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What Presidents Obama and Bush Have in Common With the Charlie Hebdo Shooters
08 January 15
ere’s a question for everyone tweeting mournful thoughts on the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag: Whenever scores of innocent civilians are killed in U.S. airstrikes, do you tweet #WeArePakistan or #WeAreSyria? If the answer is no, that should give you pause. Ask yourself why you’re compelled to feel for white victims of terror, but don’t bother to tell your friends on social media about your sadness over the deaths of the thousands of nameless Middle Eastern civilians that the U.S. government has caused.
Yes, the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office that resulted in 12 dead Europeans was a tragedy. But it was no more of a tragedy than the recent U.S. airstrikes in Syria, which our own government has admitted kills innocent civilians. It’s no more of a tragedy than civilians being killed by U.S. drone strikes, which have killed 2,400 people since 2010 and claimed the lives of 168 to 200 children in Pakistan alone. It’s no more of a tragedy than the 85 Americans who die every day as a result of gun violence. And it’s no more of a tragedy than the 22 U.S. veterans who kill themselves every day because of the scars that perpetrating violent U.S. foreign policy leaves on their bodies, minds, and hearts. We should question why there’s such inconsistency between how American media saturates us with coverage of the deaths of 12 French satirists, yet relegates innocent victims of imperialist foreign policy to obscurity.
The men who killed the Charlie Hebdo writers over satirical cartoons are suspected to be radical Muslims and are widely renounced as terrorists. Yet, President Obama has bombed seven predominantly Muslim nations – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and Iraq – in his six years as president, and he was given a Nobel Peace Prize. Just like the Charlie Hebdo attackers, President Obama kills extrajudicially, administering collective punishment for the actions of a few. And just like the radical jihadis who carried out the attack in France, President Obama has legions of delusional followers who back him every step of the way, despite the senseless violence of his actions. Let’s face it: The only reason Obama is so loved by so many despite his policies and the Charlie Hebdo attackers are so vilified is because of the color of their victims.
But President Obama is simply carrying out the wishes of the empire he speaks for, just as President George W. Bush did during his 8 years. In 2004, President Bush expressed an interest in bombing Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar, one of the few allies the U.S. has in the region. The only thing that stopped Bush from carrying out an attack that would have killed far more journalists than the Charlie Hebdo attackers did was a memo from Tony Blair urging him not to. Before that, the Bush administration oversaw a missile strike on Al Jazeera’s Baghdad office during the 2003 invasion of Iraq that killed a reporter. And the infamous “Collateral Murder” video that Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning leaked in 2006 shows U.S. gunships killing a Reuters journalist with a .30 caliber machine gun, along with the people who rushed to help him as he was bleeding in the street.
This outpouring of sorrow over the French journalists killed for drawing cartoons is especially worrisome in Europe, which has seen an uptick of anti-Muslim demonstrations in recent months. Just as it would be ignorant for Muslims to say that Christianity is violent because Obama, a Christian president, bombs Muslim countries, it’s ignorant for Christians to say that all Muslims are violent because a miniscule number of them commit acts of terrorism. Yet despite this, anti-Muslim marches are becoming a regular occurrence in Germany. A recent poll showed a whopping 1 in 8 Germans would join an anti-Muslim march in their neighborhood. And the Golden Dawn party in Greece, which has a sizable presence in parliament and whose symbol eerily resembles a swastika, openly embraces a platform encouraging violence against immigrants – particularly Muslims. The sorrowful media coverage of the 12 dead Charlie Hebdo writers will only stoke more irrational hatred of Muslims in Europe.
If Americans want to direct anger at the killers of the French journalists, they need only look at their own government. The wave of fundamentalist Islam that is destabilizing the Middle East is due almost exclusively to our meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. President Eisenhower authorized the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically-elected leader in 1953, which led to the brutal rule of the Shah and the subsequent revolution that put the Ayatollahs in power. The CIA helped Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party seize power in Iraq in the 1960s after Hussein’s two previous coup attempts failed. President Reagan armed the Taliban in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s. And in 2012, President Obama armed Syrian extremists to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, which one former CIA operator has said led to the creation of ISIS. The men who killed the Charlie Hebdo writers might never have taken such action if not for American foreign policy that creates perpetual war and destabilization – the perfect breeding ground for radical Islamic thought.
We Americans live under a violent government that desensitizes us to its brutality overseas with clever propaganda. Is it any coincidence that the #1 movie in America right now is Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” – a film about a man who singlehandedly killed 150 people in Muslim countries during American wars of aggression? One of the most talked-about movies near the end of 2014 was “The Interview,” which was essentially a comedic version of the U.S. government’s fantasy of regime change in North Korea. It seems that everywhere we look, American media and culture encourages us to cheer for Americans as we oppress and brutalize countries around the world. Cheerleaders of George W. Bush’s Iraq War said 9/11 was an attack on our freedoms, and the loudest mourners of the Charlie Hebdo attack have adopted the George W. Bush world view, saying the attack was about press freedom.
Let’s not be fooled by the media into hating an entire group of people for one isolated attack, and let’s mourn all victims of terror equally, whether the terrorist practices Islam or is the President of the United States.
Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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