Obama: the dark face of America’s weakness and wickedness

By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli:

Dr Kamal Mirawdeli

On Obama’s track record, presidential debates, Evil-Mind, PKK, Super-Storm Sandy and Super-Man.

Human beings love to hope and in particular to share in the euphoria of optimism when this becomes a possible spectre, however illusionary it may seem. Following the Bush years, catastrophes of Iraq and Afghanistan followed by the global collapse of the financial capitalist system, Obama’s message and promise of change satisfied a deep spiritual need of people, not just in America, but also around the globe. Hence the instinctive warmth with which the world received his mission of hope and change in 2008.

A phenomenon

Obama appeared as a phenomenon as far as his own mode of existence was concerned. He was highly intellectual, profusely versed in history, broadly aware of the global issues of his time and consciously sensitive about his own symbolism, role and prospects. He was a family man, a community leader and a global politician at the same time: a man of history and a visionary.  He had good looks. He was white, black and coloured. His name was African, American, and Asian.  The name Obama was onomatopoetic sounding like ‘Hopama’. His history was multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. His religion was Christian and Islamic. He was above all very intellectual and articulate. He could shrewdly and strongly exploit and operate all these unique biographical elements and personal qualities in his American political discourse. He could claim that he was the product of the American dream and the profound proof that this dream has been inclusive, democratic, outreaching. In short he was a man that best responded to the age of America’s external decline and internal decay evidenced by the failure of the Bush project in Iraq and Afghanistan and the internal collapse of the capitalist system and its financial institutions. The American Establishment could not find a better agent to represent America in the time of its imperialist fatigue, ideological faintness and economic failure.

But, once elected, this unique subjective mode of Obama was of course conditioned and controlled by his space of existence as the chief executive of the American capitalist system and the manager of its complicated web of relations, interests and changing historical modalities.  Obliged by the necessity of this role, Obama soon became an Americo-centred leader with the international issues of the world being reduced in his diplomatic design to those directly affecting the US interests, prejudices and aggressive we/they ideology. The wider world of hope to which billions of unhappy souls around the world aspired receded in his calculations to a discourse of hypocrisy and a design of incredible cruelty and inhumanity.

Hopama

When Obama was first elected as the President of the strongest country on the earth, I wrote a humble poem entitled ‘Hopama’.

As the title suggests, it was inspired more by the audacity of his message of hope than by the elation of his election. This latter is about a vacancy that must be occupied one way or another by whomever the coincidences of fate, human will, political game and history conspire to crown, but the world at this specific conjuncture needed a new voice, a new face, a new message of hope. Obama’s persona and language delivered it. And his language was, and has been, simple and straightforward. It sounded of sincerity.  But of course I was, and always had been, aware of the fact that hope and illusion are cousins or even twins.   I knew that his message could be no more than an illusion but still it was needed: to give us something we share after so many things that have been dividing us throughout history. A unifying, inspiring illusion is a better respite than a depressing heart-wrenching reality. What a beautiful world of illusion the gift of words and his skill of oration as the head of the strongest power on earth offered us.  In my poem I wrote:
Maybe it is just an illusion
But we share it with exhilaration
And soon we know, what we have become
A new nation
Let us be fully awake and dream
Let us be bright and beam
All things cannot be what they seem
But we dream
And toll the death knell of Yesterday’s nightmares
And defeat our ´finite despair´ with our ´infinite hope´.
Our ´No way´ with “Yes, we can´´
Yes we can: you and me

Of course it was/is important that this message comes from an African-American with Muslim and Christian background. This was/is another ingredient of the illusion: its symbolic universality:

Coming all the way up from the deep dark recesses of history
Like a bursting summer stream
The Black Solomon has come the jungle safe and sound
Tamed the lions, tigers, wolves, snakes, and the white eagle,
Speaking a universal language understood by the dead and the living,
By humans and animals and birds and flowers and green grass and streams and rivers and oceans and skies and children dreaming of bread and water and words
Language so universally shared is heard by God too

Yes, humanity is simple. In spite of our mortality and the long history of rationalism going back to Zoroaster and Aristotle, we often feel happy and relaxed to participate in a historical moment of delusion we can all share. We can all respond to the cry of hope and the promise of change for better especially when the times are tough, realities and ruthless, horizons are horrid. Dreaming is a universal expression of our unique human soul. We share our primordial myths in whatever hidden corners of this petty planet they had grown. No one wants to reject the invitation to share a big dream especially if carries the promise of change for the dispossessed and the oppressed.

