US Elections 2012: The Middle East
martedì 6 novembre 2012 English 0 commenti
Il Giornale, November 6th 2012What will change for us with one or the other president? Such response is worth of a Pythia’s performance [Pythia was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, widely credited for her prophecies inspired by Apollo, T’s N]. It won’t be a tangible change; there are no approaching changes in our lives as inhabitants of the banks of Mediterranean, nor hanging from our Eastern European neighbors’ authoritarian and dangerous whims. What will change will be the vision, the Weltanschauung of our Napoleon, the USA. Europe will be confined at times in the role co-chair, like in the case of the Balkans then and now in Arab countries, at other times, in the role of tricoteuse … [knitter, the reference is to the time of the French Revolution, when women would gather at the guillotine – knitting - as sullen onlookers to the daily public executions, T’s N]. It’s not by coincidence that Romney stayed poised during the foreign affairs match: he didn’t want to make a warmonger impression; he just wanted to highlight his different stance with regard to Israel and on the Bengasi event. Obama and Romney are not concerned about Europe, but about Middle East. Only about Middle East.
Obama, just as Romney would do, used his anti-terrorism drones, he used lines like he killed Bin Laden, he shut down Guantanamo, he said he would never accept a nuclear Iran; Netanyahu, he says, is intrinsically different from him, but he would not ignore Israel. Perhaps Romney would further stress the war to terror, considered that, unlike Obama, he must not claim that Al Qaeda is defeated, though the US suffered another September 11 in Libya. Romney has an innate sympathy for Jerusalem capital of Israel; he will explain to Palestinians that they also have to sit down for peace talks, but he will insist, as Obama does, on two states for two peoples, Israel out of the West Bank: he’s not planning an attack on Iran; Obama at his turn doesn’t want nuclear ayatollahs anyway, so they both are on the same boat. The US never wants war, yet it wages it at times, irrespective which president. Clinton ordered the operation Desert Fox, a four-day bombing campaign on Iraq in 1998, and it was Madeleine Allbright who defined Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction as "the threat of the 21st century”.
Romney’s presence at the White House won’t sink any further the negative Islamic world’s opinion of the US, they already have a very low opinion of Obama. So, will things remain unchanged? Not at all! The world spirit would change; we won’t see Obama’s kowtow to the Saudi monarch, a hand stretched but eventually not shaken; conditional respect would rise, that would be the idea at least, support would be granted only if convenient and deserved.
What will also be different is what of the American culture will radiate toward Europe, as with the comeback of exceptionality we will be forced to come to terms with an ideal, an excellency ambition that has long eluded our European horizon. Islam took the guise (notwithstanding several liberal dissidents) of the Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist movement, independently from our desire to disguise it. Obama assumed an attitude of apology and [psychological] repression which excludes a conditionality policy. The example led by a USA less distressed by an “unhappy conscience” would perhaps wield traction for a nowadays impoverished and frightened Europe. Therefore, even if nothing changed, everything could be different.