The constant portrayal by the fundamentalist right of Barack Obama as a weak president for accepting a gift from Hugo Chavez and his willingness to talk with unfriendly leaders leads to reflect on the age old question of, why do they hate us?, and why we don't really need another strong leader?To honor reason I'll bypass the envy explanation or the idea that a couple of demented religious zealots are sitting in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan plotting against us just because they can't stand the fact that... I don't know... here men don't grow beards and women wear pants.
So, why do they hate us?
After 2 decades living abroad and experiencing how things really were on the receiving end of one of the darkest chapters in American foreign policy it's easy for me to answer that question. I am an eye witness to the toppling by the CIA of a democratic government and the implementation of a right wing repressive military dictatorship, the suspension of all civil rights, the state death squads traveling the country summarily executing dissidents (politically active citizens that believed in the democratic process). Soccer stadiums used to concentrate the soon to be members of the disappeared lists, the free press braking under repression and becoming just a tool for official indoctrination, the heartbreaking sight of all those mothers, wifes and daughters of the vanished marching in the streets with pictures of their loved ones; can we here just imagine the desolation in their hearts?; can we walk just for a minute in their shoes?.
Ever even wondered how might it feel to drive down the street past a building complex where the only thing to be heard is very loud music knowing that it's being used to mask the screams of the ones being tortured inside.
I saw the implementation of a brutal capitalist model that moved the poor back to the slums and made a few collaborators very rich, and witnessed trough the years, at the cost of thousand of lives, the complete and systematic transformation of a society until it was rendered politically sterile, just a shadow of what once was a vibrating political environment.
So why did all this atrocities happened?
Very simple, to protect the economic interests of two American corporations and the destruction of an alternative model that might be a bad example for the other countries in the region as stated in the pertinent White House and Pentagon documents declassified years later under the Freedom of Information Act and other initiatives.
This is not an isolated incident, after going through such an experience one begins to analyze other incidents around the world and a pattern begins to appear. One in which many of the circumstances are similar but just the actors are different; that is the day when the true objective of the American foreign policy shows its face.
The priorities of our foreign policy have been be presented as follows:
1.- Ensure that the world safe for American corporations.
2.- Enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress.
3.- Preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model.
4.- Extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible.
What is the answer then?It's the empire and all its nasty consequences. It has nothing to do with our freedoms or beliefs, it's people around the world that want our hands out of their natural resources and away from their governments. Just a look at the name for American in Spanish, gringo (green-go!), and the whole idea gets easily across.
Is Obama weak?. Not by any stretch of the imagination, He is pioneering a new approach that could be the beginning of a very long healing process between us and the people that has been affected by our pursuit of power and dominance.
To better protect our country against the foreign threat we don't need another strong president, we need one that will lay the foundation for a radical change in our policies both domestic and international; someone that will start the long road to bring us back from the disproportionate use of the worlds resources.
We use 25% of the worlds oil and other resources at only 5% of the population; this simply means that many people are going without so we can have double, this people are not giving us their resources voluntarily, we are taking them by force and as long as that stays that way we will remain in danger.
We are only responsible for the monstrosities that our government commits, for the others is the job of the citizens of those respective countries to force their governments to issue apologies and reparations as they see fit. For now if we want to lead... let's lead then!
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