Why?
Now, I know I am going to get a barge-load of crap for posting the video below. I will be accused of tainting the quality of this blog with partisan YouTubery, swifttubing, and whatever else readers who loathe my worldview might come up with to discount the content of this video. Setting aside those silly affronts to my impeccable personality, and understanding that this video may be a distortion in some way despite clear foortage, I still would like to ask co-bloggers and readers alike the same question that the video does.
Why?
A stronger attack than the Jeremiah Wright one, anyway.
Not something I’d expect to register with most Americans.
Comment by Rojas — 10/7/2008 @ 6:26 pm
Perhaps, but that still doesn’t answer the question why? What was Obama’s motivation in this?
Comment by James — 10/7/2008 @ 6:30 pm
Well, presumably for two reasons.
First, Obama’s involvement in the election predated the post-election violence.
Secondly, I think a reasonable claim could be made that the incumbent regime was worse.
Comment by Rojas — 10/7/2008 @ 6:35 pm
Fair ground for questioning. I’d be interested to hear Obama’s response to questions on the subject.
Comment by Talarohk — 10/7/2008 @ 6:39 pm
Ok. Go on, Rojas. Worse in what way? Worse is a relative term on the African continent. Most of all, why did Obama take the time from his busy legislative schedule to campaign for the lesser worse in Kenya? I am not trying to be a pain in the ass here, I don’t need to, but what was Senator Obama’s motive in this? US interests? What?
Comment by James — 10/7/2008 @ 6:41 pm
Family ties?
Comment by fred — 10/7/2008 @ 7:13 pm
I know it’s fashionable to make oblique connections but deny up and down that anything is being implied save the “people are asking” thing, but can I turn this question around?
What is your take-away from this?
In any event, a few things:
There is a pretty widespread suspicion that the vote was rigged against Odinga, and that the announced results in the clip you posted was a sham. The International Republican Institute, European Union election watchers, Jeffrey Sachs, Human Rights Watch, and most every international election-watching organization I can find. The wikipedia depiction of what followed:
That’s a little bit different than the bloody coup the video seems to imply. In fact, a lot of the cries that Odinga has blood on his hands appear to be coming from…Mugabe people, who Odinga has vociferously decried for his rule.
On ties to Islamic fundamentalism, the objective account is also a bit different sans flaming machete images and ominous music:
What’s more, I can’t find a single source saying Obama endorsed Odinga. This account is a lot more indicative, saying Obama visited Kenya twice in 2006 on his “roots” trips, did indeed appear with Odinga and most every other Kenyan dignitary at one time or another, and his family denies they’re related to Odinga. Nevertheless, he was certainly friendly with him and spoke positively about him at events.
This seems to be the most fair—and roundly critical—take on Obama’s role in all this, and it seems to me to be an “appearance” issue, i.e. Obama was at Odinga’s side a fair bit, and many Kenyans took that as a tacit endorsement, though it was certainly not the purpose of his trip, and as Rojas points out, it’s pretty impossible to be a prominent African descendant with Kenyan blood visiting Kenya and not wind up at the side of some brutal thug or other (I’d remind James of all the friendly trips members of this administration made with Saddam Hussein et al, including, more or less, setting him up his rule). In any event, it’s unclear to me that, had Obama visited with Odinga’s predecessor, Kenya’s current President, the other opposition party leaders (Odinga seems a relative moderate by comparison), one couldn’t have made an almost identical video. Let’s face it, Africa is a brutish shithole at present, and short of hiding under a rock, any visits with heads of states or parties is going to rank high on the “steering clear of any potential association with bad people”.
I can see the point, but I’m having a pretty hard time seeing what this says about Obama save he went to Africa, being a rock star there, and appeared at some events with a political dignitary who is, at best, shady, but also, I’d remind you, the current Prime Minister of Kenya. Condaleeza Rice, in the course of her own duties, has also met with him repeatedly, and many other as-bad-or-worse African leaders. As well she should have.
