"Yes, we caaaan't!"President Obama has shown himself to be weak in his dealings with the Middle East, says Robert Fisk, and the Arab world is turning its back with contempt. Its future will be shaped without American influence
This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.
While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America's new role in the region. It was pathetic. "What is this 'role' thing?" an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. "Do they still believe we care about what they think?"
Obama says no Palestinian state must be declared at the UN. But why not? Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says? Not even, it seems, the Israelis. The Arab spring will soon become a hot summer and there will be an Arab autumn, too. By then, the Middle East may have changed forever. What America says will matter nothing.
ReplyDeleteWell, I certainly hope that is true, for I believe they should chart their own destiny, but I have my doubts. I would be convinced if I saw some really principled rejection of all American aid, economic and military, from Israel, Egypt, Jordan, etc. I think that would be an excellent way to declare their complete independence and we could certainly use the money to reduce our debt.
Off topic, given it is "Memorial Day" in the U.S.:
ReplyDelete...the thousands of warriors they killed — the ancestors of us "original" Americans — aren’t counted for the ultimately futile but unhesitating sacrifice they made fighting to keep their people free. On Memorial Day, they are invisible. Monuments to the Rebel dead can be found in practically every town of the Confederacy. Memorials to Indian resistance are next to non-existent. Many Americans of Indian ancestry are, of course, interred in military cemeteries. As far back as the Revolutionary War, Indians have fought in uniform under the Stars and Stripes. But those who died in the century of armed resistance from 1790 to 1890 get no recognition, even though the battlefields where they resisted can be found in nearly every state of the union.