Obama’s Mistakes in the Middle East

Barack Obama set himself some key objectives in 2008: stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and put the brakes on Iran’s nuclear program.

Four years later, he has achieved none of them, and other challenges are piling up: how to make sense of events in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia — not to mention how to manage the situation in Syria.

Obama has not managed to be the antithesis of George W. Bush, after all. His failings are the product of several factors: his role as president of a militarist empire, his efforts to reconcile the interests of the U.S. elite with instability and prosperity in the Middle East and, finally, his underestimation of Middle Eastern leaders’ capacity for subterfuge.

He got it wrong twice in his Cairo address: firstly, by associating the citizens of Muslim nations with their leaders, many of whom are obscurantist despots; and secondly — speaking from the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood — by promising a new beginning to U.S.-friendly leaders instead of asking forgiveness from the Iraqi and Afghan people for crimes committed by the United States. The same skewed vision drove him to bow before the king of Saudi Arabia and support the religious right-wing during the Arab Spring.

Later, in June 2009, he slipped up over the peaceful protests against electoral fraud in Iran. Chanting “Obama, Obama, ya bauna ya bama” [Obama, either you’re with them or you’re with us], demonstrators warned him of the danger of having a foot in both camps. But the United States president, in the midst of the financial crisis, feared a change beyond his control in this great oil-producing country. Obama was wrong to not support the demonstrators and wrong to shelve the idea of direct dialogue with the Iranian government on bilateral issues. And he’s still getting it wrong. He is increasing the pressure on Iran, though this triggers popular uprisings that may bring the military to power, who in turn will seek out more arms to defend themselves and put an end to so much as a glimmer of an opening up of the Iranian system. If Obama fears a nuclear Iran as well as a war, he must negotiate directly with both the Islamic Republic and Israel.

During the Egyptian Spring, having shifted his stance several times, he backed Brother [Mohamed] Morsi, threatening to withdraw military aid from the Egyptian army if it failed to cede power to the new president. In exchange, he expects Morsi to respect the Camp David agreement and Egypt to continue to act as a counterweight to Shiite Iran.

U.S. involvement in Libya had a catastrophic outcome, drenched in crude oil: the mob killing of the head of a sovereign state, the deaths of thousands of civilians during NATO's hushed-up bombings and weapons given to thousands of mercenaries who have plunged the country into chaos. The murder of Ambassador Stevens by these individuals is the result of “keeping a serpent up your sleeve.”

“He must go” has become a refrain in his irresponsible speeches, in which he does not consider the effects on its citizens and on the entire region when a country’s state machinery is dismantled. In his inability to understand the concept of “class struggle,” he believes that simply changing the head of a state and staging elections automatically leads to political openness and an improved economy.

Obama is a more astute version of Bush, using multilateralism to share out the moral and economic costs of his battles, a strategy of “leading from behind” to reduce United States exposure, and drones to control foreign territories without even setting foot in them.

As You Sow, So Shall You Reap

The Republicans have pushed Obama into “Bushifying” his foreign policy. That way they clear the name of that befuddled individual, while at the same time perpetrating their own political agenda.

Without firm convictions, nor the character to defend them, the president usually has no Plan B and shifts from one position to its opposite without turning a hair. Guantanamo is an example. His charisma and his magnetism conceal his lack of ethics. It is said that, like Don Corleone, he personally selects which members of rival families are to be “whacked” in other territories.*

Confronted with a panorama like this, even the last bastions are withdrawing support for the U.S. Saudi Arabia accused the U.S. of disloyalty to the tyrants during the Arab Spring, and therefore ignored Obama’s calls for political reform in Bahrain, instead sending in tanks to crush its citizens’ protests.

Pakistan, a U.S. ally throughout the “war on terror” thing, is strengthening ties with Beijing and Moscow and getting its own back on Obama, who is busy forging an alliance with India in order to contain China.

In Iraq, despite the presence of thousands of occupying soldiers and mercenaries, the United States no longer enjoys the influence it did under Saddam Hussein. Iraq, which borders Iran, now backs Bashar al-Assad and purchases weaponry from [Vladimir] Putin. Another one that’s backfired. Obama is appealing to Turkey to re-establish religious balance in the region, affording protection to Sunni Muslims.

As for best buddy, Israel, Netanyahu is the foreign head of state who most humiliated the U.S. president. The Israeli prime minister refused to freeze the construction of Jewish settlements and negotiate with the Palestinians, and forced Obama to recant his recognition of Palestinian statehood.

It is not true that peace in the region depends on the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such a focus gives too much weight to those involved, involves others who are not part of the problem and gets in the way of finding a way out of the tangled mess that is the Palestinian tragedy.

U.S. authority has been diminished in this part of the world, which now looks to China and Russia as a counterweight to the power of the West, whose partiality and greed weaken the legitimacy of its proposals.

The problems of the Middle East are beyond the scope of a single political power. United States presidents should stop acting like gods of divine retribution and return the role of mediator in international conflicts to the United Nations.

*Translator’s Note: The author is referring to Obama’s so-called “kill list,” his personal selection of terrorists targeted for elimination by U.S. drone strikes.