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Some Nuance for Barack Obama

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Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Some Nuance for Barack Obama

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Going through the vast literature that is being daily produced with focus on the ongoing Democratic campaign, one gets the idea that rich conceptual thinking, innovative approaches, and nuance are all there.

Yet, the field where nuance seems to be permanently absent in America is the US foreign policy. This does not concern the present campaign only, but the situation has certainly been exacerbated over the past weeks. From the comical comments of Senator Mac Cain about the US staying in Iraq another 100 years (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/04/mccain-100-years/) to the hysterical reaction of Senator Clinton as regards to US 'policy' toward Iran' Ayatollahs (click here one gets the impression that the US foreign policy risks being entrusted in irrelevant hands precisely at a moment when the unipolar world of one and sole superpower seems about to end.

With the American economy in the middle of a serious crisis that can be tremendously deteriorated, with a great number of social issues unresolved, with a wide range of very preoccupying global problems (energy, food crisis, bio-fuel, environment), America's foreign policy needs reconsideration, reassessment and re-evaluation from scratch.

The need for an immediate shift in the US foreign policy consists in the most urgent demand for America as it hinges on all other issues, energy, environment, commodities prices, economy, to name but a few.

In a rising multi-polar world where China, India, Russia, the Islamic World, Africa, Brazil, Mexico and Japan vindicate their position next to the US and the EU, America needs to think out-of-the-box, and devise a global strategy that will promote the US interests genuinely conceived.

To briefly comment on the aforementioned oversights, we would focus on US-Iraq issues, and ask the following:
- What is the benefit of the US staying 100 years in Iraq, if the Christian Aramaeans who are the ethnic majority of Mesopotamia (Iraq is a false term that severely damages the US interests) are thus eradicated from their fatherland?

- To whose profit is this sort of extended American presence in Iraq going to be?

- Are Americans able to understand that the US-led invasion of Iraq turned to the unique advantage of the Islamic terrorists?

- Is Senator Mac Cain mentally capable of envisioning an 100-year long American presence in Iraq that would not be to the profit of the terrorists? If yes, why doesn't he publish an overview of this policy so that people be able to appreciate the pillars on which it may be based and be convinced about it? If not, for whom is he working in order to practically extend US damage (present policy has been clearly assessed as such thus far) due to the invasion of Iraq for another 100 years?

One can therefore understand that what matters in Iraq is not whether the US military stay there 3 months, 3 years or 3 centuries but whether US presence in Iraq can let Justice prevail, help repair damages caused to several ethno-religious groups over the years of colonialism and post-colonialism, and promote a culturally – educationally genuine, democratic nation building that has long been deliberately averted.

As we have entered, since 2001, in the period of the so-called War against the Islamic Terrorism (irrespective of the veracity or not of the events of September 11), America should consider whether the infantile US foreign policy has so far committed, in this new era, precisely the same errors that have been perpetrated in the period of the foremost waste of US national resources, namely the Cold War.

Absence of Nuance

To be more precise, we will circumspectly present two models of consideration. Evaluating America's performance during, and contribution to, the Cold War (1950 – 1990), one could conclude that the US, by forging an alliance with Western European democracies, managed to contain and in time to cause the downfall of the Soviet regime.

This is the conventional thinking that does not take into consideration the resources and the time wasted, the loss in other fronts (Europe, Africa, China, Latin America), as well as the impact on the image and the perspectives of America. Even worse, this conventional way of thinking does not take into account the fact that the so-called collapse of the Soviet Union consists in an absolutely false myth; in real terms, it was a 10-year moratorium that ended up with the replacement of the former Soviet Union by Russia.

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Orientalist, Historian, Political Scientist, Dr. Megalommatis, 51, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, (more...)
 
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