The most vociferous critics expected far more than a mere mortal could deliver
By Gideon Rachman, who twice endorsed Barack Obama
It has taken a long time, but the world’s fantasies about Barack Obama are finally crumbling.
In Europe, once the headquarters of the global cult of Obama, the
disillusionment is particularly bitter. Monday’s newspapers were full of
savage quotes about the perfidy of the Obama-led US.
Der Spiegel, the German magazine that alleged that America’s National Security Agency has bugged the EU’s offices,
thundered that “the NSA’s totalitarian ambition . . . affects us
all . . . A constitutional state cannot allow it. None of us can allow
it.” President François Hollande
of France has demanded that the alleged spying stop immediately. Le
Monde, Mr Hollande’s home-town newspaper, has even suggested that the EU
should consider giving political asylum to Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower.
But
if liberals wanted to compile a list of perfidious acts by the Obama
administration, the case of the bugged EU fax machine should probably
come low down the list.
More important would be the broken promise to close the Guantánamo
detention centre and – above all – the massive expansion of the use of
drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and
elsewhere.
It has gradually dawned on President Obama’s foreign fan club
that their erstwhile hero is using methods that would be bitterly
denounced if he were a white Republican. As Hakan Altinay, a Turkish
academic, complained to me last week: “Obama talks like the president of
the American Civil Liberties Union but he acts like Dick Cheney.”
It is not just Mr Obama’s record on security issues that disappoints
the likes of Mr Altinay. Liberals in Turkey, Egypt, Russia, Iran and
elsewhere complain that the US president has been far too hesitant about
condemning human rights abuses in their countries. Or to adapt Mr
Altinay’s complaint: when it comes to foreign policy, Mr Obama
campaigned with the human rights rhetoric of Jimmy Carter but has
governed like Henry Kissinger.
Yet those who argue that the world was duped and Mr Obama is simply a
fraud are making a mistake. Before disappearing into a lather of anger
and disappointment, the president’s critics should consider some
counter-arguments.
First, some of the decisions that Mr Obama has made that liberals
hate are partly a result of some other decisions that they liked.
Foreigners have largely applauded the Obama administration’s decision to
wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if you are not going
to go after your enemies on the ground, you may need other methods. Mr
Obama’s controversial expansion of the drone strike programme is closely
linked to his reluctance to deploy troops on the ground.
Similarly, Mr Obama has rightly received some credit for his decision
to end torture of terrorist suspects, including such practices as
waterboarding. But the need to gather information on terror threats
remains – and the massive expansion of electronic monitoring is partly a
response to that.
Europeans respond that bugging the EU’s Washington office has nothing
to do with the “war on terror”. True enough – but is it really so
surprising that allies sometimes eavesdrop on each other? The British
have occasionally debated whether they should spy on the Americans – and
only turned the idea down on the grounds that they would inevitably be
caught, causing severe damage to the “special relationship”. The French
are thought to have conducted commercial espionage, aimed at America.
The Israelis spied on the US – as the conviction of their agent,
Jonathan Pollard, confirmed.
The current European backlash against Mr Obama is reminiscent of a
similar process of disillusionment undergone by American liberals in
recent years. In one column, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times compared
Mr Obama unfavourably to a fictional president, portrayed by Michael
Douglas, in a film. This drew a sharp response from Mr Obama when, in a
recent speech, he called out to Mr Douglas – “Michael, what’s your
secret, man. Could it be that you were an actor, an Aaron Sorkin liberal
fantasy?”
It is not entirely Mr Obama’s fault that he became the vessel into
which liberals all over the world poured their fantasies. Of course,
like any politician, he pumped up expectations when running for office.
But when Obama-mania really took off in 2008, it swiftly moved into a
realm beyond reason. What was candidate Obama meant to say to the
200,000 Berliners who turned out to cheer him that year – “Go home guys,
this is silly”? When the new president was given the Nobel Peace Prize,
simply for existing, all he could do was graciously accept.
It is perfectly legitimate to argue that Mr Obama should have done
more to cut back the rapidly growing secret state that he inherited when
he took office. The combination of a “war on terror” and the new world
of “big data” has created possibilities and pressures – and Mr Obama may
have made some wrong calls in response. Yet the US president has had to
balance a variety of pressures – including the continuing existence of a
terrorist threat and the entrenched power of the intelligence world.
Mr Obama was living in a real universe, full of hard choices. It was his overheated critics who lived in a fantasy world.
SoRo: When they can no longer act as though he is the best thing since, well, the beginning of time, they will continue to make excuses.
Journos, if you haven't been investigated by Obama, you might just be in the tank, luvs.
Related: Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him.
Related: Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him.
http://tinyurl.com/kephn67
No comments:
Post a Comment