Apollonian
Guest Columnist
Inside the Mind of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama
Michael S. Rozeff
Link: https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/inside-mind-nobel-peace-prize-winner-obama/
Obama has made the U.S. a major co-participant in the “Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen“, which is a primary factor in the Yemeni civil war (2015–present). Obama has unquestionably supported the bombing campaign against Yemen and the Houthis therein. It’s fair to say
“The United States has forcefully backed the Saudi-led war. In addition to sharing intelligence, the U.S. has sold tens of billions of dollars in munitions to the Saudis since the war began. The kingdom has used U.S.-produced aircraft, laser-guided bombs, and internationally-banned cluster bombs to target and destroy schools, markets, power plants, and a hospital, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths.”
It’s fair to say, as the wikipedia article does, that the bombing and blockade produced a humanitarian disaster or catastrophe in Yemen. Obama has a hand in this, a powerful and strong hand.
What considerations run through the byzantine mind of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Obama when he decides to enter a new war and intervene in a place like Yemen or Iraq or Syria or a dozen or more other African countries, but Yemen in particular? Byzantine in this context refers to elaborately scheming for the gaining of political favor, position or gain; for that is what must be driving a decision like this that creates a humanitarian disaster. Obama knows that he is killing innocent people and harming huge numbers of others. He knows that he’s setting back this poor country for a long time to come. He knows that he’s allowing Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to seize more territory. He knows he’s making war, not peace. He knows these bad effects, and so what kinds of considerations outweigh them in his scheming mind?
Obama’s fattening the profits of the military suppliers. Chas Freeman, who was the ambassador to Saudi Arabia between 1989 and 1992, says “Congress is amazingly responsive to the military-industrial complex, and it’s making a bunch of money by providing munitions, ordinance, as it’s expended.” Obama gains favors and political debts by kowtowing to Congress and doing them the favor of this war.
Obama is kowtowing to the Saudis. He views them as an ally and as anti-Iranian. He also gets them in his debt; this can help influence the price of oil and hurt Russia. He gets them to shut up about his deal with Iran. He caters to or gives in to their misapprehensions about the Houthis and Iran.
These anti-Iran and anti-Russian factors probably weigh heaviest in his decision to support Saudi Arabia. In other words, Obama acts as if the U.S. were in contests with Iran and Russia. He acts as if the people of Yemen are of little or no concern. To him, they are like collateral damage. He doesn’t act like a man of peace who is acting to advance peace. He acts as if the country were in some sort of war; or if that’s not the case, as if it were in some sort of constant struggle that requires hard and warlike action and commits the country to a great many hot spots and war situations.
Obama temporarily gets support from critics like John McCain who view (wrongly) the Houthis as hand-in-glove with Iran.
Obama strokes his internationalist leanings and his notion that an international coalitions has greater legitimacy. He acts under cover of Saudi Arabia leading a 9-state coalition.
We also read “The White House has offered a limited public defense for its role in the bloody Yemen conflict. It speaks mainly of supporting a friend against instability in its neighborhood, with an official telling Al-Hayat newspaper that the U.S. was nervous that the Yemeni rebels were preparing to attack Saudi Arabia.”
The notion of Yemeni rebels attacking Saudi Arabia is ludicrous. That’s a lie, a fabrication, an exaggeration. It certainly didn’t warrant a full-scale bombing campaign lasting over a year and made possible by the U.S. The idea of “supporting a friend against instability in its neighborhood” is way too vague to have been a real reason for what Obama ordered.
In September of 2015, after having created great instability and having created a humanitarian disaster, Obama met with King Salman and said “We share concerns about Yemen and the need to restore a function government that is inclusive and that can relieve the humanitarian situation there.” This is a version of the instability rationale, but it’s totally meaningless and hypocritical because these two characters made the issue of a functioning government worse and created the humanitarian “situation” they now claim to be concerned about. “Situation” is the soft-pedal term that Obama chose to use instead of disaster or catastrophe.
Three months ago, Obama gave an interview to The Atlantic in which he backs off: “Mr Obama explains why it is not in the US’s interests to continue the tradition of the US foreign policy establishment, whose views he privately disdains, by giving automatic support to the Saudis and their allies.”
In effect, Obama blames the State Department for his own decisions. Obama’s own inadequacies, weaknesses, inexperience, mistaken ideas, immaturity, failings, ignorance, and defects in organization of advisors ended up in his decisions and failures of judgment. The same is true of all of us. Our lives are strewn with such failures. It’s quite hard to admit that we’ve made a mess of things because we like to go to the grave thinking that our lives actually had some meaning and were not a waste.
The next White House occupant will also make a mess of things. That is about as sure a thing as one can bet on. We will be grateful if whoever it is can make even a handful of right decisions that benefit the country. We will not be surprised if they do the opposite. We pray for pleasant surprises emanating from the White House for a change.
It will help this country, in my opinion, if its leaders shifted away from the war mentality that has captured the U.S. government for such a long time. This is the foundation for why a Nobel Peace Prize winner could throw the Yemeni people under the wheels of the military machine. It’s the foundation for choosing up “allies” all over the globe and making alliances that commit Americans to possible wars that could largely destroy mankind. Obama blames the war mentality on what he found surrounded him from the State Department, and there is some truth in that view. He is not entirely to blame for his decisions. Place anyone in the same position surrounded by those with a war mentality and they too will be influenced by its pervasiveness.