Friday, July 17, 2015

Obama courts a legacy in his second and final term

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE tell me what Obama has done for his country? You may come back with the retort that he is his country's first black president – well yes this is true; but surely, as an egotistical politicians  - and all such modern politicians have to have a flourishing ego - this is not what he wants to be remembered for after two terms. This is why he is currently locked in a diplomatic pavane with Iran over her capacity to produce nuclear weapons which, in any Iranian Ayatollah's hands would be a real and genuine threat to the West: Saudi Arabia; has now promised to develop its own nuclear capacity in response to Iran's.
                
                Obama is playing a dangerous game in order only to secure his legacy; for have no doubt, this has been what these negotiations have been about: and there is no doubt in my mind that he will compromise to secure it. This is what Israel fears – and rightly so.
               
                Obama's terms in office have centred on his gift for rhetoric and the elegant phrase; but the persuasive tongue is always insufficient in itself, unless you back up the words and threats you make  with the action you suggest will follow if your demands are not met; which Obama has singularly failed to do. We remember his red line on Syria over Assad's use of chemical weapons: if it could be proven that Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people then America would act militarily.
               
                It was proven, and Obama did not act. The message this sent out to the West's enemies was that the leader of the most powerful military nation on earth had blinked, and was capable of blinking time after time…after time. Obama has demeaned his office, and himself. He is now trying to redeem his presidency by trying to diplomatically bring an end to Iran's nuclear capacity. Even after every deadline imposed on the negotiations by the White House go ignored by the Iranians - yet other deadlines are forthcoming by the White House.
                
                The Iranians are a counterfeit outfit as far as diplomacy and negotiation is concerned. They use negotiation as a weapon to achieve what they want, and once a treaty is signed it is fully prepared to ignore it if something superior comes along to alter their circumstances for the better an put them on a stronger foot: which is how Iran understands negotiation; and any deal reached on this fraudulent basis means little to Iran: but the naive American presidency of Obama is fully compliant with whatever he is presented with – his place as the first black American president in American history seems to be his one and only concern as his second term is  just 18 months from its end.
                
                Good faith means nothing to the Iranians; they will break any treaty once they have benefited enough from its clauses. Then they will become emboldened once more to achieve their nuclear ends.
                
        
ONE OF THE FIRST acts Obama took on gaining office was to remove a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. The significance of this simple act told us something about the man. Why would he want to dispose of Churchill's effigy by returning it to the British embassy in Washington? This must have told the British Foreign Office of the kind of man they were dealing with; but being diplomats they took it in good grace. After all, the special relationship was paramount, and if we were disliked as a nation by one particular president then we could live with it until another president arrived to continue the time line of the special relationship.
               
                It turns out that an ancestor of Obama was a member of the Mau Mau in Kenya who had been killed or tortured by the British under their colonial occupation. This seems to have driven Obama toward a particular hatred for the British. I understand this because my father served in Burma and I also once resented the Japanese.
                
                But the Japanese I recognise today have little bearing on the Japanese my father had fought in Burma; and one would have thought that Obama would have arrived at the same conclusion regarding imperial Britain.

THERE IS HOWEVER another aspect of Obama that has barely been touched upon and that is his support for the beliefs of Pastor Jeremiah Wright who was Obama's religious mentor. There have been suggestions from this relationship that Obama is a closet Muslim – why, I do not know. The pastor has apparently given sermons supportive of the Islamic faith, but certainly not of the Islamists.
                
                My concern is that president Obama carries much baggage. There have been accusations (and nothing more) that Obama is a believer in Islam. If so then Islam is not exactly outlawed. But if his faith belongs to Islam, he should have been upfront about it when he first stood for the presidency. For it brings into dispute the very question, and the very nature of the talks with Iran.
                
                It is also true that Obama is no friend of Israel. To Obama, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is evil incarnate, as was witnessed off camera by his true feelings toward the Israeli prime minister.
               
                Obama has reached out to Iran and has done so against not only the advice of Israel which it appears his Democratic administration was deliberately picked to oppose from the very start of his presidency; but also other Arabic countries, like Saudi Arabia. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are unpleasant regimes, they each, between them support their Shia and Sunni brethren who are now at war throughout the Middle East. But it is in the West's interest to support neither.
               
                 President Obama is nothing more than a black figure-head for both the afro-American, and the white liberals of the Democratic Party. Whatever Obama achieved in office which was very little; these constituencies would stand true to him out of political correctness: he also had the undying loyalty of West and East coast liberals; while most of America only wanted an end to what they perceive as the tsunami of migration.

               


                

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