Monthly Archives: June 2014

Point of View Columns

Weekend Edition – June 28, 2014

Seeming to respond to the Teapublican chicken hawks beating the drums of war, President Obama has announced that he will send $500 million of military aid to Syrian rebels. What could go wrong? Meanwhile, in Mississippi we had the opportunity to watch Teapublicans flip the script with Senator Thad Cochran trying to get black people to vote. And finally, House Speaker John Boehner has announced that he plans to sue President Obama for not upholding the laws of this country. Is this a flimsy and transparent prelude to impeachment?

The Bloody and Slippery Slope

President Obama now wants to inject a half billion dollars of weapons and military assistance into the churning and bloody swamp of sectarian violence known as Syria. He has stated that this aid will go to “moderate” rebels, whatever that is supposed to mean.

This is a movie that we have seen before. Then it was called assistance to the “freedom loving people” of Afghanistan who turned out to be the Taliban, al Qaeda and………..Osama bin Laden.

There are several outcomes and none of them good. The “moderate” rebels may turn out to be not so “moderate” and use their gift of weapons against Americans and American interests the next time some yahoo minister in America burns a Koran.

The “moderate” rebels may turn out to be stand-ins for al Qaeda and ISIS and the gift of arms will go directly to sworn enemies of the United States.

Or, the “moderate” rebels may turn out to be not such great fighters and will simply surrender their weapons or lose them in battle – weapons that will then be used against the United States.

Or, the targets of the “moderate” rebels will decide to attack the United States soldiers, personnel and interests wherever they can find them.

This move by the President seems to be a sign that the pressure from the Teapublican chicken hawks is finally getting to him, and that he feels it is necessary to “do something” in Syria. But this is wrong in conception, wrong in execution and fraught with fatal circumstances for this country. Senator Obama was elected to do better than this. President Obama was re-elected to do better than this.

Nothing good can possibly come from this move.

Mississippi Scam

Mississippi has always been the place where the dreams of black people go to die. During the horror of American racial slavery, Mississippi and Louisiana were the worst places for black people.

Since Emancipation, black people have been routinely and institutionally terrorized. The history of black people seeking to vote is written with the blood of martyrs.

This past week, the irony of Teapublican Senator Thad Cochran seeking the vote of black Mississippi citizens in order to eke out a primary win was ghastly and instructive. It is ghastly because Senator Cochran is a blatant hypocrite in seeking the vote of the black people of Mississippi. His record indicates absolutely nothing that the black people in Mississippi should support – except that he was slightly less racist than his opponent who accepted campaign donations from the Ku Klux Klan.

The instructive aspect of this horror show is that the black people of Mississippi have more power than they have exercised. With 37% of the registered voters in that misbegotten state being black, there is tremendous potential for change, reformation and progress.

Perhaps Thad Cochran’s chicanery can serve as a wakeup call for the black people of Mississippi.

Sneak Preview

House Speaker John Boehner has determined in his wisdom that he should further waste taxpayer dollars by suing President Obama for not faithfully carrying out the laws of the United States. His real, and thinly veiled, cause of action is that President Obama is not doing what Speaker Boehner and the Teapublicans want him to do.

Even though Barack Obama has won two national elections by significant margins, the Teapublicans will stop at nothing in their efforts to delegitimize this lawfully elected President of the United States.

Is this the prelude to an impeachment strategy in 2015? What do you think?

Stay strong and be great!

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Point of View Columns

The Last Person to Talk

The mission of the Teapublicans has been to diminish the Obama presidency and to dismantle each and every aspect of his legacy. One aspect of his legacy has been his steady extraction of this country from the bloody muck and mire of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One war (Afghanistan) was conducted without an exit strategy. The other (Iraq) was a war based on lies and a mindless neocon strategy that was doomed at birth. Everyone associated with the origin and implementation of these mindless atrocities owes it to America the planet to just be quiet and wallow in their shame in an undisclosed location.

Now it appears that the damage done to America and the planet is not enough for some miscreants disguised as pundits, experts and know it alls. Instead we are forced to witness Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Judith Miller and other authors of the twenty-first century American nightmare weigh in on yet another unfolding tragedy in Iraq. Incredibly, they have the nerve and temerity to shamelessly criticize President Obama because the broken egg called Iraq can never be put together again.

Remember that we are talking about Dick Cheney, who absolutely engineered the lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This would be the same Dick Cheney who was a world class draft dodger in his youth, claiming that there were other ways in which he could better serve his country – although to this day no one knows what that service might have been. This is the same Dick Cheney who claimed that American troops would be welcomed as liberators in Iraq – before over 4000 of them were killed and tens of thousands were maimed and damaged for life.

Somehow this Dick Cheney is actually given the platform of the Wall Street Journal to spew more lies in defense of the damnable policy and legacy of death, destruction and defeat for which he is primarily and personally responsible. There is simply nothing of value, substance or merit that arose from the American invasion of Iraq. By destabilizing a fragile sector of the planet, the Bush-Cheney Gang has given a foothold for unimaginable sectarian violence that threatens to spill over to every corner of Earth.

