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From dreams to drones: who is the real Barack Obama?

fd24

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Barack Obama, according to Foreign Policy magazine, "has become George W Bush on steroids". Armed with a "kill list", the Nobel peace laureate now hosts "Tuesday terror" meetings at the White House to discuss targets of drone attacks in Pakistan and at least five other countries. The latest of these killed 17 people near the border with Afghanistan today .

Unlike the slacker Bush, who famously disdained specifics, Obama routinely deploys his Ivy League training in law. Many among the dozens of "suspected militants" massacred by drones in the last three days in northwestern Pakistan are likely to be innocent. Reports gathered by NGOs and Pakistani media about previous attacks speak of a collateral damage running into hundreds, and deepening anger and hostility to the United States. No matter: in Obama's legally watertight bureaucracy, drone attacks are not publicly acknowledged; or if they have to be, civilian deaths are flatly denied and all the adult dead categorised as "combatants".

Obama himself signed off on one execution knowing it would also kill innocent family members. He has also made it "legal" to execute Americans without trial and expanded their secret surveillance, preserved the CIA's renditions programme, violated his promise to close down Guantánamo Bay, and ruthlessly arraigned whistleblowers.

Not only is Cornel West, Obama's most prominent black intellectual supporter, appalled, but also the apparatchiks of Bush's imperial presidency such as former CIA director Michael Hayden. Perhaps it is time to ask again: who is Barack Obama? And how has Pakistan featured in his worldview? The first question now seems to have been settled too quickly, largely because of the literary power of Obama's speeches and writings. His memoir, Dreams From My Father, was quickened by the drama of the self-invented man from nowhere – the passionate striving, eloquent self-doubt and ambivalence that western literature, from Stendhal to Naipaul, has trained us to identify with a refined intellect and soul. Not surprisingly, Obama's careful self-presentation seduced some prominent literary fictionists, inviting comparisons to James Baldwin.

Later biographies of Obama, published after he became president, have complicated the picture of him as the possessor of diversely sourced identities (Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii, Harvard). David Maraniss's new biography shows that at college the bright student from Hawaii's closest friends were Pakistanis, and he carried around a dog-eared copy of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

But Obama also began early, as one girlfriend of his reported to her diary, to "strike out", "shedding encumbrances, old images". "Do you think I will be president of the United States?" he asked a slightly bemused Pakistani friend, who then witnessed "Obama slowly but carefully distancing himself from the Pakistanis as a necessary step in establishing his political identity".

"For years," Maraniss writes, "Obama seemed to share their attitudes as sophisticated outsiders who looked at politics from an international perspective. But to get to where he wanted … he had to change." Obama's Pakistani friend recalls: "The first shift I saw him undertaking was to view himself as an American in a much more fundamental way."

In an incorrigibly rightwing political culture, this obliged Obama to always appear tougher than his white opponents. During his 2008 presidential debates with John McCain, Obama often startled many of us with his threats to expand the war in Afghanistan to Pakistan. More disquietingly, he claimed the imprimatur of Henry Kissinger, who partnered Richard Nixon in the ravaging of Cambodia, paving the way for Pol Pot, while still devastating Vietnam.

It can't be said Obama didn't prepare us for his murderous spree in Pakistan. It is also true that drone warfare manifests the same pathologies – racial contempt, paranoia, blind faith in technology and the superstition of body counts – that undermined the US in Vietnam.

The White House has been used before to plot daily mayhem in some obscure, under-reported corner of the world. During the long bombing campaign named Rolling Thunder, President Lyndon Johnson personally chose targets in Indochina, believing that "carefully calculated doses of force could bring about desirable and predictable responses from Hanoi".

But of course "force", as James Baldwin pointed out during Kissinger and Nixon's last desperate assault on Indochina, "does not reveal to the victim the strength of his adversary. On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic of his adversary and this revelation invests the victim with patience".

The last US personnel in Vietnam had to be evacuated from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon, and this may yet be the fate of the western mission in Afghanistan. The Taliban, it is clear, won't be killed and mutilated into submission. A weak Pakistan, its rulers bribed and bullied into acquiescence, is the easier setting for a display of American firepower. In ways his Pakistani college friends couldn't have foreseen, their country now carries the burden of verifying Obama's extra-American manhood, especially at election time.