Track record   

But, four short-long years on, what are the outcomes? In his final debate on foreign policy and issues Obama said:

“And they can look at my track record, whether it’s Iran sanctions, whether it’s dealing with counterterrorism, whether it’s supporting democracy, whether it’s supporting women’s rights, whether it’s supporting religious minorities. And they can say that the President of the United States and the United States of America has stood on the right side of history.”

‘On the right side of history’, this is a favourite expression of Obama when he describes his foreign policy and military interventions.  Let us have a quick glance at his record to see what ‘right side of history’ he has been on?

Supporting Turkish fascism

It seems like ages ago now when Obama visited Turkey in April 2009, he walked all the way to have ‘the privilege of visiting the tomb of the great founder of  [the Turkish] Republic… a man who did so much to shape the course of history’ as he described him in his speech. Obama reasserted America’s friendship with Turkey: “a friendship that flourished in the years after World War II, when President Truman committed our nation to the defense of Turkey’s freedom and sovereignty, and Turkey committed itself to the NATO alliance.”

Yes, Kamal Ataturk was a great leader, in terms of politics of power, a sort of politics that sacrifices morality, humanity and truth, shapes the course of history by practising tyranny against the helpless, reciprocates good-will and kindness with abuse and treachery.  Ataturk built the new artificial Turkish state out of the flesh of the Kurds and the blood and the skulls of the Armenians. But what made the lie of Turkish democracy possible was the deep-structured lethal hypocrisy at the heart of Western civilization’s thinking and constructing of the other.  But who paid for this friendship a term of which was, has been and is, to deny the very existence of 20 million people.

Armenians never were and there was no genocide. Kurds and other minorities do not exist.  Happy he is, who says he is a Turk. This policy is hundred times worse that what the notorious South African apartheid system used to be. Yet, it is, for the US and the West, and has been an example, a successful model, an achievement of democracy. Where is the idea of natural rights and natural law, the principles of the French Revolution, the values of American Constitution, any element of respect of human rights, the right to be, in all this?

Turkish democracy

Obama visited Turkey within his first 100 days in office. He visited Turkey for being a Muslim state and he praised her for being a democracy. This was and has been proved since, a dual naked hypocrisy. Turkey, for the Kurds, has never been a democracy but has always been a demono-cracy.  Ataturk’s democracy is and has been no more than a fascist dictatorial decree excluding the majority of the original inhabitant of Asia Minor from the right to be as the God has created and endowed them, a decree which with the strike of a pen cancelled centuries of people’s heritage and civilization to replace it with the fascist state-sponsored national engineering and forced assimilation.

This experiment has been demonic, diabolical, dictatorial, aggressive, bloody and inhumane as far as our Kurdish nation has been concerned.  Turkish state’s strategy has been first to assimilate Kurdish language, folklore, culture, heritage and civilization into an imagined and ideologically constructed Turkish nation, and then use the same Turkified elements to assimilate non-Turks to the new artificial formula. This meant the operation of a police state unprecedented in any Communist and fascist states before and after, decades of martial law, military coups, suppression of free speech and political repression in Kurdistan. Turkish state oppression in Kurdistan has been the denial not only of the very basic human rights but also the right of having a name, naming a name, keeping a divine name whether of people, plants, parrots, rivers, roses, mountains, of children’s or chickens, of festivals or fires, of cats or colours.

This is the democracy that the West has for 90 years portrayed and projected as the best of both worlds. It is a democracy that has eliminated two million Armenian and Kurdish peoples and continues to deny genocide of Armenians and enslave twenty million Kurdish people. This is Obama’s ideal picture of democracy and the peoples of Afghanistan. Iraq, Baluchistan and Kurdistan, and now Libya, Yemen and Syria, do not need to use their wits to understand the nature of the America and the West’s democratic message. They live it daily.  It means daily practices of corruption, cruelty and criminality, of endless exploitation, murder and destruction.

