Say Hello to Obama, New War President, Same as the Old One

"I am in blood/ Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
- Shakespeare's "Macbeth".

"Upon the breaking and shivering of a great state and empire, you may be sure to have wars."
- Francis Bacon.

By Charley Brady

You have got to laugh at Sinn Fein, just the same. Whatever you say about these scumbags, they do have a great sense of irony about them.

They drench this country in blood for decades in their less respectable disguise as the IRA. They bomb and they kill their way into power in a way that would make most homicidal maniacs, not to mention Norman Bates and the dictators of Third World countries feel ashamed.

Yeah, I'm thinking Chile in the seventies; yeah, I'm thinking Panama. Of course that was done legitimately. After all the Americans were there so it just had to be legitimate.

Bomb the crap out of Manchester as our proud Irish freedom fighters did; bomb the hell out of London: it was all in the name of Freedom.

Yeah, right. It's all done in the name of Freedom.

And then when in power there they are, in their shiny new suits walking the corridors of prestige in London and what do they come up with now that we are "threatened" by a visit from the Queen of England?

Here's what they come up with, and God help them if that's the best they can get: the ludicrous Sinn Fein TD Caoimhglin O Caolin coming out with this drivel:

"Sinn Fein opposes the proposed State visit of the queen of England, commander-in- chief of the British Armed forces."

Oh would you pass me the sick bucket... please.

Because if I hear one more word about 800 years of tyranny under the English I will throw up.

Let's hope that the newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron decides not to have a reciprocal visit from the likes of McGuinness and Gerry Adams. Except of course that's already happened several times over the past years, with no corresponding outcry from the Brits.

Speaking personally of course I would have a hard time shaking hands with these guys. I'd be scrubbing for a hell of a time to get the blood off my wrists and I'd be counting my fingers into the bargain just to make sure that they hadn't stolen one of them.

There's a thing going on at the moment called the World Cup. (Soccer, that is, for you heathen Americans).

Jeez, what is it with the Irish? They will proudly say that they don't care who wins it as long as it is not the English.

Yet their favourite team is Manchester United. Figure that one out. Actually, don't bother. I think that too much of listening to those horrific African horns blowing in their ears has messed up the few brain cells that soccer followers had in the first place.

There's been a lot of pissed off football fans asking for them to be banned from the grounds but in this Politically Correct world you really shouldn't do that as it is "part of African culture".

To the brain dead PC morons out there, that irritating vuvuzula horn was created in the 1970's. Culture, my ass. Jeez, I hope that guy took out a patent on it. He'll be making a fortune if he did. So will the guy who invented earplugs.

Well, I can't say that it's been the happiest of fortnights here in the bat cave. Personal reasons.

In fact, short of being chased through the mountains of Carpathia by a howling bunch of villagers with burning sticks in their hands and yelling "We hate you, Victor Frankenstein" I don't think that it could have gotten much more downhill.

Still, it could have been worse I suppose. I could, for instance, have been sharing a prison cell in France with Nicolas Cocaign who thought it would be a great idea to kill his fellow prisoner and eat one of his lungs. Now I've always thought that the French would eat anything (and they've certainly eaten a lot of humble pie in THIS World Cup) but surely that's taking it to extremes. Still, like myself I guess that Mr. Cocaign is looking on the bright side: at least he's guaranteed his own room for the rest of his life; and I doubt that his lawyer will have much trouble in proving that his client has "psychiatric problems".

Or I could be Brad Pitt. Now I wouldn't mind being old Brad if that deal came without the growing brood of sprogs that he has to contend with and without the seriously scary control freak that is Miss Angelina Jolie. What does he do at night? Sleep with one eye open just in case he wakes up to find that he's not going to wake up again?

So when I look at my own problems they seem relatively minor. After all, I still have the luxury of pondering life's little mysteries. You know, things like how did Ludwig Van ever write such a beautiful piece of music like the Ninth Symphony or how did a collection of molecules come together to form as ghastly a creation as Peaches Geldof?

