TALKING MARXISM

Obama and the Middle East

by Abbie Bakan

On May 19, US President Barack Obama delivered a speech in Washington framing US policy in response to the new mass movements for democratic transformation that have toppled the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, and continue to destabilize the longstanding autocratic states in the region.

The timing was strategic—just before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s May 20 state visit to the US, and the opening of the meeting of the G8 states in Deauville, France on May 26.
Obama’s hypocrisy is unbounded.

His government was among the last to endorse the rebellion that toppled Egypt’s Mubarak. Now, worried about being shut out by the resistance, the US has been keen to intervene militarily in Libya, feigning interest in “democracy” in order to retain and expand the global reach of US interests in the oil-rich region.

Obama is trying to distance his administration from the Bush era, but simultaneously assert continued domination by the US as a key player in the region. Despite the failure of the US to achieve the decisive hegemony sought by the Project for a New American Century, Obama and Co. want in.

Obama is attempting to bask in the political glow for US imperialism marked by the killing of Osama bin Laden, while striving to locate his government in a rhetorical defense of democracy.

“For six months, we have witnessed an extraordinary change in the Middle East and North Africa. Square by square; town by town; country by country; the people have risen up to demand human rights. Two leaders have stepped aside. More will follow…. And though these countries may be a great distance from our shores, we know that our own future is bound to this region by the forces of economics and security; history and faith.”

Obama made great pains in his speech to link a selected reading of US history with the current movement for change.

“The story of self-determination began six months ago in Tunisia. On December 17, a young vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi was devastated when a police officer confiscated his cart... [T]his young man who had never been particularly active in politics went to the headquarters of the provincial government, doused himself in fuel, and lit himself on fire.

“Sometimes, in the course of history, the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has built up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat. So it was in Tunisia...”

But the overriding message from the US administration is not one of solidarity, but a fear of autonomous actors affecting outcomes. The recent agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), while unstable, has put Israel on alert that no undemocratic states will be left untouched by the new mood of change.

Dead end

It is in this context that Obama has renewed emphasis on the historic US call for a two state solution in the Middle East. But this is a dead end.

Obama followed the May 19 speech with another on May 22 to the influential US Israel advocacy group, AIPAC. He attempted to defend the two state model by relying on racialized arguments about the “uncontrollable” growth of the Palestinian population. As Electronic Intifada editor Ali Abunimah put it in his blogpost of May 22, this amounts to an endorsement of Israeli apartheid:

“…Obama does not call for a morally correct solution: equal rights for all who live within the territory and all who have been unjustly excluded from it on the basis of ethnicity, according to basic democratic principles. Instead, the president exhorts Israel to rush to create a truncated Palestinian statelet in the false belief that a Palestinian mini-state on a fraction of historic Palestine can fulfill the rights of some 11 million Palestinians denied their human rights, and right to self-determination for decades….

“Palestinians ‘west of the Jordan River’ are not interlopers or intruders. They are indigenous people of the country. Instead of searching for ways for Israel to escape them by gerrymandering a bantustan, Obama should be calling for full and equal rights, nothing less.”

Arab Intifada

But the Arab Intifada continues to inspire confidence among masses of disenfranchised people—students, women, workers and the poor. The May 27 editorial of the Canadian Charger articulates a common sentiment:

“Obama gets an A for staging and an F for substance…. Obama’s speech had the same old tune, lecturing Arab people about rights and self determination with a high dose of hypocrisy. Obama could not understand, or does not want to understand, that the people of the Arab world have passed the stage of looking up to the US as a role model or even turning to her for help.”

The rhetoric of an American president no longer resonates. This is a movement that is, currently, beyond the control of any ruling class, West or East.