Obama Claims He or His Administration Had a Role

President Barack Obama has joined the ideological school of deferred action, not in religion, but in politics. His address at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday tackled many issues, of which I limit myself here to what concerns me, i.e. the issues of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Iran and the issue of violence. He supported, denounced and then reiterated well-known positions, but fell short of proposing solutions, which he seems to have deferred until after the U.S. presidential election on the 6th of November. But there is a point here that I need to express my personal objection against. The president seemed in his speech as though claiming for himself or his administration, a role or a credit he deserves with regard to the Arab uprisings. Although he was responding to accusations made by Republican rival Mitt Romney of having unleashed forces hostile to the United States, suggesting that the Arab uprisings “were made in America” is wrong. Nay, it is an insult to the revolutionaries and the martyrs, who all rose up for very clear internal reasons, and do not trust the United States to begin with. Two hours before the president’s speech at the UN, I received a telephone call from my colleague Fatima Najdi, who conducted a live interview with me on her show on ONtv that lased half an hour. During the interview, I said that Obama would say this and that, defend his administration and attack the violence unleashed by the offensive anti-Islam film, but will offer no solutions. And indeed, this is what he did. The word democracy was thus mentioned 15 times in his speech, the word freedom 13 times, violence 13 times, Libya 11 times, Iran 7, Israel 5, Egypt 6 times, and Palestine twice. Perhaps I would add here that his talk about Palestine and the Palestinians contained nothing new. So much so that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal yesterday did not run any of it in their respective summaries of Obama’s 30 minute speech. Concerning Iran, Obama restated his confidence in that diplomatic measures will prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon. But by doing so, he would have also reiterated his opposition to the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and refused to draw red lines for Iran that would subject the latter to military action if crossed. In reality, Obama repeated, without explicitly saying anything, his personal contempt of the Israeli prime minister, when he refused to meet him despite mediations by Jewish American figures, including Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago and former White House chief of staff. Emanuel served in the past in the Israeli ‘Defense’ Forces, i.e. the army of murder, occupation and racist-fascist destruction. The Wall Street Journal, a Likudnik newspaper that is the mouthpiece of the wealthy, wrote that Israel and Iran do not believe Obama. While I do not object to this here, I read a commentary in the newspaper over Obama’s speech written by none other than Alan Dershowitz, who was described by the WSJ as a being a law professor at Harvard University but whom I describe as a Likudnik American extremist who supports a terrorist state. Dershowitz wants the United States to threaten Iran with war, if it should press ahead with its plans to produce a nuclear weapon. Not even in a hundred years – or a thousand years, if I want to exaggerate – would Iran pose a threat to the U.S., whether it acquires a nuclear bomb or not. Yet, the enablers of Israeli crime want America to fight on Israel’s behalf, subjecting U.S. interests to enormous risk and the region to a devastating war. Of course, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is so ignorant that he often ends up helping the enemies of his country. The Iranian President chose to visit New York to repeat his campaigns (verbal only) against Israel. He said that Israel is something transient in the Middle East and that its inevitable fate is to vanish. Of course, the lackeys of Israel chose to explain this as continued threats by him to wipe Israel off the map of the Middle East. I am writing a few hours before President Muhammad Mursi gives his speech. The officials who accompanied the Egyptian president told me that he will repeat his call for a more balanced U.S. policy in the Middle East and for an end to the full commitment to Israel where its interests are placed above those of any other, including American and Arab interests. President Obama spoke about the freedom of speech as a universal, and not American or Western right, more than any other topic in his speech. The Americans say, be careful of what you wish for, so I wait for the Egyptian president to believe him and expresses himself freely, and say what the U.S. President would not like to hear. He will hear, but he will defer any response until after the presidential election. I hope that Obama will be reelected, because his rival Mitt Romney is championing policies that will be disastrous to the United States, the Arabs and the Muslims. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.