Absolute truth versus absolute falsehood

Democracy cannot exist in three forms: democracy, hypocrisy and demonocrcay. Truth cannot have a form and language in Washington and London, and another quite opposite form and tongue in Istanbul, Kabul and Kurdistan. Truth, one single perfect concept of truth, standing in absolute complete diametrical opposition to lie and falsehood is what the Zoroastrian thought introduced to the world of humanity thousands of years ago proving that man cannot achieve reason, happiness and harmony with himself, his world and universe and set up a system of justice unless he holds high the ideal of truth and goodness, unless he first firmly gives up duplicity in the unity of thinking-saying-acting.

Zoroaster’s ideal of goodness Ahura Mazda (God Wisdom) opposes Angra Mainyu, (Evil Mind) the personification of evil in all his thoughts, words and deeds. Mazda (wisdom) epitomizes everything that is life-affirming and creative, and all activities that foster truth, hope and beauty, the benign ordering of life and a pastoral care of the earth and its creatures. In contrast, Evil Mind represents destruction, untruth and bloodshed, and the aggressive hypocritical thought-pattern and life-pattern of the despots, dictators, exploiters, abusers and immoral hypocrites.

“In the beginning of existence, the Ahura Mazda spoke to him who is Evil: ‘neither our thoughts nor our teachings, nor our wills nor our choices, nor our words, nor our deeds, nor our convictions, nor yet our souls agree.’ ”

In spite of that Zoroaster’s teachings never shut the door of dialogue and opportunity to the forces of evil to change and choose goodness, to repent and get rid of evil in their words, hearts and minds. For Zoroaster believes in the power of good, truth, love and beauty, to change humans to better and make them more perfect, peaceful and just and to make life beautiful and joyful for everyone. These are not ideals. They are the energy of our existence and the forces of our happiness. And this force starts from thinking. Only when we educate and correct our way of thinking about ourselves, others and the world, about life, wealth and happiness, about war and peace, then we can produce harmony, justice, beauty, truth and goodness in our words and deeds. Imagine to what extent one can be evil if he thinks, (and then says and acts accordingly) that his own freedom depends on denying the freedom of others, his own prosperity necessitates creating misery and pain for others, his very existence depends on eliminating others, his truth lies in constant lies with himself and others?

The ‘right side of history’

Unfortunately this pattern of hypocritical thought is what exactly has defined Obama’s and the US’s foreign policy and practice.

Both Obama and Romney base their policies on military strength, tribal revenge, war and killing capability. The empty claims of principles, of human rights, democracy and respect for human life and dignity are no more than shameful lies and pretensions. The ‘drone’ killings in Afghanistan and Waziristan, the killing fields in Iraq, Libya and Syria all testify to absolute hypocrisy and criminality. What kind of freedom and liberation is it as we have seen in Iraq, Libya and now in Syria, when the same people who have lived together for ages are incited, armed and aided to kill each other, to eliminate their own neighbours, friends and families; to destroy their own homes, streets, cities and civilization in the name of liberation while merchants of arms industry and blood make billions out of their tragedy and while their oil and resources are plundered by foreigners, and corrupt agents with no roots in their communities are imposed on them in the name of democracy?  Do the Western leaders accept the same logic and process if it happens in any Western country? Now people in many European countries as the result of capitalist exploitation and cruel austerity measures want a new economic order. Is it right if a foreign country arms them to kill each other in the name of changing the system?

Everyday hundreds are killed in Syria, the historical cities are destroyed, more than a million people are uprooted, a generation of children are traumatized, and it is going on and on; yet Obama has audacity to say:

“We are mobilizing humanitarian support, and support for the opposition. And we are making sure that those we help are those who will be friends of ours in the long term and friends of our allies in the region over the long term.”

