In June, Ralph Nader accused Barack Obama of wanting to “talk white.” Last Friday on Bill Maher, Nader played the racial condescension card once again while making the (defensible) case against sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal regions.
Now, I’m really ashamed that someone from a third-world background like Barack Obama is so unbelievably insensitive about the history of that area, and how many U.S. soldiers are going to be slaughtered.
I’m really ashamed that someone from a progressive background like Nader is so unbelievably insensitive as to suggest that Obama’s ethnic identity requires him to adopt a simplistic view of the Pakistan-Afghanistan issue. Nader went on to charge Obama with wanting to “blow up Pakistan,” as if Islamist militants are not already blowing up Pakistan.
People from a “third-world background,” if anything, are probably all the more aware of the stakes in Pakistan’s deadly internal power struggle, and less inclined to see it as a matter of Western will to conquest.
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