Obama For Peace

Not for nothing was this American president awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. The promise was there, in his words, his demeanor, his obvious intentions. A man of goodwill and peace. Capable of smiling and extending an open hand in friendship to those whose rictus of rage at the West guaranteed they were quick to slap away the palm with their own closed fist. But, never one to give up so readily, to surrender to defeat, this extraordinary man presses on.

He allowed his military to initiate the NATO aid to Libyan tribal rebels by their naval artillery rounds fired off the Mediterranean coast, then withdrew so that France, Britain, Italy, Canada and others could represent the determination to unseat a murderous tyrant by aerial means. To ensure that the military juggernaut of the regime was then incapable, with destroyed air power, of annihilating their adversaries. And the result? Helpful to the rebels, but a country left in perpetual turmoil, overtaken by Islamists.

When Islamists overtook Egypt, the country where President Obama made his first conciliatory speech to the Islamic world however, his administration was pleased to proffer support. When the noose of Islamist extremism tightened over Egypt and the people rebelled in unmistakable terms of rejection, the Obama administration was far less than pleased at this demonstration of people power, rejecting 'democracy'.

And when people in Syria, deciding that their majority Sunni sect had been repressed for long enough, marching in peaceful demonstrations urging their president, Bashar al-Assad to confer equality on them and his response was to order his military to arrest, torture and murder children, tormenting the protesters successfully enough to transform them into a rebellious army comprised of hundreds of militias all prepared for conflict with the Shia government, the U.S. gave witness and little else.

Just as had been done years earlier when Iran's green revolution made its tentative appearance in the streets of Tehran with protesters enraged over yet another corrupt election returning Mahmud Ahmadinejad to the presidency. The obdurate non-involvement of the United States in that failed attempt to challenge the malevolent power of the Republican Guard and Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, more than amply revealed the face of the new, transformed, world-friendly America.

And now there is Syria, utterly destroyed, its civil infrastructure in ruins, its people beyond demoralized, starving, accepting a fatwah allowing them to eat whatever domestic animals might stray into their vision, mourning their dead, leaving their homes for safety elsewhere, fearful of the tens of thousands of conflict-hardened jihadists in their midst who have as much compassion for desperately fleeing men, women and children as does the regime.

Syria has descended into barbarity and deprivation, a place where death stalks and hope has fled. In places warlord fiefdoms exist, a puzzle of mini-emirates, and portions held by the regime, hoping by butchery and resolve to regain what has been lost. Matching brutality for brutality; jihadists against jihadists, sectarian and tribal hatred in full flux.

For this Barack Obama cannot be blamed. His country had exhausted its military and its financial resources in Iraq and Afghanistan. And in both countries a relapse to extremist savagery among the tribal and sectarian polarities have been revived, and there is little resolve among the people, among those who consider themselves tribal warlords responsible for their own and none other, to remake of themselves a nation.

The failure is that of the people of the Middle East. Those who worship Islam, emphasizing its fundamental goodness, but practising fundamental ruthlessness, repression, counter-revolution, and barbarity. The great hope of the world that resided in the new persona of a new president of the most powerful country on Earth has crumpled into nothingness. Barack Obama has become a facade behind which nothing substantial exists.

He has surrendered to a wilier Slavic version of an American autocrat, who outfoxed and maneuvered him into a position that has alienated him from former friends and colleagues, placing America into has-been status as a faltering, failing world power, as others bringing up the rear observe with complacency.  In Syria, the country has dissolved into a stone-age version of civilization.

IHS Jane's reports that among 100,000 anti-regime fighters, one third represent "hard line Islamists", and one third of those fighters are said to be incorrigible jihadists. Which description equates with martyrdom-aspiring mass-killers. The armed struggle, the jihad of extremely threatening Islamism extends its death-deliverance where it can.

While the Obama administration busies itself placating Iran, agreeing that there is little reason to insist it cease its production of enriched uranium to 20%, and stockpile what it wishes to, because it can and it will, and its indomitable march toward nuclear warheads is now unstoppable. And because of American indifference to consequences under this administration, nuclear proliferation has become a reality, with Pakistan diffident over a request by Saudi Arabia to procure nuclear warheads for an arsenal of its own.

But not all is yet lost; the Obama administration has dispatched John Kerry to continue his strong-arming of Israel, and placatory ministrations toward the Palestinian Authority, insisting that whatever else happens, a peace agreement between a country that refuses to recognize the character and purpose of its neighbour, while claiming itself to be a country dedicated wholly and solely to the well-being of Arab Palestinians, sees no harbour for Jews in Israel.