Cuba USA

Obama´s Tears

by: David Brooks

source Cubadebate

translation Cuba - Network in Defense of Humanity

The image of the week (well, until surpassed by Sean Penn and El Chapo) was the tears shed by President Barack Obama

The president famous for controlling his emotions, presented a series of minimal executive measures to deal with what some consider an epidemic of violence with fire arms – it is the bloodiest advanced country with more than 30 thousands deaths a year. Facing an impossibility of promoting reforms to laws that are ever increasingly permissive regarding weapons purchases and for personal use – an issue that many consider a sacred right and protected by the Constitution – and due to the fierce opposition in Congress, Obama sought something to do to impose a little more control.

Dealing with the subjects of constant incidents of violence, above all of homicides by fire arms; many purchased legally, he referred to the other bloody event in Connecticut in 2012 in which a young armed man killed 20 children and 6 adults. Suddenly he stopped his speech; his voice trembled and shed some tears. In the televised scene dozens of cameras took thousands of shots of that image. The note read: Obama

cried.

Immediately all kinds of reactions followed. Conservative commentators of the most powerful right wing Fox News made fun of him asking why he didn’t cry for the deaths due to terrorism in California. There were even some who suggested it was mere show and certainly had an onion hidden in the podium to cause tears. Liberals reacted furiously against these suggestions, defending the tears of the president and assured they were real. Others, by this time, believe nothing of any politicians and saw it as another theatrical show in which actors really cry but know how to do it professionally.

But why is it difficult to feel solidarity with his tears, whether real or not. The same week in which he cried he was implementing policies to put hundreds of children at risk. The most important newspaper in the country, The New York Times, published an editorial repudiating the raids of Central American mothers and children

supported and justified by Obama, and commented: A president who movingly spoke of the deaths by violence of children caused by fire arms has undertaken the task of sending mothers and children from a trip of no return to the deadliest countries of our hemisphere.

As denounced by religious leaders, immigrant leaders, organizations of human rights and civil liberties and even the important national association of lawyers, the American Bar Association, with 400 thousand members declared that these measures are not only done brutally (in the morning officials broke into the homes capturing mothers and their children, already traumatized by the conditions from which they fled) violating legal national and international principles, primarily for those who are refugees. Not a single tear.

In the past years Obama has ordered more killer missions by remote control with planes known as drones against terrorist objectives.

Although there is an intense debate over whether these operations are precise and limit collateral damages more than other missions with troops and bombings; the fact of the matter is that groups of human rights and others have documented growing numbers of civilians, including children, killed by these missions.

Some calculations vary from 400 to almost one thousand only in Pakistan (other countries attacked are Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen) that includes about 200 children. In other words 10 times more that

those killed in Connecticut.

Some former drone operators commented to The Intercept [1] that many of the civilian victims often referred to children who killed like terrorists in fun (fun-size terrorists) games.

It is impossible to imagine a mother, who day and nights hears the sound of a drone waiting, praying that her children are not killed collaterally in these zones of operations in several countries and the seas of tears that these persons have cried in the longest wars of US history. No one knows how many children have died nor who they are, or what were their dreams. Not one single tear shed for these colateral

damages.

Also for families destroyed and 2,7 million children in which one of every 28 in this country have a father or mother in prison by a justice system that has managed to have the largest prison population in the world (per capita) many detained for non violent crimes, related to drugs and hundreds of thousands of victims of the war against drugs, almost always poor and the majority are Afro descendents and; for Latinos one out of every 41. But not a single tear shed.

Not to mention the largest economic inequality since before the great depression and its harmful effects, sometimes devastating, for millions of families who, due to the protected greed of a richer one

percent– is not ideological. It is empirical to have to accept the end of dreams not only for them but for their childrenor even worse; watch their children die of hunger (one out of every six); if one is a minority, to live with the fear that there they will be protected and watch national politicians propose persecuting them and observe their battles for the basic rights of women and minorities destroyed. Above all the eyes of the president are dry.

It’s a crying shame.

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