By: Sabah Salih
July 29, 2008
Barrack Obama is by and large the creation of an American media that has grown intensely militant in its opposition to the revolutionary changes in Iraq and Kurdistan.
Less than two years ago, the Illinois senator was not even a speck on the horizon. But in the mounting American casualties and increased violence in Iraq, now both dramatically reduced, the media saw an opportunity to catapult the junior senator into the national and international spotlight with one simple message: Bush, not Saddam, was the guilty party, and American needed to get out of Mesopotamia no matter the consequences.
The media quickly turned this mother-of-all distortions into a national mantra and the messenger into a national savior - a new Lincoln, in fact. In a country where keeping track of history - even recent history -is considered bothersome (even for journalists), where image holds far more sway than the word, and where quick fixes are a national obsession, the Obama message struck a chord. Around a slogan as vast as America itself, Obama offered tantalizing simplifications; the wretched word “change” had to (and still has to) endure it all. The more-than-a-decade-long history of American's conflict with Saddam was made to disappear overnight; solution to the conflict now seemed only a simple matter of reversal in policy.
Except that in this case the reversal-with its tiresome call for troop withdrawal, its implied acknowledgement of imperialist aggression against an innocent Saddam, and its disregard of Kurdish and Shiite suffering under the many years of Ba’thist tyranny-wasn’t exactly the type of change Obama was preaching: It was a return to an old, old policy.
In fact, what Obama was telling the peoples of Iraq- and in particular the peoples of Kurdistan- was not the anti-colonialist message his supporters made it out to be: far from it, it was a message that basically said: If I could reverse the situation in Iraq to the way it was before March 2003, I would; Saddam was not our enemy; he meant America no harm.
Any wonder then that during his long overdue visit to Iraq Obama acted much like the much-pleased-with-himself colonial officer of a bygone era visiting an outpost just because he can! It wasn't a simple oversight or lack of time that Obama chose to snub Kurdistan. There was, actually, an obvious message in it: With a nod to Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Jordan, and other Arab countries, Obama in effect said: Take it from me, when it comes to America's policy in the Middle East, the Obama administration prefers doing things the old-fashioned way, that's, giving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the center stage, reassuring the governments in the region that stability, not change, would be America's goal, and further reassuring these governments that the Kurds would in no way be a factor in the new policy.
http://kurdistanobserver.servehttp.com/July-2008/29-7-08-op-ed-sabah-obama-you-dont-count.html
In fact, what Obama was telling the peoples of Iraq- and in particular the peoples of Kurdistan- was not the anti-colonialist message his supporters made it out to be: far from it, it was a message that basically said: If I could reverse the situation in Iraq to the way it was before March 2003, I would; Saddam was not our enemy; he meant America no harm. Any wonder then that during his long overdue visit to Iraq Obama acted much like the much-pleased-with-himself colonial officer of a bygone era visiting an outpost just because he can! It wasn't a simple oversight or lack of time that Obama chose to snub Kurdistan. There was, actually, an obvious message in it: With a nod to Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Jordan, and other Arab countries, Obama in effect said: Take it from me, when it comes to America's policy in the Middle East, the Obama administration prefers doing things the old-fashioned way, that's, giving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the center stage, reassuring the governments in the region that stability, not change, would be America's goal, and further reassuring these governments that the Kurds would in no way be a factor in the new policy.