A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
In their own inimitably depraved ways, the French and American governments insulted two million dead Algerians and Iraqis, without ever mentioning their deaths. France was largely silent on its defeat in Algeria, 50 years ago, while the U.S. president told fantastic lies about the Iraq war without acknowledging U.S. defeat or Iraqi dead. “There is no word that can describe the absolute moral turpitude of imperialists….”
Obama and Sarkozy: How Imperialists Deal With Defeat
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“The president embraced George Bush’s great crimes against global peace and his holocaust against the Iraqi people.”
Fifty years ago this week, the French admitted defeat in their war against Algerian independence, by signing a formal ceasefire. The government of Nicholas Sarkozy said it would hold no formal ceremonies, because to mark the anniversary would reopen “deep wounds of a painful page in the recent history of France.” It’s all about the French, you see – their pain at being defeated by a people they had subjugated and treated as lesser forms of life for 132 years; their loss of face as a great imperial power, not the Algerian’s pain at the loss of one million men, women and children in the final struggle for nationhood.
This week also marks the 9th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Americans have, of course, never admitted defeat in that war – although defeat is the only reason U.S. troops are no longer in Iraq. President Barack Obama very reluctantly carried out the troop withdrawal agreement that President George Bush was forced by the Iraqis to sign in November of 2008, after it had become clear that America’s unprovoked war of aggression was lost.
Obama was even less gracious in defeat than French President Sarkozy, who at least had the manners to keep personally silent. In proclaiming March 19th “A National Day of Honor,” Obama praised the “unshakeable fortitude and unwavering commitment” of U.S. troops who fought “block by block to help the Iraqi people to seize the chance for a better future.” Other obscenities and damnable lies flowed from Obama’s mouth, as the president embraced George Bush’s great crimes against global peace and his holocaust against the Iraqi people. “The war left wounds not always seen, but forever felt,” said Obama – speaking, of course, only about the wounds suffered by Americans, just as Sarkozy spoke only of the pain of the French. The anniversary of a U.S. invasion of another people’s country, is all about the Americans, you see – the 4500 American dead, to whom, Obama said, “we owe a debt that can never be fully repaid.” No mention of the blood debt that is owed to the more than one million dead Iraqi men, women and children whose country, once the most advanced in the Arab world, was utterly destroyed by the United States, and who hope to never see an American in uniform again.
“They have annihilated and enslaved whole continents, and dare to call it civilization.”
What are a million Algerians worth to the French? The same as one million Iraqis are worth to the United States. They are not even worth mentioning.
There is no word that can describe the absolute moral turpitude of imperialists, the casualness of their genocides, their infinite capacity for narcissism, and their whining self-pity when confronted with minimal casualties to themselves in the course of their global depredations.
The Americans and western Europeans regret nothing but their own setbacks in the 500-year war they have waged against the darker peoples of the Earth. They have annihilated and enslaved whole continents, and dare to call it civilization. Their only remorse is for their loss, in recent times, of total dominance over the human species, of which they still consider themselves the superior fraction. It is during weeks such as this, when the French and American governments note the historical markers of their national depravity, that affirm the inseparability of racism and imperialism, and the necessity to defeat them once and for all.
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 .
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Dr. Gerald Horne is an author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
