The Enemy Within
Published in Süddeutsche Zeitung
(Germany) on 18 November 2010
by Christian Wernicke (link to original)
(Germany) on 18 November 2010
by Christian Wernicke (link to original)
Translated from
by Ron Argentati.
Edited by Sam Carter.
Barack Obama is still a figure of hope. The Republicans, however, are crippling the United States with their new congressional majority, and not only domestically. In foreign policy as well, they’re turning Obama into a weak president.
The reason is ridiculously insignificant. One might say it’s even trivial, but what they’re doing contains the seeds of a crisis that will be felt around the globe. One eminently mediocre Senator from sunny Arizona has urged his colleagues in the Senate to block a disarmament treaty that would “limit” Moscow’s, as well as Washington’s, capability to destroy the planet to a maximum of just 1,550 times.
That man, a certain Jon Kyl, has the right to single-handedly veto the provisions of the treaty according to ironclad U.S. Senate rules. And in the foggy mists of his reasoning, a motive begins to take shape: Senator Kyl is convinced the START treaty might prevent American ingenuity from developing better, more easily deployed nuclear weapons.
That’s where the joke ends. Is his reason ridiculous? Even Vice President Joe Biden immediately warned, "Failure to pass the New START Treaty this year would endanger our national security." In any case, it would maliciously undermine one of the few foreign policy achievements of this president. Mean-spirited intrigues would be stopping global progress.
The START treaty wasn’t only the first step on Obama’s road to a nuclear weapons-free world; it was to serve as the foundation for new and fruitful cooperation between the United States and former superpower Russia. A cooperative missile defense system facing Iran’s nuclear threat shoulder to shoulder, more unity in the war on terror, Middle East peace — these are the things Obama hoped to realize when he met with his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev at the NATO conference in Lisbon later this week.
Instead, a president humiliated at home will land in Europe and will stand in the foreign policy arena empty handed. He will be able to do little beyond promise allegiance to the alliance and to continue to pursue his disarmament policies despite Republican opposition. And he can only hope and pray that the other NATO members don’t ask about his more or less confidential plans to soon start withdrawing tens of thousands of U.S. troops from Europe.
His barely 48 hour-long stopover in Europe threatens to become as embarrassing as his Asian trip last week. At its high point — the G-20 Summit in Seoul — Obama embarrassed himself with demands that export powerhouses like China and Germany should voluntarily limit exporting their goods while the United States fired up its printing presses in order to create 600 billion new U.S. dollars. Anyone who would suggest such an inflationary measure richly deserves the ridicule he received. Obama’s warning about economic rationality, cynics noted, were just about as credible as George W. Bush’s appeals to respect human rights while he was responsible for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Americans Have Become Almost Un-American in Their Pessimism
These are all symptoms of domestic weakness. The dramatic defeat the Democrats suffered in the midterm elections are considered a popular verdict against the first 21 months of Obama’s presidency. The results rattled him both at home and internationally. Even many Europeans, with whom Obama is more popular than he is with his own people, are prone to wishful thinking that these seismic shocks will be limited to the United States alone. What a mistake!
It’s precisely this president who has understood that the power base of his nation has been steadily eroding on the global stage. That’s why Obama declared the rebuilding of America his highest national security priority. He often speaks of the connection between internal and external strength. He did so a year ago in a speech that wasn’t necessarily his nicest but was certainly one of his most important when he told the American people of his intention to dramatically increase troop levels in the Hindu Kush. There, at the West Point Military Academy, Obama promised that the surge would be immediately followed by a withdrawal beginning no later than July 2011. He intended to go after al-Qaida exclusively and not engage in creating heaven on earth in Afghanistan. Nation building, the rebuilding and stabilization of countries, is not a mission most Americans think should be theirs. That’s why Obama announced, “the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own.”
But that’s now more difficult than ever. Americans are giving in to their illness. Americans have become uncharacteristically un-American in their pessimism as well as frighteningly angry with their own government. That’s where a political demon reigns that plays games with the nation’s well being. Just look at the nuclear disarmament issue and the willingness of some to accept the collapse of the system just to achieve their own political ends. It’s this demon that blinds them to the dangers of increasing the national debt. Just look at the G-20 Summit or the trend toward destroying the environment that comes with maintaining “The American Way Of Life.” Obama remains the symbol, as diminished as it now is, of what America could be. Jon Kyl, on the other hand, should remind people of the alternative to that.
The reason is ridiculously insignificant. One might say it’s even trivial, but what they’re doing contains the seeds of a crisis that will be felt around the globe. One eminently mediocre Senator from sunny Arizona has urged his colleagues in the Senate to block a disarmament treaty that would “limit” Moscow’s, as well as Washington’s, capability to destroy the planet to a maximum of just 1,550 times.
That man, a certain Jon Kyl, has the right to single-handedly veto the provisions of the treaty according to ironclad U.S. Senate rules. And in the foggy mists of his reasoning, a motive begins to take shape: Senator Kyl is convinced the START treaty might prevent American ingenuity from developing better, more easily deployed nuclear weapons.
