Obama’s TroubleIs With His Friends

The New Year has come full of all things negative for the Western world and its leader, the United States. All economic predictions point toward the continuation of current stagnation, an increase in the rate of unemployment and an increase in bankruptcies on the part of both large and small companies, without exception. Nor does the political agenda seem to be in a better state, with prophecies for more dangerous times to come. Western forces did not win in Iraq, despite all the deceptive reports on an improvement of the situation and the false celebration of a return of sovereignty to the Iraqi government after the signing of the Status of Forces Agreement [SOFA], which regulates the presence of US forces and sets a withdrawal date for the end of 2011. For the attacks that haven’t ended, national reconciliation has not been achieved, and the plunder and pillage of Iraqi resources continues to soar at record rates.

Perhaps the real motive behind the US administration and its allies is Afghanistan; with the increasing prominence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, not a day passes without the fall of scores of victims amongst the ranks of NATO forces and the Kabul government’s security forces.

Western governments no longer use the phrase “The War on Terror”, which it has been repeated throughout recent years and has been used as an excuse for launching wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, mobilizing armies and forming coalitions. This is a clear recognition that this war has failed, or that, at best, it cannot be won.

The new American president-elect will find that the al-Qaeda network, which it waged war to eliminate, has returned to Afghanistan stronger, after seven years of having its infrastructure destroyed and its leadership displaced, along with a large proportion of its members detained or killed.

And the Taliban, which the current US president George W. Bush gloats over having toppled, has come to control over 80% of Afghanistan, striking painful blows against NATO forces, rejecting all appeals by Hamid Karzai, President of Kabul (proper), for dialogue, instead insisting on the exit of all invading forces before it joins any negotiations, leading to a ceasefire and a return to government, as it was prior to the American occupation.

Facing these bleak economic and political scenarios, President-elect Obama expects that his friends, in the region and in Israel in particular, will not make the situation more difficult and will not create more explosive scenarios. Yet his ally, Israel, has put him in a great impasse, by waging a war in the Gaza Strip, committing massacres whose victims took were many children and civilians, embarrassed all the moderate Arab regimes and destroyed both the peace process and the two-state solution. Indeed, this is the peace process G. W. Bush’s advisors promised to focus on, pushing it forward by picking it up from where it last stumbled.

The problem awaiting the next US president is not limited to his country’s enemies which the current administration has made (and just how many they are!) Rather, it is in his friends, since most of them are either like Israel, which is determined to outrage the West and its interests in the region; or they are like the ruling Arab regimes, regimes which have been characterized by record levels of corruption and dictatorship.