Namby-pamby foreign policy

Guest column

In 2009, Nobel Prize Peace Laureate Barrack Obama came to power in Washington under the glow of international praise. There were high hopes for peace, and at least détente, around the globe; following the warmongering of George Bush and Dick Chaney in the Middle East. The Nobel Committee declared that the Prize was being “used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.”

Over the next eight years Obama extended illegal drone warfare over Pakistan and North Africa, illicitly supported the destruction of the Libyan state and the murder of its Pan-African leader; and embarked on a genocidal “Asad Must Go” campaign in Syria.

What made matters worse for the West was the refugee crisis. Millions of people left their homes in Syria, Libya, North Africa and began to make their journey by boat, foot, lorry, through Southern Europe into places as far North as Austria, Germany. What a colossal tragedy! The US media used the equally colossal euphemism: “blowback”! Obama had no clue what to do. By 2016, many Syrian cities were besieged, evacuated, abandoned, or reduced to powdery white sepulchres. 250,000 Syrians were dead; eleven million had been uprooted, flagellated like bush in an obeah-man’s hands.

Russia intervened and saved the day for the West, for Syrians. And this genocide had gone on for five years, whilst Obama busied our minds with kool-speech, and dude-walk. Then Donald Trump came on the scene. He promised to be friends with Russia, if this proved possible. Being friends with Russia is a good thing, not bad.

He also promised to give peace a shot in the Middle East, peace particularly between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Poor leadership has thrust the Israeli peoples into a no-win game. When the US weakens, cannot support Israel any more, Israelis stand the risk of vicious “retribution” from North, South, East and West.

The US would have no choice but to accommodate an Israel, an Amish or Mormon-like Israel, in its Mid-West, or South Western desert country.

Better to make peace, therefore, with its neighbours than war. Better to engage, than rely on the fickle and treacherous hand of a Western Alliance.

If Hitler had not moved west into Britain, east into Poland, south into France, directly attacking Western Europe and the USSR, international intervention to abort the genocidal pogrom against the Jewish people would NOT have been readily forthcoming! Now Trump has blundered!

By deciding to take a posture, to re-locate the US embassy to Jerusalem, a policy which so far has been enshrined in paper rather than direct action, he has all but invalidated himself as a peacemaker.

A most duncy-headed move. He has spoiled his presidential street-cred with Arabs, and some Jews, everywhere.

He has grabbed, in what has been nothing but, since the end of World War 1, a grabbing affair: two sovereign peoples living together, followed by grabs using pacts and UN mandates; the grabs by Egypt and Jordan, the Gaza Strip and West Bank; then a grab-back by Israel; a little release on the Gaza by Israel; and now flagrant grabbing by settlements on the West Bank. Grab after grab after grab. Not good. What has been Trinidad and Tobago’s position on Trump’s blunder?

It was shocking to hear that our Government abstained on the UN vote to sanction or not sanction Trump’s decision. It was more shocking to hear a reporter say that TT is an ‘ally’ of the US.

And even more shocking to hear the official state response: we are abstaining for the cause of our national interests.

Little England, Barbados, voted against the Trump decision. Big TT, independent, Republican, a leader at Caribbean and Caricom hemispheric affairs, has now, it seems, become the colonial stooge of Donald Trump and the US administration! Not good.

Who gave our Government permission to become an “ally” of the US, if the reporter is correct?

How were our national interests defined in this instance? What happened to the policy and practice of Non-Alignment? Or of simple decent ethics, common sense, in global affairs? Our Government voted the way of namby-pamby flunkeyism.

The way of the silent front against historical genocide in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and North and South East Asia. The way of blinding us with bull on CNN, FOX, BBC, NBC, with this gate or that gate, while the imperialists commit every manner of debauchery and savagery against sovereign peoples, republics and leaders!

There is still redemption for Trump. He must set all his alarming presidential authority, and capacity for grabbing global media, to the task of a genuine Palestinian-Israeli peace.

A full-frontal assault on war and hegemony. Save Israel, once and for all.