The Americans did this in Iraq and destroyed a multi-ethnic society. They built walls between communities which had once intermarried, ethnically cleansing the Sunnis and driving millions out of the country. Embedded media reported this as ‘peace’; American academics bought by Washington and ‘security experts’ briefed by the Pentagon appeared on the BBC to spread the good news. As in 1984, the opposite was true.
Something similar is planned for Afghanistan. People are to be forced into ‘target areas’ controlled by warlords, bankrolled by the CIA and the opium trade. That these warlords are barbaric is irrelevant. ‘We can live with that,’ a Clinton-era diplomat once said of the return of oppressive sharia law in a ‘stable’, Taliban-run Afghanistan. Favoured western relief agencies, engineers and agricultural specialists will attend to the ‘humanitarian crisis’ and so ‘secure’ the subjugated tribal lands.
That is the theory. It worked after a fashion in Yugoslavia, where ethnic-sectarian partition wiped out a once-peaceful society, but it failed in Vietnam, where the CIA’s ‘Strategic Hamlet Program’ was designed to corral and divide the southern population and so defeat the Vietcong – the Americans' catch-all term for the resistance, similar to ‘Taliban’.
Behind much of this are the Israelis, who have long advised the Americans in both the Iraq and the Afghanistan adventures. Ethnic cleansing, wall-building, checkpoints, collective punishment and constant surveillance – these are claimed as Israeli innovations that have succeeded in stealing most of Palestine from its native people. And yet, for all their suffering, the Palestinians have not been divided irrevocably and they endure as a nation against all odds. John Pilger, article Socialist Worker online 11 January 2010
The most telling forerunners of the Obama Plan, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and his general and his PR men prefer we forget, are those that failed in Afghanistan itself. The British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th century attempted to conquer that wild country by ethnic cleansing and were seen off, though after terrible bloodshed. Imperial cemeteries are their memorials. People power, sometimes baffling, often heroic, remains the seed beneath the snow, and invaders fear it.
‘It was curious’, wrote Orwell in 1984, ‘to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same – everywhere, all over the world ... people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same – people who ... were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world’. John Pilger, article December 2009 ‘Welcome to Orwell’s World 2010’
Far from ‘deconstructing [sic] the war on terror’, Obama is clearly pursuing it with the same vigour, ideological backing and deception as the previous administration. George W Bush’s first war, in Afghanistan, and last war, in Pakistan, are now Obama’s wars – with thousands more US troops to be deployed, more bombing and more slaughter of civilians. On 22 January, the day he described Afghanistan and Pakistan as ‘the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism’, 22 Afghan civilians died beneath Obama’s bombs in a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds and which, by all accounts, had not laid eyes on the Taliban. Women and children were among the dead, which is normal.
Far from ‘shutting down the CIA’s secret prison network’, Obama’s executive orders actually give the CIA authority to carry out renditions, abductions and transfers of prisoners in secret without the threat of legal obstruction. As the Los Angeles Times disclosed, ‘current and former intelligence officials said the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role’. A semantic sleight of hand is that ‘long term prisons’ are changed to ‘short term prisons’; and while Americans are now banned from directly torturing people, foreigners working for the US are not. This means that America’s numerous ‘covert actions’ will operate as they did under previous presidents, with proxy regimes, such as Augusto Pinochet’s in Chile, doing the dirtiest work.
Bush’s open support for torture, and Donald Rumsfeld’s extraordinary personal overseeing of certain torture techniques, upset many in America’s ‘secret army’ of subversive military and intelligence operators as it exposed how the system worked. Obama’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, has said the Army Field Manual may include new forms of ‘harsh interrogation’, which will be kept secret.
Obama has chosen not to stop any of this. Neither do his ballyhooed executive orders put an end to Bush’s assault on constitutional and international law. He has retained Bush’s ‘right’ to imprison anyone, without trial or charges. No ‘ghost prisoners’ are being released or are due to be tried before a civilian court. His nominee for attorney-general, Eric Holder, has endorsed an extension of Bush’s totalitarian USA Patriot Act, which allows federal agents to demand Americans’ library and bookshop records. The man of ‘change’, is changing little. That ought to be front page news from Washington. John Pilger, The Politics of Bollocks, article New Statesman, see also website
Obama has even rejected the Federal Healthcare Model and virtually said to the States – Well, you can organise it as you wish. John Pilger, In Conversation
Under Obama, nuclear warhead production is greater than under any post-Cold War president. John Pilger on the Threat of World War III, interview Going Underground, Youtube 18.43
Obama’s role as a PR man extraordinaire. ibid.
Obama was giving truckloads of this false hope. ibid.
Drones have killed, according to the Pakistani authorities ... seven hundred civilians since the inauguration of Obama. John Pilger, interview Democracy Now!, July 2009
The 2012 election is now expected to cost $2 billion; it’s going to have to be mostly corporate funding so it’s not at all surprising that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. Noam Chomsky, lecture University of Toronto 7th April 2011, ‘The State Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival’
President Obama’s global assassination campaign … is extreme terrorist war. Noam Chomsky, interview Channel 4 2016
And they expected to be rewarded – it’s the way politics works – and they were. Soon as Obama picked a financial team – economic team – to deal with the financial crisis that the financial institutions had created he picked their people right across the board. Noam Chomsky, lecture University of Tennessee 25th January 2011
The Obama victory in 2008 was primarily due to a big flow of capital that poured in especially toward the end from financial institutions who preferred him to McCain, and that carried him over the edge, and of course they expected to be rewarded and they were immediately. The country was in the midst of a big financial crisis and the main task was to deal with it: Obama picked an economic team to deal with the crisis; the team was selected almost entirely from the people who were responsible for the crisis. Noam Chomsky, lecture Oregon 20 April 2011, ‘Global Hegemony: The Facts The Images’
It quickly became clear there’s no Hope and there’s no Change. Noam Chomsky, interview Democracy Now! April 2007
Obama is running a global terror programme of a kind that has never been envisioned before. Noam Chomsky, interview Abby Martin: The Empire Files, ‘The Empire’s Election Extravaganza’, Youtube 2015
It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did Jack Kennedy. Watch: we’re gonna have an international crisis. A generated crisis to test the mettle of this guy. Joe Biden, vice-president
I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that’s a storybook, man. Joe Biden
A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be next president of the United States – Barrack America! Joe Biden, first campaign rally Springfield 23 August 2008
First black president, and all those wonderful words about hope and change ... Whatever happened to hope? This World: Andrew Marr, Obama: What Happened to Hope? BBC 2012
Change to what? ibid.
On that historic night in November 2008 when Obama was elected president was briefly ecstatically different. ibid.
One of his greatest strengths was simply his presence ... There was an exuberance of political intoxication. ibid.
Guantanamo Bay stayed open. ibid.
Health care in America is hugely expensive. ibid.
In 2010 Obama’s Democrats were slaughtered. ibid.
He’s rubbish at actually explaining what he’s doing. ibid.
They loathed him for what seemed to them to be liberal condescension. ibid.
He hasn’t really begun to change or reform. ibid.
Obama disappointed us because he seemed to promise so much hope … Something scared him. Oliver Stone
Obama brought back the same economic team. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States X: Bush & Obama: Age of Terror, Showtime 2012
A $700 billion bail-out on remarkable easy terms. ibid.
He [Obama] repeatedly invoked the State’s secrets privilege in lawsuits involving torture, extraordinary rendition and illegal NSA eavesdropping. ibid.
Obama surrounded himself with hawkish advisers. ibid.
Those who accepted torture would tolerate vigilante justice. ibid.