In an address remarkable for its brevity, President Barack Obama essentially announced success, lectured Afghanistan on its responsibilities to secure its territory, and noted upcoming troop withdrawals.

Anyone who has lived through past U.S. wars abroad has heard similar statements before, but I doubt they’ve heard what Obama said before: that the U.S. is “not an empire.”

That’s surely news to dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, which have had their leaders chosen, armed or replaced on American whims.

This is not the end, but it is the beginning of the end.

And it ends not that differently from that of the former Soviet occupation, albeit slower, for both empires were drained of wealth and will.

In the wake of the earth shaking economic fall of late 2008, the U.S. was left with limited resources. Also, recent polls have shown that support has been dwindling for the continuing war effort.

With an election coming, among dramatically high unemployment levels, military draw downs might re energize disaffected Democratic voters.

The President suggested Al Qaeda’s crippling and the Taliban’s humbling the latter being brought to the bargaining table.

But the Taliban is far from humbled. For just a month ago they hit one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, immobilized it for 30 hours, and attacked important military and governmental targets with ease.

Using suicide bombers and small arms, several dozen men hit the governor’s palace, police headquarters, the transportation police headquarters and several military buildings.

One observer of the strike in Kandahar said shell casings hit the streets like “hail after a storm.”

Kandahar is more than a big city: it’s the biggest in southern Afghanistan and a major NATO base.

One Kandaharian asked, “How are they able to occupy nearby buildings and stage themselves so they can shoot on the governor’s office and N.D.S. department? (NDS is the Afghan intelligence agency – its CIA) Answering  his own question, Kandahar’s Mohammed Umar Sathi suggested, “Either the security forces are incompetent, or they have no coordination among each other.”*

The Taliban are itching for the hour of American withdrawal, at which time will come a reckoning.

Empires, like individuals, can tire.

It was not for naught that Afghanistan has been called, “the graveyard of empires.”

p>Mumía Abú Jamal

As the Arab Spring moves into the Arab Summer, the forces of the distant colonial past arise, like vampires from their crypts, seeking something to feed upon.

European and American exploiters, using UN resolutions (but ignoring others) and NATO as fig leaves, rain death and desolation, in the name of ‘protecting civilians’. That these same forces were, just months ago, in bed with the very same dictators that they today denounce, shows us that something else is at work.

One thing for sure, two things for certain, it ain’t the protection of Arab civilians! This may be seen when Palestinian kids lob stones at occupying Israelis armed with automatic weapons and tanks, the West damns the stone throwers – not the bullet shooters.

When the American President dared to even mention the 1967 borders between Palestine and Israel as a negotiating point, the Israeli President, Binyamin Netanyahu essentially told him (in diplomatic language) to go to hell.

At times such as these, one sometimes wonders, which is the world power — and which is the satellite?

At the much heralded Cairo speech (June 2009) U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama charmed the elites of the Muslim world by proclaiming, to applause: “Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will eventually fail.”

Clearly, he didn’t mean Israel, which is allowed to flout UN resolutions, by bombing Palestine civilians from F14′s, invade other countries (like Lebanon, at least twice), build sky high walls on Palestinian land and generally occupy, steal and settle on their territory, at will, with the U.S. rarely raising its voice.

The late French general and President, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) once said: “Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.”*

After the Cairo speech, with its flowery promises of a “new relationship” with the Muslim world, hopes rose like kites in the spring winds.

Two years later, after the waste of Iraq and Afghanistan, rough riding through Pakistan and the bombing of babies in Tripoli, and the thrill is gone.

After all is said and done, it’s about what it’s always been about — oil.

–(c) ’11 maj

[*De Gaulle, C., Newsweek magazine, Oct. 1, 1962.]

That’s because despite political and U.S. press claims to the contrary, the killing has done nothing to weaken al Qaeda. In fact, according to one counter-terrorism insider, al Qaeda is stronger today than it was 10 years ago, before the strikes of 9/11.

Leah Farrell, a former Senior Counter terrorism Intelligence Analyst for the Australian federal police, reported in the latest Foreign Affairs just this fact.

She writes:

…[S]ince fleeing Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas in late 2001, al Qaeda has founded a regional branch in the Arabian Peninsula and acquired franchises in Iraq and the Maghreb.

Today, it has more members, greater geographic reach, and a level of sophistication and influence it lacked ten years ago.*

As for Osama, he hasn’t had operational or command and control power for years now. Thus, his loss will have minimal impact on the organizations’s actions or plans.

It’s important to keep in mind that we are discussing a war between one of the most powerful and resourceful states in history, and a group. Seriously, who’s at a disadvantage?

U.S. Special Forces could’ve knocked off Osama the week after Sept. 11th. Why didn’t they?

Because if they did there would’ve been no pretext to invade Iraq. The public, its great thirst slaked by vengeance, would never have supported it — and the neo cons in the White House wanted in –desperately.

So Osama, like Mubarak, Like Ben-Ali, and like Quaddafy, have outlived their usefulness to the empire.

Remember then Gen. Colin Powell’s quip (during the 1st Iraq war)? “We’re running out of boogey-men!”

The media and political establishment like to raise up demons to unsettle American comfort.

Osama fulfilled that function for ten years.

They don’t need him anymore.

[col. writ. 5/2/11] (c) ’11 Mumia Abu-Jamal

In 4 years, over 600,000 combatants were killed, more than in Vietnams long, 9-year war.

Isn’t it interesting that the war fought to preserve slavery was fought in the nation called “land of the free?”

From 1861 to 1865 the war raged all across the country.

At war’s end the U.S. Congress passed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, and it would take nearly 100 years for the courts to even begin to recognize them (for most of that time, they granted constitutional rights to corporations -not Black persons.) For the courts supported white supremacy rather than Black equality.

While one of the biggest offenders was the Supreme Court, American presidents also played key roles in supporting policies designed to restrict, deny and undermine Black rights.

Under state laws, Blacks were denied the right to vote, to enjoy public accommodations, to hold public office, and to purchase homes in most neighborhoods.

Schools, from elementary to college were both racially segregated and economically under funded.

150 years later, and urban schools remain segregated by class, as well as woefully under funded.

Over 50% of kids in big-city schools, like Baltimore, New York and Chicago are drop-outs. such schools are often more segregated today than they were 50 years ago, and the political elites are pushing to privatize education.

It’s been a century and half since that bloody war began, and still legal scholars like Michelle Alexander (author, The New Jim Crow), argue that the Black poor and working class constitute a “caste” in American society, subject to disparate and discriminatory treatment in the nation’s courts, and virtual social exclusion, afterwards.

For too many people, the war continues.