Obama – The Beginning And The End
06 January 2017
By Eyad Abu Shakra
Next month, the USA and the whole world will turn the page of Barack Obama's
presidency; bidding farewell to eight years whose early days were full of
promise, but for tens of millions ended with sadness and disasters.
Like lottery tickets, electoral democracy is never a sure thing. Indeed,
American voters throughout US history elected several presidents with big
majorities and yet their terms in office ended either with scandals such as
Richard Nixon's Watergate, war quagmires such as Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam, or
economic recessions such as the one during Herbert Hoover's presidency.
When Barack Obama won the presidential race in November 2008, many regarded
his victory as a 'revolution'. It was a 'new hope' for America, giving the
nation a much needed dose of youthfulness and vitality, as well as tolerance,
hope and belief in a future away from conservatism and racism.
Why not, bearing in mind that when elected president Obama was a youthful
senator in the middle of his first term in Congress? Why not, when he became
the first Afro-American president, and the first president carrying a
non-European name, as he was not a descendant of freed former slaves but
rather the son of a Kenyan academic who hailed from the prominent Luo people
of East Africa?
Barack Obama's victory in 2008 was, thus, truly historical. Perhaps this was
most poignantly manifested by Rev Jesse Jackson's tears of joy during
inauguration day. That day Jackson witnessed what another Civil Rights hero Dr
Martin Luther King Jr was dreaming of when he uttered his famous words: ''I
have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character'', in the country described in the US national anthem as ''The Land
of the free and home of the brave''.
Obama entered the White House under the banner of ''Change'', and optimism in
his ability to affect change was almost as huge as the need to affect that
change.
Throughout the eight years of George W Bush's presidency the 'neocons' brought
out almost all the cruel prejudicial policies that suited their ideology,
without forgetting to satisfy the conservative Evangelist Right by giving it a
free hand in domestic social affairs. In addition to launching pre-emptive and
punitive wars under the pretext of eradicating terrorism and ignoring human
rights, clean environment and anti-gun lobby campaigners, Bush Jr left market
forces and big business unrestrained. Under pressure from extremist
conservative Evangelists, Bush Jr also slowed down scientific – namely stem
cell – research, thus delaying vital medical breakthroughs for years if not
decades.
Obama was just the opposite of all that. While Bush Jr was a parochial
personality with a primarily domestic vision and culture, Obama had a
cosmopolitan character with global dimensions and interests. Not only was he
the son of a Kenyan Muslim, but also the son-in-law and half-brother of
Indonesian Muslims and he actually lived for a while in Indonesia, and later
in Hawaii – the only American state with non-White European population.
While Bush Jr was a member of his white aristocratic Protestant family, and a
'hostage' of religious, social and economic conservative lobbies, Obama –
despite studying in some of America's top colleges – was basically a self-made
man who did his 'rough and tumble' political apprenticeship in the poor
neighbourhoods of Chicago.
The first impression about Obama was that he was a leader keen not only to
understand the world – which his predecessor never cared much about getting to
know – but also change it. This is at least what many thought after his famous
'Cairo Speech' in Egypt on June 4th 2009.
During his first few months in office, the new US president seemed quite
interested in tackling the roots of problems rather than limiting his
endeavours to symptoms. Indeed, during the first two years he retained the
aura of idealism and goodwill that were the hallmark of his rhetoric since
elections day, however, the momentum began to weaken and grind to a halt.
Furthermore, despite succeeding in forcing courageous internal changes in the
face of his stubborn Republican opponents, foreign relations approaches began
to shroud his 'idealism' and credibility with doubt.
There were two early setbacks that uncovered the fragility of Obama's
'idealistic' push for 'Change', both directly connected with the Arab and
Muslim worlds: the first, beating a retreat on the Palestine-Israel peace
front when confronted by the hawkish Binyamin Netanyahu; and the second, his
failure to live up to his promises to shut down the Guantanamo Bay Detention
Camp where suspected Islamist terrorists are detained.
Thereafter, Washington looked confused giving contradictory and misleading
information in the early 2011 during what came to be labelled 'The Arab
Spring'. Then, within a short time, the hitherto 'secret' American – Iranian
talks in the Omani capital Muscat were made public, although few at the time
imagined these 'talks' and agreements reached would become the cornerstone of
Washington's strategy towards the Arabs and the Muslim world.
Few thought that the mullahs and Revolutionary Guards' Iran, with its
hyperactive gallows, sectarian agitation and incitement, and destructive
expansionism would soon become a strategic 'ally' to the USA in the open war
against a 'new' enemy called ISIS. An enemy that appeared suddenly, and was
allowed to grow, expand and occupy lands, and then used as an excuse to
justify sacrificing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, uprooting and
displacing tens of millions other, bringing down cities, wiping out
communities and redrawing national borders.
Thus, if 'Change' was the motto of Obama's first term in the White House, then
'Retreat' would be the most appropriate motto for his second.
It is not only a 'retreat' in the face of Iran which Obama's policies allowed
to become a regional time bomb, but against Russia, the 'old enemy' from the
Cold War days!
Today the whole of Europe is paying a heavy price for Vladimir Putin's
strident and aggressive 'leadership' and his unabated efforts to undermine the
continent's stability through aiding and abetting his extremist and racist new
'allies'. The same 'allies' who are now riding the waves of hatred and
xenophobia against immigrants and refugees, tens of thousands of whom were
made refugees by the Kremlin itself.
Even America's democratic system is not safe anymore from Putin's ambitious
meddling, if we are to believe the CIA, no less! In a few words, 'retreat' in
the face of extremism and racism is now Barack Obama's catastrophic legacy to
America and the whole world.
Eyad Abu Shakra is the managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat. He has been with
the newspaper since 1978.
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