Obama’s Fiasco in His Politics with Arabs
Published in ABC Journal
(Spain) on 17 September 2012
by Hermann Tertsch (link to original)
(Spain) on 17 September 2012
by Hermann Tertsch (link to original)
Translated from
by Talisa Anderson.
Edited by Tom Proctor.
The biggest fiasco arising from all of these tragic occurrences surrounding the anti-Islam video is of course that of President Barack Obama. Years of understanding toward radical currents, and snubs toward Israel to simulate equidistance between the Jewish and Arab communities have not helped. The United States is as troubled these days as in the worst moments: not those of George Bush but, rather, of Jimmy Carter. His well-known policy of a “comprehensive approach” has implied that the aggression of U.S. enemies in the Islamic world would be nothing more than a misunderstanding. Once it was made known that the evil George Bush no longer held office in Washington, this would correct itself. Such absurdities have a price, although it has not been expressed with clarity and has always been only a diffused message.
The expressed need for harmony is always interpreted as a weakness by this type of enemy. Another considerable fiasco is that of the “moderate” Islamists. They were supposed to accede to these institutions, which were believed to be able to control the Salafists by giving them certain fields of activity and impunity to avoid conflicts. They have not stopped conquering spaces by force and with maximum brutality and directness. In not only Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but also in other parts of the Islamic world, the strength of Salafism has become a real plague that the governments, Islamist or not, and the Western countries, seem to not want to recognize. The third fiasco is that of the Western democracies accompanying Obama in his misjudgments, and competing in their denial of their own internal Islamist problem.
The arrests in Belgium right now, or in other Western countries, are no more than the spasmodic reactions of some states whose police know that they are placing a huge bomb in the cellar, but believe that they can go on delaying the alarm. And that is why there is no E.U. policy to openly combat Salafism, even though it is not a religion, but rather pure fascism with theological literature. Germany is the latest extreme case, with its 28 million Korans; a policy of proselytism that is more than incisive is aggression towards moderate Muslims. [There will be] many fiascos before the already immediate threat of the total enemy that does not know and refuses, by nature, any compromise.
The expressed need for harmony is always interpreted as a weakness by this type of enemy. Another considerable fiasco is that of the “moderate” Islamists. They were supposed to accede to these institutions, which were believed to be able to control the Salafists by giving them certain fields of activity and impunity to avoid conflicts. They have not stopped conquering spaces by force and with maximum brutality and directness. In not only Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but also in other parts of the Islamic world, the strength of Salafism has become a real plague that the governments, Islamist or not, and the Western countries, seem to not want to recognize. The third fiasco is that of the Western democracies accompanying Obama in his misjudgments, and competing in their denial of their own internal Islamist problem.
The arrests in Belgium right now, or in other Western countries, are no more than the spasmodic reactions of some states whose police know that they are placing a huge bomb in the cellar, but believe that they can go on delaying the alarm. And that is why there is no E.U. policy to openly combat Salafism, even though it is not a religion, but rather pure fascism with theological literature. Germany is the latest extreme case, with its 28 million Korans; a policy of proselytism that is more than incisive is aggression towards moderate Muslims. [There will be] many fiascos before the already immediate threat of the total enemy that does not know and refuses, by nature, any compromise.