Ebb Tide V: Robert Parry Looks At Barack Obama And Sees Michael Douglas

Veteran journalist Robert Parry has done fantastic work on a number of important fronts; see, for instance, Iraq War As A War Crime (Part One), and don't forget (Part Two).

But he frustrates me because he won't talk about 9/11 in any terms other than the official story, he never mentions any issues relating to election integrity, and his take on the Democratic nomination process has been bizarre -- and increasingly so.

Bob Parry quite rightly points out deceit and gamesmanship when it comes from Hillary Clinton. But he seems to have a blind spot when the same tactics come from Barack Obama -- who has never quite managed to make me stand and cheer. But when Bob Parry looks at Obama, he sees ... Hollywood!

Thus, "Obama's 'Michael Douglas Moment'"

Barack Obama’s speech on race – both laying out the nation’s multi-sided racial resentments and pointing to a path beyond them – might be called his “Michael Douglas moment,” reminiscent of the speech near the end of “The American President.”

In the climactic scene of that 1995 movie, the President (played by Douglas) responds to political attacks against his girlfriend over an old photograph of a burning American flag and to insinuations about his own alleged lack of patriotism reflected in his American Civil Liberties Union membership.

After weeks of political maneuvering in his pursuit of a second term – and finally fed up with the attack politics of his opponent, Bob Rumson – the President bursts into the press room to denounce the smears and to renounce his own politics of equivocation.

“We have serious problems to solve,” Douglas says, “and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-age, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. …

“We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.”

Well, that's just about the way I saw it ...

Except that Obama didn't get serious -- he changed the subject!

And he didn't denounce the smears -- he capitulated to them!

And he didn't renounce his equivocation -- he wallowed in it!

Other than that, Bob Parry's analysis is ... well ... let's just say his introduction didn't contain any misdirection.

I left him a long comment at his blog, and since it took me quite a while to compose it, and since it lays out my thoughts a bit better than any of my recent posts here, I thought I might share it with you.

It makes me sad to say this, Mr. Parry, but I cannot understand how an observer as intelligent and as experienced as you could fall for this.

I do understand that we all see things differently and we all form our own opinions. But to me it seemed as if Obama played his "race cards" for just long enough to put everyone in a warm and fuzzy mood, but not quite asleep, and then while nobody was looking he threw the truth under the bus.

Facts are facts, are they not?

Jeremiah Wright, September 16, 2001, Chicago:

“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said America's chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

What in the name of heaven is wrong with this? Is there a single assertion of fact here that is incorrect? If anything, Reverend Wright's list is too short. He left out Guatemala. He left out Vietnam. He left out death squads in El Salvador. On and on it goes.

Barack Obama, March 18, 2008, Philadelphia:

the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

This is one lie after another; let's look at only the last of them:

Do "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" emerge from a cosmic void? Can the United States really continue to bomb and invade and destroy one foreign country after another without ever releasing any "chickens" that might someday "come home to roost"?

Operation Cyclone

Beginning in 1979, Americans working secretly through the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, as well as some other Middle Eastern allies, recruited and trained terrorists; armed and funded them; motivated them with extremist Islamic propaganda; and infiltrated them into Afghanistan via Pakistan.

The object was to hassle the Soviets, to lure them into invading Afghanistan. The American-trained terrorists were known as "mujahadeen" at the time, and in the USA they were called "freedom fighters". Their modern offshoots have names like "Taliban" and "al Qaeda".

The damage these groups have done is almost immeasurable. We hear about al Qaeda all the time although they don't attack here. That's because they attack in Pakistan. And elsewhere. In Pakistan alone in 2006 there were more than 600 terrorist attacks in which more than 900 people were killed. In 2007 the numbers were even higher. That's just one country. We think we know about terrorism. We know nothing.

Operation Cyclone was started during the Carter administration. It was a brainchild of Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Carter, Brzezinski, and the other supposedly "pro-human rights" Democrats thought nothing of fomenting terrorism in one foreign country, exporting it to another and using it to attack a third.

Is this not a war crime of the highest magnitude?

Zbigniew Brzezinski is now a foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama. So tell me: How much hypocrisy does it take for Barack Obama to say what he has said about the conflicts in the Middle East? How can he dismiss America's long and gruesome record of crimes against humanity so easily?

How can we possibly hope for peace or justice or unity in the face of such mendacity?

Barack Obama essentially wasted 37 minutes of our time telling us how unfortunate it was that Jeremiah Wright was an older black man who grew up harboring certain resentments that are no longer relevant, or something to that effect.

He turned the whole story into an issue of race, when the basic question was "Why did you sit through his sermons? Why did you stay in his church?" and the correct answers would have been "Because he's a good man who loves God and his country, and because was telling us the truth!"

"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism."

Barack Obama should have repudiated his foreign policy advisor, not his pastor.

Horrifying: Obama's Brilliant Speech Of Hope And Unity Scares Me Half To Death

The Sermon Obama Repudiated Was One We All Needed To Hear

My comment has not produced a response. As far as I know, it hasn't even caused a single mouse to click. If that changes, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I'll continue to read Consortium News. But when it comes to the Democratic primaries, I'll be getting my "independent investigative journalism" elsewhere.

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fifth in a series