Obama was quick to say sorry to Poland last week for saying "Polish death camps" rather than "death camps in Poland" in a speech. But he refuses to apologise for the American air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November last year. Widespread public anger has forced Pakistan's government to block Nato's supply routes to Afghanistan; any hint of infirmity on the sensitive issue of sovereignty is likely to strengthen some of the country's nastiest extremists. Thus, the few possibilities of political stability in a battered country are now hostage to Obama's pre-election punitiveness.

Certainly, Obama's political and personal journey now evokes less uplifting literary comparisons. For, nearly four years after his ecstatically hailed ascension to the White House, Obama resembles Baldwin much less than he does Kipling and other uncertain children of empire who, as Ashis Nandy writes in The Intimate Enemy, replaced their early identifications with the weak with "an unending search for masculinity and status". These men saw both their victims and compatriots "as gullible children who must be impressed with conspicuous machismo"; and who suppressed their plural selves "for the sake of an imposed imperial identity – inauthentic and killing in its grandiosity".

"We're killin' 'em! We're killin' 'em all!" Bush exulted, according to Bob Woodward, during his last months in office. And now another man sits in the White House, surveying his own kill lists and plotting re-election, after having already pulled off the cruellest political hoax of our times.

From dreams to drones: who is the real Barack Obama? | Pankaj Mishra | Comment is free | The Guardian

A selected comment....

When drones were first introduced the situation has changed considerably now. Its clear that the US is increasing the frequency of drone strikes in response to the tensions between Pakistan and the US. There was a hiatus when it seemed that the tensions would be resolved (over supply routes). Similar was the case with the CIA contractor who killed two people in broad daylight. When he was held by the Pakistanis, with the exception of one, there wasn't a single drone strike for over two months. The day after he was released, 40 tribal elders at a peace jirga were incinerated by a drone strike by the Americans to show who is boss. The timing in other words was quite deliberate.

In other words, drone strikes are not the function of an immediate threat or even a perception of it. They are timed very deliberately and the timing is contingent on the politics between the two countries. That renders the whole argument that these strikes are driven with the sole motive of striking 'terrorists' an outright lie.


Obama is a war criminal. Nothing more nothing less.
 
CIA is the new KGB and Obama is the new Stalin!
 
and what is pakistan??????? 20 bill doll of aid in last 8 yrss...

remember aids come with string attached, but for pakistan they came with drones and missiles.

A comment which one can expect from a simpleton. By giving "aid" which is really $$ given to our leaders to be bribed to bend over and obey, entitles them to send drones and kill innocent civilians? What the hell are you on about? Please when commenting on PDF engage brain before posting. The Americans are intensifying the drone attacks to put more and more pressure on Pakistan to allow them to dictate their policies and mindset.
 
Even before taking over as a president, Obama as a Senator supported Unilateral Missile Strikes in Pakistan, Until Paksitan takes action against al-qaeda and taliban militants holed up in North waziristan, US has got every right to strike there.
 
Obama has killed people for doing morning exercises
Obama has killed a family of innocents - knowingly
Obama has killed an American citizen - knowingly.
Obama has bombed funerals, weddings, mosques, tribal courts, schools and houses.
 
Obama has killed people for doing morning exercises
Obama has killed a family of innocents - knowingly
Obama has killed an American citizen - knowingly.
Obama has bombed funerals, weddings, mosques, tribal courts, schools and houses.

Signs of Frustration.
 
Signs of Frustration.

by saying the truth he shows signs of frustration?
Perhaps the frustration is with the fact that the Americans seem to have 1 rule for themselves and another for the rest of the world. One is agitated with innocent people losing their lives because of this war criminal. I think the drone attacks are the signs of a frustrated nation behaving like a spoilt fat child not getting his way.
 
“If you are creating 10 more targets for every target you take, are you doing a service or a disservice to your eventual goal of winning the war?” Khar asked.
 
by saying the truth he shows signs of frustration?
Perhaps the frustration is with the fact that the Americans seem to have 1 rule for themselves and another for the rest of the world. One is agitated with innocent people losing their lives because of this war criminal. I think the drone attacks are the signs of a frustrated nation behaving like a spoilt fat child not getting his way.


