Barack's always had a problem with accountability and responsibility -- that explains the scandals he's currently mired in. He's also had a problem of taking criticism aimed at him from the right and using it to smear the American people in general or his own supporters in particular.
While campaigning for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, he veered from the script one day and smeared the left, repeating a long disproven myth from the Vietnam era. This was reported by some news agencies. His campaign swore he didn't say what was being reported and offered a milder version. Most gave him the benefit of the doubt. (Even I did here after spending 20 minutes on the phone with a friend in his campaign swearing to me it didn't happen.)
He's never felt the need to build bridges. If you couldn't sing several choruses of "O Come Let Us Adore Me" in the tent revivals the Cult of St. Barack staged in 2008, there was no room for you.
Today, a national holiday, when it should have been a time of unity and noting what we shared in common, it was instead his turn to turn the criticism of him from the right-wing back onto the American people.
The right's accused him of losing Iraq because he took out (most) American troops. The argument goes that he betrayed the work done in Iraq back the US military. So Memorial Day was the perfect time for Barack to declare, "The truth cannot be ignored. Today, most Americans are not directly touched by war." They're not?
Our economy remains in the toilet, bridges are falling down (no, not in London, most recently in the state of Washington), there are no jobs, the future of America was mortgaged by the likes of Barack Obama to wage a war on credit. (Barack voted for one authorization after another as US Senator.)
"As a consequence," NBC News' Tracy Connor reports him saying, "not all American may fully grasp the depths of sacrfice, the profoud costs, that are made in our name."
Well maybe they were only eight-years-old! -- to cite one of his own popular (if illogical) excuses.
Teacher's pet Barack declares, "As a consequence, not all Americans may fully grasp the depths of sacrifice, the profound costs, that are made in our name."
Barack's the one who threw away the work of the US military in Iraq.
Not because of his faux 'withdrawal.'
Earlier this month, AP reported on an interview Barack gave to Univision, "When asked, he replied that it’s up to the people of Venezuela to choose their leaders in legitimate elections."
That's how it works?
I guess unless you're someone that little Barack needs to stay in office. Legitimate elections took place in Iraq in 2010. Nouri al-Maliki tried to buy votes with bribes and intimidation, he used a government agency to purge many of his rivals from the candidate list, yet with that and so much more, Nouri's State of Law still came in second in the 2010 elections. Iraqiya came in first.
That means Iraqiya (headed by Ayad Allawi) is the winner and therefore a member of it is named prime minister-designate and given 30 days to form a Cabinet. If they can't do it in 30 days, per the Constitution, someone else is named prime minister-designate.
Last year, John Barry's "'The Engame' Is A Well Researched, Highly Critical Look at U.S. Policy in Iraq" (Daily Beast) covered an important non-fiction book:
Washington has little political and no military influence over these developments [in Iraq]. As Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor charge in their ambitious new history of the Iraq war, The Endgame, Obama's administration sacrificed political influence by failing in 2010 to insist that the results of Iraq’s first proper election be honored: "When the Obama administration acquiesced in the questionable judicial opinion that prevented Ayad Allawi's bloc, after it had won the most seats in 2010, from the first attempt at forming a new government, it undermined the prospects, however slim, for a compromise that might have led to a genuinely inclusive and cross-sectarian government."
That's not the US military, that's Barack.
In fact, the US military, in the form of General Ray Odierno predicted what would happen, that the election would be won by a party other than Nouri's and that Nouri would refuse to step down as prime minister. That's why Odierno supported a caretaker government to be in place during the elections.
Now Barack didn't just look the other way while Nouri tried to steal the election.
He was willing to do that but Nouri's so inept he couldn't pull it off so you had the world watching for eight months as Nouri refused to allow anyone to be named prime minister.
It was so humiliating for Barack. By the fifth month of the stalemate, you had the Guardian's editorial board noting, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality."
So Barack had US officials broker The Erbil Agreement. There was no way -- even with the laughable ruling from the Baghdad court that Nouri controlled -- Nouri could have a second term based on the election results.
Let's deal with the ruling real quick. The Constitution lets the winner of the Parliamentary election (party or slate with most votes) have first go at prime minister-designate. The Baghdad court tried to say that this 'winner' could happen weeks after the election via alliances with other blocs that are formed after the election.
