He Knew the Job Was Dangerous When He Took It

“This wasn’t a Republican invasion of Iraq, this was an American invasion”

-Richard Wolfe, Newsweek

" . . . and I broke the lamp in the Oval Office, too."

The splitting headache of being president of the United States is that you inherit with no ambiguity the failures of your predecessor.  With President Obama, the failures of his predecessor are numerous and obvious.  None, however, weighs more heavily on the conscience of the nation than the destruction of a (dangerous) sovereign nation.  In March of 2003, President Bush ordered the United States Army to lead a coalition of world forces to topple the government of Saddam Hussein, ostensibly to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people like those who destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, New York on September 11, 2001.

Candidate Obama on the campaign trail pledged to remove the United States from Iraq in sixteen months, if he were to be elected President.  He argued before the invasion (in 2002) that it was a needless waste of American lives and resources, that it removed the focus from retaliation and revenge on al Qaeda (who perpetrated the attacks), and that it was a “dumb war.”  Unfortunately for him, the realities of our involvement are mounting against the audacity of his original stance, and the tempered pledge of his latter.

He has now announced that the US is leaving Iraq . . . sort of.  In nineteen months, in August of 2010, all combat troops will be removed from Iraq.  Mind you, two combat brigades renamed advisors (I saw a bumper sticker that read, “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam”) and up to 50,000 troops will remain.  This sounds eerily similar to Candidate McCain’s claim that the United States might remain in Iraq, “up to 100 years.”  Speaking of Senator McCain, he is now supporting the President’s plan to withdraw and redirect combat troops, while the President’s own party is attacking his withdrawal because he’s leaving troops there.  While I’m for holding the executive branch accountable and checking its power, the Dems are beginning to feed on themselves again.

Neither of the extremes on Iraq, 1) we were wrong to go in, so lets get out now, nor 2) we liberated Iraq, and it is a “good war” are correct.  What is true is that we are in a hell of a mess, and the blathering response is not helpful to the President, engaging for the troops, or emblematic of the moral and intellectual leadership that we as a nation have enjoyed in the past.

We have a moral obligation to LEAVE IRAQ in a way that leaves A FUNCTIONING IRAQI GOVERNMENT.  And the “you didn’t do what you said you would” finger in the face whining that both parties are doing is singularly ridiculous in the face of the coffins we’re now allowed to see, the sacrifice our soldiers have been ordered to make, and the gaping holes in our national character we must begin to mend.

The President is doing a very good job cleaning up the messes he inherited.  It’s simply going to take some time.

Today, I can announce that our review is complete, and that the United States will pursue a new strategy to end the war in Iraq through a transition to full Iraqi responsibility.

Remarks of President Barack Obama – Responsibly Ending the War in Iraq

Repudiating Bush

Obama sets firm date to end Iraq war he inherited

On the right track, finally, in Iraq

Obama says most troops will leave Iraq by 2010

Obama’s Iraq Speech Receives Mixed Reviews on Capitol Hill

Democrats voice concerns on Obama’s Iraq drawdown plan

Most support plan to bolster U.S. troops in Afghanistan

The New Business of Politics

President Obama’s Inaugural Address codified his desire to set the tone in and for the United States of respect, discussion and action.  Both domestically and internationally, his actions have followed his words to the letter.  Despite the continued recalcitrance of individuals like John Boehner and Hamid Karazi who actually have some participatory relevance, and Rush Limbaugh who doesn’t, President Obama has reached not only across the aisle to listen to and engage Republicans with different ideas about how to stimulate the economy, but he’s gone all the way across the street.

It’s sad and funny at the same time, watching the GOP “leaders” deal with this new way of doing business.  I’m sure that across the nation and across the globe, part of the HOPE that was held tight like baited breath was that CHANGE would actually come to the White House.  It has.

Whether beginning his administration by ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay, the forbiddance of torture, calling bumbling CEOs to account, stimulating the economy despite Republican obstacles, going to listen to the Republican obstacles, speaking for the American people directly to the Muslim and Arab and Middle Eastern populations around the world, speaking to the American people about our national attitudes toward Muslims and others around the world, President Obama is proving that he can do what Senator McCain couldn’t – walk and chew gum concurrently, I mean, do more than one thing at the same time.

And while I am loathe to frame President Obama with negatives, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that he is not what President Bush was: arrogant, ignorant, insulated, perjorative, aggressive or engaging in perfidy.

“There’s a new sheriff in town, and his name is Barack Obama.”