So again, I’d ask the why question back at you.
Comment by Brad — 10/7/2008 @ 7:26 pm
What I think it should teach Obama is that he’s not just a regular Senator over there (and won’t be a regular President). It’s akin to Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey. As such, he has to be very careful how he uses his innate celebrity when dealing with African issues, a lesson the Odinga thing may well have already taught him (since the election, he seems very clearly to have distanced himself from Odinga and thrown in with the legitimate government, calls for non-violence, and reassertions that he does not specifically Odinga and is not related to him). Hopefully he’ll be a little less cavalier about who he’s seen with and who he might be perceived as lending support to. It’s a tough lesson, by the way, for anybody involved in African politics at any level to learn (say, a diplomat from Europe, a congressional delegation from America, whatever).
Which sucks, because if there’s any area of the world that really needs some ties to Europe and North America, it’s Africa. It’s the Wild West out there, but short of just severing all diplomatic relations to all African nations that are in turmoil (read: most all of them), they need to be engaged with, and preferably in such a way that they are led towards something approaching political stability and validity. The problem, of course, is that the person who looks like the legitimate agent of change one week may well have a mass grave from uncovered the next, and most anybody that “makes it” in African politics has blood on their hands somewhere down the line (and probably will have more of it if they’re to gain and maintain any kind of political legitimacy). So if you hold to the “guilt by association” line, and punish any pol who appears in public with an African political leader who later turns out to be or have been a thug, the incentive is to just stay well fucking clear of Africa and let it be somebody else’s problem. Which is, indeed, the stance that most of the colonial powers have taken since they left town, which is, indeed, part of what has precipitated the whole mess. A reflexive tendency to steer well clear of the region in terms of any political or even personal involvement whatsoever to save your own reputational bacon is probably not any kind of ideal to demand of our people in charge.
No good solution. I find it a bit hard to turn this around as an Obama issue, so much as one that underscores the inherent thorniness of Africa. If there’s some third way though, I’d like to hear it (as, probably, so would Rice, Obama, et al).
Comment by Brad — 10/7/2008 @ 7:28 pm
My take is that Barack Obama is a stealth Marxist, Brad. You can forgive that if you want, I will not.
Comment by James — 10/7/2008 @ 8:05 pm
Hey, don’t let me get in your way, then. Good luck with…that.
Comment by Brad — 10/7/2008 @ 9:03 pm
Stealth?
Comment by Rojas — 10/7/2008 @ 11:21 pm
Pretty snarky James.
I’m sorry I trashed your last post as being deceitful tripe
http://thecrossedpond.com/?p=5431
but it was and I knew it because I went to the effort to find out about the mortgage/economic crisis.
I won’t be correcting whatever documentary/propaganda you are posting above because I don’t know anything about Odingleberry or his merry country. And if the facts confirm your piece, then it should stay up and inform people.
Your last post didn’t, which was why I took issue with it. If you want to treat demands for accuracy as ‘attacks on your worldview’, so be it. The integrity of ‘your worldview’ is the thing that will suffer.
Comment by thimbles — 10/8/2008 @ 2:40 pm
I would just like to point out that I think I gave a pretty fair assessment of the facts as well as a 10 minute google search can provide (which is apparently more work than some are willing to put in).
I am not the in the tank one on this one!
Comment by Brad — 10/8/2008 @ 3:43 pm
Your sources, and google, are clearly in the tank.
Comment by Jack — 10/8/2008 @ 3:52 pm
Thimbles, I disagree that the post you refer to was “deceitful”. You will note that I gave no verdict other than the word “scandalous” there. I am aware of what went on in 2004 and you will note that I did not, and do not, lay the blame on the Democrat’s doorstep alone. Find Congress as a whole to be a pack of utter failures though. I will say that for anyone, especially the Democrats, to point fingers of blame in the issue to be risible.
