As if that was then, and this is now.

On Obama's message to Africans that they "stop blaming colonialism" for their "problems":

Because he has African blood, we were afraid to tell him that it takes more than a couple of brief visits to Africa to understand the continent. We agreed with him that, “Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict.” But we failed to explain to him that many of the Africans who bring up colonialism do not do so to blame the West. That we have never denied that in Africa corruption exists in endemic proportions; that we mention colonialism for the sake of practicality; that we want the West to understand that a continent brutalized and looted for centuries cannot turn around in 50 years.

We want the United States to look at where it was 50 years after its independence. Were the African slaves free? Could women vote? Had the civil war even happened? Wasn’t corruption rampant in the new, free nation?

But rather than ask this son of Africa to look at history, we let him spit the same Western rhetoric that implies that any African who utters the word “colonialism” wants Africa to wait 200 years for a strong “democratic commitment.” Because Obama is of our blood, we let him continue to push the same flawed, condescending idea that every African is in dire need of water, food and medicine. “And that's why," he said, "my administration has committed $63 billion to meet these challenges.”

We cheered when we heard Obama say that America “will put more resources in the hands of those who need it,” even though we know that most of that aid will end up in the hands of our not-so-democratically-committed African-born sons. We applauded when Obama said, “Wealthy nations must open our doors to goods and services from Africa in a meaningful way,” although it’s no secret that even if the entire world opened its market to Africa, most of us would have nothing to sell.

Ironically, Obama's African blood has made us too blind to see that the heart that pumps it through his veins is American.

For the full article, click here

And a report on Obama's visit to Ghana here.

deaths and remembrances

2 articles i just read:

1. Are Afghan Lives Worth Anything? by Tom Engelhardt

i didn't like the ending, but the juxtaposition IS disturbing

... You'd have to make a desperate effort not to know that Michael Jackson (until recently excoriated by the media) had died, and you'd have to make a similarly desperate effort to know that we've knocked off one wedding party after another these last years in Afghanistan. One of these deaths -- Jackson's -- really has little to do with us; the others are, or should be, our responsibility, part of an endless war the American people have either supported or not stopped from continuing. And yet one is a screaming global headline; the others go unnoticed...

2. Evaluating McNamara by Pranay Gupte

... “Bob is a good man,” Maurice Strong told me, his voice quivering. “Your paper shouldn’t be carrying such criticism of him.” Implicit in what Strong said, of course, was that some sort of apology was due to McNamara.

Neither Susan Tolchin nor I ever issued such an apology. What for? Yes, Bob McNamara had served admirably well as the World Bank’s President, and later as a board member of the Washington Post Company and the Washington-based liberal think tank, the Brookings Institution. Yes, he made contributions to philanthropies. And yes, he came out against George W. Bush’s military adventure in Iraq.

But one’s past is not cleansed so readily. I know that a 93-year-old man has passed away peacefully in his sleep, and I know that it is traditional to view such a man’s life through the prism of kindness.

I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. Too many of my friends died in Indochina. Too many of them came home without limbs. Their lives never got to be celebrated in the manner in which Robert McNamara was feted in his later years. That’s why, for me at least, he will always be Bomber Bob.