Obama in a Vice

The recent resurgence of terrorist acts committed by Al-Qaida aims at a threefold goal.

The so quickly forgotten George W. Bush and his clan were a godsend for Al-Qaida. Now that he’s gone, the terrorist network is trying to rebuild an enemy of the same caliber. What success this would be for them to bring Barack Obama to deny the intent of his speech last June in Cairo! There he advocated an appeased relationship between his country and the Arab-Muslim region.

If he is still alive, Osama bin Laden did not miss the best yet. The turn taken by the war in Afghanistan brings water to the mill of turbaned extremism. Freshly reelected, Hamid Karzai has become apathetic. He has demanded that NATO be put to justice as authors of the umpteenth blunder in his country, having cost the lives of a handful of Afghan civilians, including several children. This asymmetrical conflict with no end in sight is reminiscent of Vietnam. Security deterioration and the duplicity of the Pakistani government have forced the American president to make decisions in opposition to his praiseworthy intentions of his speech in Cairo. The attempt of a young extremist Nigerian to blow up an airplane allowed the Americans to discover a vacationing Obama eating his words when evidence of the inattention of intelligence groups more occupied with infighting than their jobs came to light. To assert himself as the inflexible custodian of the security of his fellow countrymen is a role that Obama begrudgingly endorsed as his duty on Jan 9, 2009.

Accomplices, “without the knowledge of their own accord,” Al-Qaida and the American Republicans were careful not to cheer too loudly for this conversion under the pressure of events. They do not deprive themselves of any excitement at their prescience or praise at the relevance of the villainous line followed by Dick Cheney and associates. They are nevertheless bothered by the emergence of a radical opposition to Obama on their right flank. In the last issue of 2009, the French weekly Courrier International reproduced several articles from the major American press. This reveals the phenomenon of political fundamentalism of the quasi-religious types, those with financial provisions at their disposal, forming media connections not made by the news but by demagogic politicians with their hands in the mud. The race and origin of the president does not save him there. At eleven months until the mid-term elections, the demonization of the Democrat’s administration and the president influences the style of the Republican campaign to come.

The recent resurgence of terrorist acts aims at a threefold goal. Arab-Muslim leaders see it as a warm welcome to the new orientation of American politics. The war-hungry Yankees in a crusade against terror are supplied with ammunition for new calls to arms. And the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is threatened to be squeezed in a vice.