Ayoon Wa Azan (I Insist That He Will Achieve Nothing)

I continue from where I left off yesterday. I do not know whether Barack Obama will achieve any successes in his second year, after his first year came devoid of any memorable achievements. There are enormous difficulties facing Obama, both domestically and abroad. If he should succeed, he would have conjured up a miracle of biblical proportions, but he is to fail, then I will hold the previous administration responsible, since the latter left him with an impossibly burdensome legacy.

The American financial crisis, and the ensuing global financial crisis, were both caused singlehandedly by the Bush administration. Recall that the latter had inherited a budget surplus of one trillion dollars from the Clinton administration, but bequeathed to the Obama administration a one trillion dollar budget deficit which has since become three trillion dollars, and perhaps will become six before we see any signs of improvement.

Between the surplus and the later deficit, the Bush administration waged three failed wars which it all lost, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the War on terror, which actually led to more terrorism around the world instead of decreasing terrorism.

All this has a price of course, and the figures betray a frightening image, such as the budget that Obama presented earlier this month to the Congress and which amounted to 3.8 trillion dollars, with a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit, or 11 percent of the entire GDP of the United States.

The year 2009 witnessed a record deficit at the time, amounting to 1.4 trillion dollars, while the Obama administration is forecasting next year’s deficit to be at 1.3 trillion dollars. The administration, in ‘reassurance’ of the American people, is saying that the deficit in 2020 will not exceed 3.9 percent of the GDP (while Sarkozy’s government in France claimed that French deficit will be eliminated by 2020).

Frankly, I do not believe such promises, be they American, French or Somali. I will only believe it when I see it, and I see that the budget of the U.S Department of Defence has hit a record high of 708 billion dollars, following a trajectory of gradual increase in this budget since 1999. This is despite the fact that we all believed, following the collapse of the communist bloc, that defence budgets all over the world will be reduced. But then we lived to see that the U.S defence budget alone increased, while this budget is largest than the combined defence budgets of the rest of the world.

I say the Department of Defence budget because that is the term in use today; however, spending two billion dollars each day while the United States has no declared enemies other than al-Qaeda and a few hundred terrorist cannot be called defence. This budget is a remnant of the Bush administration and the imperial ambitions of the United States for world domination, and for the Israeli domination of the Middle East. Subsequently, this is a budget of aggression and offence, and not of defence.

The result is what we see, and we have read American estimates that attempted to determine the number of al-Qaeda operatives, according to official U.S reports. I found that the number is a few hundred in Afghanistan and about two thousands in Pakistan, in addition to tens of operatives in the ‘al-Qaedas’ in Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula, the Arab Maghreb and Somalia, and concluded that there are 666 U.S soldiers for every terrorist from al-Qaeda.

Incidentally, the number 708 billion dollars is the official disclosed figure for the defence budget, which does not include other figures such as the 33 billion dollars to fund the war this year, and 160 billion dollars for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, and also other defence-related figures which fall under other appropriations in departments other than the Department of Defence. If these figures should be added together, the sum will be astronomical, and would perhaps be even enough to cancel out the deficit in the public budget.

Will Obama hence be able to place his country back on the road to financial recovery, in order for him to achieve the other tenants of his policies, both domestically and abroad? While he is insisting that he will carry on forward, I insist that he will not achieve anything unless he stops trying to appease everyone, and begins strongly confronting his political opponents to prevent the Democrats from losing the upcoming midterm elections like they lost in the state of Massachusetts.

Frankly, all that concerns me with respect to this subject is the Palestinian cause, and the need to move forward with the peace process on the basis of the vision of two states living side by side in peace.

But Obama’s difficulties in this vein do not only lie in the sheer size of the financial and military burden that the Bush administration left behind, albeit these remain immense and quite challenging.

In truth, the Palestinians bear a large part of the blame because of their ongoing internal strife, which harms their cause. This is while the Arabs and Muslims are also responsible because of their weakness and divisions, and which thus invited the greed of both the East and the West for intervention in their region.

Then there is also the fascistic government in Israel, which instead of seeking peace, is threatening war, while fully aware that the U.S Congress is under the control of the lobby, and that no administration can ever impose a solution on Israel. Also, how can we ask for peace from a government that includes the Likud, Shas, and Yisrael Beiteinu? If I wanted to form a gang for the purposes of murder, robbery and forgery, I will not be able to find any better criminals than the cabinet members in the Israeli government, may God curse them all.

khazen@alhayat.com [1]