Ah....Mwalimu Ken Harrow, your optimism is misplaced. Washington does not call BOZO Obama "The George W. Bush On Steroids" for nothing. He has emerged as the most warmongering POTUS in our American history. He has added five more wars to the two he inherited from Bush. And as for his ultra-militarization of Afrika, which is preparing the armies to start their wholesale coup d'etats again, read my essay titled "The War on Terror in the African Theatre: George W. Bush Started It, Barack Obama Parlays and Exacerbates It." Also, read my "The Arab Spring: An Epitome of Western Political Machinations."
> [Original Message]
> From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
> To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
> Date: 5/25/2013 5:37:14 AM
> Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - obama's speech
>
> ending a real war is no easy thing; it involves negotiations, efforts to
> acquire strong positions from which to negotiate, hatreds and mistrust
> built from the years of propaganda needed to mobilize the popular; anger
> of those who lost family members, were victimized by the enemy, etc etc
> ending a "war," a so-called war, a fabricated war, fabricated so as to
> serve the right-wing ideological aspirations of a conservative party
> that had no clear enemy on which to focus its venom and around which to
> mobilize the basest instincts of the populace, has proven to be near
> impossible.
> i was desperately disappointed in obama's seemingly thoughtless
> continuation of bush's phony war, and of the politics that brushed aside
> human rights. human rights mean, fundamentally, respect for the person,
> the underlying basis of a decent society. we lost that with torture,
> rendition, guantanemo, drone attacks, and maybe worst of all, a mindset
> of arrogant self-righteousness that found the vocabulary to turn the
> "enemy" into non-persons by labeling them "terrorists."
> what a nightmare that that word has become common coin now everywhere,
> from china to mali to you-name-it. not only combatants, but enemy
> combatants, without rights-terrorists--who are no longer deemed to
> possess any rights, much less common humanity.
>
> obama has started to turn that monstrous vessel, the "war on terrorism"
> around. after all, if a pseudo-war can be declared, a pseudo-war can be
> declared ended. and if its end isn't, and can't be negotiated since
> there is no one to negotiate with, no unified constituted enemy, only
> the amorphous hatred of vast swathes of people, then whose to say that
> the war itself isn't over.
> if madeleine albright has the temerity to say that it wasn't genocide in
> rwanda, just "acts of genocide" which didn't merit outside intervention,
> then obama can say that attacks like the boston marathon bombing, are
> "acts of terrorism" without them being battles in a war; he can stop
> bombing people whose enmity hasn't been determined in a legal framework,
> can stop assassinating people and anyone around them; can start to
> release people imprisoned for "crimes" that were never judged to be such
> in a court of law, people guilty before being proven innocent.
>
> let's face it, we have an important moment to celebrate. cautiously,
> since rightwing hawks will try to build public sentiment against this,
> unscrupulously fanning flames of hatred and ignorance whenever they can,
> from bengazi to kabul, with not a clue about how to halt opposition to
> the u.s. except by the use of force, the misuse of force--barely hiding
> their desire for the one really imperial flaw in the u.s., the desire
> for hegemony.
>
> i'd love to hear the voices of our own gloria emeagwali or moses ochunu
> speak up for this change in policy. we have been lost in this dreadful
> course set in motion by bush at 9/11. maybe the dark night will begin to
> come to an end with obama's move. finally, an intelligent and courageous
> moment.
> ken
>
> --
> kenneth w. harrow
> faculty excellence advocate
> distinguished professor of english
> michigan state university
> department of english
> 619 red cedar road
> room C-614 wells hall
> east lansing, mi 48824
> ph. 517 803 8839
> harrow@msu.edu
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
> For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
> For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
> To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
> unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>