Friday, January 28, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Yemen. Another link in the American Empire falls. A corrupt and repressive regime America has supported for 32 years is toppling. Who’s next? Although we never called it an Empire until G.W.’s reign, that’s what it was all along. The leaked cables show the secret behind-the-scenes scorn and what was really going on, the not-for-public-consumption stuff. And some of the leaked cables about Tunisia, Yemen, Palestine, et al, added to the revolutionary fever. Seems to be a pattern here: exposure of hypocrisy and corruption followed by an uprising of the young – for whom there is no future under the present regime. It’s becoming more apparent why WikiLeaks is so threatening. Small article this morning about the FBI issuing more than 40 search warrants as part of the investigation into the anonymous hacker group that retaliated against Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, and all those other puppets of government bidding who tried to cripple WikiLeaks by refusing to process their financial transactions. All this –the leaks and the nascent revolutions – must be troubling for you, Mr. President, but as an outside observer, I gotta say, it sure tickles me. Three cheers for the revolution! As Steve Coll points out in this week’s New Yorker, all these countries have similar characteristics – youthful populations, high unemployment, grotesque inequality, abusive police, reviled leader, authoritarian systems that stifle free expression, and all of them supported by the U.S. of A. Now I realize you didn’t start the support of corrupt regimes, that’s been going on for many decades, but you can stop it. As Mr. Coll also points out, the policy of supporting anti-democratic authoritarians in order to have a stable “ally” is unsustainable. If we want real allies in the Middle East, we should be supporting the people in their democratic aspirations, a little scary and not at all guaranteed, but in the long run, a better bet than the present policy. And meantime, I would urge you to think about the path we’re taking here at home, the one illustrated by your (in)Justice Department’s relentless pursuit of WikiLeaks and the inhumane treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning. Suppression, injustice, grotesque inequality, three of the same conditions that prevail in all these restive Middle East countries. We seem to be headed down some slippery slope here, Mr. President. You can stop, or at least slow it down. You have a duty to do that. Do the right thing.

Free Bradley Manning!