Port Mortuary’s Pull

[babylonsister]

Port Mortuary’s Pull

MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 31, 2009


Michelle had gone up to New York to watch the World Series opener with Jill Biden and Yogi Berra.

The president had dinner at the White House with Sasha and Malia. Then, shortly before midnight, he donned a dark overcoat, boarded Marine One and flew to Dover Air Force Base.

On the tarmac in the darkness, he stood at attention, saluting, as 18 flag-draped cases were taken off an Air Force C-17 and carried to Port Mortuary by military teams in camouflage fatigues and black berets.

The Halloween-eve parade of death included casualties from America’s most horrific day in Afghanistan in four years, and its bloodiest month of the war.

It may have been a photo op, another way Obama could show he was not W., the president who started the Iraq war in a haze of fakery and then declined to ever confront the reality of its dead.

Certainly, as Obama tries to figure out how to avoid being a war president when he’s saddled with two wars, he wants as much military cred in the bank as he can get.

But it was also a genuinely poignant moment. It is how we want our presidents to behave, doing the humane thing especially when it’s hard. And Obama, who called it “a sobering reminder” of sacrifices made, signaled to Americans that he will resist blinders as he grapples with the byzantine, seemingly bottomless conflicts he inherited.

snip//

Barack Obama, the wunderkind who came out of nowhere to win the presidency, was supposed to push America out of the ditch and into a glittering future. But modernity is elusive when you’re in a time machine to the 14th century called Afghanistan. The tableau of Obama at Dover evoked the last line of “The Great Gatsby:” “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

As Obama comforted families at a tragic moment, he also had to contemplate a tragic dimension of his own presidency: It’s nice to talk about change, but you can’t wipe away yesterday.

Obama wants to be the cosmopolitan president of the world, and social engineer at home to improve the lives of Americans.

But what he had in mind for renovating American society hinged on spending a lot of money on energy, education, the environment and health care. Instead, he has been trapped in the money pits of a recession and two wars.

For now, the man who promised revolution will have to settle for managing adversity.

It is, as Yogi Berra said, “déjà vu all over again.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/opinion/01dowd.html?hpw

[CatWoman]

1. I have my issues with Maureen Dowd

but this time she hit it completely out of the park!!

[Undercurrent]

2. Refreshing to see Maureen

rise above the soap opera petty, and write from a point of intellectual clarity. I would love to see her talent used in this way more often.

[Hutzpa]

3. +10000.

:headbang:

[Clio the Leo]

4. +10001

[amacd]

5. Dowd on Obama's pivotal decision

Maureen Dowd today, in her Op-Ed about Obama’s coming
monumental decision to either accede to the current path of
America’s multiplicity of imperial crimes ‘abroad’ and
tyrannies ‘at home’, captures both the flavor and the scale
and scope of the decision that Obama must make about an
entirely necessary revolution for America --- a second
revolution away from Empire and borne back "against the
current" to democracy.

One wonders in this 'First Year', is Obama ‘overwhelmed’ by
the multiplicity of issues of war ‘abroad’, and dozens of
domestic problems ‘at home’--- or just ducking the seminal
issue?

This first year of Obama’s ‘hope’ and ‘change’ revolution has,
for Obama himself, and the whole of how America is governed,
devolved into a vast multiplicity of problems, covering up a
singularity of cause: Empire.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=14781

But like Obama, Rev. Martin Luther King was confronted with a
similar monumental decision about whether to speak-out against
the imperialist war ‘abroad’, that was grinding up the
working-class sons of both black and white Americans, or to
continue focusing on his most heart-felt problem ‘at home’ of
racism’s tyranny against young blacks.

For more than a year, Rev. King kept his focus on the racial
battle at home, and would not be detoured by addressing the
combination of multiple issues that would inevitably spring
from taking-on the crimes of imperialist foreign war, domestic
racism, and the ‘class-warfare’ that linked these crimes of
Empire.

Finally, on April 4th, 1967, and at the Riverside Church in
New York City, Dr. King decided that it was “A Time to Break
Silence” not only about Vietnam, but Beyond Vietnam, and to
speak the truth about the nature of Empire and the class-war
that Empire always uses to maintain its unfair, unjust, and
un-democratic control over the indivisible political-economics
of power both ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’.

Hopefully, Obama will reach the same monumental decision as
Dr. King – and even more hopefully, average Americans of all
colors will respond to a seminal outing of Empire by
recognizing their common humanity, their common-wealth in
country, their common ‘public interest’ in democracy (against
the ‘private interest’ of Empire), and by treating this 21st
century messenger and leader against Empire and for democracy
differently than Dr. King was treated. 

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine


PS.  I hope that Obama is benefiting, in his time of decision,
from taking the time to re-read King’s Riverside speech:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

King noted, “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far
deeper malady within the American spirit”

And today, hopefully, Obama will take note that,  “The war in
_______ is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the
American spirit”

King continued:

“It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late
John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said,
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make
violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice
or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the
role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by
refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come
from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am
convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution
of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the
shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented
society. When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights, are considered more important than people,
the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and
militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

And I hope that Obama recognizes that those “giant triplets of
racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” are EMPIRE.

Finally, King concludes with, “If we will make the right
choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of
our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

And I hope that Obama, in preparing to make his choice,
recognizes that the multiplicity of those “jangling discords
of our world”, those pressing problems ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’
are but the uniform fingerprints of one thing ---- EMPIRE.