush. As captain of ‘the world’s sole superpower’ (though that position is already under challenge), the Nobel Committee hoped to guide him in a less destructive direction than his predecessor. Following on Cole, the New Yorker’s George Packer observed, this prize was meant to encourage Obama down a productive path. Peace prize as a seed for good fortune, rather than as reward for good action.
But if this act of premature optimism is to bear fruit, then Obama will need to do more than make a humble but obstinate defense of American militarism. But to get there, he is going to need to let go of some of his own beliefs – or at least the beliefs of those he has surrounded himself with – because they stand in the way of our long term security and the greater needs of the world around us.
My purpose here is to consider his speech in light of his decision to maintain the status quo policy of our war in Iraq and to get involved more deeply in the war in Afghanistan. While Obama’s speech reflected his conscious awareness of the contradiction between winning this prize and his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, it also revealed some of the ideological undertones that led him to do so.
His humility in accepting this prize – in the absence of significant accomplishment and while waging two wars – was laudable, as were his aspirations for a nuclear-free world, human rights, his acknowledgement of our subordination under international law and his gestures toward diversity. But his arguments about American exceptionalism, just war and America’s role as world policemen – while very ‘Beltway’ – are also concerning.
I will go through his speech and illuminate some of those elements here.
Primordializing Warfare
President Obama built his pragmatic argument on war from the following remark:
"War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease — the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences."
This naturalization of war as eternal and central to human existence is fallacious. For most of Humanity’s history, we were hunter-gatherers. While fighting among humans and even groups of humans may have existed, hunter-gathering societies depended on extensive social networks and reciprocity to survive. The 'wealth' of those communities was not measured in terms of material possessions, but richness of their social networks.
Warfare largely emerged with agriculture and ‘civilization’, about 10 thousand years ago. Moreover, you cannot compare fighting in the forest over hunting rights or stealing your neighbor’s goats with modern concepts and ambitions of total warfare. Warfare in ancient Ireland – prior to Norman colonialism – was largely about stealing cattle and (in the later years) arguing over who was the symbolic ‘high king of Ireland’. Yes, people got hurt. Sometimes they even got killed. But killing your neighbor wasn’t the point of the contest, the point was bravely asserting your claim to rights, asserting your grievances or stealing something that belonged to your neighbor. I would note that ancient Ireland didn't have the death penalty, either. Violence was remedied by payment, usually in the form of cattle.
Similarly, in pre-Colombian Native America, combat between groups was about establishing one’s collective rights, through acts of bravery. As the early American colonist and Indian fighter, Captain John Mason said about the Pequot before he slaughtered them, ‘they might fight seven years and not kill seven people.’ His remarks reflected on a multi-day battle with the Pequot in the 1630’s and the query from the Pequot chief as to whether ‘they had fought enough.’ The point – from the Pequot perspective – was that willingness to fight established the right to seek common ground. From Captain Mason’s perspective, the point was exterminating one’s enemy.
The rise of agriculture – grounding people to a fixed piece of land – created surpluses that invited greed and made populations vulnerable. In the end, it created haves and have-nots. As inequality rose, so did empires. That is, people willing to use violence to assert their power over others. As ‘civilization’ evolved over the past 10 thousand years, it did so on a wave of violence, largely over the control of wealth (land, resources and commodities). It exacerbated inequalities and funded the technologies of violence, further exacerbating inequalities, hardly the stuff to celebrate.
By comparison, hunter-gatherers – the mode of economic existence for most of humanity’s history – personal or collective possessions were easily made and on short order. Thus, social networks, not possessions were the most valued currency. Generosity and sharing – indeed, even giving away everything you had – were the ways one rose to prominence in one's social group (and by, extention, with your neighbors). Killing your neighbor was very risky adventure that not only undermined your social wealth, but made your whole extended family vulnerable to reprisal. This is why murder – let alone warfare – was rare among hunter-gatherers. Even agricultural, pastoral and hunting cultures like the ancient Irish or the Pequot (and the modes of existence for most of humanity up until the 20th century) engaged mostly in symbolic warfare – where murder was not the purpose – because that measured response was the safer path for all.
While we no longer live in such a world, it is absolutely dangerous to primordialize warfare or to fail to distinguish between the symbolic warfare of our premodern ancestors and the total warfare that made the Western modernity dominant over the world. At its most cynically applied, such a logic has been used far too often by those who want to wage war and normalize such conflict in the minds of those who experience it or must wage it on behalf of elites. While I realize that these myths are popular in our society, as the son of an anthropologist, I thought President Obama would have known better.