Obama: ‘We don’t have a moment to spare’

How Al-Arabiya got the Obama interview

Obama envoy arrives for talks with Israelis

The GOP grapples with Obama’s charm offensive

Obama tells GOP no compromise on tax rebates

He kept US safe

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President Bush and his administration decided to keep the United States safe.

A little late, but a good move nonetheless.

Of course, having failed to do so on September 10 was irrelevant.  The briefing titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in US” was forgotten or ignored.  So the United States invaded Afghanistan, failed to capture or kill the ringleader of the attacks, partially destroyed a repressive, Islamo-fascist group called the Taliban, and then moved on to invade Iraq under the auspices of being the military backup for the United Nations, an organization so respected by our government that we were the largest debtor nation, owing dues of close to half a billion dollars.  But they’ve kept us safe . . .

What we did find in Afghanistan were informants who turned in other people they knew, some terrorists, most not, to our armed forces in exchange for money.  And those unfortunates were thrown in dark holes called detention centers, which President Bush on his magical history tour claimed “kept us safe.”

He and his people authorized torture in order to “keep us safe.”

They deviated from the moral high ground that our country has always espoused (not necessarily lived up to, but espoused nonetheless) to keep US safe.

But, according to the CIA, some of the people treated to Bush/Cheney hospitality and then released actually didn’t like the United States when they left, so they took up arms against our country.  Imaging that.  People were kidnapped, held, “interrogated”, released, and they had some aggression toward their captors.  That doesn’t sound too safe . . .

Turned in by someone I know to a foreign army for $5000.  Taken away from home, and held without charges or opportunity to confront my accusers for a couple of years.  Released and exported like cattle, dropped off in a country where people hate my captors, and given the opportunity for payback.

I’d be fighting, too.  And those people wouldn’t be safe at all.

Now the same people who supported the camps like Gitmo are claiming that President Obama is doing the wrong thing by shutting it down.  Actually behaving as if we have a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution that reflect the values we hold dear and espouse as a nation is considered unsafe?

The noises they’re making about, “if we’re attacked, it’s his fault,” totally fail to take into account two obvious facts:

1.     There are already people who were held and released back on the front lines attacking us; and

2.     The innocent people who have been held without trial and interrogated now have a pretty good reason to hate us.

From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay, the lack of moral leadership and the authorization of torture by the Bush Administration recruited terrorists for the “far flung networks of hatred and violence,” that President Obama and his administration are left to deal with, and put some of our troops and intelligence operatives on pretty shaky ground.

But president bush kept us safe . . .

What’s next for Gitmo detainees?

Transcript: Bin Laden determined to strike in US

U.S. uses dues to push reform

Obama orders Gitmo closed.  Now the hard part.

Security experts skeptical on Gitmo detainee report

What’s next for Guantanamo Bay detainees?

Bush: I would have done some things differently

Detainee went from Gitmo to al Qaeda

Blogging History

Eric Holder, the Attorney General-designate of the Obama Administration is drawing a lot of fire from Republicans.  They are trying to bluff and bluster, in order not to appear patsies to the mandate of the President-elect and the Democratic majority in Congress.  One of the “issues” they are going to try to get him on is his role in the Elian Gonzalez case.

Elian Gonzalez was a young Cuban boy who left Cuba with his mother in a boat trying to escape Fidel Castro’s regime.  His mother, though, died on the journey, and he was picked up by the US Coast Guard, and brought to his mother’s family in Florida.  When all this came to light, his father, still in Cuba, asked that he be returned.  After months of very public grandstanding and pleas from entertainment and political figures, the US government raided his mother’s family’s home, and pulled the crying youngster from his mother’s family at gunpoint.  The Senate Republicans want to know “exactly what Mr. Holder’s role in the affair was in his capacity as the Assistant Attorney General.”

I firmly believed then, as I do now, that Elian should have been returned to his father without any qualms, and that the United States government should not have been beholden to a group of wealthy ex-patriots who were trying to prove a political point instead of worrying about what was best for Elian.  That being said, I began to wonder what else I would have blogged about, had blogging been around at the time.

Here’s my list:

1. The fall of apartheid in South Africa

2. The Tienamen Square Uprisings and suppression

3. The Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984

4. The election of Bill Clinton (my first presidential election as a voter)

5. The persecution of President Clinton

6. The real reason he should have been impeached

7. Tupac, Biggie and the real meaning of assassination

At this point, blogging was around, but I wasn’t doing it!

