Belly-Crawling Diplomacy at the Washington Forum.
Listening to Sean Sobers speak at the Washington Ministerial Forum on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, I didn’t know whether to laugh at his naivety, cry for the victim populations his comments ignored, or just seethe at his blatant, belly-crawling sycophancy.
After offering obsequious praise to the U.S. government and Secretary Narco Rubio for their "warm hospitality" in convening the forum, Sobers went on to talk about combating left wing political terrorism, without once mentioning centuries of right-wing political violence - most of it instigated and bankrolled by Washington - that produced the radical left wing backlash that has the US government scared shitless, making ministerials like the one he was invited to, necessary.
Sobers is well read, he cannot be genuinely ignorant of the numerous political kidnappings and assassinations of foreign leaders that the U.S government has carried out, either directly or through paid assassins over the decades. Similarly, the 400 plus democratically elected governments that the U.S has destabalized and overthrown in its 250 year existence - an arithmetic average of one every seven months for 250 years - while installing, propping up and protecting violent rightwing dictatorships when it aligned with America's' interests.
By historical count, two hundred of those violent regime change operations took place after 1950 - Fifty occurred right here in the Caribbean and Latin America, and those are separate and apart from over 100 other distinct military and kinetic interventions in this current post 9/11 period, all spanning Sobers' own student and adult years.
Sobers cannot be so naive to believe that the U.S government's network of Black Sites in foreign jurisdictions, and floating prisons in international waters, established for the specific purpose of detaining and torturing people beyond the oversight of domestic legal systems and international law - often with the acquiescence, if not total collaboration of foreign host governments - are figments of world imagination, or that they testify to U.S government respect for human rights or even human life.
Or, is he so historically apathetic that he can, with clear conscience, heap raise on the country that has caused mass destruction and heavy loss of lives throughout its 250 year history? The United States does not hide the violence it practices abroad, like bombing 4.7 million lives into extinction - that averages around 1600 lives a month for 250 years. Or the fact that it currently supplies the weapons for Israel's genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people? In fact, it takes great pride in its past campaigns and often threatens with unapologetic patriotic fervour to repeat them, and do worse, like bombing Iran back to the Stone Ages, to protect 'the American way of life'.
Yet, third world politicians like Sobers and his Prime Minister, even though armed with first world education, continue to trip over themselves eager to genuflect for an American pat on the forehead.
While diplomacy requires being gracious to a host, brown-nosing is not what the proud citizens of Trinidad and Tobago expect from those representing us abroad. It is certainly not what we voted for.
Barack Obama was right. "Elections have consequences." Ours of April, 28th, 2025 certainly did. We voted for change; many say we simply got exchange, but we here at the Common Sense Bench believed we got shortchanged
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