President Obama has pursued a prudent, reasonable and intelligent policy in getting American troops out of Iraq. That this policy has been imperfect should come as no surprise given the botched butchering of any semblance of order by Dick Cheney, playing Geppetto to George Bush’s Pinocchio.

What is insulting, grotesque and shameless is that the high profile spear carrier chicken hawks have the audacity to suggest that there is some kind of military action that President Obama should pursue, or should have pursued, that would have kept Sunnis and Shiites from continuing their blood feud which goes back……….centuries. What is insulting, grotesque and shameless is that these Teapublican chicken hawks would infer, suggest or hint at another round of military intervention in Iraq.

What is even worse is that virtually none of these Teapublican chicken hawk impostors, (starting with Dick Cheney) have ever served a moment in military combat. Yet they cannot wait to send another American son or daughter to certain death or damage for a cause that defies logic, explanation or justification.

The pillorying and bullying of President Obama will continue until January 2017 – and probably beyond. Part of this goes with the territory of him being President of the United States. Part of this probably goes with the territory of him being the first black President of the United States.

But it is beyond ragged white lines of political warfare to send more American men and women into the bloody maw of combat in Iraq to prove an uprovable point – that somehow and some way George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were right.

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Point of View Columns

A Voice from the Past

It seems like yesterday, but 44 years ago this month I had the privilege of both graduating from Dartmouth College and speaking at the commencement exercises. I was reading that speech recently and I was amazed at how much has changed and how little has changed. I hope that you will appreciate this “Voice from the Past”.

Mothers and Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, Mr. President, Faculty and Guests:

We are gathered here this morning to celebrate what is supposed to be a great day, a day of significance, and a day of meaning for all those involved. But what does this day mean for us, what does this day mean for us, the Black students who have survived the Dartmouth College experience?

This day means that we recognize ourselves as being the result of years of labor and sacrifice, the labor of fathers, the sacrifice of mothers, the encouragement and help from brothers and sisters, the support of friends. What we owe for this labor, this sacrifice, this encouragement, this help, this support, we can never pay back in material terms no matter how hard we try. For what we have been given can never be measured in terms of money, the god of fools. For what we have been given was given in the spirit of love and we must return in the same that love, otherwise we have not survived the Dartmouth experience, but rather we have been crushed by it.

If we are to make the years of labor and sacrifice meaningful, then we must dedicate ourselves to our people. We must dedicate ourselves to Black freedom and Black peace of mind, no matter what the obstacles, no matter what the barriers, no matter what the side alleys that lead to dead ends of frustration and negation. We must dedicate ourselves to putting an end to the sad humor of the contradiction of a Black man in a white man’s school trying to learn how to free himself.

We were made to be free, Black men and Black women were not meant to be anybody’s hand servants or slaves, we were meant to stand tall and proud under the sky of liberation without any clouds of oppression or injustice on the horizons of our minds. And if we are to be free once more, then we must not be surprised by whatever America tries to do to us. Three hundred years of oppression, three hundred years of blood, three hundred years of brutal and inhuman treatment should have taught us that much.

But, when we were first put in chains, our ancestors were surprised; when Reconstruction was found to be a sick white joke we were surprised; when Marcus Garvey was railroaded to prison, we were surprised; when Emmett Till and Mack Parker were murdered, we were surprised; when Malcolm X, the prince of blackness was murdered in cold blood we were surprised; when Martin Luther King, the prince of peace, was killed were still surprised; when Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed by the animals that masquerade as Chicago police, were we were still surprised; and even last month, when more of our brothers and sisters were shot down in Augusta and Jackson, we were surprised.

Well, we can’t be surprised any longer. What goes around comes around, and it’s time for the other folks to be surprised.

We have been told to believe in America, to believe that there was something deep down inside America that was good. And what has happened?

Black brothers die daily in the Indochina madness that is just another example of the sickness of America spilling out all over the world, and still be try to believe; Nixon tells Black people that he doesn’t give a damn about us, that he would rather put a white man on the moon than put food into a Black (or white) child’s stomach, and still we try to believe; the Congressional Records of the United States detail the construction and planned use of concentration camps and still we are supposed to believe.

The time has now come for us to believe in ourselves. The time has come to make ourselves free. Our stars of freedom still shine and our saints of righteousness do live. You only have to look around.

The stars are in the eyes of little Black babies and children who were born destined only for freedom, the saints of righteousness are the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters who have provided the strength for Blackness to survive in the face of the forces of evil.

The time is coming, the time has got to come, when freedom will be seen in our smiles, and our Blackness will mean freedom. We have to believe this, because this is the only reality left to us.

That is what we are about, that is what today means for us. To best sum up our feelings though, I would like to quote a poem written by Brother Herschel Johnson, of this Class of 1970, as this poem speaks for the souls and spirits of all of us:

For you mothers with dirt-rough hands

For you with backs aching from bending

And flushing and scrubbing

For all you women on transit

You with brown bags under your arms

Bringing home the leavings of white folks

Bringing it to your children

For all you Black mothers and fathers

Who had to live with humility

And yet have had the pride to survive

For you Black mothers and fathers who raised us

Your men are now with you.

