Obama, the prince of bait-and-switch

I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children to a US bomb

By John Pilger Published 24 July 2008

On 12 July, the Times devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the "high drama" and "meticulously practised routine" of evacuating another overheated journalist. For her US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, "saving a life took precedence over [their] security". Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that "47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday".

Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no "enemy" nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another "precision" bomb. Inside were nine people - his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. Neither of these mass murders was news. As Harold Pinter wrote of such crimes: "Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."

A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while the Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at a wedding party. Wedding parties are a "coalition" speciality. At least four of them have been obliterated - at Mazar and in Khost, Uruzgan and Nangarhar provinces. Many of the details, including the names of victims, have been compiled by a New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold, whose Afghan Victim Memorial Project is a meticulous work of journalism that shames those who are paid to keep the record straight and report almost everything about the Afghan War through the public relations facilities of the British and American military.

The US and its allies are dropping record numbers of bombs on Afghanistan. This is not news. In the first half of this year, 1,853 bombs were dropped: more than all the bombs of 2006 and most of 2007. "The most frequently used bombs," the Air Force Times reports, "are the 500lb and 2,000lb satellite-guided . . ." Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America's and Britain's puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA's payroll.

The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W Bush's former spokesman Scott McClellan has called "complicit enablers" - journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a "good war", the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber.

In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghan istan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power - because their collaborators are, as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, "bait-and-switch" Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince.

Those who write of Obama that "when it comes to international affairs, he will be a huge improvement on Bush" demonstrate the same wilful naivety that backed the bait-and-switch of Bill Clinton - and Tony Blair. Of Blair, wrote the late Hugo Young in 1997, "ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values' . . . there are no sacred cows [and] no fossilised limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain . . ."

Eleven years and five wars later, at least a million people lie dead. Barack Obama is the American Blair. That he is a smooth operator and a black man is irrelevant. He is of an enduring, rampant system whose drum majors and cheer squads never see, or want to see, the consequences of 500lb bombs dropped unerringly on mud, stone and straw houses.

http://www.johnpilger.com

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Tags: Barack Obama

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93 comments

Thu, 2008-07-24 20:04 — knave

I cannot understand the hatred for Pilger.
I don't even think he a leftie in the true sense of the word.
He gives an alternative view with passion.
We are surrounded by journalists who give the neo con, economic liberal, US propaganda view. There are thousands of Cohens , Brights, Goves, Hitchens, O Keefes, Johnsons and Brownes. God the list is endless.
Surely even a right wingers ( like AL, claddarch and Johnny mac) want to see as many alternative views as possible.
Also if you hate him so much why do read his columns.

Thu, 2008-07-24 21:09 — BlairSupporter1

People here referring to the "right-wing Zionists" etc who have commented here would be interested to know my previous political background. It is anything BUT right-wing.

I am presently disenfranchised, for the simple reason that although the Tories and many in Labour understand the REAL issues ("join the dots", Blair once said) not ONE major party is telling it like it is.

And the Lib Dems were WRONG about Iraq.

The reason we are hearing nothing on this issue? All major parties are intimidated by the fear of losing the inner-city ethnic vote. Nothing else. No point of principle. They all understand what's going on here in this land of ours.

Interesting how some here feel that you are surrounded by right-wing views. The right-wing feel the opposite. You only need to read our press- from the 'NOTIndependent' to The Guardian, The Mail, Express ad nauseum. They are all anti-the Iraq invasion and anti-Blair by and large. Yet HE was the one who got it right, imho!

So if we all feel hard done by re press coverage, perhaps the balance isn't all that much out of kilter after all.

Guardianistos are the soul-mates for the pro-Pilgerites here. They're all anti-Israel, anti-America, anti-Blair. In fact I can't recall who they're for.

Oh yes, the poor misunderstood Islamist fundamentalists/terrorists.

http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/islamists-accept-demo...

Thu, 2008-07-24 21:12 — timcampbellxyx

Pilger juxtaposes some incredible facts about reporting on Iraq and makes Time look like modern day Marie Antoinettes. Thanks.

Pilgers was however, less convincing when he subsequently launched an attack on Barack Obama. Obama is not responsible for the efete concerns of Times journalists.

Thu, 2008-07-24 21:53 — knave

So if we all feel hard done by re press coverage, perhaps the balance isn't all that much out of kilter after all.

Do you read the newspapers. They despise your hero not because of his right wing views but because he was too left wing.
One newspaper, the Guardian and one periodical , this one gives people like Pilgerites a voice.
The rest make Blair look like Trotsky.

