The late “rhetorical pugilist” Christopher Hitchens sub-titled his book God Is Not Great with “How Religion Poisons Everything.” He might have added, and perhaps did in his leftist days, that propaganda poisons everything, too. It certainly feels like its ideological signature is everywhere these days. Not least on President Obama’s final tour of Asia, including stops in Vietnam and Japan as highlights of his farewell junket.
Memories of Mayhem
Perhaps no leg of this absurd journey is more disorienting than the stopover in Obama demanding Vietnam make new human rights commitments–the USA telling Vietnam this after committing genocide across Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. And what’s the carrot? Lethal weapons. And why lethal weapons? To help polish off Obama’s preoccupation with surrounding China with bases, artillery, and trespassing destroyers. It’s all part of what journalist John Pilger calls a “lethal arc” that extends, relative to China, from Korea in the northeast to Australia in the south to Afghanistan in the west, with many points between.
The U.S. press hardly bothers to think through the implications of the visit. Selling lethal arms to Hanoi as part of the Asian pivot is described in Time Magazine as an effort by Obama to leave “a positive legacy.” These and other articles seemed to have seized upon the storyline of America, as usual, coming to the defense of small indefensible countries being bullied by the…