And Romney calls for further arming the jihadists and conflicting groups to intensify the spiral of murder, blood and destruction instead of calling for peace and prevention of further bloodshed and destruction?

And on Libya Obama shows that America was more motivated by self-interest and the tribal instinct of revenge than any consideration of human rights and freedom:

“ But going back to Libya — because this is an example of how we make choices.  We also had to make sure that Moammar Gadhafi didn’t stay there. Moammar Gadhafi had more American blood on his hands than any individual other than Osama bin Laden. And so we were going to make sure that we finished the job. “

Obama has no qualms about the disgusting, brutal manner by which Qadhafi was murdered. But has the job been finished for the Libyan people when at this very moment the people of Bani Walid, just because they belong to a pro-Qadhafi tribe, are subjected to daily massacres amounting to genocide?

Obama’s emphasis is on brutal military power, power to pursue, decimate and murder without any consideration for human compassion, morality, legality, international law and the lives of thousands of innocent people.  On America’s military power he said: “Now, keep in mind that our military spending has gone up every single year that I’ve been in office. We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined; China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, you name it. “

On the wrong side of morality

Sorry Mr. President, you have not been on the right side of history but on the wrong side of morality.

You mention in an earlier speech Visions of America, delivered on 8 November 2008:

“Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Then as an example of the possibilities provided by these ideals you say:

“My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or “blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.”

Did you, have you ever truly believe in the idea that ‘all men are equal”?  Did you ever consider the fact that your African name, Asian background, Islamic second name, black colour, did not prevent your ascendancy to the highest position in the US power pyramid, should morally oblige you at least not to plan and participate in the hideous crimes of depriving other nations, minorities and human beings from the right to choose a name, to speak their language, to use their own language to call the flowers by their native names, to use their own letters to write the names of their children? Isn’t it a most abhorrent crime in the 21st century, in the age of IT revolution and globalization of knowledge and communication, that defenders are prevented from using their language for defending themselves in courts?

Do you know that the letters: w, q, or x are not allowed in children’s names in Turkey because they exist in Kurdish language but do not exist in Turkish language?

Obama’s Kurdish policy

The language in which the above noble Zoroastrian system of ideas is written is an old Kurdish one which is not much different from the Kurdish of today. Yet, we are in the 21st century now, and Turkey denies that there is a Kurdish language. Defendants are punished for saying ‘yes’ in Kurdish. Children are imprisoned for asking to study in their mother tongue. Legislators are put in jail for years for using Kurdish to swear their allegiance to the Turkish state. Elected representatives of people in Kurdish regions, democratically elected according to the very laws of the Turkish state, are arrested, persecuted, tried and punished en masse for expressing their Kurdish identity. Kurds in Turkey want the Turkish democracy if exists to be inclusive, to embrace all ethnic, religious and social sections of society: To be democracy before being Turkish and to be Turkish in the sense of the universal constitutionally and legally established rights of citizenship. There is no Turkish democracy, British democracy, or French democracy. This is another Evil-Minded device of confusing between truth and lie, transparency and transgression, justice and tyranny. Democracy is about embracing difference and diversity including ethnicity and language, or it is no democracy at all.

For Kurds Turkish democracy as I mentioned earlier has been demonocracy, Ahriamnian evil based on lie, assimilation and repression. Turkish ‘democratic’ national and regional elections have been demonic traps to attract the politically-conscious leaders of Kurdish community to participate in the political process. Once they do this, are elected and practise their democratic duties to represent their Kurdish constituencies, they are harassed, persecuted, pressurized and eventually arrested en mass, tried (without the right to say ‘Yes, I am here’ in Kurdish) and imprisoned for expressing their Kurdishness in line with the existential (divine) realities of their electors and supporters. Then the Kurds have to wait one or two more decades to create political leaders who would represent them only to be persecuted, marginalized and jailed again.