Thu, 2008-07-24 22:23 — Petite Anglaise

@pugnax

"But as an American voter, what am I supposed to do? I can't refrain from voting."

But most of you crazy, dangerous critters do ... and the rest of the flock deliver the world unto true evil ...

Thu, 2008-07-24 22:51 — Beowulf

Mr. Pilgar,
You hardly mention Obama as much as you go on about the murderers and bombers known to you as the American and British Forces. Do you REALLY believe our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters of the military don't take every precaution to prevent harm to innocents? Do REALLY believe they are such sloppy shots that they are throwing bombs around willy nilly? Let me know when you pull your head out of your arse.
A Real American LADY

Thu, 2008-07-24 23:02 — writeon

The Western media has a definite tendancy to ignore or effectively de-humanize the victims of our imperial/colonialist adventures. This was always the case, "savages" rarely had names, families, or anyone to mourn for them.

Constrast the lack of information about the latest massacre in Afghanistan with the detail we are presented with whenever we are attacked or lose soldiers in our latest war for freedom and in defence of our way of life. Surely all human life is equally precious, not just the lives we value?

Are we supposed to be overjoyed when we kill "terrorists" in Afghanistan and Iraq? How far do we go down this road of imperial slaughter? Is one Western life really worth more than the lives of a hundred of the "enemy"? Because that's the ratio we have created.

During the first Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, we lost somewhere in the region of two or three hundred soldiers, whilst Iraqi losses were in the hundreds of thousands, and most of them were retreating! What do these vast, horrendous, disparities tell us about the nature of the way we choose to wage war? Mostly they tell a simple story. That we are massively powerful and bloodthirsty and our enemies, dispite what we are told in the propaganda war, weak and barely able to defend themselves against the staggering power of our onslaught.

Isnt' there a paradox at work here? On the one hand we are told that we face a massive threat from this season's "Hitler" or "Nazi Germany", yet once the war starts we sweep them aside with contemptuous ease on the battlefield. How can these puny nations be such a threat that we have no choice but to go to war with them, yet at the same time they are clearly so easy to defeat?

Obviously the truth is we are being duped on truly massive scale. There is no real terrorist threat to us, or our way of life. There is no international terrorist network. There is no Islamist danger. There is no such thing as Islamism. We are not under attack at all.

The acts of terror aimed at us are the acts of the weak who don't have other means to fight back and take revenge on us for our agression directed against them.

What really characterizes Western values? Self-delusion, hypocracy, double-standards, the desire to control the world, arrogance, racism, and most importantly our willingness to comitt acts of genocide over and over again, century after century.

And now we are back in Iraq and back in Afghanistan again and on our way into other savage countries. Both these countries are models for the future. Western imperialism and slaughter on a colonial scale are back, and this time with a vengence!

Sun, 2008-07-27 01:46 — pugnax

Cyber, the world is full of "crazy, dangerous critters", and we yanks have, alas, more than our share. But we are only marginally, and not consistently, worse than you Brits. After all, Mr. Blair was in office for a decade and under your parliamentary system he should have been more readily removeable than any of our eight-year maxers. If my family and I lived in the UK, I assume we would hold our noses and vote Lib Dem--and never really win.

Thu, 2008-07-24 23:29 — JC2

Claddach you are on the mark with this:
Mr Pilger calls New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold's Afghan Victim Memorial Project "a meticulous work of journalism". Really? Herold affected to have constructed a database of civilian casualties during the war in Afghanistan, yet his double- and even triple-counting of media reports, coupled with his refusal to share his data and sources with those he feared did not share his political beliefs, destroyed his credibility as a serious or even half-way competent statistician.
And this:
Iraq Body Count retains Herold as a consultant. It's thus unsurprising that Pilger fails to see what's wrong with this statement of his methodology:
medialens.org had a run in with the IBC a while back and I am yet to know of a time when that lot were wrong. I am pretty disappointed that Pilger is using it when he is a close associate (if not friend) of the two Davids. He knows it's dodgy.
Good work, claddach.
JC2

Thu, 2008-07-24 23:34 — JC2

Cybertiger this is a good post:
"And the final rule, of course, is that terrorism is never the fault of terrorists. Unless "terrorism" is re-defined to include the military actions of Western armies, when, er, suddenly it is."

The simple thinking of simpletons like George Bush and Jonny Mac do not keep the great flocks safe.

I put my thoughts a bit more succintly on my blog jimmykrongold.wordpress.com. Here is the post in it's entirety (minus photo):
Terrorism is a legitimate tactic available to the oppressed. If those who are targeted by terrorists have a problem with that, then they can f**k off to another country or get rid of the government that caused the f**king problem in the first place.

And that is that.

JC2