No, that's not what the Constitution said or what it meant. The whole point of the elections are that the people go to the polls and vote. They are voting for the slates -- in many cases candidates names are not listed -- or parties they believe in. For their vote to matter, it can't be nullified aftwards by some back alley deal made by crooked politicians.
And no one was going to go along with that. Jalal Talabani, who would become president of Iraq for a second term, told the Americans no way was he going to be the one to stand up and name Nouri prime minister-designate (the Constitution mandates that the president name that post) based on that court-ruling which runs counter to the Constitution.
Nouri had that ruling in his pocket before the election was held. No one knew it. It was his back up plan for if State of Law didn't come in first. When that happened, he suddenly pulled out his verdict.
That's also not how the law works. The verdict's not legally sound but let's pretend it was. You don't get a verdict and not share it. The courts are not allowed to hand down verdicts that one side can choose to make public or not and to use or not.
So the US government ignored the will of the Iraqi people and circumvented the Iraqi Constitution by coming up with an extra-Constitutional measure, a legal contract known as The Erbil Agreement which gave Nouri a second term and in which Nouri gave things to the political blocs -- like implementing Article 140 of the Constitution.
Political leaders were stupid, they never should have signed off. Let's deal with Article 140. It calls for a census and referendum to determine who gets Kirkuk -- the Kurdistan Regional Government or the central government out of Baghdad? Nouri became prime minister in 2006 and the Constitution calls for Article 140 to be implemented no later than the end of 2007.
It was now October 2010. And despite Nouri taking an oath to uphold the Constitution, he'd refused to implement Article 140. (Kirkuk is oil-rich, the reason everyone wants it.) Why would you believe that a legal contract would make him do something his oath to the Constitution didn't?
The leaders of the political blocs can argue they believed because the US government told them that it was a legally, binding contract and that it had the full support of the US government.
After the US-led illegal war turned Iraq into a country of widows and orphans, you were still willing to trust the US government?
Yes, they were. And Nouri got his second term and then proceeded to ignore all the written promises he'd made in a legally binding contract. And the US didn't say anything. For months, they stalled leaders of other political blocs. As one year passed, they began acting like they'd never heard of The Erbil Agreement. As two years passed, they started saying that this could all be resolved in two more years when parliamentary elections were held again.
Nouri didn't win a second term from the voters. He got a second term from the United States government. And all the violence that has followed, all that bloodshed, it's on Barack's hands.
That's Iraqis protesting in Samarra last March with a message for the world (photo via Iraqi Spring MC).
And he has the nerve to say that others don't understand? He's the one who wasted the military and the diplomatic gains in Iraq.
Now he could have gotten into office and, as we suggested here, immediately began a withdrawal (a real one), had all US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2009 and any criticism of him on this would have been dealt with by stating, "The American people were opposed to the war, they voted me in to end the war. Any problems resulting from the war go to my predecessor who oversaw the war."
But he didn't do that.
Instead, he chose to continue the Iraq War. Even now, he continues it, sending in the Special Ops team last fall. Having US military train Nouri's new SWAT forces who are terrorizing the peaceful protesters in Iraq?
This is all on Barack.
The failure of Iraq is on Barack.
And when we saying that he had to do an immediate withdrawal or he would co-own the illegal war, we were right.
He doesn't take responsibility for any of that. And no US reporter has ever felt the need to ask him to explain the failure of The Erbil Agreement or why he felt it was appropriate.
But on what should have been a day of unity, Barack steps to the front of the classroom and says, "Ms. Penny, the problem with the youth today is that they just don't care! I look around this classroom and see Hank who is stealing 20 dollar bills from his mother's purse or Amanda who secretly takes things from lost and found . . ."
We get it. We got it a long time ago. You're an unethical kiss ass who will always insult a peer group -- be it the left, be it peace activists, be it African-American fathers -- to kiss up. You're the little brown noser, the classroom snitch. We got it. We understand. But, before July 4th rolls around, might you take just one damn minute to grasp what the concept of unity really means and stop trying to sew division among the American public?
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Lois Lerner on the Job" went up Sunday. Today, Kat's "Kat's Korner: Shannon with a side order of Clams" and "Kat's Korner: Where are Hanni El Khatib's fingers?..." went up, Ruth's "Ruth's Report" and Isaiah's "Eric Investigates Eric" went up.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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