In a commencement speech given at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 22, President Obama concluded by telling the cadets, I have no doubt that we will have prevailed in the struggles of our times. I have no doubt that your legacy will be an America that has emerged stronger, and a world that is more just, because we are Americans, and our destiny is never written for us, it is written by us, and we are ready to lead once more.The quest for justice, both at home and abroad, seemed manifest.
In his remarks dealing with America’s foreign policy and place in the world, the President vowed to lead a strategy of national renewal and global leadership.
For President Obama, influence abroad is conditioned by strength at home.
In turn, a strong America, will depend on the nation’s resolve and ability to promote education, and research. American innovation must be the foundation of American power, he asserted.
That entails developing and sustaining a strong and vibrant economy spurred by innovation and fostering the means to advance US interests abroad.
Unlike the Bush administration, he stressed the need to avoid acting alone, and vowed to strengthen existing alliances and build new ones to promote peace and development around the world.
Success, added the President, depends on who we are.
The wars of our time are not the ones we were accustomed to because they are waged and spearheaded by terrorist organizations the likes of al-Qaeda that have limited means and resources.
As such, they pose no existential threat to the nation.
They do represent a real danger however, in the sense that they may lead us to succumb to our fears and take inconsiderate measures curtailing our fundamental freedoms in the mistaken belief that ultimate victory demands such sacrifices.
That would be a mistake, the President considers, because they cannot defeat us, but only provoke us into betraying our values and thus defeating ourselves.
The US, founded on the universal values of freedom and equality must not only do its utmost to protect them at home, but also disseminate them abroad.
That effort is also a major policy priority, for promoting these values abroad can only further enhance America’s security at home.
Hence, America will foster these values because that is who we are, a nation founded on humanistic values that loathes war.
America does not fight for the sake of fighting, the President claimed. We fight because we must.
In addition, he predicted victory in the war in Afghanistan.
We will adapt, we will persist, and I have no doubt that together with our Afghan and international partners, we will succeed in Afghanistan, he asserted.
Mr. Obama claims that the US only fights reluctantly.
Is it true?
The nation has been continuously at war for nine years.
Its total defense spending approaches $1.2 trillion a year, or 8% of its GDP, more than the rest of the world put together…
This is simply the reflection of the US’s current military and foreign policy posture, spawned by the collapse of the USSR and the simplistic conclusion that we won and they lost, and the world was now ours to shape as we saw fit.
After 1990, and the subsequent decade and a half of national hubris, as Chas Freeman recently put it, the primary objective was clear: preserve America’s unchallenged global military hegemony.
Furthermore, the militaristic approach to foreign relations led the Bush administration to launch two wars in three years, including the disastrous Iraq war, though that Arab nation posed no threat to America or any one else, in order to demonstrate American resolve and military prowess. The US was determined to impose its democratic values unilaterally, by military means if necessary.
That was its unique and hallowed mission.
All potential foes were now warned of the fate that would befall them should they not heed American injunctions.
The events that followed, including the civil war in Iraq and the reemergence of Iran in the region, including inside Iraq itself, were a deep disappointment for the ideologues in the Bush and Cheney Whitehouse.
Americans are learning the hard way that armed evangelism and the diplomacy-free foreign policy associated with it gave birth to more enemies than they kill, wrote former ambassador Chas Freeman.
Has President Obama forsaken this dangerous and failed policy?
Though an early and prescient critic of the Iraq war (and now determined to withdraw all combat troops by this summer), he has made the Afghan war also launched by his predecessor his own.
There, after a lengthy policy review, the President decided to escalate the war effort, and inject a further 30,000 troops in Afghanistan after an initial 20,000 increase shortly after his inauguration instead of heeding the lessons of history and not succumbing to what John Burns of the NYT called the folly of foreign military adventures in Afghanistan.
The USSR abandoned a similar enterprise to subdue this proud nation after ten years of futilely trying, at the cost of 14,000 dead and billion of Rubles.
