Obama's Middle East speech: ?democratic? rhetoric cloaks predatory
policy
By Bill Van Auken
20 May 2011

In his ?Arab spring? speech Thursday, Obama sought to cloak US
imperialism?s predatory aims in the Middle East and North Africa in a
mass of hypocritical and empty ?democratic? rhetoric.

While promoted by the White House as the initiation of a change of
course in US policy, Obama?s rambling and distorted review of recent
developments in the region offered nothing of the kind.

Rather, they signaled US imperialism?s determination to continue its
drive to exert hegemonic control over the oil-rich countries of the
Middle East and North Africa in the face of a powerful revolutionary
challenge from below and ever stiffer competition from economic rivals
in China and Europe.

According to initial press reports, the speech was largely received
with dismissal and contempt in the Arab countries. Despite Obama?s use
of the word ?democracy? or ?democratic? 23 times in his address, there
was no sense in the speech that anything has changed in the policy of a
government that has steadfastly backed ruthless dictatorships and
monarchies in the region and given unqualified support for six decades
to Israel?s suppression of the Palestinian people.

Obama began by summarily dismissing the significance of the two US
wars that began under the Bush White House and have continued under his
presidency, claiming the lives of over a million people.

?Now, already, we?ve done much to shift our foreign policy following a
decade defined by two costly conflicts,? he said. ?After years of war
in Iraq, we?ve removed 100,000 American troops and ended our combat
mission there. In Afghanistan, we?ve broken the Taliban?s momentum, and
this July we will begin to bring our troops home and continue a
transition to Afghan lead.?

As if militarism and war did not continue to ?define? US foreign
policy. In Iraq, nearly 50,000 US troops remain, and the Pentagon is
maneuvering with the Iraqi government to keep a significant number of
them there permanently. As for the claim that the US has ?broken the
Taliban?s momentum,? with nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan,
violence remains at record levels and there is every indication that
the population is turning ever more hostile to the US occupation and
the puppet government that it has maintained.

Obama went on to boast of the US killing of Osama bin Laden as a ?huge
blow? to al-Qaeda, while in the same breath acknowledging that the
former CIA ally had lost his ?relevance? in the face of the upheavals
in the Middle East over the past several months. The attempt to segue
from a dirty assassination to the revolutionary uprising of the masses
fell flat.

Perhaps the most hypocritical aspect of the speech?and one that will
evoke contempt throughout the Arab world?was Obama?s attempt to
identify US policy and ?values? with the uprisings in Tunisia and
Egypt.

He began by retelling the story of Mohammed Bouazizi, the young
Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in protest over abuse at
the hands of the Tunisian authorities, an act that inspired protests
that spread and grew, finally leading to the ouster of the dictatorial
regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Obama?s invocation of Bouazizi?s name is beneath contempt. While the
young man lay dying and Tunisians were being shot and beaten in the
streets, his administration approved a $12 million military aid package
in an attempt to keep the regime in place.

The same pattern was repeated in Egypt, where the Obama administration
sought to the very last to salvage the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak,
whose regime had been kept in place with US military aid and political
support for three decades. Only after the Egyptian military made the
decision to pull the plug on Mubarak?s rule did Obama publicly state
his support for the dictator?s ouster.

Obama continued by proclaiming, ?In too many countries, power has been
concentrated in the hands of the few. In too many countries, a citizen
like that young vendor had nowhere to turn?no honest judiciary to hear
his case; no independent media to give him voice; no credible political
party to represent his views; no free and fair election where he could
choose his leader.?

The US president cast these conditions as characteristic of the Middle
East. But are they really so inapplicable to the United States itself,
where federal and state governments are imposing drastic social
cutbacks that will deny ?dignity? to millions, and where power and
wealth is more concentrated in the hands of a few than virtually
anywhere on the planet?

Do Bouazizi?s American counterparts, the millions of unemployed and
underpaid young workers in the US, have anywhere to turn in terms of
political parties that will represent their interests or a media that
will speak to their concerns and demands?

Yet Obama tried to cast the US as the example to be emulated and the
benevolent power whose role it is to guide the Arab peoples to
democracy.

He said that the US would continue to pursue its ?core interests? in
the region, which he defined as ?countering terrorism and stopping the
spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-
guarding the security of the region, standing up for Israel?s security
and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.?

Oddly missing from this list, and indeed from the entire speech was
one three-letter word, ?oil.? Its omission underscores the lying
character of the entire address.

The US, Obama said, would continue to pursue these ?core interests?
with ?the firm belief that America?s interests are not hostile to
people?s hopes; they are essential to them.? He didn?t bother to
explain?much less apologize for?how the defense of these regional
interests was anchored for three decades in the repressive apparatus of
the Mubarak dictatorship.

