Cindy Sheehan On Obama's West Point Speech

Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan's oldest child Casey was killed in Iraq on April 4th, 2004. Since then she has been on a mission to end the wars and hold George W. Bush accountable
December 2nd, 2009 4:22 AM
30,000 Wrongs Won't Make it Right
By Cindy Sheehan
I have had to reluctantly watch many presidential speeches since my son was killed in Iraq in 2004. I was even dragged out of a Bush State of the Union speech in 2006, that I didn’t want to go to anyway, for just wearing a shirt with an anti-war message.
Now, I knew that Obama was going to announce that he would be condemning 30-35,000 more troops to Afghanistan(Pakistan): that wasn’t exactly a state secret. I also knew that his speech would be filled with jingoistic propaganda—that’s a given with presidential speeches—and the Pope of Hope is no different. However, I was not prepared for the physical sickness that overcame me while he was speaking. His delivery was wooden and not convincing, but the words tore my heart apart like I was a newbie to presidential calumny.
I did not support Obama when he ran for president because he said he was going to send more troops to Afghanistan. He is a rare bird: a president that fulfills a campaign promise. I am not surprised, or disappointed, but I am filled with anger.
I am angry that thousands of more mothers will, without reason or rhyme, be served the unending pain of burying a child.
I was watching O’Bomber’s speech tonight at a bar in Las Vegas after our protest at the Federal Building there and I was punched in the gut with Obama telling the Cadets at West Point that he has:
“As President, I have signed a letter of condolence to the family of each American who gives their life in these wars. I have read the letters from the parents and spouses of those who deployed. I have visited our courageous wounded warriors at Walter Reed. I have travelled to Dover to meet the flag-draped caskets of 18 Americans returning home to their final resting place. I see firsthand the terrible wages of war.”
Just like goddamned George Bush and his evil vice-president, Obama has no freaking idea what the “terrible wages of war,” are. Signing letters, or saluting caskets, or meeting with the wounded are NOT the same thing as receiving one of those letters, lying in one of those caskets or being maimed for the rest of your life. He has only “witnessed” the “terrible wages of war,” from a remote viewing location that is filtered through the gauze of a deep disconnect from the violent pain that he is imposing.
Another thing—no one in our armed forces are “giving” their lives. No one has “given” his or her life for decades now, if ever, in our history. The people who have been killed in the Racket of War have had their lives STOLEN from them and their futures denied by chicken hawks who sign condolence letters in comfortable offices surrounded by millions of dollars of protection and by Congress members who also have no idea of the never-ending ache that is not dulled by time. Don’t even start with the bullshit that our troops are “volunteers.” If they are “volunteers” then I would suggest every one of them, or any one of them try to “volunteer” not to be deployed to Afghanistan.
December 7, 1941 was a day that has lived in “infamy” but it was not used to justify the waging of unending wars, even though our permanent bases still remain in Germany and Japan after 65 years. However, Obama again uses the attacks on 9-11 to justify this absolutely bat-shit crazy occupation of Afghanistan—no matter what he says, it IS an occupation. Tonight, in the speech he gave in front of his Cadet “props,” Obama said that the attack on 9-11 was “vicious.”
I agree that 9-11 was awful and it’s a day that we surely will never forget, but if that was “vicious” then what does Obama call what America has been doing in Iraq-Af-Pak now for twice as many years as WWII lasted? What’s worse than “vicious?” Genocide, that’s what.
Genocide is the systematic killing of a racial or cultural group and please don’t waste your time telling me that Obama has a “good heart” or “great intellect” because if he had either one of those things, the troops would be coming home by now.
Obama is just another coward that has risen to the highest office in the world and I am tired of having to be shoved by crazy people, chased and shot at by police, tear-gassed, arrested, called names that make even me blush, scrimping for every penny to stay afloat in this peace business, traveling and protesting to the point of exhaustion, etc. Not only did Obama condemn 30,000 troops to horror, with just one speech, he also condemned the real anti-war movement that was opposed to his policies from the beginning, to many more years of our sacrifices.
Well, I am not going to stop protesting and doing all of the above things, but I am not doing them for the rest of my life. If you believe in the mythical “drawdown” that Obama has just lied through his teeth about, then I ask you where did the “one combat battalion per month” out of Iraq go? Remember that promise? There has been no significant “drawdown” of troops from Iraq at all.
No matter what Obama says, these wars aren’t “just” and we aren’t “right” and we only have the “might” of the War Machine to open those “new markets” he talked about in his speech.
No matter what Obama says, these ARE open-ended wars, but I am NOT an open-ended anti-war activist.
We have to end them as soon as possible. We have to escalate our peace as the War Machine escalates its violence.
Want to go all the way for peace?
Join us this spring in D.C. for Peace of the Action!

