generalspeaking

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Obama Legacy : Unrealized Aspirations, Realized Failure

"I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam ... share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. [A] new beginning."
U.S. President Barack Obama, 2009, Cairo

Obama waves to supporters at his farewell speech in Chicago Darren Hauck/Getty

Long since then, Cairo declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, even while President Obama respectfully received the counsel of the Muslim Brotherhood established in the United States, professing to be speaking on behalf of all Muslims in the United States. Consulting with the Muslim Brotherhood led Barack Obama to give his full support to Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammad Morsi, and to abandon America's longtime ally, President Mubarak.

And when the Brotherhood failed to unite Egypt and President Morsi's administration sank the nation further into violent crime and the persecution of Egyptian Christians even as the nation's economy plummeted, another popular uprising mandated the removal of Morsi and the elevation of Egypt's popular top general, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a moderate Muslim who ousted the Islamist Morsi.

The Obama administration reacted in a hostile show of continued support of the Brotherhood and Morsi and the rejection of President el-Sisi's rule, obviously confident that it knew better than Egyptians what was best for Egypt. Before Egypt imploded to remove longtime President Hosni Mubarak, Tehran, whom Mr. Obama had extended his open hand of friendship toward, was beset by a peaceful demonstration by Iranian moderate greens.

President Obama exercised his new beginning options by complete indifference to the crackdown on peaceful and regime-protesting Iranian greens, rather than committing to their support as might have been expected by an administration whose head handily won over the Nobel Committee in Oslo which awarded him the Peace Prize in recognition of the "new climate" Mr. Obama's soaring rhetoric had promised the world.

President Obama had asserted how prepared he was to "reach out" to "the Muslim world". He would be the anti-Bush, who had acted "without regard for the interests of others". And then he proceeded to negotiate with Iran's ayatollahs striking a nuclear deal with them that the release of hundreds of billions could be arranged and sanctions lifted if Tehran agreed to set aside for a few years its nuclear bomb aspirations. And so the world was made "a safer place", thanks to Obama's diplomatic skills.

Thrown into the bargain with Iran was a free hand in support of its Syrian proxy with eyes looking the other way as the Lebanese Hezbollah militia beloved of the el Quds division of the Iranian Republican National Guard aided Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad in his mission to destroy the lives of a half-million Syrian citizens dissatisfied with his tyrannical rule.

The new America led by President Obama ushered yet another support of the Muslim world into Europe to the tune of millions of Syrian refugees flooding Europe in escaping the merciless slaughter of the Syrian president whom the Obama administration abetted by deigning not to establish a no-fly zone over Syria to protect the rebels and Sunni citizens whom the Shiite regime battered with chemical weapons and barrel bombs.

In the process, the Obama administration collegially handed over influence and control to Vladimir Putin and Moscow of the region that he had chosen to neglect and the people who yearned for democracy to be overlooked as, under his tutelage, America took his vaunted direction toward a new world order so hugely beneficial to the Muslim Everyman.

"We need to prepare for a post-American, post-NATO European security order. Our counterparts in Asia need to start making their own arrangements too."
"It is going to be messy, costly and dangerous, and a large share of the blame rests with the man now packing up at the White House."
Analyst and correspondent Edward Lucas, Centre for Policy Studies, London