our death merchant in cairo

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I thought I'd completely dropped the urge to comment on the outrage of the Cairo address, and stop bothering to read the compendiums of commentary upon it, because it's just STUPID to listen to Obama, and vital to watch what he DOES, but the end of Pilger's bit broke my skim mode and I thought it was worth sharing.

Naturally, unlike George W Bush, Obama did not say that “you’re either with us or against us”. He smiled the smile and uttered “many eloquent mood-music paragraphs and a smattering of quotations from the Holy Quran”, noted the American international lawyer John Whitbeck. Beyond this, Obama offered no change, no plan, only a “tired, morally bankrupt American mantra [which] essentially argues that only the rich, the strong, the oppressors and the enforcers of injustice (notably the Americans and Israelis) have the right to use violence, while the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the victims of oppression must... submit to their fate and accept whatever crumbs their betters may magnanimously deign suitable to let fall from their table”. And he offered not the slightest recognition that the world’s most numerous victims of terrorism are people of Muslim faith – a terrorism of western origin that dares not speak its name.

In his “reaching out” in Cairo, as in his “anti-nuclear” speech in Berlin, as in the “hope” he spun at his inauguration, this clever young politician is playing the part for which he was drafted and promoted. This is to present a benign, seductive, even celebrity face to American power, which can then proceed towards its strategic goal of dominance, regardless of the wishes of the rest of humanity and the rights and lives of our children.

Maybe I should add that he should be prevented from doing what he does, as well as from speaking as he does, that he is taking the role of front man for the Empire of Oligarchy too seriously, and completely abdicating his oath of office, and this should be remedied with all speed.