Presidential Visit in the Middle of a Real Life Nightmare

Pragmatic North American political analysts, so accustomed to mitigating leaders’ actions and their efforts to mask reality, exploded when popular uprising began in the place they were least expected. They didn’t dare overhaul their worn out ideas and stubborn quantitative stances.

Maybe they believed in the curse of the late ideologist Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations and they lost touch with reality, a reality laden with individual and subjective clauses that surface when conditions allow. They create a political conscience in the very people who supported the severity of leaders turned dictators — the oppressed.

To believe that people are an erratic mob and those least qualified to create a revolution in these times when nobody wants to talk about a “revolution” leaves political analysts of any ideological strain theoretically and politically disarmed. There aren’t causal explanations for something so simple and obvious, but they are so used to surrendering to hallowed elections, changes of government, division of powers, etc. In reflecting on superficial analysis, they hope they will be heard and read by Washington representatives and the political establishment.

As much as it might be desirable to avoid an international situation during the visit of the principal emissary of North American politics, especially a situation similar to several countries in the Arab world, particularly Egypt, on this visit to El Salvador, the unrest against tyrannies and dictators disguised as “democracies” that Washington protects and arms, cannot go unnoticed.

President Obama can’t confidently promote democracy on his visit to El Salvador if he consents to dictatorships and kingdoms in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia, where democracy is the last thing practiced. The peaceful demonstrations that defeated Tunisian dictator Ben Ali, the demands of the people for pro-American Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to leave the government and the popular movements spreading through other countries that are rebelling against their dictators in North Africa and the Arab world are reasons for the visiting president to worry. In fact, the extraordinary Arab revolution that caught him by surprise probably wasn’t in his plans or on his agenda, so foreseeing bigger issues and playing it safe, he calls for “an orderly transition.” Instability in a country of strategic importance for his interests is causing him to lose legitimacy for continuing to keep in power until the last possible moment a pawn who has, in his own way, carried out the president’s imperial plans.

Certainly, the visit will center on Salvadoran domestic matters and U.S. assistance with the complex problems confronting our government. However, a deeper analysis suggests that, given the objective and subjective conditions shaking the regime in Egypt, our visitor is more likely to be watching to ensure he emerges unscathed from the popular uprisings and will support Omar Suleiman, who will quiet the discontent arising from the corrupt and authoritarian political regime. The interests of the American government are at stake in that country, as are those of the terrorist state of Israel. He won’t, for any reason, allow the situation to depart from the script written by the CIA and their domestic allies (the military, police, politicians, tycoons, etc.) accustomed to power and privileges.

The visiting president cannot stay away from El Salvador now, but any democratic government in the world has to be conscious of the American government’s political and diplomatic double standard when it tries to defend its interests.

The host government cannot, and, if remaining faithful to formal western protocol should not, make the U.S. president uncomfortable regarding matters affecting his foreign policy. However, it also has to be clear that antidemocratic mafia governments must be rejected without any consideration or hesitation; more than one journalist will confront the visitor with a loaded question that will cause him to move his entire security force dispersed around troubled areas.

Investment, employment, economic revival, security, Temporary Protected Status and the Millennium Challenge Account will be discussed, but they won’t obscure the big hurdle Washington is facing. No matter where the president goes, it torments him constantly that this is happening right when he has serious problems to attend to at home. When a president takes a beating overseas — aside from seeing when Hosni Mubarak’s regime will fall, split apart or recover — he has to use gestures and actions to conceal his deteriorated relations in other parts of the world where he has responsibilities. To fail to recognize this fundamental fact is to tell stories in which everything is perfectly worked out to ensure the crook emerges intact.

When the whole world sees — many with hope and few with unease — that the level of discontent is huge in Egypt, the loss of credibility and legitimacy of a government that has armed and protected a despot stultified by power is a certainty. Those who provide arms and blind themselves to the stupidity of the Egyptian political regime share the same luck as those who topple. The difference is that they are an arrogant and greedy power that doesn’t want the people to overpower them.

In the center of the Salvadoran reception for the visiting president, there will be people that tenaciously resist the army of the scornful regime that relishes repressing, killing and besmirching the dignity of the Egyptian people. If President Obama comes here with covert agreements, he will be remembered as the president who set foot on Salvadoran soil leaving a trail of doubts about his true interests in El Salvador.