Obama’s
Farewell Tears Are an Insult, His Record is Soaked
in Blood
By John Wight
Do not be fooled by the tears and gushing
words of Obama and his supporters as he
counts down to his departure from the White
House. They are an insult when measured
against the tears of the countless Libyans,
Syrians, Afghans and others who have
suffered as a result of a foreign policy
that brought his administration into
disrepute.
Barack
Obama goes down in history as a president who more
than any other in living memory entered the White
House on a wave of hope and expectation, only to
depart eight years and two terms later under a cloud
of crushing disappointment and bitterness.
In speech after speech, America's first black
president outlined a vision of his country's place
in the world that would embrace multilateralism,
place a premium on diplomacy, and embrace a foreign
policy underpinned by justice. He also pledged to
close the controversial US detention facility at
Guantanamo Bay. Eight years later it's impossible to
avoid the conclusion that he lied.
When it
comes to the Middle East, although Obama certainly
cannot be blamed for creating the disaster in Iraq —
for this we have the war unleashed on the country by
his predecessor, George W. Bush, in 2003 to thank —
his actions upon entering the White House in 2009
made the situation worse.
The
military surge, begun in 2007 under the Bush
administration with the deployment of thousands
of additional US troops to the country's Anbar
province (Sunni Triangle), had been designed to
end the brutal sectarian control of al-Qaeda in
Iraq (AQI) over the province. Within a year it
had succeeded in reducing the terrorist group to
the point of near extinction. In partnership
with Anbar's Sunni tribes, who'd suffered under
the iron heel of the terrorist group, US forces
had embarked on an aggressive policy of seek and
destroy. It was an innovative and successful
operation that not only succeeded militarily but
also in terms of winning the hearts and minds of
the country's Sunni minority.
Unconscionably, Obama ended the surge while
continuing to support the Maliki government in
Baghdad, whose sectarian policies favouring of
the countries Shia majority at the expense of
the Sunni minority led to the revival of AQI's
fortune. In 2013 the group changed its name to
Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) and at the beginning
of 2014 succeeded in taking control of Fallujah,
just 57km from Baghdad, where its notorious
black flag first came to international
attention. In attempting to underplay the
significance of the growing strength of ISI in
Iraq, Obama infamously compared the terrorist
group to a junior varsity (jayvee) team — in
other words a threat of no great consequence.
How wrong he was. In June 2014, ISI launched
offensives against Tikrit and Mosul, taking both
cities, before moving across the border into
Syria. There it morphed into Daesh (also known
as ISIS/ISIL), establishing a reign of
barbarism, terror, and cruelty such as the world
hasn't seen since the Khmer Rouge ravaged
Cambodia in the 1970s.
It was
a disaster that had arrived in the Middle
East on the coattails of a so-called Arab
Spring that saw the Obama administration
throw former US and Western-supported
dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt under the
bus. It did so at the same time as
opportunistically throwing its weight behind
the mass protests that had erupted
throughout the region, doing so with the
objective of ensuring that the outcome was
favourable to US and Western strategic,
geopolitical, and economic interests.
The destruction of Libya, wrought by
Washington and its NATO allies in 2011,
along with US support for sectarian
terrorist groups in Syria, almost pushed the
region into the abyss. When Russia entered
the fray at the end of 2015, at the request
of a Syrian government whose forces were
overstretched and struggling to beat back a
Western supported onslaught, Obama refused
to accept Russia's request to join forces to
defeat terrorism. Instead his administration
did its utmost to impede Russian efforts.
The result has been the unnecessary
prolongation of the conflict in Syria
and the suffering if its people. Along
with the turning of Libya into a failed
state, it produced a refugee crisis of
biblical dimension, leading to thousands
of people drowning in the Mediterranean
in the act of fleeing a region plunged
into chaos.
In Eastern Europe, meanwhile, the US
under Obama's watch supported a fascist
driven coup in Ukraine in 2014 that
toppled the country's democratically
elected government. The result was a
civil conflict on Russia's southwestern
border.
The attempt to paint Russia as the
cause of the ensuing instability
exposed Obama's mendacity and his
blithe disregard for Russia's
security and legitimate rights. With
the arrogance of a Roman emperor,
the president attempted to bully the
largest and most populous country in
Europe into submission over Ukraine
and its role in Syria fighting
terrorism reduced relations between
East and West to the point of
full-blown crisis, where they
currently remain.
Add to his legacy a drone war that
has killed hundreds of innocent
civilians, and nobody should be
fooled by the happy-clappy emotional
farewell speeches he is currently
giving in advance of his departure
from the political stage. His record
in office leaves both him and his
presidency disgraced.
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