Empire

Obama’s story has finally turned to tragedy. It’s clear to see that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate couldn’t handle the pressure and had to resort to war.

Every president of the United States — or rather, every president — ends up sooner or later taking part in a tragedy. But none was as tragic as the recent story of Barack Obama: After six years of explaining to his country that no one benefits from using American military power at the far reaches of the earth where fundamentalists hide, and after evading — much to the chagrin of his society — the cries of those shrewd pacification fanatics (“The solution is to kill those bastards,” would have said the most crude of them), has slowly become another George Bush since last Sept. 10, a dime-a-dozen president. How enlightening has it been to see him talk about “degrading and destroying” the terrorists of the fearsome Islamic State; he has said, as any tragic figure who surrenders before his gods does, that he was incapable of escaping his nation’s manifest destiny.

Now that he has begun with his “irreversible plan for Syria and Iraq”* a few weeks before the right takes full control of Congress, it’s obvious that Obama’s defeat is the triumph of a ceaseless war. His timid proposal of depriving extremists of reasons to attack has been quashed by the will of the American empire.

I never rejected American things; I never uttered “Yankee, go home,” nor have I ever thought about it, because I met American professors who stopped me from believing in stereotypes, I saw with my own eyeglasses that the brave fictions of its artists refute the exalted lies of its politicians, I noticed that the best Hollywood dramas recreate and remedy Washington’s worst disasters; in short, that culture — and its immense beauty, from Mark Twain to Richard Ford, from Buster Keaton to Wes Anderson, from Art Spiegelman to Joe Sacco, from Bo Diddley to Tracy Chapman — was always close to me, as it was for every other lost soul of my generation encased in a pair of jeans. But I’m certain that today’s road to the Near East is paved with the good intentions of American leaders.

In Oliver Stone’s “Untold History of the United States,” the filmmaker argues that his country lost its way in 1945, on the day the warmonger Truman replaced the progressive Wallace as vice president. Professor Howard Zinn, in his book “A People’s History of American Empire,” points out that the reactions to the 9/11 tragedy — “We committed terrorist acts to send terrorists a message” — proved that American leaders didn’t learn a single thing from this 20th century of “violence reciprocated with violence.”* The comedian Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” reminds us that 65 percent of Americans support the attacks, but can’t find the enemy on a map. After Sept. 10, the country that was thinking of where to use its power went back to being the country that shoots before asking questions.

Obama’s story has finally turned to tragedy: Squinting like Dirty Harry, much to his own chagrin, he said: “American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world.” It’s clear to see that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate couldn’t handle the pressure and had to resort to war. He knows that if it wasn’t due to the fact that societies aren’t solely made up of their governments, the only future of his beautiful country — which is also a tired empire — would be the worst kind of decadence. When he says, “U.S. intelligence underestimated the Islamic State,” he’s saying that he was elected for the same reasons he isn’t able to rule freely. It’s obvious for those of us who read between the lines why he keeps repeating that his favorite series is “Homeland”: Watching it is watching the power of the secret agencies, arms dealers and spies; but on the upside, [it is the power] of a new generation that is distrustful of the old powers. The world is no longer in the hands of presidents.

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.