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 .... We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.
Wright's main point is backed by intelligence community members past an present. In his book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, one of three-part series, Johnson details the causes of "blowback," a term coined by the CIA to denote the unintended consequences of "economic colonialism" policies.Professor Johnson, a former cold war hawk and consultant to the CIA, writes:
The evidence is building up that in the decade following the end of the Cold War, the United States largely abandoned a reliance on diplomacy, economic aid, international law, and multilateral institutions in carrying out its foreign policies and resorted much of the time to bluster, military force, and financial manipulation... The world is not a safer place as a result.
This is a point I made in a brief essay, Four Phases of US Monetary Influence, which outlines how the decline of US monetary power has been mirrored by increasingly coercive foreign policy measures.
Obama needs to say he understands that the thrust of what Wright and others are saying is an honest and necessary assessment of the past policies of the United States government. Obama can do so by pointing out that the government has, at times, been captured by elite powers that use the executive branch for their narrow self interests. In doing so, Obama would further the message that his presidency would reclaim the government from the hands of those corrupting elite powers.
Sources:
Associated Press, Obama denounces pastor's 9/11 comments, NEDRA PICKLER, March 15, 2008.
2 comments:
You are so Wright. I am so ashamed of being an American. Why we should be flogged. Nuked. We are the maggots of the world...I'm singing God damn America as I type. Makes you wonder why everyone wants to become an American.
The US has the potential to be positive force in the world. The people need to assert their authority, then we won't need to be ashamed. We can't look to Obama and the establishment to make that happen.
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