Just Wars
Having bought into this first fallacy, Obama falls neatly into the next one: the ‘just war’.
"The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence."
But we began both our wars with aerial bombardment campaigns that couldn’t help but inflict violence on civilians. Neither war was started in ‘self-defense’, though we got ample justifications that they were. Yes, 9/11 was terrible. I had family and countless friends who worked in those buildings (I worked there myself at one point). But the overwhelming majority of people in Afghanistan – and virtually everyone in Iraq – had nothing to do with that moment, including those who have fought our invading forces. 9/11 was simply a pretext for an imperial war on the oil-producing Mideast. It wasn’t our action of last resort, it was the first and only option ever suggested in response to the violence of 9/11.
Wars are always justified by those who wage them. Hitler had his justifications, Al Queda has theirs, Tamerlane had his and the Romans had theirs. Justifications are critical to any war campaign, to ensure the support of the troops, those who fund war and the citizenry who have to pay for the wars with blood and taxes. So every war is made ‘just’ by somebody. If both sides fully believe their justifications, then they will slaughter each other until one side or another wins or both are ravaged from the exchange.
But the two wars we are engaged in right now – and ones that Obama has sunk us deeper into – were started under false pretenses, where warfare was the option of first resort – not the last – where overwhelming violence was central to the invasion strategies and began with an assault on the citizenry of those countries (shock and awe). So both our wars failed the test Obama described.
Free Markets Will Save Humanity
Having bought into the notion of justifiable wars, his subsequent description of post-cold war life staggered me.
"Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty, self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud."
"Commerce has stitched much of the world together"? That’s a kind way of putting it. I think Walmart speaks to that process better than anything else: a place where poor people buy stuff made by other poor people and sold to them by poor store employees. And the arrival of a Walmart in your town means that your local shops are about to go out of business. The free market model of capitalism that Obama is expressing here is a poverty-making machine. This brings me to his next sentence....
"Billions lifted from poverty"? Are we kidding? I’ll resist the hyperbole festival, but certainly free market economic policies have created far more poor people than they’ve lifted from the muck. The social safety net pulled out from under those in the former Soviet bloc cast many – if not most – down the economic stairs, rather than lifting them up. In the absence of Communism to compete with, country after country dismantled their social safety net, or was forced to do so by the IMF and the World Bank and the gap between the rich and the poor grew wider than any time in human history, including in the United States.
Even more revealing in terms of what drives President Obama’s policies – domestic or foreign – is this is precisely the militaristic neoliberal logic offered by Tony Blair’s advisor, Robert Cooper, offered in his defense of ‘Liberal Imperialism’. Central to this line of thinking is the moral imperative of the ‘free’ West to drag "reactionary" regimes "out of the 19th century" by force, so that they may be enlightened by the western capitalism and limited democracy. This logic unfortunately draws again from supremacist western values that presume we have all the answers to the world’s problems and anyone who doesn’t agree must be forced to our will. Apparently, there are limits to Obama’s humility.
Internal Resistance to the New World Order
Having ignored entirely the reasons for the current cycle of conflicts – inequality, imperialism, rampant weapons sales, greed – President Obama launched into a familiar list of violent problems, seen from the comfort zone of the Western imperial metropole:
"A decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.
Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations. The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts, the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies and failed states have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos. In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed and children scarred."
I do not disagree with this partial list 21st century problems, though I note that it describes the effects without revealing the causes. But President Obama utterly failed here – as President of the United States – to take any responsibility for this mess. First we desire to dominate the world, economically if we can, by force if we must. Our country spends more on the military than all our allies and enemies combined. This trend is furthered by our reckless desire to dominate the world’s weapons markets that, in the face of Bush’s warmongering, sparked off a frenzy of weapons sales that has flooded the world with weapons. It also has pushed countries we marked as ‘rouge’ to embark on the road to nuclear weaponry and other forms of weapons development. Failure to take responsibility for OUR role in this mess – particularly after President Bush so completely wrecked the world with his warmongering – is galling.
The Enlightened Self Interest of the World’s Sole Superpower
Obama returned to his humble posture, acknowledging he did not bring with him a "solution to the problems of war" and attributing his political success to the work of Martin Luther King.
But then he launched into a defense of his recent decision to deploy more troops in Afghanistan that must have dropped the jaws of some of the audience in attendance:
"But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.
Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions — not just treaties and declarations — that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest — because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other people's children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity."
