In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky said he never expected much of President Obama, adding, “The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain.”
Maybe the reasons for Obama’s transformation from a Chicago law professor into a world-class totalitarian thug is that he is a creature of the Central Intelligence Agency; that both his parents were CIA payrollers; that the CIA financed his college education and gave him his first job afterward—-so that we may well have a president beholden to this international criminal organization, an agency that has left a trail of blood, turmoil, and assassinations around the globe.
According to a report in The New Yorker, when General James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked at an Obama Situation Room meeting why the U.S. was building a second air force in the form of a CIA drone attack fleet, Obama told him, “The CIA gets what it wants.” This view is reinforced by Cameron Munter, President Obama’s former ambassador to Pakistan. Munter questioned whether the drone strikes in Pakistan weren’t having a blowback effect on the Pakistani public. Writing in the magazine, Steve Coll says Munter learned under Obama: “It was what the CIA believed that really counted.”Reporter Coll says America’s drone war is a major factor in why U.S. relations with Pakistan have “collapsed.” Today, he writes, “the U.S. has surpassed India as the most hated nation in Pakistan.” Coll adds, “Obama seems unwilling to confront the possibility that drone strikes may be creating more enemies than they’re eliminating.”
So far, the drone strikes are believed to have killed 3,000 people, not one of whom got a fair trial in the American tradition. The attacks are being made in countries where the U.S. has never officially declared war: besides Pakistan, in Somalia, Yemen, and even in the Philippines. Obama has turned the whole world into an American shooting gallery.
In his two terms in office, President Bush authorized 48 drone strikes in Pakistan. But since 2009, Obama has okayed more than 300, as reporter Coll writes. What’s more, The Washington Post reports that CIA Director John Brennan believes that targeted killings will be needed to contain Al Qaeda-related terrorism for at least another decade.The green light for a bunch of organized crackpots and anarchist-type bomb-throwers to roam the planet with their sophisticated killing machines raining Hellfire missiles down on suspects, nearly all of them foreigners, without jury trials is a dream come true for the CIA. They are treated as an inferior race of people not entitled to trials while the CIA is the Master Race that can kill whomever it wants. Does this remind us of anyone?Let’s connect the dots between the Boston Marathon massacre and blowback triggered by the CIA’s overseas killings. Strange, but we don’t see Finland or Brazil under attack by terrorists. Maybe it’s because they respect other nations’ sovereignty.On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President Obama honored the legacy of the civil rights leader by attempting to emulate his example. However, his use of the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists has been met with disapproval, as it has resulted in the deaths of more than 100 children to date. It is widely believed that Rev. King would have been strongly opposed to such actions.