The Afghan mujahidin did more to hasten the demise of the USSR than Mr. Reagan’s policies ever did…
Their ancestors waged a war of insurrection against the British in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842).
In 1842, as the British were withdrawing a force of 18,000 towards Kabul, the Afghans attacked them.
Of the original force, only fifty were left to make a last stand at Gandamak: one sole Briton, Thomas Souter, survived, in one of the most humiliating defeats ever suffered by the British army…
Ironically, the largest British base in the country is called Camp Souter…
The British had to face another rebellion in the 1870s, in what is known as the Second Anglo-Afghan War…
The Afghans and particularly, the Pashtun majority (which today dominates the Taliban insurgency) have never tolerated a foreign military presence on their soil.
This has led many observers, including John Burns, to conclude that the war against the Islamic militants may ultimately be unwinnable.
A former Taliban commander now fighting on the Afghan government’s side, Haji Ghulam Mohammed Hotak, commander of the Afghan Public Protection Force, told The National that peace will not come. Never.
The US effort to turn the war around began in Marjah last February.
After initial gains, the Taliban have returned and are forcing many locals to flee.
Every day they were fighting and shelling. We do not feel secure in the village and we decided to leave. Security is getting worse day by day. We thought security would be improving, a farmer told the NYT.
The Taliban are everywhere, they are like scorpions under every stone, and they are stinging all those who get assistance or help the government and the Americans, another said.
In spite of the troop increase approved by Mr. Obama, and which will soon be completed, progress is fleeting at best.
The insurgency is by no means faltering. Its operational capabilities and organizational reach are qualitatively and geographically expanding, according to a Pentagon report quoted by the NYT. The strength and ability of shadow governance to discredit the authority and legitimacy of the Afghan government is increasing, it added.
Progress, where there has been any, has been slow, and time is running out, as General McChrystal himself acknowledged during a recent visit to Marjah… How many days do you think we have before we run out of support by the international community, he asked one of his Marine commanders?…I'm telling you. We don't have as many days as we'd like, reported McClatchy Newspapers.
According to the President’s own timetable, troops should begin withdrawing in July 2011.
Yet the military demands more time. "The vast majority of people are going to be on the fence, and they're going to wait," said the U.S. official, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was meant to offer candid advice to McChrystal.
"The hard question for us is: Can we push them off the fence or do we have to wait for them? It will take time, and even if you throw two more battalions in there, it is still going to take months and months."
"It was a long way gone; therefore I think patience is necessary," said Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan. "But I can quite understand why the sheer amount of attention created a sense of expectation that is hard to fulfill, wrote McClatchy Newspapers.
There aren't enough U.S. and Afghan forces to provide the security that's needed to win the loyalty of wary locals. The Taliban have beheaded Afghans who cooperate with foreigners in a creeping intimidation campaign. The Afghan government hasn't dispatched enough local administrators or trained police to establish credible governance, and now the Taliban have begun their anticipated spring offensive, concluded Dion Nissenbaum, of McClatchy.
The situation has not evolved very favorably since last year, though there are ever more troops on the ground, and yet we are told more troops are needed…
As in Vietnam, it seems we never have enough ressources to complete our civilizing mission…
Moreover, the much more complex Kandahar operation has not yet even begun…
Will the President once again heed the calls of those who advocate escalation, or cut his losses and withdraw on schedule?
We will then have been in Afghanistan for ten years…
Over 1000 US troops have already died there…
As in Iraq during the early years, more and more are being killed by ever more powerful IEDs…
Moreover, President Obama is currently escalating the war across the border as well.
More and more drone attacks are being launched in Pakistan’s border region.
If 30 attacks occurred in 2008, the last year of the Bush administration, 53 were initiated last year, and already 34 in 2010.
The CIA is now even authorized to target unknown, suspected militants.
Previously, only those appearing on an approved list could be hit.
This escalation has led some critics to question the moral legitimacy of the entire program. There are a lot of ethical questions here about whether we know who the targets are. The danger is that it could spawn new terrorists and increase resentment among the Pakistani public, in particular where these strikes are taking place, Loch Johnson, an intelligence scholar at the University of Georgia, told the LAT.
