Tuesday, March 22, 2016

An open letter responding to Vijay Prashad's cowardly open letter

I guess it's fitting that it was posted at AlterNet.


That is where cowards go.

For years, it was known as the rip-off site with writers like Molly Ivins  and Al 
Giordano complaining about the lack of payment from the site that 'republished' writings.  And, of course, there was our own run in with the site where we called it out for bullying a young boy (and were delinked from them -- didn't shed a tear) as a result.

So I guess it makes sense that the cowardly garbage would get posted there.


Vijay Prashad is the author.  Not a particularly cowardly voice but also not a truly strong voice in the past either.

His weak and cowardly piece is entitled "Iraq's Torment: A Letter to George W. Bush."  No link, we don't link to sites that bully children.

Prashad is so 'brave,' isn't he?

He's writing a letter to Bully Boy Bush!!!

Why?

Many of us -- most? -- believe that if Bully Boy Bush can read it's slowly and by sounding out one word at a time s-l-o-w-l-y.

So if he wanted to reach Bully Boy, maybe he should have made it "A Letter to Laura Bush" and she could have read it to her husband.

But he wanted to write Bully Boy Bush and to write him about Iraq and the big question there is: Why?

Toi pay his respects?


I'd sooner spit on Bully Boy then write an open letter to him.

As I've noted -- and I'm not a member of the Cult of St. Barack -- one of my happiest days was in January 2009 when Bully Boy Bush finished his eight year occupation of the White House and left DC.

So I don't see the need to write Bully Boy Bush.

Is it because he feels Bully Boy started the Iraq War.

Well he did.

Along with Tony Blair and the largely forgotten then-prime minister of Australia (we'll leave him forgotten because it ticks him off so much -- in real time he was wrongly called -- within the press -- John Major which was even funnier).

And he started it along with Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress -- which would include Hillary Clinton.

Bully Boy Bush is so toxic today that he may have harmed Jeb Bush's campaign -- though Jeb did a lot of that himself.  As one friend said of Jeb recently, "If that's the smart Bush, that family was a lot stupider than anyone ever knew."

So I'm failing to see the need, thirteen years after the Iraq War started and seven years after Bully Boy left office, the need to write an open letter to him.

Will Prashad next write an open letter to LBJ about Vietnam?

Is Prashad in a twelve step group and trying to reach closure?

Should he read these letters aloud and then burn them?

That might be the therapeutic thing to do but, in terms of common sense, I'd just suggest that he grow the hell up.

Bully Boy is powerless today.  Thank the heavens.

If you want to call out someone, Hillary's running for the presidency.

Calling her out actually would matter.

Or how about calling out Barack Obama?

Remember him?

The sitting US President.


Remember Barack?

I wonder if Prashad actually does?


Barack was elected to end the Iraq War.

That would be the ongoing Iraq War.

'Ended' in the same way that Barack 'closed' Guantanamo or in the same way that he supported striking workers?

Barack was elected to end the ongoing Iraq War.

He didn't.

I'm sorry but the country -- the majority anyway -- trusted him to end it in November 2008, that's why they elected him.

Seven years in and the war drags on.

Where's Prashad's open letter about that?

An e-mail this morning gripes about no snapshot yesterday "when you should have been crowing you were right because it's finally being reported about the US military base [Fire Base Bell]" which has US fighters who are in combat.

I don't need to crow.

I said it because it was true.

I heard it from a friend who is a reporter for a major newspaper.

It was known before I said it here.  It just wasn't reported -- like so many things aren't.

But, yes, US troops are in combat in Iraq.  Yes, more US troops are being sent in following the death on Saturday of US Marine Staff Sergeant Louis F. Cardin.

Yes, Barack has refused to address the causes that led to the rise of the Islamic State.

Yes, Barack has responded like Bully Boy Bush in thinking that dropping bombs on Iraq (for over 18 months now) will somehow bomb the country into peace.

And let's not even get started on what Barack's tolerating from Haider al-Abadi -- or that his tolerance of Nouri al-Maliki resulted in the rise of the Islamic State.

Or that his subversion of democracy in Iraq -- overruling the voters with The Erbil Agreement to give Nouri a second term after he lost the 2010 election -- is the event that sent Iraq even further into chaos.

Barack had seven years to end the war and has only continued it.

He told the Iraqi people to believe in democracy.  But when the people voted Nouri out, Barack insisted he stay and when the people's representatives demanded Nouri honor the contract (Erbil Agreement) that he signed (which saw Nouri granting concessions to various political blocs in order to get a second term), the people saw their representatives blown off or, worse, attacked by Nouri's forces.

And when the ballot box provided them no relief and when their elected officials could not right things, the people took to the streets in protest.

Nouri's response was to kill nearly 60 -- including children -- as he ordered his forces to massacre a sit-in.

And the US government's response?

To call for calm on both sides.

Yeah.

It takes no courage to write an open letter to someone who's no longer in the White House and reviled around the world.

It might have shown a tiny bit of courage to hold Barack accountable (he's not only restarted the illegal war, he's continuing it beyond the next president being sworn in) or to have held Hillary accountable.

But Prashad only demonstrated how useless and pathetic he is.

New content at Third:


















The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.







 
Posted by at