ROBERT FISK: OBAMA, MAN OF PEACE? NO, JUST A NOBEL PRIZE OF A MISTAKE
Independent/uk
Sunday, 11 October 2009
The US president received an award in the faint hope that he will
succeed in the future. That’s how desperate the Middle East situation
has become
Israeli soldiers clash with Palestinians in Qalandyia, south of
Ramallah, on the West Bank
His Middle East policy is collapsing. The Israelis have taunted
him by ignoring his demand for an end to settlement-building and by
continuing to build their colonies on Arab land. His special envoy is
bluntly told by the Israelis that an Arab-Israel peace will take "many
years". Now he wants the Palestinians to talk peace to Israel without
conditions. He put pressure on the Palestinian leader to throw away the
opportunity of international scrutiny of UN Judge Goldstone’s damning
indictment of Israeli war crimes in Gaza while his Assistant Secretary
of State said that the Goldstone report was "seriously flawed". After
breaking his pre-election promise to call the 1915 Armenian massacres
by Ottoman Turkey a genocide, he has urged the Armenians to sign
a treaty with Turkey, again "without pre-conditions". His army is
still facing an insurgency in Iraq. He cannot decide how to win "his"
war in Afghanistan. I shall not mention Iran.
And now President Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace
Prize. After only eight months in office. Not bad. No wonder h e said
he was "humbled" when told the news. He should have felt humiliated.
But perhaps weakness becomes a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Shimon Peres
won it, too, and he never won an Israeli election. Yasser Arafat won
it. And look what happened to him. For the first time in history,
the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded its peace prize to a man who
has achieved nothing – in the faint hope that he will do something
good in the future. That’s how bad things are. That’s how explosive
the Middle East has become.
Isn’t there anyone in the White House to remind Mr Obama that the
Israelis have never obliged a US president who asked for an end to the
building of colonies for Jews – and Jews only – on Arab land? Bill
Clinton demanded this – it was written into the Oslo accords –
and the Israelis ignored him. George W Bush demanded an end to the
fighting in Jenin nine years ago. The Israelis ignored him. Mr Obama
demands a total end to all settlement construction. "They just don’t
get it, do they?" an Israeli minister – apparently Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu – was reported to have said when the US Secretary
of State, Hillary Clinton, reiterated her president’s words. That’s
what Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s crackpot foreign minister – he’s not
as much a crackpot as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he’s getting close –
said again on Thursday. "Whoever says it’s possible to reach in the
coming years a comprehensive agreement," he announced before meeting
Mr Obama’s benighted and elderly envoy George Mitchell, "… simply
doesn’t understand the reality."
Across Arabia, needless to say, the Arab potentates continue to shake
with fear in their golden minarets. That great Lebanese journalist
Samir Kassir – murdered in 2005, quite possibly by Mr Obama’s new-found
Syrian chums – put it well in one of his last essays. "Undeterred by
Egypt since Sadat’s peace," he wrote, "convinced of America’s unfailing
support, guaranteed moral impunity by Europe’s bad conscience, and
backed by a nuclear arsenal that was acquired with the help of Western
powers, and that keeps growing without exciting any comment from the
international community, Israel can literally do anything it wants,
or is prompted to do by its leaders’ fantasies of domination."
So Israel is getting away with it as usual, abusing the distinguished
(and Jewish) head of the UN inquiry into Gaza war crimes – which also
blamed Hamas – while joining the Americans in further disgracing
the craven Palestinian Authority "President" Mahmoud Abbas, who is
more interested in maintaining his relations with Washington than
with his own Palestinian people. He’s even gone back on his word
to refuse peace talks until Israel’s colonial expansion comes to an
end. In a single devastating sentence, that usually mild Jordanian
comme ntator Rami Khouri noted last week that Mr Abbas is "a tragic
shell of a man, hollow, politically impotent, backed and respected
by nobody". I put "President" Abbas into quotation marks since he
now has Mr Ahmadinejad’s status in the eyes of his people. Hamas is
delighted. Thanks to President Obama.
Oddly, Mr Obama is also humiliating the Armenian president, Serg
Sarkisian, by insisting that he talks to his Turkish adversaries
without conditions. In the West Bank, you have to forget the Jewish
colonies. In Armenia, you have to forget the Turkish murder of one
and a half million Armenians in 1915. Mr Obama refused to honour his
pre-election promise to recognise the 20th century’s first holocaust
as a genocide. But if he can’t handle the First World War, how can
he handle World War Three?
Mr Obama advertised the Afghanistan conflict as the war America
had to fight – not that anarchic land of Mesopotamia which Mr Bush
rashly invaded.
He’d forgotten that Afghanistan was another Bush war; and he even
announced that Pakistan was now America’s war, too. The White House
produced its "Afpak" soundbite. And the drones came in droves over
the old Durand Line, to kill the Taliban and a host of innocent
civilians. Should Mr Obama concentrate on al-Qa’ida? Or yield to
General Stanley McChrystal’s Vietnam-style demand for 40,000 more
troops? The White House shows the two of them sitting opposite
each other, Mr20Obama in the smoothie suite, McChrystal in his
battledress. The rabbit and the hare.
No way are they going to win. The neocons say that "the graveyard
of empire" is a cliché. It is. But it’s also true. The Afghan
government is totally corrupted; its paid warlords – paid by Karzai
and the Americans – ramp up the drugs trade and the fear of Afghan
civilians. But it’s much bigger than this.
The Indian embassy was bombed again last week. Has Mr Obama any
idea why?
Does he realise that Washington’s decision to support India against
Pakistan over Kashmir – symbolised by his appointment of Richard
Holbrooke as envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan but with no remit
to discuss divided Kashmir – enraged Pakistan. He may want India
to balance the power of China (some hope!) but Pakistan’s military
intelligence realises that the only way of persuading Mr Obama to act
fairly over Kashmir – recognising Pakistan’s claims as well as India’s
– is to increase their support for the Taliban. No justice in Kashmir,
no security for US troops – or the Indian embassy – in Afghanistan.
Then, after stroking the Iranian pussycat at the Geneva nuclear talks,
the US president discovered that the feline was showing its claws again
at the end of last week. A Revolutionary Guard commander, an adviser
to Supreme Leader Khamenei, warned that Iran would "blow up the heart"
of Israel=2 0if Israel or the US attacked the Islamic Republic. I
doubt it. Blow up Israel and you blow up "Palestine". Iranians –
who understand the West much better than we understand them – have
another policy in the case of the apocalypse. If the Israelis attack,
they may leave Israel alone. They have a plan, I’m told, to target
instead only US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their bases in
the Gulf and their warships cruising through Hormuz. They would leave
Israel alone. Americans would then learn the price of kneeling before
their Israeli masters.
For the Iranians know that the US has no stomach for a third war in the
Middle East. Which is why Mr Obama has been sending his generals thick
and fast to the defence ministry in Tel Aviv to tell the Israelis not
to strike at Iran. And why Israel’s leaders – including Mr Netanyahu –
were blowing the peace pipe all week about the need for international
negotiations with Iran. But it raises an interesting question. Is
Mr Obama more frightened of Iran’s retaliation? Or of its nuclear
capabilities? Or more terrified of Israel’s possible aggression
against Iran?
But, please, no attacks on 10 December. That’s when Barack Obama
turns up in Oslo to pocket his peace prize – for achievements he has
not yet achieved and for dreams that will turn into nightmares.