The winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace is currently involved in military attacks on six different countries. Where is the BBC on this? Now the US President has even sent troops to invade yet another Muslim country: Somalia. Where are the BBC’s war correspondents? Where is the BBC North America editor to give expert analysis on why The Obamessiah isn’t a cowboy warmonger? Fortunately, Matt Frei is no longer around to tell you that He is a “reluctant warrior”.
In case anyone here relies solely on the BBC for their information, I’ll list the countries in which the US is currently militarily involved:
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia.
Back when the President was dithering deliberating over whether to join in the war on Libya, Mardell sneered at those who wanted to see “an unapologetically aggressive America storming ahead, out front, leading those who have the guts to follow”. He also said that the President “didn’t want to be seen leading the posse to lynch the bad guy.” So what about now? Why is there no BBC discussion of how the US is blowing people up and targeting them for assassination without UN resolutions and without joining an international, NATO-led effort?
As Mardell himself said before hostilities against Ghaddafi commenced:
Many in Britain and the rest of Europe cheered when Obama was elected. They were fed up with the guy in the cowboy boots who shot from the hip. They seemed pleased with a US President who had no aspirations to be the world’s sheriff. Now, some are shaking their heads, looking for a leader.
So he is perfectly capable of criticizing people who wanted the President to go to war. Why, then, is he incapable of criticizing – publicly, anyway – the President Himself for not only going to a war that Mardell didn’t like, but taking war into even more countries than Bush could ever have dreamt of?
Just before the US joined in with Cowboy Dave and Sancho Sarkozy, Mardell explained that the White House’s reticence was due to the fact that nobody wanted to make the US look like it was doing more of that nasty old imperialist aggression. So why does the bombing of Yemen and invasion of Somalia not look like it? If it walks like imperialist aggression and quacks like imperialist aggression……
Mardell at one point tried to convince you that The Obamessiah made the UN more relevant by forcing them to make the moral decision to attack Ghaddafi. He said it was a big deal because now nobody would think the US was “dictating what happens in the Muslim world”. How about now, BBC? Why is invading Somalia or bombing Yemen without a wink at the UN different?
There’s no dithering deliberation when it comes to wantonly bombing the crap out of Muslims in other countries. And not a single raised eyebrow at the BBC. Mardell can be critical of people who urge the President into war, but he cannot be critical of the President Himself for invading countries without any prompting from an uncouth public.
It was a big deal when everyone agreed that there would be no troops on the ground in Libya, as if that somehow certified the humanitarian bona fides of the “mission”. So why is the BBC completely silent when the US sends troops in to invade another country altogether? I assume Mardell is on yet another vacation, but there are several other Beeboids assigned to the US, some of whom are allowed to give their own expert analyses on US issues. Where are they?
The BBC has no trouble running articles telling you about criticism of the French supplying weapons to the rebels in Libya, but cannot find a single person to criticize the President for ordering drone bombing runs in Yemen or Somalia, never mind Libya. The criticisms of His ramping up the war in Pakistan have been kept extremely low key as well. What a difference between now and when Bush was in charge.
As has been pointed out on this blog by so many people, there is also a marked absence of anti-war protesters. This isn’t the BBC’s fault (much), but surely there must be one curious Beeboid on staff who wonders why the anti-war crowd simply doesn’t care about how many innocents The Obamessiah kills or may kill with His warmongering. I think they simply view the bombings and killings differently because it’s Him. Somehow, He knows what’s best, and wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t good for all of us. He works in mysterious ways, ours is not to reason why, etc.
The BBC’s integrity when it comes to reporting on war has been severely compromised by their deep, unwavering bias in favor of the leader of a foreign country. Your license fee hard at work.
The Left have a (post-war) heritage of being “anti-war”. Its a cheap easy sentiment that chimes with the ban-the-bomb ’60’s hippy make love not war stuff. The one war they are strangely reticent about is the war conducted by muslim extremists against the West. And what should be done about it.
Having painted Bush as a “war-mongerer” they can’t bring themselves to admit that the continued pursuit of al-Qaeda and the Taliban might be a legitimate Western objective, as it means Obama = Bush, way too complicated, best to remain silent, look the other way, and hope no-one notices.
The Left are not (and never have been) anti-war.
They are anti-American, anti-Nato, anti-West, which is not quite the same thing. Muslim extremists are also anti-American, anti-Nato, and anti-West, hence their alliance.
There is still a hard-core anti-war brigade in the UK – the Stop the War Coalition, Jeremy Corbyn, Galloway, CND – opposing the Libyan campaign, but the anti-Iraq War hordes seem to have have all melted away, including the anti-Iraq War BBC. The regular invitations from the BBC to the hard-core anti-war types seem to have dried up.
Any war against against an anti-Western Leftist dictatorship will be opposed by the Left.
