Sarah Palin’s Cross Hairs – and Obama’s

All Killings are Tragic but Numbers Count

It was a coincidence but an enlightening one. As I heard of Sarah Palin’s cartoon crosshairs trained on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and other politicians along with Barack Obama’s condemnation of violence, I happened to be tuning into a TV documentary on Wikileaks.

There, 30 minutes into the video, I found myself staring into real crosshairs — not the cartoon version on Palin’s Facebook page. These were from the videos of the helicopter gunship, mowing down civilians in cold blood, including reporters from Reuters in the Wikileaks release “Collateral Murder.” Those who have seen this, far too few since it did not get saturation coverage of the type reserved for the murders in Tucson, remember the cold-blooded killings of innocents who received no warning and no request to surrender. They were gunned down in cold blood along with the good Samaritan Iraqis who tried to rescue one of the wounded lying in a giant pool of his own blood and take him to a hospital. These would be rescuers were also gunned down – along with their children who happened to be with them in their van.

So let us compare the real-life cross hairs trained on these innocents to the cartoon crosshairs of the dimwit Sarah Palin, puppet of the neocons. One set of crosshairs is figurative hyperbole equivalent to the cry of Obama in his campaign, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” But the other in the Wikileaks video is cold blooded, calculated murder. And although that murder occurred on Bush’s “watch,” the same murders continue today under Obama’s direction — not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan and Pakistan — and not just with helicopter gunships but with drones and bombers killing hundreds, if not thousands by now two years into the peace presidency of the Messiah. These are the forces of mass murder which Obama dispatches to the Central Asian killing fields each day. Is this man no less a war criminal than Bush/Cheney?

I wonder what goes through the minds of the Democrat Party activists as they avert their gaze from the real crosshairs about which they say so little to the cartoon ones. The Dems seem to be a latter day version of The Fantastiks’s Luisa. Not to defend the dimwit Sarah Palin who has parlayed her beauty and personal charm into a useful tool for the neocons. But who is worse – the phony peace president Obama or the silly, powerless Palin? Or is the death of defenseless civilians at Obama’s hands to be overlooked because they are poor Asians and helpless Muslims, instead of a Congresswoman who is a stalwart for AIPAC?

Obama fits neatly into the central theme of Andrew Bacevich’s book Washington Rules. The book’s most important message is that the foreign policy of the U.S. Empire is marked by continuity. A new beginning is not heralded by each presidency as the “progressives,” who can see no farther than the next election, would argue. Rather as Bacevich shows and Chomsky and others, among them Libertarians and consistent Paleocons, have argued for decades, the policy and imperatives of U.S. foreign policy endure from one President to the next. Those who seek refuge in the next savior to win the peace, at least as long as he is readily anointed without strife by one of the major parties, are bound to be sorely disappointed.

Sarah Palin and her dismal cartoons are the outpourings of an idiot useful to the champions of Empire. But the real gold dirt for them is Obama, a pol who can co-opt the forces for peace and lead us ever deeper into killing fields where the dead, maimed and displaced can scarcely be counted. Which is worse?

John V. Walsh, @JohnWal97469920, until recently a Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, has written on issues of peace and health care for several independent media. Read other articles by John V..

6 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. mary said on January 12th, 2011 at 8:06am #

    The mentalist Palin accuses her detractors of issuing a blood libel’ in this missive. She uses the royal plural throughout too!

    {http://vimeo.com/18698532}
    Half way through if you can bear to watch her.

  2. Don Hawkins said on January 12th, 2011 at 8:28am #

    The champions of Empire. I saved that one…

  3. jayn0t said on January 12th, 2011 at 8:28am #

    Mary – for once I have to disagree with you. It’s either very brave, or very dumb, for Palin to use the term ‘blood libel’, but for once, she’s right. “Co-opt the forces for peace” (in the article above) is a bit of an understatement for describing how the Democrats make political capital out of tragedies to justify police repression.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/12/sarah-palin-response-arizona-shooting

  4. mary said on January 12th, 2011 at 9:21am #

    Disagree. She is dumb…and dangerous. God help Amerika if she ever comes to power.

    I only know the phrase ‘blood libel’ to be used in this context so she used it most inappropriately.

    {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel}

  5. hayate said on January 12th, 2011 at 11:18am #

    Well, the zionist corporate media is apparently slamming her over it. I’ve been seeing a trend since the arizona shootings by the media to distance themselves from palin, before they didn’t really challenge her. I seriously doubt there is any moral reasoning or turnabout going in the msm about supporting ziofascism/fascism, that’s their prime job, so this turnabout on the far right probably is related to something other than opposition to it. It’s probably a phony outrage, as well, since the far right and right are both under firm ziofascist control in american politics. Something to occupy the wad with arguing over, more of that phony liberal vs conservative “rivalry” promoted in the media and in american politics to keep people hoodwinked into voting the “lesser of 2 evils”. I’m wondering if the leaning on palin now is to move her out of the way so a more “serious” repub can get the spotlight before the elections so the race wont look like such a sick joke.

  6. jayn0t said on January 13th, 2011 at 6:42pm #

    No worries, Mary. The Anti-Defamation League have criticised Sarah Palin. She’s toast.