Wednesday 29 August 2012

Afghanistan Veterans' Obama Plot - Don't Ask, Don't Tell

There is a curious reticence about this story. When US Military personnel are compiling guns and explosives to remove their Commander In Chief, who happens to be the US President, why isn't this headline news? I know the perpetrators are wingnuts and goopers, to use the American terminology, but they are US service members and serving soldiers. Can you imagine the brouhaha if the equivalent happened here in the UK? Or anywhere really.
Part of the coyness by the US media may be down to the Republican Convention taking place and the US Presidential campaigns being underway. They could use the excuse that such a story could skew the debate. But that kind of logic has never stopped the US media, all sectors, from swarming all over scandal-type stories in the past. 
They could also use the excuse that the murder trial of the conspirators for killing one of their ex-comrades and his innocent girlfriend could be compromised. Again, such sensitivity has been conspicuous by it's absence from the US newswires in previous times. 
I suspect that the truth is that the story is too grotesquely embarrassing for America, even for the vulgar, venal, celebrity-worshipping and superficial sections of the US commentariat. Maybe they can't believe it. Blowing up the president by 'our boys', the heroes of Helmland - that really would be change you could believe in. 
But, on a serious note, the underbelly of US society, not just the military which reflects it, is about to be on show once again in all its ugliness to the whole world. The fanatic who massacred his fellow Americans at the Sikh temple was a racist bigot and ex-soldier. The four accused in this case will turn out to be nothing much different. This story has legs and will run. Even after Obama gets his second term. LINK

1 comment:

  1. They do not like to talk about it when it is one of their own [white guys].
    America no longer has a news media.
    We have a ministry of propaganda that writes what they are told.

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