And then there was Libya, America’s remaining point of military involvement. Surely here, if nowhere else, the land of the brave still commands authority? Well not really. Even in Libya, the newest frontier, the former world policeman’s influence is withering, and Obama knows it. After deliberately taking a back-seat to a UK-French led NATO intervention due to pressures back home,
Christian Louboutin Pumps, the first-term President has reverted to a more hawkish stance – attempting to reassert some control over proceedings by pledging the use of US drones in aerial missions. It’s a noble effort to help break the stalemate and reassert some influence, but with the unending siege of Misrata and obvious disconnect between rebel forces across the country it seems unlikely to prove divisive enough to lead the resurgence of star-spangled-banner internationalism.
Inextricably linked to the sunset of America’s Pakistan policy is their occupation of Afghanistan. Individual affirmation or condemnation of the war aside, there are some serious arguments circulating that the death of Bin Laden, coupled with an increasingly effective Hearts and Minds campaign, could mean an even quicker process of withdrawal than originally planned. This will be difficult. It is unlikely that an instant, ready-formed and free Afghani society exists with the cohesion required to facilitate a transfer of power free of Taliban resurgence. However, austerity measures and a harsh political landscape back in the land of liberty are turning more and more Americans against Obama’s slower paced withdrawal. So potential backlashes from home means strategic manoeuvring for the 2012 elections could well force the administration to hurry out of the Afghanistan on the heels of Bin Laden’s execution. Electorally speaking perhaps that isn’t a bad idea. Obama could add the end of the War in Afghanistan to his growing list of foreign policy achievements to thoroughly trump (no pun intended) the Republican argument that a liberal couldn’t possibly be an effective commander-in-chief. But it would be at the cost of leaving the hollow echo of a once booming speaker for American foreign policy in the region. It would, to all intents and purposes, be the final admission that you can’t in fact deliver democracy through the barrel of a gun.
Closest to the incident we have Pakistan. America’s involvement with whom can only decline, especially if we believe the White House and Pentagon rhetoric that the mission is going well. So well in fact, that it seems unlikely the withdrawn American-Pakistani ‘bromance’ need continue much longer. The apparent success of Leon Panetta’s drone attacks and the neutralisation of public enemy #1 in Abottabad ultimately means continued violent incursion on Pakistani sovereignty is losing justifications by the day. Surely the corollary of America killing terrorists in the area is the killing of their reason to be there. Ultimately, the frosty relationship between Islamabad and Washington are based on the prevalence of Islamists in the area, so once the localised element of that threat is eliminated or the Pakistani regime begins a believable process of self-policing (which it looks to be doing), America will be forced to end black-ops involvement (about their only involvement in light of recent trade stagnation).
Protracted analogy aside, America, like her deceased enemy that now lies somewhere on the floor of the Indian Ocean, has little left to prevent being shuffled front-right off the Middle Eastern stage. In light of some new players in the Arab scene, it seems Osama Bin Laden wasn’t the only one whose influence withered one educated,
cheap pandora charms The Great Stall of China Se, placard holding Arab at a time. America is likewise struggling to find a voice amid the newly evolving powerhouses of the region. Just look at her fading points of interest…
Last week, for the first time in a long time, reality approached the realm of the great westerns. Our old-time hero tracked down the enemy to a dusty village amongst the mountains of some foreign land. After years of searching, turned bitter by constant evasion, he’d found his man. Without delay he saddled up, rode into town and, with the help of the greatest special-forces regiment the world has ever seen, wiped his wizened enemy of the face the earth in a 40-minute, guns-blazing, fire fight. The force of evil, that had too long spiritually enslaved the actions of thousands, was vanquished. The nemesis was dead, the community was free and off they flew into the sunset, just in time for a slow fade to credits.
So it’s once dogmatic military conquest of Mesopotamian town and ports will decline into little more than flags on a board-room table map, but then it has rarely ever been more that that. The belief that America imposes empirical control in every country it has a base is the exclusive reserve of reactionary anti-war protestors (who find empires because they want to, not because they are there). No, the real influence America has hitherto exercised has been in the much less sensational position of peace broker, or settlement negotiator. But amid a flourishing of self-governance it appears even this soft power is waning.
