Daily · Dreamtime

What Barack Obama Owes Harry Truman

William Pfaff

Paris, January 29, 2008 – Events in South Carolina and the introduction of the race issue into the Democratic presidential primary campaign by the Clintons have brought back some memories of my own about race in South Carolina.

One night in January 1951 I was among a busload of young Georgia recruits and draftees to arrive at Fort Jackson, the big infantry training base near the state capital, Columbia. It was a racially mixed group, uneducated, headed for the infantry because not very promising material for any other military role.

I was the only one with a college degree, and one of the few who had finished high school. I was with them because I had put my name down for officer candidate school, and for that, the full, 16-week-long basic infantry training cycle was essential, rather than the 8-week short course where most people with higher qualifications went.

It had been a long drive and the bus had segregated itself – this was still Jim Crow's South – with blacks in the back and whites in the front. One white guy said in a low voice, "I hear they got (racial expletive) officers in this man's army. I ain't gonna salute no (expletive) officer!" Other whites muttered agreement.

TO: Distinguished Recipients
FM: John Whitbeck
 
Transmitted below is a very sensible article by Ghada Karmi.
 

24 - 30 January 2008
Issue No. 881
Opinion

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg:80/2008/881/op133.htm

 

What is Mahmoud Abbas waiting for?

 

It appears clear to all but the Palestinian president that resistance, not supine collaboration, is the only strategic option, writes Ghada Karmi*

 

With the appalling death toll in Gaza, relentless assaults on the West Bank (in which negotiations chief Ahmed Qurei's own bodyguard was killed), and Israel's blatant settlement expansion, one must wonder what Israeli atrocity, if any, would make the Palestinian president change course. True, last week he raised with his colleagues the possibility of suspending peace talks with Israel if it persisted in its assaults, but he has not acted. Why not?

 
Surely Gaza's plight should have been enough to outrage him, as it has done legions of people across the globe. The crowning act in a catalogue of murders took place on 15 January when Israeli tanks and helicopters invaded the Zaytoun district of Gaza, killing 19 people and wounding 50 in just 24 hours. The following day, Israel's army killed another three Gazans, and the day after it bombed the Gaza Interior Ministry, killing one woman and wounding 46 others. Many more will die after this week's power shutdown across 80 per cent of the Strip.

 

From:  Ray Close
Date: Jan 30, 2008 3:58 PM
Subject: Disappointing, but inevitable, I suppose
To: undisclosed-recipients

We were hoping for CHANGE, weren't we?  But all we get (on this subject, at least) is the same old, same old.  What better proof could there be that Mearscheimer and Walt are absolutely correct?
Why did I expect otherwise?  Where have I been all my life?
Ray

Subj: Gazans' Mass Jailbreak Smashes Illusions
Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 11:20:50 PM
From: moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG

Bush's delusions die in Gaza

Subj: Gazans' Mass Jailbreak Smashes Illusions

Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Note:  I have ommitted several paragraphs here to keep this article short and readable, and to draw your attention to the most important passages.

Even the most progressive candidate, Barack Obama, went
out of his way to take Israel's side. In a letter to
U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Obama urged the United
States not to allow a resolution condemning Israel's
illegal collective punishment of the Palestinians to
pass unless it also acknowledged Palestinian rocket
attacks, which Israel's latest closure was a response
to. "Israel is forced to do this," Obama wrote.

Obama's objection to the resolution as one-sided was
legitimate -- up to a point. Of course the Palestinian
rocket attacks that have killed 18 Israelis in four
years are morally indefensible. But as usual with
American pronouncements about anything involving the
Israeli-Palestinian crisis, Obama's letter completely
failed to address the context of those attacks,
including the harsh Israeli military actions (including
extrajudicial executions) in Gaza that have killed more
than 816 Gazans, including 379 noncombatants, since
January 2006. And, of course, it failed to mention the
most crucial fact: Gaza has been under a brutal
occupation for decades.

Fallout from the Gaza Earthquake
by Patrick Seale    Released: 29 Jan 2008
The mass break-out of some 700,000 Palestinians from Israel's open-air prison at Gaza has profoundly changed the political landscape of the Middle East. In magnitude, it can be compared to the impact on Europe of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Nothing will be the same again. There can be no return to the past.

All the main actors in the drama -- Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, the European Union and the United States itself -- will have to rethink their policies in the light of new realities.

The most striking of the new realities is that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza -- who had been reduced to abject misery by Israel cruel siege -- will never again accept being locked up. Gaza must be allowed to breathe, to trade, to be supplied with the basic necessities of life, and to live normally.

If Egypt, under Israeli and American pressure, were to attempt to bottle up the Gazans once more, this could trigger riots in Cairo, which could destabilize President Husni Mubarak's regime. Egypt must now walk a tightrope between Israeli and American pressure and the new reality of its relations with the Gazans.