A perspective from (not one of my favorite people but worth reading) Anthony Gregory at original.antiwar.com
“And here’s the dirty little secret: Although the Iraq war has indeed calmed down since Obama took power, this was going to happen anyway. Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement in 2008 setting forth the withdrawal schedule that Obama is mostly following—if anything, Obama has slowed it down a bit. A third Bush term would have almost surely overseen the same Iraq policy we have now. On the other hand, it would have also probably continued “neglecting” Afghanistan, in contrast with Obama’s energetic escalation of that war.
In Afghanistan, 499 U.S. troops died last year and 317 the year before. Bush’s last full year—2008—saw “only” 155 U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan, and this was the deadliest year for Americans in Afghanistan during the whole of the Bush administration. The troop presence has about tripled from the height of the Bush years. Overall, thanks to the Afghanistan escalation, there were more U.S. military fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan last year and the year before than in the last year under Bush. This doesn’t even touch on the vast rise in contractors in Afghanistan, which obscures the full cost of the war. In the first half of 2010, more civilian contractors died than U.S. troops.
http://original.antiwar.com/anthony-gregory/2011/05/31/worse-than-a-third-bush-term/
Pres Bush did warn that this is going to be a long war – 50 years or thereabouts. These are just the opening salvoes in a war, that has already caused serious instability in Pakistan and the the ME.
As I predicted a few years back, Iraq and Afghanistan were just starters.
I advise my grandchildren to get a skill, a trade, a qualification – that will allow them to emigrate if things get bad.
This is a long, long battle. And Obama has made it worse by sucking up to the Muslim Brotherhood.
To get a sense of the long-run history and future, everyone should read the long but magisterial account of the MB and all its tentacles by Lawrence Wright – “The Looming Tower” – the 50 year build-up to 9/11 and the rest of the global Jihad.
I agree, John, ‘The Looming Tower’ is a superb piece of work. No doubt it is compulsory reading for the young Beeboid ‘twitterati’. Like you, I’m always exhorting youngsters to get a decent qualification that may be their passport to a safer country, should things in the UK go belly up. For my part, I shall remain in ‘The Alamo’ until the bitter end, a stalwart of the local ‘Dad’s Army’. There’ll always be an England…and lots of mosques.
Imagine a republican preseident letting loose a death squad to drag a sick old unarmed SUSPECT and then shooting him in the face. No trial, no positive ID of the suspect, then to cap it all no autopsy, no investigations.
Now consider the lefts reaction, they would be screaming crimes against humanity and the uproar would be amplified by the BBC, but no, the president is a democrat and therefore immune from all the lefts supposed moral codes. Yeeeehaaaw kill em all.
That fixed Nobel peace prize handed out before he even stepped into the whitehouse is looking very suspect now isnt it?
I dont think Obama really wants to continue the war- a war that arose from 9/11, a Pearl Harbiur event. It is going to be a long one, as the actors in this war are non-state, but hide within the population of Muslims countries whose leaders are either friendly to the West, or are not actively hostile.
The mechanics of that war were set in motion by Pres Bush, and I dont think Pre Obama has the power to stop its course. Its too late for that. If he does he will have the service chiefs, the intelligence chiefs, and national bureacracy against him. They will leak, inform senators and Congress Reps against Obama. Note the opposition to his withdrawal plans from the Pentagon. I’m certain that the military bureacracy will thwart those plans one way or other (See Yes Minister). New fronts will also be opened up.
The reason why this is going to be a long war is that it is asymmetric, but not in the way it is normally defined. The asymmetry in this war is because Muslim civilians either in informal gangs of civilian Muslims, or even an individual Muslim, attack us civilians or thge infrastructure. Western weaponry and force projection though is not based on this concept. Our military doctrine is based on knocking out nations. That process does lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, which in itself leads to even more casualties, but the concept itself does not require the deliberate targeting of civilians.
The field of battle has been chosen by the enemy, and it favours him. What next?
Democrats love wars.
Every time a republican pressie starts a war they give him a kicking. The full weight of their media machine goes into overdrive.
It is a truism that all wars started or continued by republicans are bad but all wars by democrats are humanitarian.
The beeb follows this meme with slavish predictability.
Under the Obamessiah new wars have been started , Guantanamo Bay is still in business and if anything Barry O is more hawkish than his predecessor, and yet not one shot fired in anger by the STOP THE WAR BBC coalition.
Where are the marches with 400,000 so auntie can lie about 1,000,000?
Where are the buses containing human shields from some self righteous lefties with nothing better to do.
Where is the new clare short or Diane Abbott screaming about ‘fascist America’
As fas as I can see
“YES HE CAN” do what the hell he wants as far as the bbc are concerned. They have their tongues so far up his fundament they couldn’t tell whether he was GHANDI or Hitler.
As a news organisation they have lost all credibility.