Obama the Egyptian

What an obligation Barack Obama has during his tour through Egypt and the Middle East: overcome the eight disastrous years sowed by the Bush-Cheney administration in the region and restore credibility in U.S. foreign policy. There is something exceptional about President Obama’s initiatives. They are all good and necessary, but have encountered resistance from the opposing party and, at times, the president’s own party. Consider the following:

– Obama extends his hand, explicitly, to the “Islamic Republic of Iran.” Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, does not only not return the gesture, but provokingly accelerates Iran’s nuclear program. Obama patiently waits, indicating that “Iran will not prosper as a nuclear power.” If it chooses this path, it will only meet resistance and isolation. However, an Iran without nuclear arms will be met with investment, development and international friendship. On the other hand, both China and Russia maintain good relations with Tehran.

– Obama proposes to close the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Where will they send the current prisoners? Congressmen and U.S. states, “more papist than the Pope,” refuse to accept them. In spite of the fact that there are murderers, sadists, gang members and all types of criminals in maximum-security prisons in the U.S. This ridiculously exaggerated morality is counterbalanced by a clear explanation from President Obama that each detainee, as dangerous as they may seem, has the right to a legal trial – military or civil – and only then are they subject to punishment. What cannot be left out, Obama alleges, is the right to legal proceedings, be it international or domestic. Only justice will define the status of the accused. It is no surprise Obama is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review, and that he is also an active practicing lawyer in Chicago.

– In Pakistan, Obama has tried to persuade the government and society, transfixed by the traditional conflict with their Indian neighbors, that the current threat does not come from the east in India, but from the northeast border with Afghanistan. Today, India is one of the most solid emerging economies in the world and military adventures are far from a priority. If Pakistan armed itself to fight Taliban’s guerrilla warfare instead of an imaginary war with India, they would not only see a change in armaments and policy, but also in results since the United States has moved its military presence from Iraq to Afghanistan. This is a debatable decision considering that neither Great Britain nor Russia resolved the Afghan dilemma with more troops.

– Afghanistan, like Iraq, will only resolve its problems as Mexico did at one time: dealing with internal social, political and cultural realities. It is obvious that the global world of 2009 is not the nationalist one of 1909, but the underlying reality is the same: foreign intervention cannot substitute domestic/internal evolution. The fact that this is profoundly difficult in Afghanistan, a nation with an incompetent government, a drug economy and the ferocious Taliban, perhaps justifies the U.S. military presence. However, in the end it will be the Afghanis who, as Mexico did, give themselves the government they deserve. The thesis otherwise applies to Iraq, where at the end of a U.S. invasion and seven years of occupation from Al-Malaki’s central government is asking Washington to leave in order to unleash a domestic policy that will inevitably lead to conflict between Shiites (Al-Malaki’s sect), Sunnis and Kurds close to neighboring Turkey, whose admission into the European community is frowned upon by France and Germany. In other words, Iraq, like Mexico at one point (1915-35), must find an internal solution to its internal politics.

– In this complicated picture, Obama extends a hand to all democratically-elected governments of Latin America. Cuba is not one of them and to rejoin the Organization of American States (“the Ministry of the Colonies”), the charter of the OAS must be reformed as Secretary General José Miguel Insulza has asked. For Obama, the challenge will be to overcome half a century of hostility, skillfully exploited by Fidel Castro, towards the U.S. The obstacles point to Raul Castro’s willingness to negotiate in good faith and his brother’s intransigence.

– Finally, in the Middle East, Obama has reversed the erroneous policy of the Bush-Cheney administration. It does not take clairvoyance to understand that problems in the region begin and end in the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Clinton understood this, but Bush abandoned this logic to attack an old ally of Washington, Saddam Hussein, putting off the Israel-Palestine situation and unequivocally protecting Israel, a client state of Washington.

Obama has restored the order of priority. First and foremost comes the Israel-Palestine relationship with the stipulations approved by the international community: two sovereign states coexisting side by side, a return to the borders determined by resolutions 194 and 242 of the United Nations, recognition from Israel of the Muslim states of the region including the Saudi Kingdom, and abandonment of the territories seized from Palestine where almost three million Palestinians and barely 300,000 Israelis live.

The obstacles are numerous and we all are familiar with them: the Palestinian authority is corrupt and weak, Palestine is divided between authority and the group Hamas installed in Gaza, the orthodox intransigent Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, refuses to return the occupied territory to Syria and slow the extension of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Obama, of course, has an all-powerful weapon: reducing assistance to Israel. He prefers dialogue and persuasion as demonstrated by his difficult interview with Netanyahu in Washington. But, to return to the beginning of this article, Obama introduces a powerful caveat to the talks. If Netanyahu demands that Iran renounce its nuclear program so that there be negotiations, Obama proposes that there first be peace between Israel and Palestine in order for the international community to seriously confront Iran.

Obama, speaking to the Muslim world, admits the mistakes of the United States, but asks that Muslim nations also admit their own.