The text “And if so many great men and women could wear our country’s uniform and sacrifice their lives for our most fundamental rights…” is taken from Michelle Obama’s speech. The village ruins shown is a house targeted by a US drone strike in an area of northwestern Pakistan on March 16, 2009. (**).
When I read & listen to the speech of Michelle Obama on the Democratic Convention yesterday, I am moved to tears… but in my mind’s eye this imagery pops up at the same time and quells my flow of tears… Obama’s care for “fundamental rights” has been also the ‘normalisation of extrajudicial murder’ by remote controlled drones killing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan real, supposed and non-Taliban civilians, all alike, with high technological precision.
No “fundamental rights” for these people, subjected to the professionalism of “great men and women” in USA army uniforms…
It was Obama running for the presidency who promised to put an end to the non-legal ways of fighting terrorism of his predecessor, but in the place of torturing prisoners in the ‘concentration camp of Guantánamo’ under Bush we are facing now high tech liquidation without any due process of law… with hit-lists signed by Obama.
Will Romney do different? He certainly will not, maybe worse, or just the same.
The speech of Michelle Obama is moving many to tears… in the NY Times video we have frequent zoom in’s on faces in the public with both men and women that finger away tears from their faces.
How long will it take before the idea of this kind of ‘exceptional’ chosen guardianship of American Dreamers (*) will be over and people in the USA start to see themselves through the eyes and tears of ‘non-Americans’, ‘the others’?
It will surely make the world more equalitarian and possibly better.
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(*) From the last passage of Michelle Obama’s speech (19:10 and further) which the NY Times gave the header “American Exceptionalism”:
… in the end, more than anything else, that is the story of this country, the story of unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle
…that belief that here in America, there is always something better out there if you’re willing to work for it
Thank you. God bless you. God bless America
(**) Iranian Press Agency Press TV reporting : “US assassination drone strikes kill 14 Pakistanis in 24 hours” (non Western-allied countries reporting on Afghanistan can be an important source of information.
the limping messenger 