Now, he said, the US would support ?universal rights? of freedom of
speech, assembly and religion, the rule of law and ?the right to choose
your own leaders?whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or
Tehran.?

Noticeably absent from this list were Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar,
the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kuwait, all reactionary monarchical
dictatorships that serve as lynchpins of the domination of US energy
conglomerates and the US military?s operations in the region.

Obama included in the speech a somewhat hasty and unintentionally
revealing defense of the US-NATO war against Libya. He began by
claiming that the Iraq experience had taught Washington ?how costly and
difficult it is to impose regime change by force?no matter how well-
intentioned it may be.? He continued, ?But in Libya, we saw the
prospect of imminent massacre?. Had we not acted along with our NATO
allies and regional coalition partners, thousands would have been
killed.?

By attributing good intentions to the Bush administration?s 2003
invasion of Iraq, the US president endorses a war of aggression
launched on the basis of lies. He then acknowledges that the war in
Libya, ostensibly carried out to protect civilian lives, is in fact a
war for ?regime change.? The claims that if Washington and NATO had not
acted ?thousands would have been killed,? has never been substantiated.
And, in fact, thousands have died?and millions have been turned into
refugees?as a result of a civil war that is being prosecuted by means
of NATO military power.

In both Iraq and Libya, the wars involve not ?universal rights,? but
rather ?core interests,? above all US imperialism?s drive to exert
hegemony over the world?s strategic energy reserves.

In short, the ?universal values? espoused by Obama are imminently
flexible, their method of application determined entirely by US
imperialism?s ?core interests.?

The speech also promoted US initiatives to ?advance economic
development for countries that transition to democracy.? Obama asserted
that this was based on the understanding that the revolutionary
upheavals in the region were driven by concerns over ?putting food on
the table? and being ?unable to find a job.?

What Washington?s proposed economic policies amount to is an attempt
to use the changes brought about by the mass protests to open the
region up even more fully to the exploitation of American capitalism
and US-based transnationals.

He said that US policy would ?focus on trade, not just aid; and
investment, not just assistance.? Its aim, he said, would be opening up
the region?s markets, while ?ensuring financial stability.?

It was precisely the pursuit of capitalist free market policies under
the dictatorships of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt that
produced staggering levels of social inequality and opened up these
countries? economies to the impact of the financial meltdown of 2008,
producing the growth in unemployment. These conditions of inequality
and unemployment played the decisive role in sparking the resistance of
the working class in the first place.

The aim of the Obama administration is to use limited credits?$1
billion in debt relief and $1 billion in new borrowing from the US
Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) ?to tie the Egyptian
economy more closely to the US. These sums are eclipsed by the billions
of dollars in military aid that Washington to continues to bestow on
Mubarak?s successor regime, which is essentially a military junta that
continues to repress the Egyptian people and lock up and torture
dissidents.

The section of Obama?s speech that has drawn the most attention from
the US media is his remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian question. Much
has been made of his call for a resumption of negotiations based on the
goal of creating two states?Israel and Palestine??based on the 1967
lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders
are established for both states.?

The Republican right has seized on this statement, claiming it
represents a betrayal of Israel. The more astute reactions in Israel to
the speech, however, were quite different.

?Obama has granted Netanyahu a major diplomatic victory,? the Israeli
daily Haaretz commented. It noted that the US president had invoked the
creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders ?without
defining the size of these lands? and providing for ?swaps? that would
allow Israel to retain control of the vast settlements in the West
Bank, rendering any new state unviable.

The report also noted that Obama made no condemnation of the illegal
settlements nor did he demand a freeze on settlement activity, which is
sharply accelerating with plans unveiled Thursday for building 1,550
new homes in the occupied territories around Jerusalem.

Dripping in hypocrisy, Obama?s speech referred to Israelis living in
fear of their children being killed and Palestinians? ?suffering and
humiliation? under occupation. One would never guess that Israeli
occupation has claimed 100 Palestinian lives for every Israeli killed
in the conflict or that just days before, Israeli troops had shot to
death 16 unarmed Palestinian protesters who sought to assert their
right to return to their homeland by scaling borders into Israeli
occupied territory.

That these demonstrations, which were joined by many thousands of
workers and youth who marched on the borders from squalid refugee
camps, are part and parcel of the revolutionary wave sweeping the
region was utterly excluded from Obama?s ?vision.?

In the end, the speech presented nothing new in terms of US policy and
expressed the Obama administration?s commitment to using the
traditional tools of militarism, economic domination and CIA
destabilization to assert US control over the region?s strategic energy
resources and to quell the struggles of its working class.

At the same time, however, this absence of substantive initiatives and
utter inability to make any credible appeal to the Arab masses express
the decline of US imperialist influence in the region and the
increasing desperation of the American ruling elite as it attempts to
fend off the threat of revolutionary upheaval.

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