When host Joe Scarborough raised the criticism on his show Scarborough Country on October 23, 2012 that Obama's drone attacks are killing a lot of innocents, including 4 year old children, guest Joe Klein, Time Magazine's political columnist, an ardent Obama partisan, defended the drone attacks with these words:
"the bottom line in the end is - whose 4-year-old get killed? What we're doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror ."
Whose 4-year-old gets killed? This stunningly naked xenophobic and reactionary statement by Joe Klein topped an earlier comment of his in this same show in which he described the virtue of drone warfare:
KLEIN: It has been remarkably successful" --
SCARBOROUGH: "at killing people" --
KLEIN: "At decimating bad people, taking out a lot of bad people - and saving Americans lives as well, because our troops don't have to do this . . . You don't need pilots any more because you do it with a joystick in California."
This is one of the most prominent political columnists in America speaking, an ardent Democratic supporter: "You don't need pilots anymore because you do it with a joystick in California."
This is what Obama has done. When he talks about the American family that sticks together he means that Americans should stick together - 4-year-olds, siblings and their parents, white, black, Latino, Asian, Native Americans - to kill 4-year-olds of other lands, murdered by Americans in sunny California wielding joysticks, raining death from above, aware only that the shadows they see falling under the drone attacks are not 4-year-old Americans. This is the harsh reality of this American president's soaring rhetoric. This is what happens when the Bush policies are not repudiated and electoral answers -- i.e., electing Obama -- instead of a people's movement for impeachment movement are chosen.
This is what American leadership, whether Democratic or Republican, means. This is not the triumph of a center-left coalition. This is the sobering and deeply disturbing truth that we dare not ignore.
First published at DennisLoo.com.
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