America: Lost in Translation
by C. L. Cook
They were cheered no doubt in Mogadishu and Port-au-Prince the night Barack Obama was declared. They had hope too for better days in Baghdad and Kabul. A little more than a year later, little can remain of that.

The year was unkind at home too; millions were tossed out of work, lost their homes, watched helplessly as their savings, investments, and pensions dwindled and disappeared down the drain.

 

They could forgive Obama all that. Wasn't it all the fault of the venal George junior and his mercenary wrecking crew that gutted government, carving out the fat for themselves and leaving the burial detail to the hapless Democrats; as father, so son?

 

But Tuesday's speech to the next graduating class at West Point  sealed it: there is no changing, and no point in hoping for political change through participation in, America's presidential pageant.

The congress, judiciary, and the Oval Office are all in the hands of the military claque that is determined to control the future of the planet's petroleum supplies through the ruthless application of America's (and her reluctant allies') force of arms.

 

Same as it ever was.

Obama referred in his speech to the six decades America has "underwritten" security for the world. That would be the period following the great war; the time of the Greatest Generation we're reminded. He repeated the mantra spake from the mouths of his great and lesser predecessors, to whit: though America e'er be the reluctant warrior, it will see its duty through, come hell and/or high water.

To make good that premise, Obama promised 30 of the 40 thousand pairs of boots on the ground the general in charge ordered, (with a caveat for the other ten be served up piecemeal fashion as demands required). Two thirds of the latter platter will be provided by foreign fodder from the never enthusiastic coalition of Europeans, and Anglo colonial remnants Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Where many in America still believe the noble twaddle Mr. Obama's speech contained, few outside the blinkered behemoth are fooled. To the majorities in those countries the United States is viewed as a brutal, vicious, bullying hegemon; an uncaring killer of women and children, devoid of conscience and irredeemable. But the facade must be maintained by the elite of America's satellites, discouraging words ne'er being heard.

In Canada, for instance, there is currently a Parliamentary committee looking into the charges Canadian Forces (CF) turned over Afghani prisoners taken to the government of that benighted nation despite evidence those turned over would be tortured. This the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan knows to be in contravention to both the laws of Canada and the international conventions on war and torture the country has signed on to. It's a very Canadian thing this Special Committee; torturously tedious quasi-legal proceedings, hidden in the back pages of the country's few newspapers, dropped almost entirely from its three television networks.

Failing a bombshell, it will wind itself, like so many committees before it, from obscurity to oblivion. But one question that will certainly not be asked, one connection not made is: what was the fate of the prisoners the CF routinely handed over to the Americans, knowing full well their gruesome reputation regarding prisoner treatment at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Airbase, and of course, Abu Ghraib? What of the confirmed "dark sites" hellish holes scattered across the globe, hosted by dictators, monarchs, and monsters of all description, each eager to please Uncle Sam? Will any question the morality of handing over prisoners to them, the American paragons of virtue?

 

In Britain, meanwhile, another commission is in session. The Chilcot lnquiry will soon hear from former prime minister Tony Blair. It's long been known he and former president Bush cooked up the "justifications" for the Iraq invasion and occupation, the Downing Street memos exposed all that years ago. Will Chilcot be enough to rouse reality-challenged Americans to their feet and into the streets? For the most part, they'll probably never hear about it.

 

And even if they did hear the tale of a cynical president, controlled by the military and the arms and energy merchants they represent, it would likely not make a great deal of difference. America is happy enough with its illusions. It needn't be reminded of the blood and horror that illusion obscures.