Saturday, Apr 11, 2009
Gulf News
In just eight days, the US president did much to reassure the world that America is changing for the better.
How could one not be captivated by the man's charm, persuasiveness and, above all, eloquence?
US President Barack Obama appears to be a quick study, because he knew which buttons to push on his eight-day overseas trip - his first big foreign foray - which stretched from London, for the G20 meeting, to Ankara, for a long anticipated speech intended to build on his earlier pledge to "seek a new way forward with the Muslim world".
He told Europeans that there is a new America out there that wanted to be a 'partner', not a 'patron' in the transatlantic alliance.
"In America there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world," he said, adding, clearly in an effort to assuage Europeans' resentment over his predecessor's reckless policies of unilateralism, "Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance."
And there's more where that came from. At the conclusion of the G20 summit, he said: "We exercise our leadership best when we are listening... when we lead by example, when we show some element of humility and recognise that we may not always have the best answer".
That was no doubt music to European ears, after eight years of neoconservative pomposity about 'Old Europe', a putative Europe that George W. Bush's officials had dismissed out of hand.
But what did he have to say to the Islamic world, and by definition to the Arab world and much of the Third World, in his speech in Ankara, which was broadcast live to the Arab Middle East by Al Jazeera and Al Arabia?
It was, to put it bluntly, a bit quixotic in its rhetorical flourishes. Though the speech focused primarily on the US-Turkish relationship, it also addressed the theme, dear to Obama's heart, that the United States "is not and never will be at war with Islam".
Later in Istanbul, he told a student audience that he looked forward to building a 'constructive relationship' with Iran, forging a settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict and, more unrealistically, ridding the world of nuclear weapons. (What was not music to to Turks' ears was Obama's refusal to disavow, or even prevaricate on, his earlier statements that Turkey should take responsibility for the mass killings of Armenians during the First World War, though he fell short of identifying those killings as a 'genocide', a term Turks bristle at.)
Clearly, Obama's maiden foreign policy trip was intended to portray the US as a gentler, more benign power, interested in partnering with rather than bullying allies, and engaging rather than confronting adversaries.
He even talked, with the kind of humble rectitude few American presidents have evinced in recent memory, about his country's 'dark period', when the US sanctioned slavery, the disenfranchisement of Native Americans and, more recently, the torture of suspected terrorists.
All in all, this was not just a tour overseas but a tour de force by an American president not seen since the days when John F. Kennedy equally charmed the world with his idealism and earthy, Irish eloquence.
What's that? Long on style and short on substance, you say? Maybe so, but the man has been in the White House for a relatively short period of time. Take him to task only if he fails to follow through on his promises.
Meanwhile, you have to admire his coolness and finality of tone, his appreciation for globally perceived values (without which world peace could not be sustained) and his assertion that, from here on, America will not always have the last word in the dialogue of cultures. So, the point is to cut the American president a bit of slack here, to observe how, and whether, he will practise what he preaches, and not to take anything for granted.
My favourite quote of Obama's is from his Ankara speech, where he waxed poetic about the need of a people to take responsibility for the wrongs they committed against another. "History unresolved can be a heavy weight," he said. "Each country must work through the past, and reckoning with the past can help us seize a better future."
I hope he tells that to Israeli officials when he meets with them in coming weeks to work on a comprehensive settlement of the Palestine question. Palestinians will not be satisfied with modest repairs at the margin - they deserve a solution.
In this regard, nobody is asking the US to shift gears by dramatically loosening its relationship with Israel from its traditional moorings. At this time in history, given the nature of American politics and the mood on Capitol Hill, this would be unrealistic, if not also fatuous.
But we are only asking the US president - who, in the days before he embraced the verbal reticence of a chief executive, said that "no people have suffered as much as the Palestinians" - to admit what has long been axiomatic in the Middle East debate.
No peace is possible without the balancing of the accounts between the Israelis and Palestinians, and without the former coming to the realisation that the acquisition of territory by force of arms is unacceptable in international law, just as it is unconscionable morally.
An American president would have to practice self-deception to an inordinate degree to believe that there is any other solution in Palestine, and Obama is not that kind of man.
Fawaz Turki is a veteran journalist, lecturer and author of several books, including The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile. He lives in Washington DC.
Gulf News 2009. All rights reserved.
