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 and His Head-Chopping Friends
10 Sep 2014
🖨️ Print Article

Obama and His Head-Chopping Friends

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“The Saudi royals are feeling the nearness of cold steel to their own necks.”

President Obama has declared war on ISIS, the renegade jihadists that have turned on their former masters in NATO and the royal courts of Arabia. Nearly four decades ago, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan spent billions to create, from scratch, an international jihadist network to torment a leftwing government in Afghanistan. The rag tag feudal Islamist raiders that once delighted in beheading young Afghan leftists who were sent to the countryside to carry out land reform and teach village girls to read, now yearn to detach the skulls of Saudi kings and princes from their obscenely rich bodies, and to methodically drive the western infidels from all Muslim territories. This is, indeed, some deep poetry.

Until the advent of ISIS, Saudi Arabia led the world in executions by beheading, often leaving the decapitated bodies on display in public squares. The Saudis have hired American public relations outfits to plant articles in the U.S. corporate press, disavowing any connection between the royal family and its wayward children in ISIS and other al Qaida off-shoots – while, at the same time, stepping up the pace of their own beheadings. In the New York Times, no less, two front men for the Saudi royal family wrote that the King’s regime is best suited to drive ISIS into oblivion – which is yet more proof that the Saudi royals are feeling the nearness of cold steel to their own necks. The logic of jihad inevitably calls for a caliphate and, for the believer, a caliphate trumps a fat king and his 5,000 corrupt little princes, any day. Emirs in the United Arab Emirates also shake in their well-crafted boots, fearing the wrath of the faithful.

Proxy Wars Within Proxy Wars

The royal Arabian fat cats who, along with the U.S., have funded the proxy war against Syria for the last three years, are now embroiled in a proxy war against each other in both Syria and Libya. The Saudis and Egypt’s military dictator Abdel al-Sisi are arrayed against the Emir of Qatar and aristocrats in Kuwait, who continue to fund the renegade jihadists. The United States has sided with their long term partners, the Saudis – who have more oil – and are pressuring Qatar and Kuwait to stop funding ISIS and its friends.

When the oil-rich monarchies are in disarray and at each other’s throats, Washington also panics. That’s why Obama has seemed so indecisive. His options become fewer and fewer. The U.S. wants to get on with regime change in Syria, but ISIS has even bigger plans for regime change in the Arab world, including lopping off the heads of America’s friends. But, Washington will not give up its dirty war against Syria. Instead, Obama is attempting to merge that war with the fight against ISIS, by somehow making stupid Americans believe that Syrian President Assad is secretly allied with the same jihadists that have been beheading Syrian soldiers and civilians since 2011. It’s a very, very big lie, but Americans are incredibly willing to believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, about Arabs and Black people. And, who best to tell such lies, than the First Black President? Just give Obama George Bush’s script and, somehow, it all sounds...different.

Which is so damn sick, it makes you want to – laugh your head off.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com, and sign up for email notifications of our new issues, each Wednesday.

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/20140910_gf_ISIS_WAR.mp3

More Stories


  • “We Need a National Industrial Commission, a Permanent One”
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    “We Need a National Industrial Commission, a Permanent One”
    05 Aug 2020
    Like the first Covd-19 relief package, the pending bill will have been written by “sleep-deprived staff and inattentive lawmakers who are making this all up on the fly.”
  • Testi-lyin’ low Barr
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Testi-lyin’ low Barr
    05 Aug 2020
    a man ‘made’ $13 billion in a day—while  Stomachs of millions of men, women and  children are symphony orchestras tuning to “Last Days of Pompeo…”
  • Essays on The Cult of White Feminism: The “Cos”-play of Elizabeth Warren 
    Earl Hazell
    Essays on The Cult of White Feminism: The “Cos”-play of Elizabeth Warren 
    05 Aug 2020
    A Black artist looks at the role of White Feminism in neutralizing the Progressive and Socialist Left in America, and its consequences.
  • AFRICOM Crying Russia in Libya: A Pot and Kettle Syndrome
    Netfa Freeman
    AFRICOM Crying Russia in Libya: A Pot and Kettle Syndrome
    05 Aug 2020
    The US waged unprovoked war against Libya and has militarily occupied Africa, but is still singing its old song that Russia is the aggressor on the continent.
  • Letters from Our Readers 
    Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers 
    05 Aug 2020
    “Freedom Rider: Let the Movement Be Radical” by Margaret Ki
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us