I try to stay out of the internal squabbles of US politics since it isn’t really my business. Also, I really don’t like the reflexive and stupid America-bashing you get a fair bit, which often seems to have more than a little in common with racial bigotry. Finally I do think that, given its superpower status, the US has acted better than any comparably powerful entity in history (damning with faint praise, perhaps, but not a point to be dodged).
The one exception, that has caused me to lock horns with others before, is where US policy causes considerable misery to the people of the rest of the world. For example, I think that Clinton was infinitely worse than either Bush or Obama because of one word: Rwanda. He instructed Madeline Albright to veto any attempt to prevent that horror and greenlighted the genocide.
I still believe that, or would like to believe that. But there’s one thing that’s recently come up, during this IRS bruhaha I’ve been hearing about. From what I have heard, the IRS was targeting certain political groups while giving preferential treatment to the foundation set up by the President’s half-brother, a foundation that isn’t the most transparent about where the money goes. Whatever; this is the standard political nonsense you hear about everywhere. It’s wrong, but it is predictable.
But here is where it get’s not funny at all. That’s from the foundation website, and what you will see is Malik Obama cheerfully associating with this guy, or as the foundation calls him “His Excellency field Marshal Suar Al Dahab”. Pay some attention to the dates of His Excellency’s career in that brief biographical precis. That means he has been Field Marshall throughout the first genocide organised against South Sudan (Nuba region) in which two million people were murdered, and the most recent slaughter in Darfur.
Again, please someone tell me this isn’t what it looks like – that President Obama is just being a bloody fool when he does things like this.
