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Obama's first public political speech, at Occidental College on February 18, 1981, was delivered in opposition to apartheid, and in support of the divestment movement. (The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick [pp 109-110].)
"There's a struggle going on!" he said, "A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between black and white. Not between rich and poor. No--it's a harder choice than that. It's a choice between dignity and servitude. Between fairness and injustice. Between commitment and indifference. A choice between right and wrong."
As the divestment movement grew, Ronald Reagan developed a counter-strategy, known as "constructive engagement", which was overtly supposed to counter apartheid, but was actually intended to counter the divestment movement.
While Obama and Reagan were on opposite sides way back when, things have changed a lot since then. South African apartheid is long gone from the international scene, but something disturbingly similar has emerged in Israel, with illegal Israeli settlements and pass laws turning occupied Palestine into a near-perfect replica of apartheid-era South Africa--hardly a surprising outcome, given that Israel was long South Africa's leading supporter, even helping out with its nuclear program. And Egypt is Israel's prime enabler in the region, supported by $1.3 billion in US military aid, as the historic peace treaty brokered by Jimmy Carter has become a means for creating a condition of unspeakable evil--about which, of course, America says nothing. (Hence, unspeakable.) What's more, as WikiLeaks cables revealed, in UK Guardian coverage last Friday, the US was well aware of routine torture in Egypt ("US reported 'routine' police brutality in Egypt, WikiLeaks cables show"), but wanted to keep on Egypt's good side ("WikiLeaks cables show close US relationship with Egyptian president").
The sharp contrast of endless kind words in public, and stark assessments of brutality in the cables serves to underscore why the Obama Administrations "nuanced" public statements are far more popular with the conservative Versailles punditalkcrazy than they are with the Egyptian people in the street, who find Obama to be unconvincing in his role of would-be champion of democracy and human rights. Indeed, it's only a secret here in heavily-propagandized America that the entire Mideast order is based on coercion--military force, secret police, and intelligence agencies that routinely employ torture. Israel's "democracy" is free to drift farther and farther into delusional rightwing fantasies thanks to our support and the collusion of Arab dictatorships. Nothing there could be remotely similar if it needed democratic foundations and the consent of the governed--all of the governed--to survive.
One of the WikiLeaks cables cited by the Guardian has a summery section that reads:
1. (C) Summary and comment: Police brutality in Egypt against common criminals is routine and pervasive. Contacts describe the police using force to extract confessions from criminals as a daily event, resulting from poor training and understaffing. Brutality against Islamist detainees has reportedly decreased overall, but security forces still resort to torturing Muslim Brotherhood activists who are deemed to pose a political threat. Over the past five years, the government has stopped denying that torture exists, and since late 2007 courts have sentenced approximately 15 police officers to prison terms for torture and killings.
Independent NGOs have criticized GOE-led efforts to provide human rights training for the police as ineffective and lacking political will. The GOE has not yet made a serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution. We want to continue a USG-funded police training program (ref F), and to look for other ways to help the GOE address police brutality.
That last bolded sentence is the very essence of "constructive engagement." As the main text of the cable makes clear, there is no real interest in actual reform, motivated by respect for human rights. Instead, to the extent there is any insterest at all in change, it is an interest in minimizing friction, and targeting torture victims more carefully. Thus, it's only when Muslim Brotherhood members get involved in political matters that they can expect to be tortured. The cable continues:
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