Be an Apologist - Without Apology
By A Khokar • Jun 11th, 2009 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look • 14 CommentsObama returns to the Oval Office in Washington where conservatives are deriding his trip abroad as an “apology tour.” In keeping with their general philosophy of giving no quarter to President Barracks Obama, conservatives spent much of last week lambasting Obama’s visit to the Middle East as an “apology tour.”
It was widely thought that Obama at this occasion will bring in some drastic changes the way USA relate to the existing governments in the Middle East. Currently, whether US is officially on record as favouring democracy or not, they are still deeply in bed with status quo Arab regimes. Israel, the US backed bullying kid planted on the Arab lands and the global network of military bases especially the installations in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iraq and US warships operate constantly in the region’s coastal waters. Not to say the least that US is in occupation of Afghanistan and is bent upon, to pour in the planned surge of thousands of more troops into that forsaken land.
But contrary to what all is going on on the grounds; Obama interestingly struck a hot chord of announcing the withdrawal of all the forces from Iraq as well as Afghanistan in the near future. But it would be naïve enough to think that Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda who were able to mark their presence on the dart by his messages prior to Obama speech, would just pack up and live a quiet life in the absence of the heavy American military presence in the region. It can’t be denied that they’re frequently cited as a rallying cry and recruiting tool. What’s more, it’s their presence that bolsters the broader logic of Al Qaeda’s view that Muslims must attack the “far enemy”—the United States—in order to express their grievances with local governments.
The invasion of Iraq, needless to say, did a great deal to intensify Arab fear that the United States is seeking the imperial subjugation of their lands (and oil). And Obama’s not condemning the invasion of Iraq by George W Bush helps in this regard, but there continues to be speculation about “residual forces” remaining in Iraq even after Obama’s promised withdrawal of “combat forces.”
Unlike the other US bases around the world, the Middle Eastern ones are deeply unpopular and seen as a legacy of colonialism.
Muslim World was very much expecting a plan for substantive changes in policy. What we got instead were fine words expressing complicated ideas on ‘deep subjects’ and there upon Obama left this region rather in limbo with everything essentially the way the things were before.
Links: Adab-arz.co.uk
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Hold Your Applause
I thought this was important too.
Did they play Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in the prison corridors of Abu Ghraib, Bagram air base, Guantanamo or the dozens of secret sites where we hold thousands of Muslims around the world? Did it echo off the walls of the crowded morgues filled with the mutilated bodies of the Muslim dead in Baghdad or Kabul? Was it broadcast from the tops of minarets in the villages and towns decimated by U.S. iron fragmentation bombs? Was it heard in the squalid refugee camps of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians live in the world’s largest ghetto?
What do words of peace and cooperation mean from us when we torture—yes, we still torture—only Muslims? What do these words mean when we sanction Israel’s brutal air assaults on Lebanon and Gaza, assaults that demolished thousands of homes and left hundreds dead and injured? How does it look for Obama to call for democracy and human rights from Egypt, where we lavishly fund and support the despotic regime of Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest-reigning dictators in the Middle East?
We may thrill to Obama’s rhetoric, but very few of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are as deluded. They grasp that nothing so far has changed for Muslims in the Middle East under the Obama administration. The wars of occupation go on or have been expanded. Israel continues to flout international law, gobbling up more Palestinian land and carrying out egregious war crimes in Gaza. Calcified, repressive regimes in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are feted in Washington as allies.
The speech at Cairo University, which usually has trucks filled with riot police outside the university gates and a heavy security presence on campus to control the student body, is an example of the facade. Student political groups, as everyone who joined in the standing ovation for the president knew, are prohibited. Faculty deans are chosen by the administration, rather than elected by professors, “as a way to combat Islamist influence on campus,” according to the U.S. State Department’s latest human rights report. And, as The Washington Post pointed out, students who use the Internet “as an outlet for their political or social views are on notice: One Cairo University student blogger was jailed for two months last summer for ‘public agitation,’ and another was kicked out of university housing for criticizing the government.”
The expanding imperial projects and tightening screws of repression lurch forward under Obama. We are not trying to end terror or promote democracy. We are ensuring that our corporate state has a steady supply of the cheap oil to which it is addicted. And the scarcer oil becomes, the more aggressive we become. This is the game playing out in the Muslim world.