Rights of women

Obama talks of the right of women and minorities.  Ask Afghani women, Pakistani women and Iraqi women what America has done for women’s rights. Ask millions of widows and orphans.  Ask the Christians of Iraq and ‘Alawites of Turkey.  The West’s criminal hypocrisy may lead to the decimation of uprooting of the Christians and minorities in Syria too. Ask Kurdish women. The Kurdish woman leader Layla Zana, who for Kurds has offered no less sacrifice and brave leadership as Nelson Mandela did for the Africans, was imprisoned for 10 year years for taking her parliamentary oath in Kurdish after she was elected for parliament in 1991. This cruel punishment was because she spoke one sentence in Kurdish adding to her oath: “I take this oath for the brotherhood between the Turkish people and the Kurdish people.”  Even after her release she has never been free from continuous persecution, prosecution and harassment. Life in Turkey for her as for most of Kurdish politicians was not better than living in a larger prison. Children have been imprisoned and tortured physically and psychologically for demanding their divine right to study in Kurdish.  Kurdish women in Turkey are in the forefront of defending the lives and rights of their children and families. Many of the freedom fighters of PKK are women, yet the US administration labels them ‘terrorists’ while removing the extremist terrorist theological Iranian group Mujahideen-e Khalq MEK from its terror blacklist.

What is happening now, what is Obama doing?

Hundreds of Kurdish politicians including MPs, mayors and members of city councils, journalists, trade unionists and many other activists from the NGOs have been imprisoned by the Turkish government. Now, most of them are in hunger strike since 12 September 2012.

They have the following demands:

  1. Education in mother tongue, and use of mother tongue in defense in trials,
  2. Respect for Kurdish people’s democratic rights,
  3. Freedom for the imprisoned Kurdish People, Mr. Abdullah Öcalan.

As from 14 October totally 324 captives/prisoners are in the hunger strike without B1 vitamin. 283 of them men and 41 of them are women.  A report in the Guardian (25 October 2012) states, “ According to the Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD), there have been reports that the hunger strikers have been beaten, isolated and denied vitamin B1, salt and sugar water.

The hunger strikers are demanding Kurdish language rights in education and in court, and an end to the solitary confinement of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is imprisoned on an island.”

The Guardian quotes Koray Çaliskan of the Istanbul Bosporus University saying that the demands made by hunger strikers were not only reasonable, but legally justifiable: “If an Italian needs to go to court in Turkey, the state is legally required to provide a translator. It should be the same for Kurdish citizens. And what are Kurds supposed to do with elective Kurdish classes? Turks should take those. Kurds already know their native language and simply demand equal education rights,” he added, referring to the country’s constitution, which enforces Turkish as the sole language to be used in schools.

Kolçak said that more than 8,000 BDP politicians and activists were in jail – of whom 4,000 were arrested in 2011 under arbitrary terrorism charges – including MPs and serving Kurdish mayors.

Tanrikulu said: “The AKP made Kurds believe that they would find a solution. But the trust in the government is gone.”

What is Obama’s reaction?

If this happened in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China, etc there would be by now a deafening outcry in Western media and Western political quarters. But what is the position of Obama and Romney to promote principles of human rights, human dignity and democracy? Romney said in one of his debates that America should support those people who share ‘our values and principles”. Yet, American establishment and biased Western media label Kurds as terrorists for fighting for the most basic human, civil and democratic rights and supports Turkish brutality against civilians and masses.

Follow our civilized example: Kill them with drones

Obama proudly mentions his success in murdering Osama Bin-Laden and decimate al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan using drones and obvious illegal methods of terror, transgression, aggression, and brutal murder. Obama and American Administration justify this as an act of tribal revenge for the victims of 9/11.  But what is their justification for providing weapons, intelligence, planning and encouragement to the Turkish fascist state to kill the Kurds? Have the Kurds ever harmed or even expressed a verbal animosity towards America?  Isn’t it an act of pure Evil, Evil-Mind cruelty to plan and encourage such unjustified immorality and brutality?

On 18 October 2012:

“The US ambassador to Turkey has revealed that Washington secretly offered Ankara to have an “anti-bin Laden” type of joint operation against a number of military leaders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)”.

On Tuesday, Francis Ricciardone revealed to Turkish journalists that the US had offered Turkey its military technology to hunt down the PKK leaders. However, the Turkish government turned down the offer, saying it would continue battling with the PKK “on the basis of its laws and experiences.”

