Obama's arc of instability By Pepe Escobar
What kind of envoy goes to the Middle East this week but won't talk to Hamas or to the Syrian leadership? And will he see the Gaza wasteland for himself?
Obama the media wizard is taking no chances, carefully packaging all this to the Arab world as a major breakthrough. The punditocracy is offering incense, gold and myrrh to the heavens because of his "game-changer" interview to al-Arabiyya, where he declares himself "ready to initiate a new partnership" based on "mutual respect" and clearly announces to the Arab world that "America is not your enemy."
As'ad AbuKhalil, professor of politics at California State University, Stanislaus, goes deeper into it: "Al-Arabiyya is run by the Saudi King Fahd's brother-in-law ... The administration selected al-Arabiyya because it is 'friendly' to US interests and because on al-Arabiyya, US officials get softball questions ... Obama chose this station because he wanted to appease the Saudi royal family. This president talks about how bad dictators are, but he is signaling that he, like Bush, will coddle Saudi Wahhabi dictatorship - a key ally of Israel today."
Warning: Vietnam ahead
Then there's Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's all related, as Obama himself acknowledged, and "the central front in the war against terrorism and extremism".
The problem now is there is simply no US-NATO sharp-elbow military solution to the Afghanistan-Pakistan maze. There is no solution without a negotiation including the historic Taliban in Afghanistan, the neo-Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas, and Pashtun leaders on both sides of the border. The monotone "radical Islamic insurgency" litany is gibberish; the real issue for Afghans is to fight and expel a foreign occupying force. Be they Soviets, Yankees, Europeans or Martians.
It gets worse.
This will be a long war, which happens to be another Pentagon denomination for the "war on terror". Envoy Holbrooke himself said so, in a Foreign Affairs article published before the US presidential election: "The situation in Afghanistan is far from hopeless. But as the war enters its eighth year, Americans should be told the truth: it will last a long time - longer than the United States' longest war to date, the 14-year conflict [1961-75] in Vietnam."
Obama the media wizard is taking no chances, carefully packaging all this to the Arab world as a major breakthrough. The punditocracy is offering incense, gold and myrrh to the heavens because of his "game-changer" interview to al-Arabiyya, where he declares himself "ready to initiate a new partnership" based on "mutual respect" and clearly announces to the Arab world that "America is not your enemy."
As'ad AbuKhalil, professor of politics at California State University, Stanislaus, goes deeper into it: "Al-Arabiyya is run by the Saudi King Fahd's brother-in-law ... The administration selected al-Arabiyya because it is 'friendly' to US interests and because on al-Arabiyya, US officials get softball questions ... Obama chose this station because he wanted to appease the Saudi royal family. This president talks about how bad dictators are, but he is signaling that he, like Bush, will coddle Saudi Wahhabi dictatorship - a key ally of Israel today."
Warning: Vietnam ahead
Then there's Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's all related, as Obama himself acknowledged, and "the central front in the war against terrorism and extremism".
The problem now is there is simply no US-NATO sharp-elbow military solution to the Afghanistan-Pakistan maze. There is no solution without a negotiation including the historic Taliban in Afghanistan, the neo-Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas, and Pashtun leaders on both sides of the border. The monotone "radical Islamic insurgency" litany is gibberish; the real issue for Afghans is to fight and expel a foreign occupying force. Be they Soviets, Yankees, Europeans or Martians.
It gets worse.
This will be a long war, which happens to be another Pentagon denomination for the "war on terror". Envoy Holbrooke himself said so, in a Foreign Affairs article published before the US presidential election: "The situation in Afghanistan is far from hopeless. But as the war enters its eighth year, Americans should be told the truth: it will last a long time - longer than the United States' longest war to date, the 14-year conflict [1961-75] in Vietnam."
posted by temporal at 1/30/2009
1 Comments:
i don't completely disagree with this analysis, but i think lefties like escobar start analysing in a vacuum.
just the fact that barack HUSSEIN obama's first interview was to an arab tv was enough to make right-wing america go haywire. and remember obama only won 53% of the vote, so its not like the US is all blue.
i doubt obama would deliver world peace and prosperity and chocolates for everyone - which the media and his fans seem to think.
the beauty of obama's presidency is its huge symbolic value. most of us don't know who owns al-arrabiya, but we know that after being demonized for eight years, none of us ever expected the new us president to talk with an arab channel, let alone have that as his first interview.
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