Thank you and may a beautiful Black peace always be with you.

 

This was written 44 years ago – it could have been written today.

 

Wallace Ford is the Chairman of the Public Administration Department at Medgar Evers College in New York City and the author of two novels, The Pride and What You Sow.

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Point of View Columns

The Circus is Back in Town

During the 2012 presidential campaign (which actually began in 2011), the Teapublican Party provided a bizarre and macabre Clown Carnival disguised as an electoral process. There was one Senate candidate who had to deny that she was a witch and another who introduced the particularly vile concept of “legitimate rape”. There was a presidential candidate who quoted the Japanese anime character Pokémon and another who wanted to colonize the moon. It turns out that 2012 was just the opening act.

Having written two published novels I would like to think that I have some idea of what kind of fiction is marketable. And I am certain that if I presented my agent with a book proposal that had a leader of the Teapublican Congress losing his seat to an avowed Ayn Rand zealot, she would throw me out of her office.

Yet, the latest news is that Eric Cantor, the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, lost in a primary to David Brat (you cannot make this up), a college professor who presumably lights candles to honor Ayn Rand every night. That would be the Eric Cantor who has voted to repeal Obamacare over fifty times. That would be the Eric Cantor who voted to cut food stamps and increases in benefits for veterans. The same Eric Cantor who led a Tea Party contingent in Congress that has shut down the federal government, imposed draconian sequestration cuts that impacted too many Americans and threatened to wreck the credit rating of the United States.

That Eric Cantor was not conservative enough for the citizens of the Congressional district in Virginia that he represents and we will now have to endure the lunacy of another ultraconservative who will be very comfortable with the likes of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Tim Scott and the Koch Brothers. And while David Brat may be comfortable with his theoretical musings on how the world would operate with little or no government, the implementation of his vision would produce a living nightmare for most Americans.

It begins with the fact that David Brat lives in the dream world of the self-made man. Somehow, in his contrived universe, he was responsible for building the public schools that educated him as well as training the teachers that taught him. In The World According to Brat, he earned everything through his own hard work and dedication – the roads and bridges and social safety net that protects him and most Americans have had nothing to do with his success.

The defeat of Eric Cantor should just be an historical anomaly. He is the first Majority Leader to have been defeated in a primary since the position was established in the 1890’s. But there is more to David Brat’s victory. Assuming that he will prevail in the general election in an overwhelmingly (and gerrymandered) Teapublican district, he will be one more voice of negativity, denial and fantasy added to the already unbearable Cacophony of No that is the Teapublican majority in the House of Representatives.

The takeaway from the downfall of Eric Cantor is that elections matter and that it is important to vote. The other takeaway is that David Brat is the symptom of a malady that is infecting the body politic and none of us are immune.

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Point of View Columns

Damned If He Does

The recent release of the last American POW in the Iraq-Afghanistan War era should have been a cause for relief, if not celebration. The fact that this release was accomplished through the exchange of five prisoners from Guantanamo, some of whom have been imprisoned for almost a decade and a half, seemed reasonable as well as a hopeful step in the direction of closing the American Gulag. Predictably, the opponents of President Obama have a problem with all of this.

The release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl pursuant to a prisoner exchange should have been one more entry in what is hopefully the last chapter of this country’s exit from the bloodbath that has been the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. The war in Afghanistan was a poorly planned misadventure by the Bush-Cheney team – a misadventure that morphed into a quagmire, consuming thousands of American casualties and billions of American dollars. The war in Iraq was hatched from misinformation and the wet dreams of neoconservative chicken hawks who feel no shame, regret or remorse in sending Americans to their death for no good reason.

Sgt. Bergdahl being the last American POW from these twin military disasters is a reminder of how disastrous foreign policy mistakes can be. It should also be one more reason for everyone to hit the Pause button prior to calling for America to “do something” in Libya, Syria, Ukraine or Nigeria. “Something” costs lives. “Something” costs money. “Something” can create chaos out of confusion. Many times “something” is not the answer and not doing “something” is not a sign of weakness as so many of the critics of President Obama would have us believe.

The fact that Sgt. Bergdahl was exchanged for five Afghan prisoners who have been held in  Guantanamo is a reminder that there is still a hell hole of torture, cruelty and violations of basic human decency that is owned and managed by the United States of America. Whatever the justification might have been for using Guantanamo as a holding pen for suspects in the war on terror (and why does the United States even have a military presence in Cuba?), there can be no justification for holding these prisoners without due process and resolution.

Meanwhile, we are faced with the specter of American soldiers force-feeding Guantanamo prisoners in the name of …………….Freedom? Liberty? The American Way? There is no way that Guantanamo, a prisoner of war camp in an undeclared war, can be rationalized. And every day that this relic of past American colonialism and present day American barbarism exists, it gives a lie to all of the glorious and magnificent aspirations of this country.

The existence of Guantanamo and its defenders are really telling us that this country has a very long way to go before it even begins to approach the ideals that it claims are the reason why the United States of America is supposed to be exceptional.

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