Obama's worldview

Like his earlier two speeches, in Istanbul and Cairo, mainly addressed to the Muslim world, President Obama's third on Thursday spelling out his vision of the Arab Spring too is an admixture of his personal pious hopes and failed United States policies. No question he is one of the most independent-minded American presidents and doesn't brook silence on issues he feels he should talk about, unlike most of his predecessors who tended to see the world through the narrow prism of Americanism.
To him the evolving socio-political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa is the revolt that showed the region must make a choice "between hate and hope, between shackles of the past and the promise of the future". But why the United States had not seen it coming he offers no answer. That some of the most durable dictators in the region, two of whom have already fled, owe their existence as tyrants in the Arab world to American support, President Obama didn't touch upon this aspect of the United States' policy.
For too long, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was the Washington's bully on the block who on the one hand had imposed an extremely repressive regime on his own people and on the other hand acted as American cats' paw to check anti-Zionism in the Arab world. And ousted Tunisian dictator ben Ali who replaced aging independence hero Habib Bourguiba in a bloodless coup in 1987 was even worse; he was the CIA's most loved Arab leader.
And not that with them getting lost from the scene there is the end of dictatorial governments in the Middle East, President Obama would like to see quick exit for Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya's Moammer Qadhafi and Syria's Bashar al-Assad while he offers advice to the Bahraini ruling family of Khalifas to mend their ways. Why did not he touch upon some other Arab states? Are they immune to issues of democracy and human rights? Even person of Obama's vision cannot afford to run afoul of the American interests that are effectively surveyed by these countries.
One wouldn't have a beef with President Obama's comparison of "shouts of human dignity" as the Arab Spring blossoms to "America's birth pangs and civil rights struggles". But is it that these very countries now smelling the scent of freedom and human values are stranger to this experience? It is here in the Middle East that almost all great religions, cultures and civilisations were born and then flourished for centuries.
The people in these countries have a lot of history on their side and they would like to draw sustenance for their struggle from their rich inheritance. Yes, they would like to keep their struggle non-violent, free of outside interference, which is so much in evidence as some outside powers have succeeded in securing the UN Security Council fig leaf to turn tables on their erstwhile adversaries.
That President Obama should skip discussing the Nato-led military operations for regime change in Libya in his speech is quite puzzling. It's also quite a stretch of imagination on the part of the president to argue that the Arab revolts proved that al Qaeda was losing its struggle for relevance and that its extremist ideology was reaching a dead end. That may be so but the Arab Spring has yet to run its full course. The fact is that after its initial successes it has run into serious snags like we see in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. It is, therefore, extremely difficult, if not impossible, to forecast the end game of the Arab Spring in these countries.
However, it's the President Obama's discourse on Palestine and its future as an independent state that lends a sense of realpolitik to his speech away from his professorial prognosis on the Arab unrest and how it would be unfolding in times to come. In fact, he has pulled the rug from under the feet of Israeli leadership by outlining his administration's position that the Zionist entity must return to the 1967 borders. Since both President Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas leadership have welcomed President Obama's call it can be said that his demand that the Palestinians, particularly Hamas, should recognise Israelis' right to an independent state would be met.
But his warning that the United States would oppose recognition of Palestine by the United Nations is untenable as it lacks international morality and should that happen it would offend a large section of international community. That said one cannot deny the fact that President Obama has the courage of conviction and say what he thinks can and should happen to obtain conditions for a more peaceful world.