Good intentions turned into dreadful mistakes

US President Barack Obama should give back the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded a few months after taking office in 2009.

Instead of making peace, he has waged war in this region and the Indian subcontinent, and sold more arms to warring governments than his Republican warmongering and war making predecessor George W. Bush.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee somewhat awkwardly justified its choice by saying: “We have not given the prize for what may happen in the future.” 

“We are awarding Obama for what he has done in the past year.”

“And we are hoping this may contribute a little [to] what he is trying to do.”

Obama began his first term in office well by pledging to promote good relations with and the “well-being” of the alienated and angry Muslim world.

In his first interview as president, he told Al Arabiya satellite television channel that the US is not the enemy of Muslims, said Palestinians and Israelis should resume peace negotiations and promised his administration would listen to and talk to both sides, presumably, with the aim of promoting a solution.

He hailed the late Saudi King Abdullah for putting forward his 2002 peace plan calling for full Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territory occupied in 1967 in exchange for full normalisation with the Arab world.

Obama showed goodwill by appointing former US senator George Mitchell as his regional peace envoy and promptly dispatching him to the area.

However, having praised the Arab Peace Plan, he initially adopted a disingenuous approach.

“I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state — I’m not going to put a time frame on it — that is contiguous,” he stated, before reiterating US support for Israel and saying its security was of “paramount” importance to the US.

He renewed his commitment to withdraw US troops from Iraq and shut down the notorious Guantanamo prison.

He pledged to support the rule of law — presumably international law.

In an address to Turkey’s parliament, Obama stated: “America’s relationship with the Muslim community, the Muslim world, cannot and will not just be based upon opposition to terrorism. We seek broader engagement based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.”

He reiterated his intention to push for a two-state solution to the Palestineian-Israeli conflict although Israel’s prime minister was the hard right winger Benjamin Netanyahu who opposed and opposes the emergence of a Palestinian state.

In June 2009, Obama went to Cairo where he promised to pursue Palestinian-Israeli peace “with all the patience that the task requires”.

While he called US ties to Israel “unbreakable”, he promised not “to turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own....” 

“Just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s.”

Aware that the Palestineian-Israeli conflict has been the source of Arab and Muslim resentment against the US for decades, he gave this issue priority.

Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, exerted pressure on Israel to halt colony expansion in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Netanyahu responded by stepping up the seizure of Palestinian land and colony construction, making it impossible for the Palestinians to negotiate as the territory they require for their state was (and still is) being gobbled up by Israel.

Mitchell’s mission was a flop and he resigned in May 2011.

The Nobel Prize Committee should have taken note of the fact that in spite of Obama’s fine words, his administration’s efforts came to naught during its first nine months in office on the all important Palestineian problem because of his failure to tackle Netanyahu who has waged deadly and destructive wars against Gaza twice during Obama’s presidency (2009 and 2014) and had its armaments replaced by the US.

After being awarded the prize, Obama has made misstep after misstep, contributing to the havoc and chaos in this region.

In February 2011, his administration dithered over the uprising against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, was accused by his supporters of abandoning him, and, eventually, by revolutionaries of backing the Muslim Brotherhood which was ousted from power in 2013.

By contrast, the administration promptly backed Syrian protesters calling for reform and, after clashes, the fall of the regime.

US Ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford became Washington’s envoy to the Syrian opposition and armed groups. 

On August 18, 2011, Obama called for Syrian President Bashar Assad to “step aside”.

By making this statement, he encouraged other governments hostile to Assad to recruit, train, finance and arm Syrian rebels and ultimately takfiris to wage war on Assad and on Syria itself.

If Obama had not made this statement, Syrian sources told this correspondent that the Assad government would have initiated reforms demanded by protesters and ended the unrest before it engulfed the country in civil war.

At the end of 2011, Obama withdrew the bulk of US military forces from Iraq but left the country in the hands of a Shiite fundamentalist-dominated government headed by Nouri Al Maliki who had deployed death squads against Sunnis, discriminated against, persecuted and jailed them.

In response, angry Sunnis joined Al Qaeda, which not only conducted a bloody bombing campaign that killed thousands of Iraqis but also formed two takfiri organisations that have wreaked havoc in Syria: Jabhat Al Nusra and Daesh.

The US continues to support takfiri groups allied to Nusra while fighting Daesh.

Obama’s administration largely ignored the threats posed by the takfiri twins until Daesh invaded Iraq and seized Mosul in June 2014. 

That August, the US began bombing Daesh in Iraq while trying to upgrade the corrupt and ineffective Iraqi army with the aim of containing and eventually driving Daesh from Iraq.

As the army is still problematic, the very same Shiite militias that abused Sunnis have emerged as the main force fighting Daesh.

Having promised to withdraw troops from Afghanistan where the US is battling the takfiri Taleban, the Obama administration will leave at the end of this year 3,000 more than the 8,400 planned, since the security situation remains “precarious”, Obama said.

The Obama administration has sold $33 billion worth of weapons to the Gulf states alone since last May and more deals are in the pipeline.

Analysts claim these sales are meant to reassure governments fearful of the emergence of Iran as a regional power following the lifting of sanctions due to July 2015 deal over the dismantling of Tehran’s nuclear programme.

However, these arms are being freely used in the US-backed war in Yemen while anti-tank weapons make their way to takfiris in Syria.

Obama the Nobel man of peace became a man of war.