If Obama is a war criminal, When your ISI and Pakistani Government and Military has killed thousands of people in Indian Kashmir are they not war criminals? Allowing Criminals like Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, Syed Sallaudin to roam freely? at least america is behaving like a spoilt child, But pakistan is behaving like a crying child, Either they are able to stop drone attacks or able to corner United States diplomatically.

“If you are creating 10 more targets for every target you take, are you doing a service or a disservice to your eventual goal of winning the war?” Khar asked.

Does the same apply to Pakistan Airforce also?
 
If Obama is a war criminal, When your ISI and Pakistani Government and Military has killed thousands of people in Indian Kashmir are they not war criminals? Allowing Criminals like Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, Syed Sallaudin to roam freely? at least america is behaving like a spoilt child, But pakistan is behaving like a crying child, Either they are able to stop drone attacks or able to corner United States diplomatically.

Look at the title and look at your post - This thread is not about Kashmir. Why are you trying to derail this thread? Why cant you say something about the topic? History will show that Obama will be treated as a war criminal and will be remembered in the killing of 100s of innocent people. The bombing of mosques and weddings - shows me that this guy is an "international thug".
 
He doesn't seem to have a choice. Pakistan can't take any actions on terrorists even after taking billions of dollars for the purpose of killing terrorists.

Obama will have to rely on drones and unilateral strikes only. Though it kills innocent sometimes which is sad, but there is no way out.
 
Please provide us the links that US drones has targeted mosques and Wedding ceremonies? b) Collateral damage caused due to drones is very low when compared to the strikes of Pakistan airforce. When you can underline US media which is against drones, I can also underline Pakistan media which supports drone strikes, I have posted a link above a article from daily times, C) Further nor your Government or any media has access to Tribal areas of Pakistan. After every attack militants cordon off the area and conduct funerals for the dead. Drone attacks has killed many top al-qaeda and taliban commanders. Can you mention any one prominent militant commander who has been killed by Pakistan Airforce?
 
He doesn't seem to have a choice. Pakistan can't take any actions on terrorists even after taking billions of dollars for the purpose of killing terrorists.

Obama will have to rely on drones and unilateral strikes only. Though it kills innocent sometimes which is sad, but there is no way out.

Please read the article again. The increase of drone attacks is down to the breakdown of the US -Pakistan relationship. They are simply being used as a tool to put pressure on the Pakistanis. In fact in his desperation to justify the loss of innocent people Obama has redefined what a legitimate target is. Talk about changing the goalposts.
To say Pakistan isnt taking steps on terrorists is unfair. I have repeated frequently no nation has lost so many lives in the WOT and no nation has sacrificed so much. Even the Americans were saying this 6 months ago - suddenly due to the Pakistanis not jumping and obeying the stars and stripes they have now been branded as "not taking action"? - Come come wake up and spell the coffee E Pencho..
 
What action has Pakistan taken against Taliban factions of Mullah Nazir, Haqqani Network, Hafiz gul bahadur, Uzbek Militants and Al-qaeda militants? US does'nt have any choice but to go after these militant networks via drone strikes.

Pakistan has is not ready to go after militants holed up in North Waziristan, Further from media reports ISI also provides Intelligence to United States regarding drone attacks, If there are any civilian Casualties ISI is equally responsible. Further some pakistan members in the forum have also commented that drones have to given to pakistan, so that pakistan will take action against these networks, In my opinion pakistan will not take any action, United States Provided Pakistan with new F-16 fighter jets and up graded the existing vintage F-16s but pakistan has used them only against TTP.
 
Please read the article again. The increase of drone attacks is down to the breakdown of the US -Pakistan relationship. They are simply being used as a tool to put pressure on the Pakistanis.
Pressure to do what now?
To say Pakistan isnt taking steps on terrorists is unfair. I have repeated frequently no nation has lost so many lives in the WOT and no nation has sacrificed so much. Even the Americans were saying this 6 months ago - suddenly due to the Pakistanis not jumping and obeying the stars and stripes they have now been branded as "not taking action"? - Come come wake up and spell the coffee E Pencho..
Actually its about a year ago when OBL was found living comfortably near military academy. I'm assuming that Pakistan did not hide him. It just shows that Paks is not capable of getting rid of terrorists. Hence the drones and unilateral strike on Paks is required.

We're back to square one now. Obama doesn't seem to have a choice.
 
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