Tag: Obama

When he assumed office in 2009, Barack Obama carried along with him into the American presidency a reputation for oratory anchored on substance and logic, and a freshness to explore alternative ways of doing things. He proved that his well-received keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention was not a fluke. Soon, too, he was marshalling efforts and innovations to tackle the recession that began before his assumption of office and which was sapping the sinews of American resolve and gnawing at the hearts of many American families. To crown his eventful first term in office, he ordered the operation that led to the killing of America’s number one enemy, Osama bin Laden, leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

But nearly midway into his second term, when his reputation as a great leader should be made, when his legacies should be in construction, he has begun to appear a distracted man and a weakened president. He now seems vulnerably like a man in retreat, a retreat that seems also to be pulling his country along the same ignoble path. He boxed himself into a corner over Syria when he threatened to punish Syria if its president authorised the use of chemical weapons. But he balked when that happened, and gave the impression he was unsure who used the weapon, whether rebels or the government. But in reality, he was perhaps wary of taking steps that would lead to regime change, given the rise of extremist forces in that country and in the region. But the failure to punish the Syrian government led to a loss in esteem, first in the eyes of some of America’s allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and secondly even in the eyes of America’s age-old rivals, such as Russia.

Worse, Obama’s hesitations probably transmitted a message of disguised impotence to other countries which began to assert themselves in various foreign policy adventures. And so whether in the Maghreb or in the Crimea, or in the highly troubled Middle East, the image of Obama projected today is one of a dithering president, or at best a distracted one who would order a Libyan intervention and tune off at the end of the campaign, or threaten a major backlash in Syria and then back down almost humiliatingly. No incident best exemplifies this dilemma as US policy towards Iraq.

Not only did America base its intervention in Iraq on lies, without a thought for the implication of an acute disruption of the country’s power balance, the US followed up by abruptly abandoning the increasingly unmanageable country after many years of failing to pacify it. Leadership incompetence within Iraq itself pushed the country into a tailspin as jihadist elements began a fierce bid for power and territory. But rather than step in immediately to remedy the situation, the US has left intervention till very late. Now, no one can predict to what extent the damage can be reversed.

If he must save his legacy and redeem his image, Mr Obama must begin to trust the instincts that helped him surmount the economic recession, push the now endangered Obamacare law through Congress, and get Osama bin Laden killed. He often claimed political and metaphysical progeny from Abraham Lincoln. But Lincoln, the intuitive iconoclast, trusted his instincts as much as he basked in self-reliant and luxuriant solitude. Lincoln was seldom wrong, but much more, he was often brilliantly prescient. Mr Obama has the intellectual wherewithal and its accompaniments; but he now needs an enormous amount of self-belief to renew his presidency, forge confidently forward, inspire himself by immersing in great biographies, and, as it were, rewrite world history in the few months left before his presidency becomes lame duck.