This is reportedly the second disclosed secret offer of assistance by the US.

Following this revelation U.S. Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James Winnefeld arrived in Turkey on Tuesday (23 October 2012) for a visit to discuss cooperation on combating the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). Prior to the visit, Francis Ricciardone, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, said that the United States would share with Turkey the tactics that it used in its operation against Osama Bin Laden, the slain al-Qaida terrorist, to achieve effective results in fighting the PKK.

Is there any moral, logical, political justification for this criminal attitude towards a peaceful friendless people? Obama wants Turkey to use the same brutality used by Sri Lankan army against the Tamils people but with the full support of the US and Israel.

On Obama’s watch the massacre of Tamils in Sri Lanka happened exactly at the same time when Obama was hypocritically visiting at the Buchenwald concentration camp in central Germany where more than 56,000 people perished between 1937 and 1945, to express his loyalty to Israel not his sympathy with victims.

It is proven now that just in the last weeks of the war in 2009, the Sri Lankan army massacred over 40,000 civilians. Has Obama or anyone in American Establishment ever expressed any sympathy for those victims of genocide?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeDmZFrqeG4

Kurds can burn the whole of Istanbul in one week

If the Kurds were terrorists, if they followed the Evil-Mind examples, tactics and schemes of super-powers, they could burn down the whole Istanbul in one week. If the Kurds were terrorists, if everyday a car bomb blew up women and children in crowed markets, if a road -side bomb threatened every passenger car in every road around Turkey, if the Kurds abducted and beheaded Americans, surely they would not be labelled terrorists. But, like the Taliban, they would be recognised as a genuine political force that Ankara must negotiate and compromise with.  This is the American Administration’s aim. Turkey must use drones and indulge in indiscriminate killing of Kurds the way Obama does in Afghanistan and Pakistan so that the Kurds would finally resort to lethal terrorism, eternal ethnic conflict between Kurds and Turks would materialize and PKK would qualify as a genuine political force recognized by CIA and, like the Iranian terrorist group MEK would be removed from terrorist black list!

Petty man, fragile civilization

Obama has demonstrated how petty the political man of the 21st century is. Humanity constantly faces grave dangers and challenges. The Superstorm Sandy like the Katrina before, is just another reminder how fragile human science and civilization, his life and lies, is in the face of nature, diseases and other elements threatening the brittle mode of man’s temporary station in his increasingly vulnerable world of economic decline, social unrest and moral decay.

How trivial, irrelevant and inconsistent the final debate of Obama-Romney looks in the face of Superstorm Sandy?  Ana Marie Cox writes in the Guardian Comment:  “Sandy is not just bigger than any campaign and powerful enough to banish all the feeble fantasies humans have about our relationship to the physical world.”

Obama says: “”Sometimes, politics can seem very small – but the choice you face? It couldn’t be bigger.”

But what is the Big Choice? Kill and starve more and more children around the world to maintain America’s illusive Super-Man position.  Obama can obambulate his primaries to deliver his hypocritical orations or sit in his armchair again and make jokes about Drones decimating women and children in Waziristan while attending a community weddings or mourning sessions for earlier victims; or congratulate Turkish fascists for bolstering their democracy by torturing Kurdish children or for deaths of Kurdish hunger-strikers in their many jails around Turkey.

Disappointment

Alas, Hopama has been a big disappointment but it is not his personal fault or failure. Tomorrow, like his sister Katrina, Super-Storm Sandy will be forgotten and it is business as unusual for the American Super-Sam whether he is Obama or Romney or Robot.  We have turned our planet into a paradise. It is time now to plan Space Wars.

Kamal Mirawdeli, London, 29th-30th October 2012

Copyright © 2012 Kurdistantribune.com

One Response to Obama: the dark face of America’s weakness and wickedness
  1. P
    November 1, 2012 | 16:07

    The truth has been spoken United States of America is no supporter of human rights, no supporter of human rights supports facist Turkish terror regime and labels Kurdish people terrorists to be annihilated.

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