[Peace-discuss] Fw: Obama's foreign policy report card

[unionyes]

Here's a real " gem " !

David J.

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Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 9:25 PM
Subject: Obama's foreign policy report card


> Obama's foreign policy report card
> 
> You'd never know it from the MSM, but he deserves high
> grades for his work so far in Iran, Iraq and Pakistan
> 
> By Juan Cole
> 
> Salon.com - October 27, 2009
> 
> http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/26/obama_report_card
> 
> Why can't the administration of President Barack Obama
> get the word out about its policy successes? President
> Obama campaigned on an ambitious platform of
> withdrawing from Iraq, engaging Iran on its nuclear
> program and persuading the Pakistani government to take
> on the Taliban and al-Qaida. Despite the charge by
> critics from both the right and the left in the wake of
> his winning the Nobel Peace Prize that he has
> accomplished little so far, in fact he has already set
> in motion significant change on several of these fronts
> -- despite the enormous domestic tasks that have
> inevitably preoccupied his administration. Yet you'd
> never hear about these successes from the mainstream
> media.
> 
> When Obama came into office in January, 142,000 U.S.
> troops were in Iraq, conducting regular patrols of the
> major cities. His Republican rivals were dead set
> against U.S. withdrawal on a strict timetable. He faced
> something close to an insurrection from some of his
> commanders in the field, such as Gen. Ray Odierno, who
> opposed a quick departure from Iraq. Moreover, Obama
> assumed the presidency at a time when Iran and the U.S.
> were virtually on a war footing and there had been no
> direct talks between the two countries on most of the
> major issues dividing them. In February, the government
> of Pakistan virtually ceded the Swat Valley and the
> Malakand Division to the Pakistani Taliban of Maulvi
> Fazlullah, allowing the imposition of the latter's
> fundamentalist version of Islamic law on residents, and
> Islamabad had no stomach for taking on the increasingly
> bold extremists.
> 
> Eight months later, it is a different world. While it
> is still early in his presidency, and there is too much
> work unfinished to give him an overall grade, it's
> already apparent he's outperforming his predecessor.
> 
> Iraq: B Obama has decisively won the argument over Iraq
> policy. Despite the massive bombings in Baghdad on
> Sunday -- the most deadly since 2007 -- the U.S. troop
> withdrawal is ahead of schedule and seems unlikely to
> be halted. One reason is that the security situation in
> Iraq, while shaky, did not deteriorate when U.S. troops
> ceased their urban patrols on June 30 (a date Iraqis
> celebrated as "Sovereignty Day"). Occasional big
> explosions obscure the reality of reduced guerrilla
> attacks. According to the Pentagon, civilian casualties
> have been steadily declining since late summer. Even
> John McCain said that Sunday's carnage should not delay
> the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq -- a 180-degree turn in
> policy for the former presidential candidate.
> 
> The process of U.S. disentanglement from Iraq has been
> gradual, generating no big headlines, no "Obama brings
> 22,000 troops out of Iraq, cuts war spending by $30
> billion." But, in fact, troop levels are down to about
> 120,000 from 142,000 early this year, and spending on
> the war has fallen, from $180 billion in 2008 to $150
> billion this year. Many things could still go wrong in
> Iraq, affecting the ability of the U.S. to meet the
> current timetable, but so far the Iraqi security forces
> are generally keeping order (there were horrific
> bombings when the U.S. was in control, too). He can be
> faulted for not working closely enough with the Nouri
> al-Maliki government to ease the transition, hence a
> grade of B instead of an A.
> 
> Iran: A There has also been movement on Iran. On Oct. 1
> the administration fulfilled its campaign pledge by
> joining other members of the United Nations Security
> Council and Germany in Geneva to jawbone with Iran on
> the nuclear issue. As a result, Iran accepted that a
> United Nations inspection team would visit the newly
> announced enrichment facility near Qom, and on Monday
> inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency
> arrived at the Fardo plant. The acceptance of
> inspectors is an excellent sign. As long as Tehran
> remains willing to allow U.N. inspections, both at
> Natanz near Isfahan and at Fardo (which is not
> operational but could eventually house 3,000
> centrifuges), neither facility can be used to produce
> fissionable material. Obama has changed the West's
> dynamics with Iran by direct negotiation, something
> that 63 percent of the American people support.
> 
> Pakistan: B Then there is Pakistan. The Obama
> administration came into office determined to whittle
