Obama Is Just as Bad as Zimmerman

By Briana Madden

Despite his impassioned and seemingly heartfelt words on the unfortunate verdict in the Zimmerman case last week, President Obama is, in fact, guilty of the same wrongs as Trayvon Martin’s killer.

The Obama administration has granted itself the power to divine by osmosis the guilt or innocence of anyone, anywhere in the world, and to decide that person’s fate. It’s not exactly a secret that we live in a world where most are guilty until proven innocent, only now we see this unconstitutional principle written into both foreign and domestic policy. It’s bad enough that these unjust practices have gone unchecked for so long, but it’s even more outrageous that our government is now attempting to justify their legal use.

The United States government has killed 475 Trayvons in Pakistan and Yemen since 2002, according to the New America Foundation. With relatively no oversight, Obama has unleashed his drones on“suspected terrorists” (American citizens or not) in the Middle East, retaining the power to do so on U.S. soil as well. Based on an intelligence profile, he decides whether a person lives or dies. These supposed terrorists never get to speak for or defend themselves. No evidence is presented to prove their innocence or guilt. Obama just pulls the trigger and a life is snuffed out.

But wait, isn’t that exactly what George Zimmerman did when he saw Trayvon Martin that night? Zimmerman decided to follow him based on a racial profile, resulting in his death. Trayvon never got the chance to prove his innocence. Before he was given the opportunity, Zimmerman pulled the trigger, just like President Obama.

And just how accurate is the Obama administration at targeting actual guilty parties? As it turns out, they are wrong almost all of the time. Estimates show that as many as 50 civilians are killed for every one“terrorist.” There is also evidence that the CIA targets civilians who come to rescue or move the victims of the drone attacks and those who attend victim’s funerals.

So the Obama administration is wrong 98 percent of the time, just like Zimmerman was about Trayvon. Yet Barack Obama and George Zimmerman are both free men today, while 476 families grieve.

Discussing the reaction of the African-American community to Zimmerman’s acquittal, Obama said,“I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.” Is it not equally important for President Obama and all of us as Americans to recognize that the people in Pakistan and Yemen are looking at the unrestricted and largely indiscriminate killing by aircraft of their innocents through a historical lens as well? With this in mind, how can anyone wonder about the cause of the widespread anti-American sentiment in the Middle East?

Obama goes on to talk about the way statistics are manipulated to show that African-American men are more violent than others. He says it’s not fair to deny the context of these numbers in order to twist public opinion against a group of people. How then, is it fair for government propagandists to engage in the same manipulation of numbers in order to convince a nation that the“war on terror” is worth this merciless killing?

In the most reported sound bite from his speech, Obama says,“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.” This comment was, I’m sure, intended to convey the idea that even though we have an African-American president, we don’t live in a post-racial world, a sentiment that Obama elaborated on later in his speech. What it brought to mind for me was that Obama could’ve just as easily been born in Pakistan and been the victim of the very violent injustice he deplored in his speech.

The president also spoke of his own personal experience and that of most every African-American man across the country, lamenting the profiling he faced due to his skin color. What he failed to recognize is that those are the same experiences of every other marginalized group in the United States. Profiling, which is derived from stereotypes and prejudice, doesn’t just drop out of thin air. It has to come from somewhere. The racial profiling of African-Americans like Trayvon Martin stems from the American slave trade. The racial profiling of Middle Easterners comes from the American“war on terror,” which our President Obama has committed himself to perpetuating through haphazard killing, indefinite detention, and extensive breaches of privacy.

Near the end of his remarks, President Obama asked,“If we’re sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?”

So I ask now, what moral high ground does Obama have to stand on as he condemns George Zimmerman?

Briana Madden earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Illinois State University and is an Editor at Reader Supported News.

—Reader Supported News, July 26, 2013

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/18596-focus-obama-is-just-as-bad-as-zimmerman