8. Bush v. Gore and the Supreme Court

9. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers

10. The invasion of Iraq

11. John Kerry and John Edwards?  Seriously?

12. The recall of Gray Davis in California

13. Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention

14. Rodney King, OJ Simpson and Reginald Denny

This list was just off the top of my head, and I was staying in the frame of time I have been walking the earth and aware of the outside world.  Otherwise, I would have blogged about Jefferson and Hemmings, Frederick Douglass, Lincoln’s “Show me the spot!” speech, and Plessy v. Ferguson, too.

Since you’re here, what would you have blogged about?

They’re on the same side of the street

Driving past the Federal Building today, I witnessed an event that speaks to the absurdity of the “conflict” in the Middle East.  On one corner, pro-Israeli demonstrators held signs, chanted, waving Israeli flags and garnering support for their cause by encouraging people to honk.  On another corner, pro-Palestinian demonstrators held signs, chanted, waving Palestinian flags and garnering support for their cause by encouraging people to honk.

In between the two huge (and growing when I left) groups were an even larger contingent of military peacekeepers, LAPD’s finest accompanied by LA County Sheriffs with riot gear.

The multiple demonstrations, though, aren’t what got my attention.  What struck me is that they were all on the SAME SIDE OF THE STREET!

Here they are, protesting their right to exist, to defend themselves against terrorism, to decry the violent interactions between their two communities, and they’re doing it SIDE BY SIDE!  Doesn’t this speak to something wrong with the prideful manner in which the whole issue has been handled?

Everyone wants to live in peace.  Both sides need food, shelter, water, and a livelihood.  Whatever the forgotten beginnings of this alleged conflict were (whether you subscribe to the notion that Jews needed a homeland after WWII or that they pushed the Arabs who lived there off their land) is irrelevant in 2009.

The end goal should be an end to the conflict.  Fighting for fighting’s sake is ridiculous.  Just look outside the Federal Building.  They’re all on the same side of the street.

Obama: ‘Much more determined’ to break Mideast deadlock

Protestors across Europe call for an end to Gaza conflict

Israel calls for ‘further patience’ to meet Gaza goals

Pro-Palestinian rally in New York turns violent

Oxymoron, thy name is Bush!

President Bush has decided to be an oxymoron.  He is checked out, a lame duck, ineffective and removed from the daily process of the world turning on its axis.  At the same time, he is taking pictures on the phone, telling his surrogates and subordinates to tell everyone who will listen that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Hamas’ fault, and the Israelis are simply defending themselves.  Beyond that, he’s leaving it for President-elect Obama to deal with.

As a student of history, I understand the creation of Israel after World War II.  I also understand the residue of hatred and frustration that is now lobbing itself back and forth in Gaza.  But it’s damn irresponsible for Secretary Rice and President Bush to act like there is no responsibility to be had in Jerusalem.

From its inception, Israel has been fighting for its existence.  But it has become the oppressive regime that it was founded in response to.  When one Palestinian life is worth 1/100 of an Israeli, the lessons of the Holocaust have been lost on those who vowed “never to forget.”

Palestinian medical sources said Friday that at least 421 people have been killed and 2,200 wounded in Gaza since Israeli air raids began December 27.

Israeli police and military officials say four Israelis have died and 57 have been wounded.

The response to the intifadas, to terrorism, is a blitzkrieg rolling out of Israel.  Update:  Israeli tanks and soldiers are now invading the Gaza Strip. And as a responsible broker in the Middle East, the President and his staff should be addressing both parties, not simply towing the line and pointing the finger.  It’s this type of irresponsible apathy when the United States is not directly concerned that leaves such a bad taste in people’s mouths when they say the words President Bush.

Just as the citizens of the United States, the patriots who truly care for and love our country, are the first ones to criticize and point out when it’s done something wrong, so should the United States, as a stalwart ally of Israel, point out when they’re doing something wrong and help them solve their situation, rather than just cheer them on and give them weapons.  Here’s where we are waiting for some direct diplomacy so anathema to the outgoing administration, and so integral to the incoming.

By being so bad at his job, then ducking out when the end is near, but poking his head up to point fingers, and then laying the whole thing at Barack Obama’s feet, George Bush has made presidential and authority antonyms.

And since he allegedly still wields presidential authority, that makes him an oxymoron.

Bush blames Hamas for Gaza conflict

Bush Gaza Crisis Response: Let Obama Handle It

Israel bombs as tanks wait on outskirts of Gaza

Israeli tanks and soldiers invade Gaza strip

Who’s writing now?

“History is written by the winners.”