(Continued……… )
The Bush White House openly tortured. The Obama White House tortures and pretends not to. Obama may have banned waterboarding, but as Luke Mitchell points out in next month’s issue of Harper’s magazine, torture, including isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation and force-feeding, continues to be used to break detainees. The president has promised to close Guantanamo, where only 1 percent of the prisoners held offshore by the United States are kept. And the Obama administration has sought to obscure the fate and condition of thousands of Muslims held in black holes around the globe. As Mitchell notes, the Obama White House “has sought to prevent detainees at Bagram prison in Afghanistan from gaining access to courts where they may reveal the circumstances of their imprisonment. It has sought to continue the practice of rendering prisoners to unknown and unknowable locations outside the United States, and sought to keep secret many (though not all) of the records regarding our treatment of those detainees.”
Muslim rage is stoked because we station tens of thousands of American troops on Muslim soil, occupy two Muslim nations, make possible the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, support repressive Arab regimes and torture thousands of Muslims in offshore penal colonies where prisoners are stripped of their rights. We now have 22 times as many military personnel in the Muslim world as were deployed during the crusades in the 12th century. The rage comes because we have constructed massive military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and established basing rights in the Gulf States of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The rage comes because we have expanded our military empire into neighbouring Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It comes because we station troops and Special Forces in Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And this vast network of bases and military outposts looks suspiciously permanent.
The Muslim world fears, correctly, that we intend to dominate Middle East oil supplies and any Caspian Sea oil infrastructure. And it is interested not in our protestations of good will but in the elemental right of justice and freedom from foreign occupation. We would react, should the situation be reversed, no differently.
The brutal reality of expanding foreign occupation and harsher and harsher forms of control are the tinder of Islamic fundamentalism, insurgences and terrorism. We can blame the violence on a clash of civilizations. We can naively tell ourselves we are envied for our freedoms. We can point to the Koran. But these are fantasies that divert us from facing the central dispute between us and the Muslim world, from facing our own responsibility for the virus of chaos and violence spreading throughout the Middle East. We can have peace when we shut down our bases, stay the hand of the Israelis to create a Palestinian state, and go home, or we can have long, costly and ultimately futile regional war. We cannot have both.
Obama, whose embrace of American imperialism is as naive and destructive as that of George W. Bush, is the newest brand used to peddle the poison of permanent war. We may not see it. But those who bury the dead do.
Source: Truthdig.com
High hopes Khokar. Applause.
Man you need to do some self introspection.
Please don’t think that you are that great a writer that people will give applause to your articles.
Your article has been there for 2 days and still no one cared to even put a single comment. You are the only person who added things to it.
Come back on earth, the Hubble repair is done by other guys not you.
Khokar,
Few points that I would like your inputs;
1) Was the land mass that you name as Arab land gifted or given to them by some one or is there name written on it?
2) What were expecting Obama to do? Is it that you were expecting to listen that they are sorry for what happened and they will pay for damages?
3) The so called status quo that you talked about, do you expect US to visit places like Sudan and other Muslim countries and make friendship with them?
4) When you say Israel in middle of Arab land, have you forgotten that they have earned or carved that portion of land by fighting neighboring countries as they were not letting live them in peace. What do you expect from them please explain.
5) Also about the Kashmir thing you had said that you will explain / talk about it later, can you do it now.
Dear Free Speech,
Every article carries a theme and topic or subject, put across for the readers to ponder upon and when the readers feel that they can come up with some suggestion or a better solution toward the implementation of subject theme or contribute toward forming an opinion; not all but only few may come forward and put up their comment.
Only cultivating of an opinion in the favour of theme is expected and not any praises for an article. I believe that article must only be put up to understand the burning issue well, so that people may be assisted to act accordingly.
Although Obama has promised few things in his speech but his audience they have the reservation in believing him; not even in America? Obama promises are seen fake, just words and no substance. It is like the promises of Juvenile, who has just fallen in love with a girl on first site and while in the grip of aroused emotions is cutting a promise to marrying her without asking his or her parents and the consequences. Obama seem not to have the support of both the houses back home neither he has got the backing of Pentagon.