But, unfortunately for the Obama administration, this is where reality and westerns part company. This story doesn’t have a well-scored credit sequence to pass the time while the popcorn-filled, awe-struck public shuffle out of a theatre or a newsroom. Whereas the ultimate fate of the battle’s champion is usually resigned to half-baked, beer-fuelled predictions, this time we cannot simply forget about our hero. As appealing as it probably is to the White House, especially in current political climates, we can’t just assume he got the girl and lived happily rearing cattle on the Texas plains for the rest of his days. In the real world we can, and must, watch what happens to the remaining characters. And in this particular story our winner seems to have suffered a fatal injury from a fly bullet in the closing scenes, which has left his days numbered.
The immediate problem now, the kind that would have once sent the American bully pulpit into overdrive, is Syria. President Bashar is slowly loosing his credibility as a reformist held back and his continued silence on the brutalisation of protesters has left the citizens of Deraa and Damascus without the hope of a figurehead. Meanwhile, state-sanctioned murder continues uninterrupted and the army slams an iron fist on widespread freedom rallies. It all adds up to the picture of a crises closer Gadaffi’s Libya than Mubarak’s Egypt. Self-governed transition is therefore all but impossible, and at the very least they need diplomatic help. But just as they were with Bahrain, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, America has been hesitant to respond. There is, of course, a realpolitik justification for so slow a condemnation of Syrian violence. As one of the only links between the Iranian administration and Hezbollah and Hamas, a post Bashar landscape could undermine the stability of the executive community. However, it hasn’t been an issue for Europe, who have managed to create a policy nuanced enough to maintain both the need for international condemnation and the need to give Bashar a chance to prove us wrong. In comparison America’s is a decidedly short-term game; the proliferation of global awareness must eventually lead protestors to the question of what exactly America was doing while Syrian’s painted the roads red for the western principles of liberalism and democracy?
This isn’t a eulogy for our wounded hero; slight economic dominance dictates it would be too early for that. But our saviour, the slayer of our enemy in the closing scenes of last week’s great western, is haemorrhaging influence at a critical rate. Perhaps, like the mortally wounded who barely survives the O.K. Corral,
pandora jewelry How many meetings do you need to s, our all-American hero will slump lifelessly from his horse before the final credits roll.
Egypt may yet prove an unsuccessful host for all these efforts and the torrents of the Arab spring may still smash unsuccessfully against the insurmountable damn of the isolationist sovereign and Israel’s wall. But they can’t be any less successful than America, who have tried and failed 6 times to bring Palestinians and Israeli’s around a table, tried and failed to passively encourage ground-up reform movement in Iran (seemingly the only country impervious to new waves of democratic sympathies), and tried hopelessly to oversee the drawn out Sudanese peace accord. In the face of an eager new rival in the world of Middle Eastern crisis diplomacy America lacks the CV needed to ensure a renewal of contract, and given the isolationist economic policies bellowing forth form a Republican House it appears they don’t want one either. It is unclear who will replace America as the go-to guide for Arab relations, but my money’s on Egypt.
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Or perhaps that question might not be asked because it needn’t be. Who needs red, white and blue in the region when help now comes from the red, white and black of Egypt? This new,
Pandora Letter Charms sale Just Show Me How to se, remarkably stable emergent from the tumult of democratic uprising has seized the absence of a strong US voice to offer a few opening lines of their own, and the reception has been warm. In an interview with Slate the interim foreign minister presented a new roadmap on Middle Eastern diplomacy, which looked to have the North African Republic sitting shotgun, leaving America to ride bitch. They have already brokered a hugely controversial accord between Fatah and Hamas by way of broadening the inclusivity of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. They have offered an olive branch to Iran in the form of an open trade dialogue, a position Washington have been reluctant to take for years (leaving them as one of only three countries who haven’t). And they have decided to offer diplomatic assistance to the impending North and South Sudan’s as a strong regional support post-secession.
All great westerns end with a Hollywood styled nod to the O.K. Corral. They all end, after a 3-hour cat and mouse chase, when our good-guy-turned-bad protagonist, hitherto spurred on by a death or a jilting or a robbery, finally corners his nemesis. A good old gunfight ensues, usually for an audience patience testing 15-minutes. Until finally the crescendo scene, set against the backdrop of tinny ricocheted-bullet sound-affects and poorly executed drop’n’rolls, sees our two great characters lock eyes, tip hats and reach for their colt 45’s. Bang. The villain is slain, his tyrannical hold on the community lifted and the hero rides off into the sunset.
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