From the Department of Revolutionary Satire:

Historic First in the Fight Against Institutional Racism

Black Man Named Head of World’s Most Sadistic (and Racist) Killing Machine

by Toby O’Ryan

February 1, 2021 | revcom.us

 

People all over the world were thrilled to learn that a Black man, Lloyd Austin, was named U.S. Secretary of Defense. At last a person of color would preside over the drone strikes, assassinations, proxy wars, invasions, occupations, and all-around war crimes committed by U.S. imperialism against... overwhelmingly... other people of color! Crimes which have taken nearly ten million lives in the years after World War 2 ended.

From Vietnam to Korea, from Iraq (where Austin played a leading role in the U.S. Army division that spearheaded the invasion and occupation that led to over 500,000 deaths and ultimately created some 10 million refugees) to Guatemala to Libya and Congo, a huge sigh of relief—nay, a shout of jubilation—could be heard worldwide.

“At last, someone who ‘looks like me’ will be in charge of the ‘death from skies,’” said Ali Muhammad of Pakistan. “I remember when my family was celebrating a wedding, and a drone strike from America took the lives of all my children, even the baby. If only it had been a Black man in charge, I would have felt so much better.”

José Quiñones mused how reassured he would have felt had a Black man been in charge of the U.S. support for the Pinochet regime in Chile, when it tortured and murdered his brother and two sisters as well as thousands of others. “Perhaps someday even a Latino will head the Pentagon and carry out the kind of slaughter that America has done—and does—everywhere on the continent,” he mused, hardly able to contain his excitement. “I know it sounds far off, but after all, if we don’t dream of it, it won’t happen.”

Hakim Owusu, an anti-police brutality activist in Nigeria spoke excitedly of the change. “We’ve suffered brutal repression and even murders from the police and from the military. But knowing that a Black man in America will be in charge of the military means that we’ll clear up this problem just like America did with Obama and Holder. Right?”

Austin himself was mentored by Colin Powell, who had the distinction of covering up one war crime—the slaughter of over 500 unarmed men, women, children, and small infants at My Lai village in Vietnam—and paving the way for another, with a speech at the United Nations justifying the invasion of Iraq on the phony pretense that the Iraqis had “weapons of mass destruction.” (They did not—as many, many people, including UN arms inspector Hans Blix, said at the time.) And Powell himself looked back to the “Buffalo Soldiers”—Black soldiers in the U.S. Army who were part of murderously exterminating Native American Indians in the western U.S. Meanwhile, the ruling class which used them was violently ripping away the hard-won rights of Black people in the South.

Yes, Lloyd Austin is a shining example of the opportunities available to everyone if only you “pull up your pants” (as Barack Obama said), put your mind to it, and swallow any shred or semblance of your humanity.

[satire]