It’s the season of discontent over President Obama. Wherever one looks, both in and out of the United States, people are disappointed – and the Arab world is no exception.
For Algeria’s El Watan, columnist Hassan Moali writes that entrenched interests and the pro-Israel lobby have overcome the desire of President Obama to recast U.S. foreign policy and that he ‘obviously overestimated his power.’ The main sticking point as is often the case: the Palestinians.
For El Watan, Hassan Moali writes in part:
Today, January 20th, President Barack Obama completes his first year at the helm of the world’s leading power. A year ago, hundreds of thousands of admirers massed in front of Capitol Hill and millions of around the world had their eyes glued to the small screen, unrestrainedly drinking in the great rhetoric of this modern-day Martin Luther King. … Clearly, Barack Obama has to face the fact that being in charge at the White House hasn’t ipso-facto given him the power to impose himself as master of Washington. The chain of command in the United States is so complicated and complex that decisions – particularly in the realm of foreign policy – are almost completely out of the hands of the Oval Office.
We’ve seen how Barack Obama chickened out when confronted by the stubbornness of Israel not to stop settlement activity on the West Bank. His cautionary speech in Cairo in which he decried the “unlawful” continuation of colonization was quickly transformed into a love poem for Israel. Obama has understood that after the outcry in the U.S. and the terse response of the Netanyahu cabinet, he shouldn’t impose on or refuse anything to Israel, the unfailing protection of which is a fundamental duty of American foreign policy. It was a rude awakening for President Obama, who has since learned to make this dogmatic premise a central plank of his diplomacy.
It was a lesson well learned, and Obama was rewarded – at dusk after taking almost a year’s sabbatical – with a Nobel Peace Prize … for abandoning the peace process! Even worse, he gave the green light to his generals to send additional troops to Afghanistan just days after receiving the precious Nobel Academy diploma. The moral: In the United States, he who accepts the rules and follows them can receive all the honors of a man of peace – even as a president of war. In the end, Obama’s change was only a dream. A genuine American dream!
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