As for the video in this post, it could include no commentary and I would still find myself asking “why?”. Obama was clearly there to support Odinga and it just seems very odd to me.
Some have argued about the assertion that Odinga made a pact with Kenyan Muslims to rewrite the constitution to include Sharia law, but it would seem that at least that claim in the video is true. Read paragraphs g) thru n) here.
As for the rest, I am working on it. It still doesn’t, however, explain the why.
Comment by James — 10/8/2008 @ 4:12 pm
What gave it away on google, the “do no evil” maxim?
Clearly, not McCain voters.
Comment by Brad — 10/8/2008 @ 4:12 pm
I think you got two pretty fair answers from both me and Rojas.
1. Obama’s appearances with Odinga guy predate all the accusations against him that the video speaks about. When Obama visited him, Odinga was coasting on a reputation for being one of Mugabe’s fiercest critics, and for having united the opposition party (peacefully) in Kenya. The claim that Obama having previously visited with him was a pre-endorsement of events to follow is a little silly, innit?
2. Africa is a rough place to get involved with. Clearly, Obama did not visit Kenya to support Odinga—that was his “getting back to my roots” trip, which was the subject of a large portion of his book about his father, and it’s unsurprising that as a sort of removed-son of Kenya, he would make appearances with local figureheads, including Odinga, who was (and remains) a popular leader of the country (he is, mind, currently the Prime Minister). Rice meets with his ilk and worse on a yearly basis. It says less about Obama personally than it does about the thorny nature of “politics” in Africa, where the liberal democratic political leader one day turns out to be the murderous thug the next, and nobody, it seems, doesn’t have blood on their hands (or if they don’t, might well soon).
Of course, that’s a lot less partisanly satisfying than the assumption that Obama is secretly a closet Sharia Law muslim who seeks to empower people who wish to violently stage Marxist revolutions and murder political opposition. But if that’s your default assumption here, I have no idea what I or anybody else can say to reason with that premise. Like I said, good luck with that.
Comment by Brad — 10/8/2008 @ 4:18 pm
I am making no assumptions, Brad. Perhaps it is just my ignorance, but I didn’t think it was all that common for sitting Senators (let alone presidential candidates) to campaign for the candidates in foreign countries. I’m sorry if I remain baffled by Obama’s motivation to do so, but I am.
Comment by James — 10/8/2008 @ 4:30 pm
He didn’t campaign for him, though. He met with other leaders during that trip as well. What he did was appear in public with him and say nice things about him. Which is not only common, it is pretty much what every sitting Senator does when they visit Africa.
Comment by Brad — 10/8/2008 @ 4:33 pm
At campaign rallies? Got an example?
Comment by James — 10/8/2008 @ 4:43 pm
Why?: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/and-now-for-the-fund-raising-part-of-our-journey/
Why?:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/promos/politics/blog/15blog-mccain-falwell.jpg
Why?:
http://s.wsj.net/media/mccain_calif_art_400_20080522162726.jpg
Comment by Jack — 10/8/2008 @ 4:47 pm
Was that a campaign rally?
It occurs to me in having this conversation that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about beyond the facts as presented to you in the video and your pre-inclination to take them at absolute face value, and then some.
I don’t have much of an idea either, mind, but in my ten minute google search pretty much everything I found severely problematizes your (read, the video’s) characterization of things, if not flat out rebuts them. It’s not my job to inform you on this one; you’re the one accusing him of being a closet Marxist looking to sow bloody rebellion in Africa, you tell me.
Comment by Brad — 10/8/2008 @ 4:57 pm
No, it was a picnic, Brad. Please.
Comment by James — 10/8/2008 @ 5:02 pm
Not at all the same as campaigning for a foreign candidate, but indeed, why?
Comment by James — 10/8/2008 @ 5:08 pm
It was a public event. That hardly makes Obama co-chair of Odinga 2008. Do you not agree that it’s pretty common for Senators to meet with prominent African political leaders while visiting their countries? Particularly leaders who, at the time, are seen as being agents of positive reform?
