Obama: Arab and Islamic Challenges

Great achievements are expected from the new U.S. president, Barak Hussein Obama. No U.S. President has ever enjoyed the love of his citizens at home and the confidence of the overwhelming majority of the nearly seven billion people in the world's population.

Tasks and challenges set before him are too huge to address them successfully, internally and externally; however, despite what has been said about his lack of experience, he will not be worse than President George W. Bush, from whom he inherited a lot of failures and an unsuccessful war.

The greatest success that can be performed by the new American president is to return the White House to Americans, and liberate it of lobbyists who kidnapped and exploited it to serve the interests of foreign countries. We refer here to the Jewish lobby and the weapons industry lobby in particular.

If President Obama wants to recover his country’s leadership of the whole world and fill the void with Muslims and Third Word countries, the magic formula will be to reverse the policies carried out by his predecessor, Bush, who left the Oval Office chased by curses without anybody regretting his departure.

Let’s be precise and say that being modest, staying far from temptations of power arrogance, respecting international law and, at the same time, imposing its respect on others, recovering the UN prestige and position and disseminating the values of justice, democracy and equality are main headings that may help him win the minds and hearts of hundreds of millions of xenophobes in the United States. Before, its disastrous policy shattered countries, killed and displaced millions, made the world less secure and more dangerous, and led to economic bankruptcy and moral bankruptcy.

We the Arab and Muslim worlds do not want the new American President to stand by us and by our issues. We cannot look forward to that aim because we know the nature of American institutions, and how decisions are made there. We only want him to be neutral. We do not want Obama to side with the other camp and wage wars against us based on purely racist ideological principles.

We want the new U.S. President to listen to us as well, and deal with facts on the ground, from a moral perspective on the basis of international law and its provisions, put an end to the crimes and violations perpetrated by those who consider themselves above the law, and who act according to the law of the jungle, where the strongest eats the weakest, imposing his laws by U.S. deadly weapons.

President Obama does not need further explanation from us on the Israeli massacres in the occupied Palestine, and before that in Lebanon; he must have seen some aspects of these massacres in the Gaza Strip over the past three weeks. But if he needs more, all he has to do is to invite Mr. Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General and listen to his testimony, since he has just come back from the region where he saw bloody achievements made by the Army of the only democracy in the region, and by its American-made aircrafts and missiles.

We hope Obama will go to the stricken region and see fresh children bodies burned by phosphorous bombs, houses destroyed over the heads of their owners and how UN schools, clearly flying UN flag, turned out to be mass graves of innocent people who had sought shelter in there.

President Obama has promised to respect Muslims, and this is encouraging and a good source of hope, but this respect can be achieved only through policies that translate it on the ground. Primarily, recognizing the failure of military efforts in resolving crises, withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, lifting US military and diplomatic protection on Israeli massacres, and imposing respect of international treaties and UN resolutions.

Fighting and defeating terrorism cannot be attained through war, or through the creation of failed states, as President Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that in Somalia, all of which are Muslim countries. Better, it can be achieved through wise diplomatic dialogue in parallel with the language of interest, and the use of financial aid in the service of political democratic reforms. It cannot be attainted through supporting corrupt dictatorships to suppress their own people, and colluding with Israeli massacres, or trying to hide them in best cases.

The new U.S. President must be aware that his country is no longer the sole superpower in the world. The US has lost the lead from a time when it decided to go to war by itself, recruit allies either by conviction, intimidation or blackmail; the same is true for using International Organizations to provide legal cover for wars. There are emerging powers such as China, Russia, India and Brazil, united by one goal: to end US control over the people’s powers.

We have no doubt about the intelligence of the new American President and his strong personality; he was strong enough not to hesitate in dealing with powerful opponents and appoint them to his administration, such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Robert Gates. However, what he lacks, and this is our hope, is to be able to deal with hot global issues with the same logic, by negotiating with Iran and other movements such as the «Taliban» and «Hamas» and the Iraqi resistance. All previous empires negotiated with those they considered terrorists. Security was recovered in the streets of London only when the British government accepted to negotiate with the Irish Republican Army.

Sending additional troops to Afghanistan will not bring victory and stability; it will perhaps lead to very negative results. Afghanistan is not Iraq, and the creation of militias is an option, which failed in the past and cannot succeed in the future. More troops means more casualties among foreign forces and the few security accomplishments made in Iraq according to this approach may be temporary. Nobody was expecting the powerful resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan seven years after the destruction of their infrastructure and dispersal of their supporters by the U.S. occupation forces and NATO troops.

We do not want to give hasty judgments against the new American president, who has just took his seat in the White House; all we can say is that he seems sincere in his words, reflecting intentions of change that carry positive indicators. Although, we believe that the U.S. Administration may not give him the freedom of movement to enable him to translate those intentions into action on the ground.

The only thing that delighted us was the view of President George W. Bush leaving the track crowned with shame, no one regretting his departure; his hands filled with the blood of children in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. It is significant that in eight years he failed to accomplish the major mission he had promised: arrest or kill the al-Qaeda leader or even his deputy or ally, Mullah Mohammad Omar.