How Barack Obama Could Do Something Right For Once

I am not a fan of Barack Obama, for me he is the biggest fraud of this short century. With simple slogans ‘hope’ and ‘change’ he conned Americans into thinking he was something new and different.

This has obviously not been the case. Under Obama the United States finally became a banana republic with the NDAA act. He has repeatedly caved into big business interests (on healthcare and austerity measures) and his foreign policy has been no different to that of his predecessors.

Expanding the war on terror via drones, he explicitly ordered the execution of a US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen without arrest or trial among thousands of civilians killed by this remote controlled terror. He vetoed the vote to recognise Palestinian statehood last year and withdrew UNESCO funding just because that organisation did recognise Palestine. He has allowed the illegal settlements to continue and, while speaking of his support for the Arab spring, helped Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to viciously crack down on their protestors.

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He has, however one last chance to redeem himself slightly. Israel, the United States’ staunchest ally has being banging the drums for war with Iran. It has been assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and it claims to be threatened by a neighbouring theocracy owning a nuclear weapon (forgetting that it itself is a theocracy with at least 200 nuclear weapons). This threat is quite frankly ludicrous, but Israel has immense power in the US.

It has AIPAC, by far the biggest lobbying group in the US, a group which Obama grovelled to on his way to the presidency. It has most of the Republican Party in its grasp as well as the Democratic Party (most notably Sen. Joe Lieberman). They along with the neo-conservatives are the ones attempting to lead the United States to war, but for once President Obama and his administration are resisting.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told Face the Nation that Iran is not trying to build a nuclear weapon. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate intelligence committee that they have no evidence that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders that the United States would not participate if Israel went to war with Iran without Washington Confirmation. This followed from the cancellation of a war games exercise between the US and Israel.

How far this will go is a mystery. Obama got into major trouble last year when he said that Israel should go back to its pre 1967 borders which brought an angry response from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. After that Obama followed the traditional US-Israel policy route: back Israel no matter what and ignore Palestinian pleas, there is the chance that this could happen again. It is election year and Obama does not need to be seen as too anti-Israel, but he sure doesn’t want war with Iran in 2012 either.

How Barack Obama Could Do Something Right For Once

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