This maxim has oft been repeated by me and in my presence.  But the latest round of apologists:  George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Condoleeza Rice and Laura Bush are putting to lie that phrase. Dick Cheney is not included here because he refuses to apologize for anything he’s ever said or done.  They are spewing this inane garbage as President Bush is on vacation twenty-two days before he loses his job, and is passing the buck on Israel-Hamas to his successor, defending himself by repeating the idiotic refrain that “we haven’t been attacked on American soil since 9/11, so I’ve done a good job.”  The continued absurdity of George W. Bush as president is overshadowed by the fact that the world continues to spin whether or not he’s at his desk, and he continues to fail at leading the nation.

But history is written by the winners.  So as we are certain the Bush Administration lost the election in 2000, we are also certain that this Gang of Four (or Five) won’t be writing much history, although their debacles and invasions most certainly will be written about.  And all of the “effort” that they put into a mid-east peace plan early in their second term has vanished in their lame-duck period.  Now they’re passing the buck to President-elect Obama, even while they are choosing sides.  He, meanwhile, powerless to act, and called upon to lead, is taking tentative steps the closer he gets to inauguration.  Again, I want to travel in time.

Since history is written by the winners, and this winner has already written history simply by winning, I am ready for “the next chapter in the American story.”  I am ready for a President who actually listens to others, and then acts in our best interests.  I am ready for an unapologetic supporter of the citizenry.  I am ready for a good-faith broker in the Middle East.

President Bush has left the office he never should have occupied, that he was handed by the Supreme Court, that he diminished by handing executive power to his Tom Riddle, that he desecrated when he invaded a country that didn’t attack the United States, and fell asleep behind the wheel.  He is in Crawford, until he moves to Dallas, and he’ll be back in Washington only long enough to join the rest of us on the mall and hand over the keys to the White House.

Let’s get to writing.

Bush is a book lover

Laura Bush wasn’t amused by the shoe incident

People will soon thank Bush for what he’s done

Obama should engage Hamas soon

Obama closely monitoring Gaza, advisor says

A Paradoxical Act of Poetic Justice

Crispus Attucks was told, as he stood at the front of a crowd of unruly citizens harassing British soldiers in Boston Massachusetts, “this ain’t none of your affair.” When the soldiers opened fire, he was the first to die. Barack Obama, as President-elect of the United States of America, while dealing with Israel’s current air strikes against Hamas, is also being told, in musical verse, that he’s “a magic negro.”

Over the course of two hundred nineteen years, many gains have been made in terms of granting full equality to all citizens of the United States. Black folk have attained the right to vote. Women have attained the right to vote. Segregation by race is no longer legal. Japanese American citizens can live wherever they want. People from China are allowed to immigrate to the United States. Slavery has been outlawed. That none of these issues should really have been contested is moot. But the marginalization of numerical minority groups is rooted in the American landscape as surely as the ideals we aspire to. And full equality has yet to be achieved in some areas still.

So while I celebrate President-elect Barack Hussein Obama’s rise to the highest office in the land, I am also cognizant that Jim Clark’s spirit is alive and well today. I am cognizant that I had to send my young black, Chicano, Chilean children to school on November 5^th armed against their second and third grade classmates’ “innocent ignorance” when they commented that “Obama won just because he’s black.” I am cognizant that Rush Limbaugh (who said Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was “all about race”), Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and their ilk and followers who may or may not believe that black people are inferior use their rhetoric and their megaphones to continue the oppressive racism of Andrew Jackson and John Wilkes Booth, of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. Kanye West’s statement that “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People,” in the wake of the President’s inaction when the levies broke, and my brother the teacher’s latest experience of being pulled over by the police after the officer watched three other (white) drivers make the same left turn, and the assassination plots and attempts constantly monitored against this President-elect remind me that much as things CHANGE, the more they stay the same.

Crispus Attucks was the first man to die in the struggle for American independence. The paradoxical nature of an enslaved/escaped black man dying for the freedom and creation of a country in which he was considered less than human by the legal framework that defined it should be lost on no one. The same way that the poetic justice of a man whose father was a black Kenyan and whose mother was a white Kansan, who is African American by nationality as well as visage and life experience being elected to lead that same country should be lost on no one.

In speaking with my sister-in-law and her parents on Christmas Eve, I asked, “do you realize what it means, to have him elected to be President of these United States?” Forty years ago, black people were being killed for wanting to register to vote. Forty years ago, one man was shot for encouraging black people to dream of equality. Forty years ago, Barack Obama was seven years old.