About My New Book. Publication Date: March 2010

About This Book

By Amechi Okolo, Ph.D.

This book exposes some classic pervasive and unbelievable American lies that were invented, and have been historically perpetuated, maintained and reinforced by American orthodoxy and by various American gatekeepers that they now seem normal and are fully accepted by American and global audience as truism.

This book has therefore been a particularly difficult one, and has taken me decades to research and write because conventional and traditional knowledge, which most of the lies have become to Americans and the world, are usually difficult to challenge and overthrow, which is the prime objective of this book. This book may therefore seem too lengthy for some but when one is challenging societal conventional wisdom and orthodoxy; one is bound to need extended explanations, substantiation and documentation to make his points.

During the pains and rigors of this book, I often reminded myself of Adam Smith who published a very controversial book in 1776 titled, An Inquiry in the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which is now popularly known and listed as The Wealth of Nations in books, libraries, etc. The book which is very lengthy has turned out to become an indisputable classic of social sciences, and some rightly call the book an apologia for the emerging capitalism of the eighteenth century. Adam Smith’s book was necessarily lengthy because it needed a lot of time and space to demolish the prevailing mercantilist orthodoxy of his epoch before proposing his own profoundly new theory of wealth of nations, which has guided the world ever since. While Adam Smith’s book was accepted and hailed by some in 1776 as a truly revolutionary work of genius, which it really was, many, who felt threatened by his new theory, because they benefitted from it, seriously opposed and challenged it because it was a very serious, fundamental attack on their means of liveliness since Adam Smith’s new theory threatened to overthrow the prevailing mercantilist orthodoxy that sustained the ruling elites of the era.

This book, The State of the American Mind: Stupor and Pathetic Docility – Volume One with its accompanying Volume Two, challenges some of the pervasive lies about America which have helped to sustain America’s ruling elites. I therefore expect some establishment scholars, pundits and gatekeepers like Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly Rush Limbaugh and some others to attack this book. However, I am pre-warning that these books are fully researched and that all challenges are welcomed and will be vigorously defended.

When one writes that the so-called founding fathers are not the real ones, that George Washington was not the first American president, that the enormous invaluable roles Pocahontas in American history and sociology should be officially acknowledged and that she should be officially recognized as America’s founding mother, that most American whites were also brought to the New World in chains as bond-indentures and slaves like blacks, that the American constitution was a racist, fascist, oligopolistic document designed by America’s ruling class and money-bags who were fundamentally shaken and scared by Shays rebellion of 1786-87 to deliberately crafted the constitution to protect and insulate them from common highly exploited and despised Americans and not the great democratic document as we are told. The depiction of the American constitution, has survived some two-hundred, twenty-two years as the longest surviving written constitution on earth, as the great peoples’ democratic document is a height of American fallacies, lies and deception as well as the deification of Abraham Lincoln really is also shown in this book series. Also, when a book challenges and depicts the might medical profession as fundamentally fraudulent and unethical, as this book shows, one must expect serious pushback from their entrenched professors and gatekeepers.

More importantly, I acknowledge that the “founding fathers” were geniuses because they crafted the clearly racist constitution which has historically guided America but that they were not racists, which is why the American system has remained an enigma, almost impossible to understand, yet highly loved and admired by many Americans, including this author, and most people in the world. America is therefore, indisputably the most successful brutal, exploiting, predatory state of the modern times, according to Harold Pinter, the 2005 British Nobel Laureate.

The selection of Obama as the Democratic candidate in 2008 and his convincing victory on November 4 election and his presidency confirm clearly that the American ruling elites, the real American bosses, the money-bags are not racists even while the system they operate and benefit from is fundamentally, structurally, and institutionally racist.

One should therefore write books of such fundamental propositions without expecting some serious oppositions, but I am ready for you all. My only request is that you read this book with an open mind, I am sure that many will be convinced when they do. In spite of all the efforts, rigors and energy I put into it cannot be the last word in this most important debate about America’s basic history and sociology. I therefore invite readers to read the two volumes of this book thoroughly, do their own research and then challenge whatever continues to upset them because I will not engage anyone who has not fully read the books.

PS/ (The State of the American Mind: Stupor and Pathetic Docility – Volume One, By Amechi Okolo, Ph.D. – Will be published n March 2010. Make sure you get your copy and tell your friends too. It will be available from Amazon.com; barnesandnobel.com and from your local book stores.)