These are the things that trouble one. Why was Scarlett Johannson giving her twopence worth as an advisor over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

Come on, that couldn't possibly be true, could it?

Is it simply because Bono and his bad back were unavailable that week? What was wrong with His representative on Earth, Bob the Gob Geldof doing that he couldn't have his oar stuck in? It's stuck everywhere else, after all.

Why has Obama decided that after all that whole "free speech" malarkey just gets in the way of things? So let me see if I've got this right. The sacked General Stanley McChrystal was "undermining" the war in Afghanistan by his comments in "Rolling Stone" magazine?

Undermining it? How do you undermine a war that is one of the most unpopular of wars in the history of unpopular wars? Just as well that Obama wasn't around during Vietnam: you wouldn't have spaces in your prisons or enough room on your welfare lines for people that were being told to shut up because they weren't too crazy about fellow human beings dying for bugger all.

Said Obama, reminding us that he is commander-in-chief: "War is bigger than any one man or woman, be they a private or a general."

No kidding; and there I was thinking that what is happening in Afghanistan was just an obscenity foisted on us by untried war criminals like Bush and his old pal Tony Blair.

Still, they don't have to watch their kids coming back in coffins. Up to 299 British dead as of yesterday, Blair. You must be very proud. Oh sorry, I forgot that you're solving the problems in the Middle East at the moment. All in a day's work, eh?

Like Macbeth, we're now in it up to our necks in blood and slaughter. As someone else once said, "You only know that you've gone too far when you've gone too far."

Hey Obama; yeah, you. What are you doing about it?

Look. I know that you inherited a bloody thankless task in both Iraq and Afghanistan but do you honestly think that it makes you look good to go on TV and talk about kicking ass (belatedly) over the oil spill? Do you honestly think that by giving a huge bitch slap to a serving General like McChrystal makes you look tough?

Jesus H. Christ, what kind of advisors do you have? Why do you even have these wastes of space in the first place?

Since I wrote this a couple of days ago I was taken aback and am indebted to Eamon Delaney of the Sunday Independent for this following information.

He tells us in quite specific language about Obama and his use of predator drones.

I'm not going to insult your intelligence by telling you what these foul and ultimately useless creations are. For anybody interested in how ingenious humans are when coming up with better and more pointless ways to kill people, you already know.

Writes Delaney: ... "President Obama, beloved of Irish liberals, just loves these predator drones. He ordered more drone strikes in the first year of his presidency than the supposed 'warmonger' George W. Bush used in all eight years of his. According to one recent estimate, predator zone strikes killed 700 civilians during Obama's first year in office, many of them women and children. A more conservative estimate last year by the New America Foundation put civilian casualties at about 30 per cent of the total fatalities in these strikes.

"But Obama has ramped up the killing spree of late, firing 18 missiles on May 10 alone. Needless to say, the terrifying prospect of being hit by these weapons, literally out of the blue, and the general misery of the escalating war has uprooted tens of thousands of people and turned the whole area into a refugee wilderness.

"And yet, far from losing sleep over this, Obama cracked a joke about them recently at a White House reception, when he mock- threatened the boy band idolised by his his daughters with these words: 'Boys, don't get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drone. You will never see it coming.' This tasteless joke was overshadowed by the predictable hysteria of the attempted Times Square bombing later that day. But if George Bush cracked a joke like that, he'd never live it down., and yet somehow Obama gets away with it.

"... Every one of these blind strikes creates new victims, and more anger, and more willing and determined recruits for violence against America, and by extension the West - and us.

"So why don't more people here, or elsewhere, say this? Where are those Irish luvvies who crowed about his election being some big and historic change? On the contrary, when it comes to war, the issue which most alienated these critics from Bush's regime, it turns out that Obama is just as much a war president as Bush, and bigger when it comes to Afghanistan. It is just like Vietnam was for the Democrats of an earlier generation - and yet this is the party that we love here in Ireland."

Yeah, Obama has been a big disappointment to me and probably to others; but the sentiment goggles are well and truly off now.

Hope to see you all next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net