As we look forward to the changes President Obama will enact both inside and outside of our country, it is important that we take a look back as well to understand the moment that we are standing in, the moments others have worked for, and the legacy that we are heirs to and guardians of for the next generation.

Happy New Year!

Obama, Rice discuss Gaza strikes

RNC chairman condemns controversial Obama song

You’re Likeable Enough, Gay People

Neo-Nazis charged over Obama ‘assassination plot’

Forced to pass on a front seat to history

blog.i.verse

Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the blog

Laced with insight and pithiness

Words cut through the fog

 

While Barack and Michelle

Played in holiday sun

We typed, read and quoted

To get the job done

 

On blago and cheney

And kennedy, too

There was so much to say

There was so much to do

 

As Tamryn recited

Words meant for Keith

My thoughts drifted back

To soldiers and students laying a wreath

 

For with all of our arguments

About what’s right and what’s wrong

The occupation still lumbers

There’s no fat lady’s song

 

So our work yet continues

Still we read, quote and write

But more in the morning

And for now, a good night.

Obama Certified

As the national lens focuses on the governor of Illinois, I continue to return to a conversation I had with my brother from another mother a few weeks ago.  We talked about whether or not the election of Barack Obama, a black, Harvard-educated, faithfully-married, articulate, good-looking, athletic father of two would change the way that we are perceived, whether this new climate of change would affect us, as we are attempting to affect it, as we walk the streets and halls as black men in America.  In much the same way that our image has continually been defined in the media by the most violent and vile, are we now to be painted with the Obama brush?  Are we “Obama Certified”?

I know that my white counterparts are not having the same conversation about whether Blagojevich and Bush affect their perception in the world.  The white privilege that they posses allows them to be individuals in American society, even while the current President continues to run his party into the ground by enacting his own type of “pay-to-play” style politics. Barack Obama’s steady pace of putting his team together, building on years of hard work and keeping his nose clean, makes him the standard bearer in national politics and American life even before he takes office. President Bush and his administration continue to highlight these differences, in their duplicitous “cooperation” with the Obama-Biden transition team, even as they deny the President-elect and his family housing in the New Year.

But I digress.  I was talking about being Obama Certified.

If you, like my brother and I, are working hard at what you do, making a difference for others by making yourself a better person, you are Obama Certified.  If you, like the men of Loyola High School of  Los Angeles, are a person for others, putting their interests so close to yours that they are indistinguishable, then you are Obama certified.  If, like the President-elect, you listen to what people say, both those who agree with you and those who don’t, before you make a decision, then you are Obama Certified.  If you can look at the hard choices that need to be made, and make them despite what is popular to do what is right, you are Obama Certified.  And I take a short break here to say that many of us have been doing this for years, with recognition from family, friends and immediate community, but still getting pulled over for driving while black.  My purpose in defining the qualities that Barack Obama brings to the national stage is to elucidate that while he is doing a wonderful job of representing, like Gwen Ifill’s new book points out, he is not alone.

To continue, if you can admit that you don’t know everything, that you make mistakes, and that you try your hardest not to repeat them, you are Obama Certified.  The saying goes that your are judged by the company you keep.  If you keep company, then, with those who share your goals and aspirations, who understand that long journeys are taken with individual steps, who are willing to give their best efforts daily because they understand that the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” you are Obama Certified.

My brother and I have been working with these ideals, these goals, this work ethic for many years.  They come from fathers who walked this walk, mothers who walked this walk, ancestors who carried chains, sang songs, sat in buses, drank at water fountains, and asked questions.  They came from Kunta Kinte, not Toby.  And as long as I’ve been on the planet, I’ve been aspiring to the positive and fighting the negative perceptions and images, stereotypes and prejudices leveled at black men, black people, Latinos and minorities in this country since it’s inception.  We were Obama Certified before he was elected.  We’ll be Obama Certified when his second term ends.  But his election gives us (and everyone else) a term to use when describing who we are and what we do.

Barack Hussein Obama’s election to the presidency of the United States will not overnight change the systemic racism, the prejudices that exist in homes of all ethnicities and cultures across the United States.  But it will take us one step closer to forming a more perfect union.  And he’s got a whole host of Obama Certified supporters working with and for him to make that happen.

Illinois attorney general asks court to act on governor

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Bush on auto bailout, war in Iraq, shoe-throwing reporter

Bush sneaks through host of laws to undermine Obama

Sorry Obamas, Early Check-in Isn’t Available

Obama wants temporary aid for automakers

Bush visits Iraq to mark passing of security pact