A flawed template of conflicts past

Michael Young at Lebanon's Daily Star, on Bush, Obama, Iraq and Syria:

The conflict in Syria has shown us that the Obama administration, like the Bourbons, has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The Arab uprisings have not led to a change in the American outlook when it comes to understanding and acting upon the democratic aspirations of Arab societies. Such a change would mean, first, giving some credit to Bush’s decision to oust one of the worst mass murderers the region had ever seen, in favor of a more democratic Iraq.

And the administration has forgotten nothing in fitting events today, above all those in Syria, into a flawed template of conflicts past. Nothing was done to arm Syria’s armed opposition, for fear that Salafi jihadists would triumph as they did in Afghanistan. Yet America’s unwillingness to act only ensured that the Salafi jihadists would fill the void created by this obtuse reasoning.

The problem is that the U.S. has profoundly changed toward a region hitherto at the very core of its concerns. The Middle East is no longer a priority for Obama, and the pillars of U.S. involvement in the region have either been seriously eroded or allowed to deteriorate. American minimalism in the region is a direct consequence of Obama’s erroneous reading of the Iraq conflict, which the president chose to explain in the context of a clash of cultures.

As Obama put it in his speech in Cairo in June 2009, “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 are not exclusive, and need not be in competition.”

In that way the president showed he understood nothing of what had transpired before he came to office. Iraq was not a confrontation between America and Islam. Even in those interpretations most critical of the Bush administration, the war was fundamentally a political act, not engagement in a cultural war by other means.....

If Iraq was regrettable in one respect, it was in pushing Obama to embrace destabilizing minimalism in the Arab world. The U.S. has left a void that contending actors are seeking to fill, to the detriment of all. Obama no longer wants the U.S. to be the world’s policeman, and in that he has been revolutionary. But minimalism has come with a price tag as the world adjusts, and it will be measured in Arab lives. Perhaps the American narrative invariably dominates after all.

 

Comments

[Dom]

Obama was elected precisely because he was the anti-Bush. He was a local phenomenon from the Chicago machine, and we knew he would never get involved in foreign adventures. I don't see this changing anytime soon.

[Barrry Sheridan]

Expecting the US to fix all the problems of the Middle East is a tired theme. The only folk who can come to terms with the issues that afflict this region are the people who live there. Regrettably the schism within Islam and the ludicrous sentiments of its radical adherents precludes the sort of sensible debate that must be the starting point. Mr Obama, however hopeless a President he seems to be, cannot be blamed for having no answers. For solutions to take effect you need reason, that exists only in the corners of this blighted region as the Israeli's know all too well.