Any how Obama was on excursion to repair the damaged image of America and trying to arrange some deceptive window dressing by sticking some soft labels to soften up the US distorted image. In this regard he may cut few favours back home.
With regard to Pakistan; the man is poised to send the drones for attack with the banner flying at the back; I love You. [1]
Any how when the picture is so confused and people are so eluded; how they can come up and put up some comments. I have seen that a lot has been written in regards to Obama speech in all the news papers and blogs in America as well as across the world; but there are very few comments.
Illusions and stories of cuckoo lands may not fetch any opinions.
(You too have come up here not to comment on the article theme—- but for leg pulling of Mr A Khokar.)
Any how; Hold your applause has been put up here for info only and is not written by me.
[1] ( For Cartoon please link adab-arez.co.uk)
Dear KKhoKKar,
At least try to respect a person and use their name properly.
Khokar,
You are saying that people don’t believe whatever Obama said in his speech from Cairo. Fine, there choice. But doesn’t it look similar to the promises Pakistan makes with India. After the 26/11 Mumbai incident, Pakistan said they will bring everyone to justice and this and that. But nothing happened. Saeed was set free saying no evidence against him.
What about the statement passed by the Attorney general of Pakistan who made a statement a couple of days earlier stating they have proof of JuD and AQ links and Saeed being involved in it.
One Indian Prime Minister rides in bus to make friendship and peace with Pakistan and your army General attacks India in Kargil.
Where is the credibility of Pakistan? Should anyone trust Pakistan for whatever they say? Or is it just a farce.
Your Prime Minister is making statement that India should come ahead talk with Pakistan on Kashmir front. But what about the things that happened in Mumbai? Why is Saeed and his people set free?
Answer these and then try to say something against other people.
Also you mentioned that I was not here to comment on the article but to pull your leg, you need to look at the comment put by me as you have cared to answer a single question that I have asked.
Answer the questions and then we can talk again.
Otherwise hide yourself in your wife’s or wives anchal, cause you are not strong enough to face a man.
Mr. Khokar:
Obama is the President of the United States, not the Chief Imam of the Moslem World. So he will do what is in the interest of the United States. His Cairo address was indeed ground-breaking. What more do you expect him to do? Why and for what should the United States apologize the Moslem World for? After all it is oppressive Moslem dictators, Sheikhs, and Kings who should apologize to their populations for decades of oppression and lack of freedom.
Speak Free
# 6
I wrote the name at random and some how it came out as ‘Free speech’ where as you preferred to be called as ‘Speak free’. I am sorry that even simple change which was owing to a typo but it did hurt you.
Any how in both the cases the given names denote that man loves the freedom of speech. But from where you got this notion that it is being disrespectful to you?
But contrary to you own set and preferred rules you have written my name:
Dear KKhoKKar,
Would you please like to reconcile?
Hi Khokar,
If you go through the comment below it then you will see that I have used your Name properly and have done it everytime.
Also the both the names have subtle differences in their meaning Speak Free means speak without fear and openly and Free Speech is what the polticians do.
By the way dont try to run away from the questions that I have asked you.
Speak free,
I think I did give reply on the subject query of setting Mr Saeed free some where.
Any how: The man was held by police when UN security council came out with banning of person and his organisation on allegation of his involvement in some nefarious terrorist activities.
He was held and his Organisation was banned all right but courts—- they need solid evidence to defunct or condemn a person, Court found that evidence supplied by India or UN security council was not sufficient to defunct a person. Personal whims or wishful thinking may not serve any purpose. Thus the man has been set free. The man can be tried any time again if the evidences hold any waters.
Pakistan is not some despotic regime. Freedom is guaranteed here and the culprits are also dealt with properly as you can see that its traitors called as Taliban are eventually being dealt with in Swat and Malakand area; humiliation and death is the verdict for these stooges.
Continued…
No body may do the way the Great Pakistanis they do.
Any how Mumbai attack was internal job of Indian Raw to escalate a war against Pakistan in which the enemy of Pakistan they failed miserably. You may find few articles here in TPS. Please look for A Khokar posts of last year. Good positive discussions were generated then.
Khokar,
It is the same old thing that you are repeating again.
But you have not answered other things, I have asked many more question than just the Saeed one.
Are you a coward? Cant even answer the questions asked by people younger to you.