Ah yes, the enlightened self interest of the world’s ‘sole military superpower’. That’s what motivated us to invade Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan: to bring democracy at the point of a gun. Buried within this elegy to American exceptionalism and supremacy is the worn out conflation of democracy with capitalism. And of course, when we’ve mowed down the competition, what the populace gets is capitalism with a simulacrum of democracy, so long as they don’t vote for parties – like Hezbollah or Hamas – that upset the free market or challenge our hegemony. In a moment when Russia, China and even Iran, India and North Korea are making freesh challenges to our claim of ‘sole military superpower’, swaggering around the bar like we are the only one with a gun in the room is an open invitation for someone to prove us wrong.
The Right to Unilaterally Wage War
Calling on the ghost of Kennedy to focus, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions," President Obama described some practical steps toward those goals:
"To begin with, I believe that all nations — strong and weak alike — must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates — and weakens — those who don’t."
He then noted that
"The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait — a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression."
My apologies for interrupting the President here, but most people don’t support the war in Afghanistan and most of our allies are giving us lip service at some political cost domestically. While his description of Saddam Hussein and his invasion of Kuwait may pass muster with popular, American understandings, but buried under that moment was a great deal of subterfuge by the US, not the least of which was giving Hussein tacit permission to invade when he brought the matter up to us ahead of time.
International Law and the World’s Policeman
In what seemed a faint bow to those who called out American hypocrisy over our behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama acknowledged that
"America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don't, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention — no matter how justified.
This becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor. More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region."
Ah, the slippery slope. While his bow toward the existence of international law marked a large advance over the war criminals that occupied the White House a year ago and reinforced the reasons for his winning this award, President Obama returned to the notion of justified and humanitarian war:
"I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace."
And within that context, Obama reiterated America’s role as the ‘world’s policeman’. A position we were never elected for, nor – dare I say it – would most people on this planet desire. It is also why we have a 12 trillion dollar debt, multiple hot wars, a couple of cold ones (North Korea, Iran) and people plotting in dark rooms to blow themselves up where it will hurt us most.
Here’s what he said on this subject:
"America's commitment to global security will never waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering. And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come.
The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries — and other friends and allies — demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they have shown in Afghanistan. But in many countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public. I understand why war is not popular. But I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That is why NATO continues to be indispensable. That is why we must strengthen U.N. and regional peacekeeping, and not leave the task to a few countries. That is why we honor those who return home from peacekeeping and training abroad to Oslo and Rome; to Ottawa and Sydney; to Dhaka and Kigali — we honor them not as makers of war, but as wagers of peace.
Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. . . . Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe that the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard."
To be fair, President Obama has made significant advances in restoring US adherence to international law, but given the scale of wreckage caused by President Bush's reign of error, admitting a mistake is only the first step toward rectifying the problems.
Three Ways to Advance the Cause of Peace
Finally, President Obama made three points that might practically advance the cause of peace: international instruments to address behavior short of warfare, nuclear disarmament and human rights.
He acknowledged that "we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior" and that "such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one" (presumably standing behind the United States).
He noted that "in the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: All will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work toward disarmament" and remarked on his efforts with "President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia's nuclear stockpiles." He took this moment to take a quick pot shot at North Korea and Iran for ignoring those international agreements, but failed to mention Israel’s failure in the same regard or its 300-600 nuclear missile stockpile, while he admonished the world about the "danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia." Even as he accepted a prize for peace, he warned that "those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war."
Invoking the scars of internal warfare in Darfur and Congo and repression in Burma, he emphasized the importance of human rights and that "peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting."
Invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he noted that "within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists — a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values."
Conflating 'Democracy' with 'Capitalism' Again
President Obama rejected that choice, arguing instead that peace is "unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please, choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence."
While I have no quarrel with that assessment, President Obama again fell into the hubris of American mythology when he argued that "America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens."
I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘democracy’. I hope I don't have to run down the list of democratic governments we've invaded or overthrown to disprove this myth. I am very disappointed in President Obama's historical amnesia on this subject.
From there, he noted that
"[the] promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach — and condemnation without discussion — can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door."
Obama noted that Nixon's meeting with Mao "helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty, and connected to open societies." As he has elsewhere in this speech, President Obamam conflates democracy (a political system) with capitalism (an economic system). While China is certainly a convert to capitalism, it very consciously declined the opportunity to embrace political democracy as its prisons amply reveal.
