Obama is a competent, charismatic George W Bush

Barack Obama is a competent and charismatic George W Bush. His Cairo speech to US puppets and dictators in the Muslim world was full of sophistry and deceit. Stripped of its rhetoric it’s a business as usual speech.

Violence is a dead end said the man who is increasing US troop numbers in Afghanistan.

This is the same man on whose orders innocent women and children are being killed by drones in Pakistan; on whose orders innocents are being slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan; whose puppet army in Pakistan is killing thousands and who has supported the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Obama’s dictators in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the quislings in the Palestinian Authority use violence daily to prop up their rule over their people. Why not tell them to end their violence?

Could it be because these dictators serve the interests of US imperialism?

Perhaps Obama has forgotten US history. America is a country built by violent revolution against an imperial order - a revolution from below which the homegrown ruling elite quickly hijacked.

I support the violence of the oppressed against the violence of their oppressors.

The right of the Vietnamese to oppose the US invaders, the right of the ANC to form an armed wing, the right of Tamils to defend themselves against genocide, the right of Palestinians to fight against US imperialism and zionist genocide, the right of the Black Panthers to arm themselves against the attacks of the racist US state, the right of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto to take up arms against the Nazis, all are legitimate struggles and justifiable.

I stand with the oppressed against their oppressors.

One guide to Obama’s business as usual approach was that he did not specifically mention democracy in the Muslim world once. Not once.

Another guide to business as usual was Obama’s comment that the bond with apartheid Israel is “unbreakable”.

Israel is a racist state built on the genocide of the Palestinian people. Obama’s two-state solution, if he is serious about it, further recognises and rewards that genocide.