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The Forum > Article Comments > The really right answer about Obama > Comments

The really right answer about Obama : Comments

By Helen Pringle, published 3/11/2008

Colin Powell's recent endorsement of Barack Obama was because of what was said, and permitted to be said, about Obama's religion.

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So Powell voices support for Obama in a corrupt circus run to prop up a facade of sovereignty for a state that has been sacked by neo-lib, free-trade rats. Ho hum. The Powell publicity is just another pole to the campaign's populist button-pushing, emphasizing again how distracting and dirty its manipulations around the fake issues of "race" and religion.

Powell backed a massive war crime by lying to the UN; he knows it and so do most of his former colleagues. Maybe he would have met some nasty fatal "accident" or even fit-up if he refused to back the Iraq War, but his action there was still criminal and cowardly. With supporters like that...of course Obama has talked up bigger pushes for the Afghanistan venture and its de facto supervision of opium production, as well as some vicious and hostile slime against Iran.

So, some Muslims have fought and died for imperialism - tell us something we don't know. May as well mention that even the Third Reich had some more-or-less loyal Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and even Jews (not to forget Christians) on its payroll of armed trusties. Of course, such religious affiliations tell us next to nothing about the crimes committed or the overriding ideology that inspired such crimes.

It is grossly misleading to so simplistically equate the term "patriotism" with any participation in or support for the Iraq War (like that of imperialist World War I misadventures last century).

It wouldn't surprise me if the author got a Fullbright Fellowship or something for such irrelevant and ephemeral fluff.
Posted by mil-observer, Monday, 3 November 2008 10:33:13 AM
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Being a little bit harsh, there Mil-observer? Yes indeed an article such as this may seem completely reductionist to people of acumen.
However, there are, unarguably, some somewhat simpler and less sophisticated souls who do indeed equate the word Muslim with Terrorist - to which thousands of words on this very site stand testament.
Posted by Romany, Monday, 3 November 2008 10:53:30 AM
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Not often we agree Mil-Observer but I found Powell's endorsement laughable for Powell still supports the claims of WMD, that the Iraq war was the thing to do, and that the surge was appropriate and worked. How different is that to the man he's endorsing.

Powell is a Washington insider as well.

I really laughed out loud when I heard Obama's acceptance of Powell's endorsement. An honourable man would have rejected it ... and his supporters would have cheered instead of remaining silent.
Posted by keith, Monday, 3 November 2008 12:13:47 PM
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Colin Powell came through the ranks of the military, "The Army thinks for you".
Sadly for him he forgot this when he entered politics as a new boy, and found himself a prostitue to neo conservative ideology. Sad!
Posted by Kipp, Monday, 3 November 2008 5:26:14 PM
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But Kipp, there have been countless letters of protest, including resignations, from senior US Army and US Marine Corps officers against the neo-cons' flagrant abuses and insults against their sacrifices and commitment. Even the service newspapers have registered such dissent, though the mainstream media both in the US and overseas have avoided mentioning these extraordinary facts.

I think you apply a particularly unfair stereotype to the US military there: Powell seems more the type of ticket-punching political officer who would have his political network doing the thinking for him. Naturally such an officer ended up sliding into a high-level at the State Department: the same processes happen in Oz, all to the horror of more military officers.

The contrast of Powell with 'Nisei' general Shinseki could not be starker - Shinseki, of course, ran into a career dead end after maintaining his own professional commitment against Cheney's and Rumsfeld's mayhem strategies on Iraq.
Posted by mil-observer, Monday, 3 November 2008 6:54:22 PM
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There is one reason and one reason only why Powell is supporting Obama. It’s purely racist. Powell is black and so is Obama.

At Obama rallies there are heaps of white supporters in the audience, at McCain rallies there is not one black person.

It would seem the blacks are the more racist.
Posted by sharkfin, Monday, 3 November 2008 9:43:09 PM
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Give the Blacks a go, Sharkfin, just imagine yourself a black, would you not be the same?

Certainly for future America, an elected Obama would be spot on - just the right time, with us whites making such a mess of things.

Finally, as far as our own Aborigines are concerned, even before they were given the vote, they should have been allowed permanent non-vote represention in every elected Australia-wide government as with Maoris in New Zealand.

And certainly American Indians should have similar representation in the US, as Indians have in Canada.

Reckon you've still got a lot to learn, matey.

Cheers, BB, WA.
Posted by bushbred, Tuesday, 4 November 2008 10:25:58 AM
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I say it once more for emphasis: "The Powell publicity is just another pole to the campaign's populist button-pushing, emphasizing again how distracting and dirty its manipulations around the fake issues of "race" and religion."

