Lonely Obama vs. Popular Iran, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Lonely Obama vs. Popular Iran

By Hussain Abdul Hussain

February 24, 2010

A common perception is that under President Barack Obama, America's image has improved, and perhaps its friends have increased. But such claims are unfounded, as the opposite proves to be true.

One would expect the charismatic Obama, with his hand extended to America's friends and foes, to fare better than the confrontational George Bush, with his simplistic views on "either with us, or against us" and his lumping of nations -- wholesale -- in this or that axis of evil.

International relations, however, are about interests, not sweet talk. As Bush went out recruiting allies, and making enemies, Obama lost America's friends while failing to win over enemies.

Apparently, the benevolent Obama failed to impress America's number one enemy, Al-Qaeda.

Between September and December, the group sent a suicide bombers into New York and Michigan. The first was foiled, the second luckily failed.

In Iraq, after losing more than 4,300 troops in battle and spending $700 trillion since 2003, America today cannot find a single politician or group that would express gratitude to Americans for ridding Iraq of its ruthless tyrant Saddam Hussein, and allowing these politicians to speak out freely.

On the contrary, shy of making their excellent backdoor ties with Washington known since they fear Obama will depart Iraq and never look back, Iraqi politicians started expressing dissatisfaction with the United States in public.

http://newageislam.com/lonely-obama-vs.-popular-iran/islam-and-the-west/d/2559

The stakes in Afghanistan go well beyond Afghanistan, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

The stakes in Afghanistan go well beyond Afghanistan

By Dan Twining

Sep 30, 2009

The problem with the current debate over Afghanistan is that it is too focused on Afghanistan. There is no question that the intrinsic importance of winning wars our country chooses to fight -- to secure objectives that remain as compelling today as they were on September 12, 2001 -- is itself reason for President Obama to put in place a strategy for victory in Afghanistan. But the larger frame has been lost in the din of debate over General McChrystal's leaked assessment, President Obama's intention to ramp up or draw down in Afghanistan, and the legitimacy of the Afghan election. In fact, it is vital for the United States and its allies to recommit to building an Afghan state that can accountably govern its people and defeat the Taliban insurgency -- for reasons that have to do not only with Afghanistan's specific pathologies but with the implications of failure for the wider region and America's place in the international system.

The surreal belief in some quarters that abandoning Afghanistan -- described as a "graveyard of empires" with its complicated tribes, forbidding terrain, and peripheral strategic importance -- would not have direct and bloody consequences for the United States, never mind the Afghan people, can be answered with three numbers: 9-11. It is troubling that our political and foreign policy elites even need to engage this debate (including its more sophisticated but equally illusory variants like moving to an "over-the-horizon" strike-and-retreat strategy). At the same time, the experts (correctly) advocating a counterinsurgency strategy make the same mistake of framing their arguments purely with reference to Afghanistan's internal dynamics. As important as they are, they constitute only part of a wider strategic landscape that would be upended by a U.S. decision to reduce its political and military commitment to Afghanistan.

http://newageislam.com/the-stakes-in-afghanistan-go-well-beyond-afghanistan/war-on-terror/d/1855