It’s not that he doesn’t care that chaos will be the main consequence of his inaction, or his extremely hesitant and minimalist actions; he seems to actually think that chaos is good. This is one point where he and Benjamin Netanyahu can agree: since their mortal enemies are busy fighting and weakening each other, they decided to give them all the leeway they need to stay at it.
By Ammar Abdulhamid for The Daily Star
The United States is a superpower but hardly a superhuman entity. It has never been that super, as all of us can attest.
For people who have long been obsessed with observing America’s every action, reaction and inaction, there has never been a shortage of criticism. But unless one is wearing an ideological blindfold, modern history clearly shows that the United States is one of the few countries that has tried to impose international order and where people’s rights and government accountability have been taken seriously. True, the United States itself has often done much to undermine the very system it was trying to impose, but the fact remains that no other country has tried to adopt a global perspective in the way America has.
It is hard to believe when one reads some of the op-eds and articles that have been written about him in the 24 hours following his passing that beyond the façades of decency, kindness and intelligence that Dr. Fouad Ajami always projected lay an actually decent, kind and intelligent man. For, unfortunately, the truth can often be hidden under a ton of ideological nonsense.
What might have sounded like a conspiracy theory not too long ago now dawns upon us like an ugly truth.
Drone attacks and clandestine operations authorized by President Obama have so far contributed, albeit to varying degrees, to the destabilization of Pakistan, Yemen and Libya. The same effect has also been achieved in Syria and Iraq but mostly through inaction.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 