Finally, he noted that "a just peace includes not only civil and political rights — it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want."
While this is certainly true, it is more than apparent from these comments that free trade capitalism is the road to that security. Unfortunately, that economic recipe produces more want, more poverty, more insecurity and – when we shove our particular form of economics down everyone’s throat – more conflict and resistance. I need only point to the unemployment line in the US and the instability that is producing in our own country – let alone the resistance of those in the Muslim world -- to make my case.
That said, he acknowledged that
"given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the cultural leveling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities — their race, their tribe and, perhaps most powerfully, their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we are moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines."
It is easy to reduce social conflict to simplistic narratives of racial, religious or tribal conflict. But underneath those dividing lines are structural inequalities, for which these divisions provide neat excuses to continue. And force-feeding American-style capitalism and notions of limited democracy don’t mitigate those tensions. They exacerbate them.
Time to Earn Your Prize, President Obama
I know some will see my critique of President Obama’s speech as unnecessarily harsh. Certainly his call for "Agreements among nations, Strong institutions, Support for human rights, Investments in development" are laudable and a dramatic improvement over the unilateralism, corruption, hypocrisy and recklessly violent supremacy of the Bush Administration.
But the devil is in the details. It may be a new day because we have a new president – and one whose political victory was indeed historic – but he represents a country that has wrecked the international landscape militarily and economically with its greed and arrogance.
Going in humbly was a good approach and if his highest words are turned into action, some good might came out of this. But if American supremacist and exceptionalist values aren’t thoroughly plumbed, confronted and discarded, then his words will ring hollow in the end. If we can’t tell the difference between a political system (democracy) from an economic system (capitalism), then we will make the same mistake that Obama made in this speech, praising freedom in China, when so many basic human rights are missing. If we don’t recognize that our model of democracy is only one of many forms it could take and that the point of democracy is creating a more egalitarian order, then our efforts will simply be seen as another attempt by the US to maintain its hegemony over the world, particularly if our notion of democracy is mostly about making the world safe for international capitalism.
If Obama wants to be an agent for peace, I recommend he heed Juan Cole’s recipe for earning the prize he has already collected:
"1. Get out of Iraq on schedule. We can't stop their low-intensity conflicts, and they are more likely to compromise with each other if we are not there.
- Resist calls for Iran to be bombed. Such a raid would guarantee that Iran would start a crash program to develop a nuclear weapon, and there would be no way to stop it short of full-scale war.
- Stop allowing the CIA to operate drones with which to assassinate people. It is illegal and shameful. The US military must be in charge of defending the country by force or we are a police state.
- Get the Palestinians a state by the end of 2011, even if by unilateral recognition. Palestinian statelessness is the biggest human rights scandal in the world, since citizenship is the right to have rights. This step alone would solve the bulk of US problems in the Arab world and would deal a deadlier blow to al-Qaeda than capturing Bin Laden.
- Stick to the plan of beginning a US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2011. Karzai and the generals will attempt to embroil us in a decades-long quagmire. No one will remember his Nobel peace prize if President Obama lets that happen."
To Juan Cole's list I would add that President Obama should fire many of his advisors and replace them with a broader coalition of thinkers. Unfortunately, he has surrounded himself with Beltway veterans who are as bound up in these dangerous ideological fantasies as he seems to be. Such thinking binds the mind and blinds it to greater potentialities. The status-quo thinking of Washington DC was on proud display in Oslo, to the disappointment of the audience that gathered to hear his speech.
As many have observed, President Obama won this award as encouragement toward a more reasonable and sane US foreign policy. To do so, he must shed the mythologies that are clouding his mind and blocking him from the answers that will better achieve his stated goals. He must let go of the supremacist notion that the US has some God-given role in the world to remake everyone over into our image, by force if needed. He must shed the Calvinist mythologies of neoliberalism and let people pursue their own economic futures without our endless pressure to capitulate. This only creates more conflict and – ultimately – more war.
Most of all he needs to lead this country away from its self-appointed role as ‘world’s policeman’, shut down our arms sales to the world (its only getting our own soldiers killed with our guns) and accept our place among nations, rather than leading the world in a 21st century arms race that we can neither afford, nor can we win. What credibility in the world we might have, should be earned by example, not the end of a gun. In a country where poor people and – most glaringly -- Black men are more likely to go to prison than to college, there is more than enough violence and inequality in our own country to keep President Obama busy for the next 7 years.
Robert Cooper:
Juan ColeGeorge PackerRobert Cooper