Indeed, 64% of Pakistanis consider the US as an enemy, and only 9% as a partner, according to recent polls quoted by Tom Engelhardt of tomdispatch.
President Obama has also seen fit to escalate America’s covert war in the Middle and Greater Middle East as well.
According to the NYT, General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command, and thus responsible for operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, issued a secret directive last September authorizing the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces.
US military activity intensified in Yemen following the directive, and the failed Christmas bomb attack.
In short, the Afghan war is not going well, US attacks in Pakistan are increasing, as well as covert military actvity in Yemen and elsewhere...
The British precedent of the Nineteenth century, the USSR’s costly failure of the1980s can only lead us to one conclusion, one many believed and hoped the young African-American president would already have reached by himself: there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan: only escalation and further mayhem and violence, or negotiations with the Taliban, a political and ideological current part and parcel of Afghan society and that we can never hope to eradicate. Elsewhere, development aid and promotion of democracy would better serve our interests.
America’s success at home and abroad depends on affirming American values, the President said.
It is high time to assert them in Afghanistan.
Only by doing so can the US hope to preserve any influence there, and more importantly, allow the Afghans to finally live in peace.
For there will be no peace as long as foreign forces occupy the country.
In the end, it is for Afghans to decide what is best for Afghanistan, not for us.
Once they have chosen their government according to rules of their own choosing can we then seek to promote our own security interests with the new Afghan leadership…
Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation -- we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t, the President said in his West Point speech.
Yet, the US reaction to the Brazilian-Turkish brokered deal on the Iran nuclear issue left many wondering what had happened to the Obama who had urged dialogue and cooperation in America’s dealings with the outside world.
Last fall, the US and its allies had supported an agreement, then rejected by Teheran, stipulating that Iran’s LEU (low enriched uranium) was to be sent abroad and in one shipment, and that the fuel rods obtained in exchange would be delivered ten or twelve months later.
Iran finally agreed to these conditions, following the Brazilian-Turkish mediation.
What was Washington’s reaction to the deal?
The United States continues to have concerns about the arrangement. The joint declaration does not address core concerns of the international community. Iran remains in defiance of five U.N. Security Council resolutions, including its unwillingness to suspend enrichment operations, was all the US State Department spokesman could find to say.
Was the US still interested in a negotiated solution to the crisis?
Many were indeed baffled.
The Turks, for their part, were disappointed, we have delivered what they were asking for and if we fail to get a positive reaction it would be a real frustration, the Turkish ambassador in Washington told ABC News.
The Americans were visibly annoyed at what they perceived as an unwarranted foreign intervention in a matter of signal importance to the US.
The US had been working diligently on a UN sanctions resolution against Iran, and the agreement was seen as undermining these efforts.
President Obama had hoped to render Congress’ own sanction plan superfluous by reaching an agreement on sanctions at the UN Security Council.
Indeed, there seems to be little support in Congress for a deal with Iran on its nuclear program.
Yet, the absence of leadership on the part of Obama on this issue is dispiriting.
But the reaction to the Brazilian-Turkish deal may undo some of the progress the Obama administration has achieved with the international community. Washington's lack of appreciation for the breakthrough may fuel suspicions of whether sanctions are pursued to achieve success in diplomacy, or whether diplomacy was pursued to pave the way for sanctions and beyond, concluded Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council on ABC News.
A much more constructive and pragmatic approach was expected from President Obama.
Instead, he preferred to revert to the antagonistic and failed policies of his predecessor.
This presumptuous, aggressive approach has failed to change Iran’s nuclear strategy, while the Turkish-Brazilian approach has been more successful. The coming days and weeks will clarify if the US-Israel-led side finally grasps the important political lessons of the Turkish-Brazilian mediation: Drop the arrogance and double standards, negotiate fairly and realistically, and accept that Iran is a power that is at once strong, technically proficient, and proud of its sovereignty; and on that basis agree to lock in its respect for existing nuclear non-proliferation standards and conventions, wrote Rami Khouri in The Daily Star.