So sharkfin actually takes the bait put out over the bogus "race election". It's a bit apt to recall the recent interception of "future crime" involving some outlandish neo-Nazi assassination-cum-decapitation plot, which probably amounted to some swaggering fascist kids' beer talk in a pub.

Whether from fear, guilt, racism or plain old gullibility and a corrupt media, white and black (and other) Americans are being manipulated over this race card, just as we are.

That's not to dismiss the very real potential for oligarchs to stir the pot with a real assassination if they fear that Obama (like a Noriega or Saddam Hussein) realizes he's just being used, and that money from the likes of Soros comes with thick, prickly strings attached!
Posted by mil-observer, Tuesday, 4 November 2008 4:14:09 PM
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I did not mean this article to be an apology for General Powell, or for his actions in regard to Iraq or any other war. I did not criticise his complicity in the war on Iraq simply because this article is not about Powell. The article is critical of his blindness up to now about Muslims, but I'd be very happy to go on a more extended anti-Powell rant in some other place, especially if it accomplished something useful.

I am only too well aware of the death machine that is imperialism, and I should have thought that my mention of Alexander Love might hint at that. But I would suggest that there are many people who (wilfully or ignorantly) don't know of the sacrifice of "some Muslims" ("some"? I give an indication of the numbers in the article, and it ain't "some"). My point does not concern the worth of the cause, but the extent of the sacrifice – and how it is unacknowledged, still. But I hadn't reckoned on how that sacrifice is so shamefully disrespected by even those who acknowledge it, such as Commenter No 1.

As for the comment that blacks are racist because there are so few of them at McCain/Palin rallies: their absence says more about the Republican Party than it does about black Americans.

Helen Pringle
Posted by isabelberners, Tuesday, 4 November 2008 5:31:04 PM
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No names no pack drill, so must only suggest that a couple of the above threads do give opinions not totally against Islam.

So even if proven that Obama is part Moslem, isn't it about time we adopted simply what is hinted at in the Sermon on the Mount, which in modern thought, simply means sharing the blame with our so-called enemies -

because nine times out of ten, it is usually right, as Mubarek of Egypt only mentioned a year or two ago that the main problem in the Middle East is not so much Islam, but simply Western intrusion and injustice.

Th point is are we too blind to see, or is it that we are so full of ourselves as whities rather than coloured we believe we have the God-Given right to close our minds.
Posted by bushbred, Tuesday, 4 November 2008 7:00:04 PM
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"According to Powell, the “really right answer” to such claims about Obama is: “What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?”"

Imagine the outcry if McCain had given that answer rather then the one he did give? My guess is that he would then have been accused of promoting the idea that Obama is muslim.

Either that or it could have overtones of the the Seinfield "Not that there's anything wrong with that" line.

There may be a perfect answer, perhaps McCain could have done better, there are legitimate things to criticise McCain over but to endorse and opponent on the basis of that response does not ring right.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Tuesday, 4 November 2008 7:27:12 PM
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Seems the author tries to displace my target onto some other irrelevancy. My actual “disrespect” is implicit only, and only for the presumptions and pomposities of such institutions as Fulbright; the rest is criticism for her commentary's distracting, “small picture” perspective. Instead – by her cheap, sophist tactic - I am supposed to have insulted Muslims killed in military service for imperialism, as if I defaced “some/many/most” of the Islamic headstones in western war cemeteries! Imagine: we're meant to conclude that the British-officered Arab Legion troops sang 'Rule Brittania' and 'Land of Hope and Tory'! For even more emotive protection against criticism, why not wrap herself in a flag, grasp totems and amulets, or bedeck herself with church icons and mosque calligraphy?

Thus does she join exactly the same superficial distraction and nasty divisiveness over “race” and religion as has numbed us throughout these very heavily manipulated Democrat primaries and presidential election campaigns. Criticise corruption, or even identify manipulation over race itself, and find yourself slapped with a gag of “racist” in some form or other (“cemetery vandal” is a new one though). No prizes for guessing how such petulance and pseudo anti-racism would label anyone addressing the motives and strategies of Obama's immediate sugar daddy George Soros.

R0bert's response identifies the Obama-McCain race-religion card for the discursive cul-de-sac that it is; such vacuous commentary as the article's only offers slight variation on the same cliched theme. The worst aspect of distraction in such pseudo-dissent is its avoidance of the elephantine issue in the US election: sanctified corruption and the financiers' virtual dictatorship via bail outs.
Posted by mil-observer, Tuesday, 4 November 2008 9:18:44 PM
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