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

Tue Oct 27 22:43:12 CDT 2009

He gets an good marks because he's better than Bush.
Cole is a slippery fellow, with slippery analyses.
He must be aiming to join the administration.

--mkb

On Oct 27, 2009, at 10:13 PM, unionyes wrote:

> Here's a real " gem " !
>
> David J.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: <moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG>
> To: <PORTSIDE at LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG>
> 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).]
>> _____________________________________________
>> Portside aims to provide material of interest
>> to people on the left that will help them to
>> interpret the world and to change it.
>> Submit via email: moderator at portside.org
>> Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
>> Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
>> Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
>> Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
>> Account assistance: portside.org/contact
>> Search the archives: portside.org/archive
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss