Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Obama: Not Cool, Just Cold-Blooded
01 Feb 2012
🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The United States is waging a terroristic war against at least four nations,” but its president is somehow perceived as “cool.” Obama’s fans, the corporate media and, apparently, the commander-in-chief himself see no contradiction between coolness and international criminality. “Barack Obama has surpassed George Bush in lawlessness.” He’s “cool like Jesse James.”

Obama: Not Cool, Just Cold-Blooded

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“When the U.S. president arrogates to himself the right to bomb and kill at will, he makes himself an outlaw.”

President Obama thinks killing people around the globe with drones is as cool as singing Al Green at the Apollo. In a live Web interview, Obama assured his audience that the U.S. unmanned drone force – now thought to number in the thousands and ranging from deadly Predators and Reapers to aircraft the size of small birds – was “kept on a very tight leash.” So, here we have a secret weapons program that violates other countries’ airspace and kills their citizens at will – and even kills American citizens without charge or trial – and Obama thinks that all he is obligated to do is give assurances that the weapons are on a “tight leash.”

The issue is not whether the American commander-in-chief has made sure that the drones are under his control, but that the United States is waging a terroristic war against at least four nations – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and possibly more – with not the slightest justification under international law.

The people of Iraq, who know a great deal about the effects of drones, are trying to figure out what their sovereignty and independence actually means when the U.S. State Department can fly drones above their cities as a safeguard to U.S. diplomatic installations. The question raised by Iraqis is not, Does Obama have those drones under tight controls, but Why is a foreign power, whose military was supposed to have left Iraq, flying aircraft in their skies? A New York Times article on Monday reported that the Iraqis’ were angry. But Obama dismissed their complaints as much ado about nothing; the article, he said was “a little bit overwritten.” I suppose Obama thinks he’s being cool, like breaking briefly into song at a Harlem fundraiser. But there is nothing cool about violating the territorial integrity of other countries – including nations like Iraq that Obama constantly describes as a U.S. ally.

“Obama apparently thought it was cool to stick a knife up Col. Gaddafi’s butt.”

Obama was too cool to let the U.S. Congress sweat him over the six-month aerial war waged by the United States and its NATO allies against the sovereign nation of Libya, at the conclusion of which Libya’s leader was murdered by U.S.-supported thugs. Obama apparently thought it was cool to stick a knife up Col. Gaddafi’s butt. The First Black President’s drones are busy over Somalia, whose government the U.S. and its African puppet allies overthrew in 2006, precipitating a humanitarian catastrophe that has only worsened as the U.S. war continues. All of Yemen is a killing zone for U.S. drones.

When the U.S. president arrogates to himself the right to bomb and kill at will, with no respect for national boundaries and sovereign rights, he makes himself an outlaw. So, I guess Obama is cool like Jesse James.

With his huge expansion of the drone terror wars and passage of preventive detention, Barack Obama has surpassed George Bush in lawlessness. But most Americans, especially African Americans, cannot imagine that Obama represents a danger to them. If George Bush had had thousands of drones that could fly up the hallway of an apartment building, ring the bell and assassinate whoever answered the door, Black folks would have been terrified. But, they're not scared of Obama, because he...is oh so cool.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20120201_gf_ObamaDrones.mp3

More Stories


  • Ghana’s Unions and Left Reject Bailout Talks with the IMF as Economic Crisis Spirals
    Tanupriya Singh
    Ghana’s Unions and Left Reject Bailout Talks with the IMF as Economic Crisis Spirals
    27 Jul 2022
    Ghana has initiated talks with the International Monetary Fund to seek a potential bailout amid a major economic crisis. This has been rejected by the Socialist Movement of Ghana and trade unions who…
  • Police Departments Spend Vast Sums of Money Creating “Copaganda”
    Alec Karakatsanis
    Police Departments Spend Vast Sums of Money Creating “Copaganda”
    27 Jul 2022
    US police departments spend tens of millions of dollars every year to manipulate the news, flooding the discourse with “copaganda.” These aggressive tactics give the public a distorted view of what…
  • South Africa’s Energy Crisis Escalates
    Brian Kamanzi
    South Africa’s Energy Crisis Escalates
    27 Jul 2022
    Behind rolling power cuts loom deep-seated socioeconomic issues worsened by the rich countries of the world.
  • National Strike in Panama Demands Justice for the Poor
    Peoples Dispatch
    National Strike in Panama Demands Justice for the Poor
    27 Jul 2022
    For almost two weeks, tens of thousands of Panamanians have been taking to the streets across the country protesting the cost of living crisis and lack of of response and attention from the…
  • Mr. Magoo, what’s new? “Oh, say, can you see?”
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Mr. Magoo, what’s new? “Oh, say, can you see?”
    22 Jul 2022
    I. Didn’t Lynne say something like, “The law’s What they say it is…today…” (????????????????) Didn’t Lenin say something like, “The state is an
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us