It is not too late for Mr. Obama to heed his own words and seek accommodation and agreement through cooperation.
The decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the covert ones waged in much of the region have had pernicious effects.
America’s pursuits have been perceived by many Muslims in the region and some in the US, as a war on Islam.
Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American imam born in the US, and who is now on the CIA’s list of targets that it is authorized to assassinate, the only American on that list, initially condemned the 9/11 attacks. We came here to build, not to destroy. We are the bridge between Americans and one billion Muslims worldwide, he said in a sermon, according to the NYT.
Yet, nine years later, after the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Awlaki now sees America as an enemy of Islam. The harassment and arrest of Muslims in the US in the aftermath of 9/11 infuriated him, so this is not now a war on terrorism, we need to all be clear about this, this is a war on Muslims! Not only is it happening worldwide, but it’s happening right here in America that is claiming to be fighting this war for the sake of freedom, he told the NYT.
Now in hiding in Yemen, Mr. Awlaki is suspected of actively planning attacks against his country. America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil. I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim, he wrote on an extremist website last March, according to the NYT.
Other Muslims-Americans, fortunately very few, have come to the same conclusions and been spurred to attack targets inside the US.
Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American, pleaded guilty to planning attacks on New York subway stations.
Bryant Neal Vinas, an American who converted to Islam and traveled to Pakistan, pleaded guilty to the charges of aiding al-Qaeda and plotting to blow up New York’s Penn Station.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an army psychiatrist alienated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is charged with the murder of thirteen people in a mass shooting that occurred at a military base at Fort Hood in November 2009. Hasan apparently had been in email contact with Mr. Awlaki (incidentally, the man charged with the Christmas Day attack on an airliner, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, also had contacts with Mr. Awlaki, the authorities believe).
Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged with planning the Times Square attack, is said to have been infuriated over drone attacks in his former country of Pakistan.
Let us be quite clear here: we are not suggesting that America‘s foreign policy, however deserving of criticism it may be, somehow justifies the planning and execution of revenge terrorist attacks against innocent civilians in New York or elsewhere..
Nothing and certainly no cause will ever justify such vile enterprises.
Nevertheless, we must come to realize that US foreign policy has alienated a great many around the world and radicalized an unstable few to the point where they decided they needed to retaliate, with the feeble means at their disposal.
In most cases, luckily, these attempts were poorly planned and executed, obviously the work of dilettantes. The intent to harm and kill definitely did exist however.
It is also important to recognize that a number of these alienated and radicalized Muslims live in America, were well assimilated there and were American citizens.
Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea, Mr. Awlaki wrote in statement last March, according to the NYT.
The Jihadists may be among us. They may not necessarily have even traveled to Pakistan or Afghanistan, but are incensed at the violence unleashed in Iraq, Afghanistan or Gaza.
An urgent tasks await us, namely to discover why disillusionment led to hatred and the desire to strike and kill. In addition, a more benign and enlightened policy towards the Muslim world certainly would not hurt either.
A decade of invading Muslim countries is having its radicalizing effects here at home. We can no longer afford to be smug, wrote H.D.S. Greenway, in a NYT op-ed piece entitled American-Born Jihad.
We must similarly come to the realization that the killing of thousands of Muslims this decade alone has had disastrous consequences on how the Muslim world perceives us. In Iraq alone, between 95,000 and 104,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003, in Afghanistan between 13,000 and 33,000. The vagueness of the figure shows how much of a priority the issue of civilian casualties has been…
We need not give in to fear every time a terrorist tries to scare us. We should not discard our freedoms because extremists try to exploit them, the President urged in his speech
Yet, an ominous and unintended consequence of this new development (homegrown terrorism) has been the temptation on the part of the authorities to curtail fundamental civil rights.
