The year is 2009 and we are in January.
Barack Hussein Obama has just been inaugurated as the 43rd
President of the United States of America. He is the first African
American President ever and -to add shock to disbelief- with a name
that has zero connection to the English Language.
For millions of people, it is a time of
hope and relief; it also is a time of anxiety and uncertainty. The
country is in turmoil brought about by a combination of
disillusionment abroad and financial crisis at home. The American
People appears to have decisively repudiated costly foreign military
adventures overseas while at home, panic struck Wall Street reeling
under one financial scandal after another courtesy of a combination of reckless speculation, greed, and outright
fraud. Unemployment has skyrocketed, homeowners have defaulted on
their mortgage payments, the stock market has taken a nose dive, the
banking System has all but declared bankruptcy.
Along comes a new US President, fresh
from a convincing victory in a highly emotional electoral campaign.
He would recall the US troops from the treacherous Middle East, spare
no effort to rescue Main Street and see to it that the days of
shady business transactions on Wall Street are gone forever.
POTUS is an outstanding orator; he inspires the masses as befits a
true leader. In no time he would deliver an eloquent speech in Cairo
calling for a new beginning and reaching out to a suspicious and understandably hostile Muslim World. So high are the expectations this
young and handsome leader arouses that be would soon receive the
prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, therefore joining distinguished
predecessors such as Dr. Kissinger, President Sadat, Prime Minister
Begin of Israel, and PLO Chairman Arafat among others.
The dust of euphoria has eventually
settled however, and some more controversial moves by the President
start to raise at least few eyebrows. One of his first initiatives was to
bail out Wall Street with hundreds of billions of dollars, those very
same banks and insurance companies that have brought out the
financial ordeal to start with; justification? they're “too big to
fail”. He of course tries to help homeowners and the unemployed but
his efforts in this regard are quite timid and hesitant. Even his
much flaunted Affordable Health Care appears way too cumbersome and
virtually perpetuates the reign of the health insurers and
the Medical-Pharmaceutical Complex. Still more worrisome the
interracial divide appears to tenaciously live on, the incarceration
rate alarmingly high, allegations of police brutality are all over
the media, the immigration mess -legal and illegal- as intractable as
ever... Add to all that violence, inner city poverty, the crumbling
infrastructure, the collapsing public school system, the exorbitant cost of
higher education, the list goes on and on.
The American People is angry and
frustrated; men are particularly fed-up with the Two-Party system and
the Main Media; many have already turned to the Social Media made
possible by the explosion of Information Technology. Before you know
it, Peaceful Demonstrations erupt in several places across the
country and crowds start chanting “the People wants to dismantle
the Regime”!
We have always been a nation of Law and
Order. Chaos shall not be tolerated. The National Guard is ordered
to intervene to enforce the peace of the Land. It is inevitable that
an altercation or two take place between the Unarmed Demonstrators
and the not-so-unarmed police along with vigilantes popularly called "Shabbiha". Regrettably few casualties result and
finger-pointing ensues. Anger mounts and the crowds swell. The
President is accused of “killing his own people”. It is not at
all helpful at this juncture for the Chinese and Russian Ambassadors
travel the width and breadth of the Nation to urge the rioters to
resist and to assure them that China and Russia are firmly on their
side in their just quest for Freedom and Democracy; unfortunately,
this is exactly what the did!
Next comes outside opportunists,
Russian TV and even the BBC initiate round-the-clock inflammatory
coverage of what they describe as an “American Spring”. They
provide the rebels with a free podium to air their views without the
semblance of cross examination. They seize on real as well as
imaginary grievances that no country is free of. They convince all
US-born Americans of the necessity of ridding their beautiful country
from the blood-sucking immigrants; they remind African Americans of
centuries of slavery and racial discrimination perpetrated by
Caucasians; they turn North against South, Black against Hispanic,
poor against rich, city dwellers against countrymen, Amerindians
against those of European stock, Evangelicals against Catholics,
Muslims against Hindus..
Evidently one can't turn a blind eye to
police brutality against civilian protestors. Along come Canada and
Mexico to the rescue. Refugees pour north and south and camps are
established across the borders to train and arm Freedom Fighters,
after carefully vetting them to weed out the extremists, needless to
say. Democracy lovers from all over the World flock to the USA via
land and sea to wage a Holy Crusade against tyranny and oppression.
The United Nations Security Council meet to debate a No-Fly-Zone over
America as to create “safe corridors” for non-combatants fleeing
violence. The vote is almost unanimous but for the perfidy of two
permanent members who had the audacity to deploy their veto thereby
denying US rebels the Liberty they so desperately seek. Not one
nation has even considered mediating between the warring parties.
After all how can you negotiate with baby killers and terrorists?!
In a nutshell, four years of incessant
strife have desolated the US Homeland, claimed millions of lives,
displaced tens of millions of innocent civilians, destroyed decades'
investment in infrastructure, wasted trillions of dollars, virtually
divided the country across racial and sectarian lines, spread poverty
and famine from coast to coast. Erasing the effects of such a
catastrophe would require a generation or two, under optimal
circumstances.
Luckily the US is not even close to
imagining the possibility of such a cataclysm, and I hope my children
and grandchildren never live to witness such a day. Still, this
scenario is neither imaginary nor far-fetched as would testify anyone
who currently lives through what passes for a Syrian Spring, or who
has survived the Libyan Spring, or the Yemeni Spring...Just swap
Obama for Assad, USA for Syria, China and Russia for USA and France,
RTV and BBC for aljazeera and al arabiya...Of course many other changes need be done given the numerous and
monumental differences between mighty USA and small countries like
Syria or Libya.
Indeed the comparison appears
preposterous at first sight: there exists a tremendous gap between
those countries at almost every level: political, cultural, financial, scientific, religious etc.. Still, the only difference that counts at
the end of the day, is MIGHT, to put it bluntly.
For no country is liberal enough,
peaceful enough, democratic enough, prosperous enough, tolerant
enough, educated enough, homogeneous enough...to withstand a barrage
of propaganda, money, weapons, armed men, foreign meddling all aimed
at it from so many powers regional as well as global.
You can “liberate” Iraq, for
instance. Liberating a country like China is altogether a different
undertaking and this has zero relation with who is “democratic”
and who is not, who is “free” and who is not. An Iraqi “Spring”
is therefore far more likely than a Chinese one and a corollary to
this statement is that we are not likely to experience an American
Spring anytime soon no matter how good or bad a US president, what
the contradictions inside the US society might be. America is simply
too powerful for anyone to mess with. Not only are US domestic
affairs off limits, the Western Hemisphere in its entirety is a
forbidden land. Interfere at your own risk, as the Soviets found out
during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 60's. The Monroe
Doctrine applies to the American Continent north and south, not just
the USA.
When
a Spartan king was asked how far Sparta’s borders reached, he held
out his spear and said, “As far as this will reach.”