That’s where the joke ends. Is his reason ridiculous? Even Vice President Joe Biden immediately warned, "Failure to pass the New START Treaty this year would endanger our national security." In any case, it would maliciously undermine one of the few foreign policy achievements of this president. Mean-spirited intrigues would be stopping global progress.
The START treaty wasn’t only the first step on Obama’s road to a nuclear weapons-free world; it was to serve as the foundation for new and fruitful cooperation between the United States and former superpower Russia. A cooperative missile defense system facing Iran’s nuclear threat shoulder to shoulder, more unity in the war on terror, Middle East peace — these are the things Obama hoped to realize when he met with his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev at the NATO conference in Lisbon later this week.
Instead, a president humiliated at home will land in Europe and will stand in the foreign policy arena empty handed. He will be able to do little beyond promise allegiance to the alliance and to continue to pursue his disarmament policies despite Republican opposition. And he can only hope and pray that the other NATO members don’t ask about his more or less confidential plans to soon start withdrawing tens of thousands of U.S. troops from Europe.
His barely 48 hour-long stopover in Europe threatens to become as embarrassing as his Asian trip last week. At its high point — the G-20 Summit in Seoul — Obama embarrassed himself with demands that export powerhouses like China and Germany should voluntarily limit exporting their goods while the United States fired up its printing presses in order to create 600 billion new U.S. dollars. Anyone who would suggest such an inflationary measure richly deserves the ridicule he received. Obama’s warning about economic rationality, cynics noted, were just about as credible as George W. Bush’s appeals to respect human rights while he was responsible for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
Americans Have Become Almost Un-American in Their Pessimism
These are all symptoms of domestic weakness. The dramatic defeat the Democrats suffered in the midterm elections are considered a popular verdict against the first 21 months of Obama’s presidency. The results rattled him both at home and internationally. Even many Europeans, with whom Obama is more popular than he is with his own people, are prone to wishful thinking that these seismic shocks will be limited to the United States alone. What a mistake!
It’s precisely this president who has understood that the power base of his nation has been steadily eroding on the global stage. That’s why Obama declared the rebuilding of America his highest national security priority. He often speaks of the connection between internal and external strength. He did so a year ago in a speech that wasn’t necessarily his nicest but was certainly one of his most important when he told the American people of his intention to dramatically increase troop levels in the Hindu Kush. There, at the West Point Military Academy, Obama promised that the surge would be immediately followed by a withdrawal beginning no later than July 2011. He intended to go after al-Qaida exclusively and not engage in creating heaven on earth in Afghanistan. Nation building, the rebuilding and stabilization of countries, is not a mission most Americans think should be theirs. That’s why Obama announced, “the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own.”
But that’s now more difficult than ever. Americans are giving in to their illness. Americans have become uncharacteristically un-American in their pessimism as well as frighteningly angry with their own government. That’s where a political demon reigns that plays games with the nation’s well being. Just look at the nuclear disarmament issue and the willingness of some to accept the collapse of the system just to achieve their own political ends. It’s this demon that blinds them to the dangers of increasing the national debt. Just look at the G-20 Summit or the trend toward destroying the environment that comes with maintaining “The American Way Of Life.” Obama remains the symbol, as diminished as it now is, of what America could be. Jon Kyl, on the other hand, should remind people of the alternative to that.
The essence of this otherwise pessimistic story les in asking what is the alternative before the people? That is the dilemma of America. Harm to America would be a greater harm to the rest of the world. America is the sheet anchor of stability of the world. Without America, the world would suffer with anarchy. Obama is beset with another severe headache. This relates to the immense pressure on him from the American Jewish lobby and the dominant Jewish media. For sixty two years, Israel has been crying wolf. This time it is the imaginary threat from Iran. Little does America know the trauma that Israel is? For four thousand years Jews have been facing an unending chain of misfortunes. The Rabbis blame Jewish continuous iniquities. Is Israel the answer of an end to the misfortunes and the breaking of a new dawn for the Jews? Rabbis on the other hand blame Israel for its biggest iniquity yet in rejecting God at the founding ceremony and replacing faith in a symbolic “Rock of Israel.” This blasphemy has serous implications on America for its contributions in the massive death and destruction in Palestine. While the Jewish God is watching all this, the stiff necked and stubborn Netanyahu is busy in a spree of desecrating the sanctity of Jerusalem. This is a serious warning to America to beware of a sudden death blow to it as fallout from a divine scourge afflicted on the Zionists. The GOP is no less involved into this criminal act. America has no better alternative option id President Obama is let down. Just as soon as the mask from the folly of Israel’s creation is removed it is a bet that a backlash against the American Jews would start rolling. For Obama the only silver lining lies in the resurgence of the Muslim world and this does not require much ado. A simple catchword to the masses in the Middle East is needed that the key to a speedy rebound lies in democracy wherein the people are the sovereign rulers. America needs a partnership with the Muslims in a multilateral and multicultural relationship. On one hand this would heal the wounds of Iraqis and on the other by creating an interim regime of Afghanistan’s Young Turks in a functioning democracy played by the rules, the trauma in Afghanistan can end in a jiffy. The Taliban and Al Qaida are likely to retreat in oblivion.