Obama's Not-So-Terrible Year
Official Washington is giving a big thumb down to President Obama's performance in 2013. But his diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East and even some of his troubles with Obamacare and the NSA could ultimately make the year a historic turning point, says Robert Parry.
Sunday, 29 December 2013 12:21
By Robert Parry, Consortium News | News Analysis
It has become conventional wisdom to say that President Barack Obama has suffered through a terrible year in 2013 – and if his slumping poll numbers are the only gauge, then these pundits may have a point. But much of this analysis simply marches in lockstep with the neocon view of Obama’s supposed foreign policy “failures,” which may not be failures at all.
Indeed, there’s a strong argument to be made that Obama’s fifth year in office will be viewed as a historic turning point in U.S. relations with the Middle East, albeit one the neocons and much of Official Washington detest, thus explaining the hostility in their year-end critiques.
The U.S. assault also would likely have destroyed hopes of a nuclear agreement with Iran, thus raising the likelihood that Obama would have been goaded into a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. At each step of these escalations, the neocons would be egging Obama on, calling him “weak” and “indecisive” if he failed to ratchet up the pressure and violence.For instance, if the neocons and the many tough guys/gals inside the Beltway had their way in 2013, the U.S. military would have pummeled Syria in retaliation for its alleged (though still unproven) role in the Aug. 21 Sarin gas incident outside Damascus.
We now know that the neocons’ desired bombing campaign would have been coordinated with a ground offensive by the Saudi-Israeli-favored, Sunni-dominated jihadist rebels, possibly leading to “regime change” in Syria.
Amid this mounting chaos, the neocons would have demonstrated that even when they are not sitting in the Oval Office, they could still direct U.S. foreign policy through their continued dominance of the op-ed pages of major newspapers, like the Washington Post, and via their strategic positioning at leading Washington think tanks.
Across Official Washington, there was a palpable sense of disappointment and even anger last summer when Obama abruptly halted the rush toward war with Syria, first seeking congressional support for a military strike and then accepting the help of Russian President Vladimir Putin in negotiating a graceful exit from the crisis by getting the Syrian government to surrender all its chemical weapons (though still denying a role in the Aug. 21 attack).
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