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    The real losers

    US public and Middle East to pay price of Republican and Democratic cowardice

    By Paul J. Balles*

    10 May 2008

    Paul J. Balles argues that, if the US Republicans and Democrats believed in real change, they would have nominated Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich – two men who would not run away from the truth – to run for the presidency.

    Focused on issues or trivia, US media giants continue to revel in election politics. Three US senators have been busily campaigning for nominations for the US presidency.

    Whether it's Hillary Clinton trying to be more macho than her male opponents, or John McCain attempting to display more chutzpah than G.W. Bush, or Barack Obama disowning the mentor he should be praising, the whole process is a sideshow on demand.

    The "on demand" part of the sideshow comes from the American public. If the Republicans wanted brains at the helm rather than a Bush clone, they would have nominated Ron Paul, a candidate whose foreign policy would keep America from pre-emptive and presumptive wars.

    Paul wouldn't be spending his time in Florida trying to convince voters there, as McCain has, that the Democratic candidates would jeopardize Israel's security and that the US should bomb Iran.

    If the Democrats didn’t believe that change can only be made by electing either a woman or a black American, they might have nominated Dennis Kucinich, the only candidate with the brains and the integrity to bring about real change. Kucinich wouldn't be threatening, as Hillary Clinton has, to "totally obliterate" Iran.

    To his credit, Obama had enough sense to reject that sort of sabre-rattling when he told Tim Russert of MSNBC

    it's important that we use language that sends a signal to the world community that we're shifting from the sort of cowboy diplomacy, or lack of diplomacy, that we've seen out of George Bush. And this kind of language is not helpful.

    In the early debates, Kucinich revealed that he wouldn't run from the truth even when it hurt. Unfortunately, he couldn't convince the voters that the most patriotic citizens often criticize and accept deserved criticism of their own country.

    Obama ran from the truth of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons and turned on his pastor. In his most famous sermon, Wright told the truth:

    We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We bombed Gaddafi’s home and killed his child. “Blessed are they who bash your children's head against a rock!"

    We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy. We killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye! Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians – not soldiers – people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yards! America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism.

    Obama should have praised his pastor’s integrity and wisdom. Ron Paul would have. Dennis Kucinich would have. But they lost. The real losers: the American public and the Middle East.


    *Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

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