If anything, I’d say it was a marginally green thing for him to do given it was seen as a tactic endorsement by some Kenyans, but that’s a pretty far cry from any of the accusations you’re throwing around.
But then again, you’re asking questions to which you won’t accept answers, so why am I still here? Why?
Comment by Brad — 10/8/2008 @ 5:45 pm
Hey, I question my assumptions constantly. That is why I can’t say one way or another whether there is any merit to the assertions of that video. But to be fair, your first reaction seems to be to defend Obama even when you have no more details than I have to question him. I think knee-jerk questioning is better than knee-jerk defense, but that’s just me.
Comment by James — 10/8/2008 @ 6:06 pm
To be fair, one can read above and see that my first reaction was to seek out said details when I didn’t know them, and to throw them out there in an attempt to gain some kind of complete picture.
Read up.
Comment by Brad — 10/8/2008 @ 6:17 pm
Read it, Brad. Just don’t necessarily buy it, but let us agree to disagree, k?
Comment by James — 10/8/2008 @ 8:16 pm
Hey man, I’m willing to look at counter-evidence.
Preferably not involving ominous musics and crash edits of machetes and a lack of any substance beyond putting two discrete and as far as we know independent elements together and “leaving it to you” to conclude that they’re intimately related. Because, you know, they’re all harrowingly edited together and shit.
And you did ask, after all.
Comment by Brad — 10/8/2008 @ 9:18 pm
Everywhere else your ’scandalous’ videos have been posted, a message of “It’s all the DEMOCRATS fault!” accompanies it. You said “Scandalous!” and inquired why the MSM wasn’t touching the story.
Is it your contention that the Democrats have no case to lay the blame for this? Is your contention based on those videos?
If so, you are wrong. There were problems at Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae, but it wasn’t democrats that pushed them off the cliff by forcing them to compete with criminal, unmonitored, lenders.
It was the criminal, unmonitored, lenders who disrupted the market with bad, short term profit loans. It was the Bush Administration who chose to ignore their obligation to protect consumers and appointed the pathetic Christopher Cox to head SEC regulators. It was the Federal Reserve who pulled interest rates down to 1% and held them there for a year. That made your bubble, which some claim was engineered to counter the post September 11th/Enron & Worldcom collapse/Oil & commodity inflation based recession that was supposed to come.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/2/nobel_laureate_joseph_stiglitz_bailout_wall
Was there some democrat corruption? Yes, but no where near the scale implied by your videos, nor put forth by the many sites linking to them.
Your second video asks “What caused our economic crisis? Google this.. Community Reinvestment Act.. The Democrats passed it.”
That is a damned lie. The CRA did not cause our economic crisis. The video which claims such is deceitful. You claim its “a little roo-rah, but the message can hardly be dismissed.” Unless roo-rah is some infantile term for deceitful I’ve never heard of, you are misleading people.
So I repeat, if you feel an attack on deceit is an attack on your worldview, you’re making your worldview look bad.
Comment by thimbles — 10/8/2008 @ 10:03 pm
Calm down, Thimbles. Really.
Comment by James — 10/9/2008 @ 12:12 am
Good rebuttal, son.
Comment by thimbles — 10/9/2008 @ 1:32 am
Never wrestle with a pig. You will both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
Comment by James — 10/9/2008 @ 1:36 am
One would think that if one desired credibility, one might put some research into things.
Just sayin’.
Comment by Mortexai — 10/9/2008 @ 3:09 am
You quoted it wrong.
My proverbial sources tell me its “Never put lipstick on a pig. She won’t appreciate it and she’ll still be a pig the next morning.”
But just for the sake of argument, in your proverbial construct, which one of us has been flinging unsubstantiated mud?
Comment by thimbles — 10/9/2008 @ 4:43 am