The failed Times Square plot has led to a flurry of proposals to restrict even further the rights that protect all Americans
Some suggested that Mr. Shahzad should be designated an enemy combatant, so that he could be interrogated as long as need be, and detained indefinitely…
Others, particularly senator Joseph Lieberman, are considering passing legislation that would strip US citizens of their nationality should they be involved in terrorist activity.
Many also criticized the FBI’s decision to read Mr. Shahzad his rights to remain silent after several hours of interrogation.
A week later, the Obama administration indicated that it would seek congressional authorization to interrogate terrorism suspects without having to read those rights at all.
We’re now dealing with international terrorists, and I think that we have to think about perhaps modifying the rules that interrogators have and somehow coming up with something that is flexible and is more consistent with the threat that we now face, Attorney general Eric Holder said on NBC‘s Meet the Press.
Yet, Mr. Shahzad continued to cooperate with the FBI, as did Mr. Abdulmutallab, even after having been read his rights.
Why then must the rules regarding the Miranda rights be eroded?
Today, we are told it is to facilitate and render more efficient the fight against terrorism. Who will be targeted tomorrow?
Furthermore, the Obama administration is also asking Congress to grant the government an additional delay before it is obligated to present a suspect for an initial hearing. The government believes that the obligation to present in a timely fashion a suspect in court could interrupt the interrogation process, and thus might staunch the flow of vital information.
However, if a suspect is cooperating, why should he stop doing so after having seen a judge and been notified of the charges he is facing?
And if he is not, what difference will an additional delay make?
The irony is that this administration supposedly stands for the rule of law and the restoration of America’s legal standing, Virginia E. Sloan, president of the bipartisan Constitution Project, told the NYT when asked to comment on the proposals.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, was equally dismayed.
It’s highly troubling that the Obama administration might propose to lengthen the time in which a potential defendant would come before a judge. Both proposals would severely undercut the Obama administration’s assertion that they believe in the rule of law, he told the NYT. Even the Bush administration had not gone this far!
Furthermore, the Obama administration, like its predecessor, has been doing its utmost to prevent detainees held in Bagram, an Afghan jail, from enjoying the same habeas corpus rights as those held in Guantanamo.
Two Yemeni detainees and one Tunisian had contended that they had been apprehended outside of Afghanistan, and only later transferred to Bagram, and were not terrorists. A lower court had ruled that they did benefit from habeas corpus, since they were not captured in a war zone, namely Afghanistan.
The Obama administration appealed the decision, refusing to grant them these basic rights, as had the Bush administration.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed this decision.
Tina Foster, an attorney for the detainees regretted the court’s decision, according to the NYT, stressing that it clearly authorized the government to kidnap people from other parts of the world and lock them away for the rest of their lives.
The government would never be compelled to present its evidence in court…
We can only conclude with dismay that Mr. Obama is chipping away at basic freedoms while stressing in his speeches that they need to be preserved.
At least, the Bush administration made no such claims…
Though Mr. Obama is a fine rhetorician, and his speeches impressive pieces of eloquence, his policies on the issues examined above speak an altogether different, much more brutal language. Contrary to what we expected, he has not forsaken his predecessor’s aggressive, militaristic approach to foreign policy.
Indeed, under Mr. Obama’s direction, the US is escalating its wars in Afghanistan and beyond…
Cooperation and diplomacy have been sidelined in favor of a more muscular approach that shows no more signs of success than it did during the Bush and Cheney days.
Where has the Obama of the Cairo speech gone?
Yet, it is the gradual erosion of basic rights that the President not only has not reversed, but intensified that is the most disappointing aspect of his policies.
Not only has he refused to investigate and prosecute the abuses committed by the previous administration, but his own Justice Department is now contemplating further restrictions that not even the Bush White House contemplated…
Has this President misled us, or were we naïve to believe he would do what he claimed he would do?
In the end, it matters little.
Those who believe in peace, justice and democracy will simply have to fight this president as they did his predecessor.
That is an unexpected and therefore disappointing prospect, but so be it…
(the photograph above can be found here)
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