> away the "state's rights" prerogatives of the Pashtuns,
> who form about 12 percent of the Pakistani population,
> of which the tiny minority of Taliban had taken
> advantage. From its inception, the Pakistani federal
> government had inherited from the British Empire a
> policy of not attempting to rule the tribal Pashtuns
> too heavy-handedly. In addition, the Pakistani military
> uses some Taliban and other guerrilla groups to project
> influence in the Pashtun areas of neighboring
> Afghanistan, making the generals reluctant to move
> against them. In spring-summer, the Obama
> administration convinced the Pakistani government to
> launch a major military operation against the Taliban
> in the Swat Valley. Despite temporarily displacing 2
> million residents, the operation enjoyed substantial
> success and gained wide popular support from a
> Pakistani population -- including most Pashtuns --
> increasingly appalled at the brutality of Taliban rule.
> In October, the military launched a similar operation
> against the Taliban in South Waziristan, despite a raft
> of bombings aimed by the militants at deterring the
> federal government from coming after them.
> 
> Obama has, moreover, signed a $7.5 billion civilian aid
> package that encourages economic, educational and
> medical development and puts pressure on the civilian
> government to keep the military under its control. The
> Bush administration gave most of its aid in the form of
> military weaponry or support, something of which
> polling shows the Pakistani public disapproves. Obama
> intends to build clinics and schools and to develop an
> infrastructure that might help fight militancy more
> effectively than any drone strikes can.
> 
> Obama's Pakistan approach, of building state capacity
> and improving the economy and basic services, while
> dealing with the Pakistani Taliban through large-scale
> military operations, may or may not succeed. But
> compared to his predecessor's policy of just handing
> over billions to corrupt military officers, some of
> whom have links to factions of militants, Obama's
> policies have been far more coherent. His use of
> unmanned predator drones to kill suspected al-Qaida
> operatives and the aid bill's demand for the supremacy
> of civilian rule over the military are both unpopular
> in some quarters, because of fears that the U.S. is
> turning the country into a sort of colony and
> infringing against its sovereignty. Obama may need to
> be less heavy-handed in the future to avoid a popular
> backlash. If not for this insensitivity to Pakistani
> popular opinion, he might deserve an A. The Swat and
> South Waziristan campaigns, at least, appear to have
> the support of the Pakistani public.
> 
> The administration has not succeeded everywhere. The
> president has yet to make a determination on his
> Afghanistan policy, and so far little progress has been
> made on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
> conflict. A verdict is still outstanding about his
> performance in those two regions, leading to two grades
> of "incomplete." But Obama's withdrawal from Iraq is
> actually ahead of schedule, his direct engagement with
> Iran is producing some tentative results, and he has
> strong-armed the Pakistani state into owning the
> problem of the Pakistani Taliban, while instituting a
> major civilian aid program. Far from accomplishing
> nothing in his first eight months, Obama has been a
> whirlwind of activity and has already gained a place in
> the Iraqi, Iranian and Pakistani history books. He
> receives his lowest grade for his failure to force
> America's chattering classes to take notice. While it
> is a bit of a relief not to be subjected to the
> constant propaganda of the Bush administration about
> its creation of shining cities on a hill abroad, the
> Obama administration has gone too far in the opposite
> direction, hiding its light beneath a bushel.
> 
> [Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana
> Institute.  He is Professor of Modern Middle East and
> South Asian History at the History Department of the
> University of Michigan. A bibliography of his writings
> may be found here. He has written extensively about
> modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf,
> and South Asia. He has given numerous media and press
> interviews on the War on Terrorism since September 11,
> 2001, as well as concerning the Iraq War in 2003. His
> current research focuses on two contemporary phenomena:
> 1) Shiite Islam in Iraq and Iran and 2) the "jihadi" or
> "sacred-war" strain of Muslim radicalism, including al-
> Qaeda and the Taliban among other groups. Cole commands
> Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows
> both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam, and lived in
> a number of places in the Muslim world for extended
> periods of time. His most recent book is Sacred Space
> and Holy War (IB Tauris 2002).]
> 
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