An American Spring

Prelude

January 2009. 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 appear 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 nosedive, and 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 he 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 a 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 brought about 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 is alarmingly high, allegations of police brutality are all over the media, and the immigration mess—legal and illegal—is as intractable as ever... Add to all that violence, inner-city poverty, the crumbling infrastructure, the collapsing public school system, and the exorbitant cost of higher education; the list goes on and on.

The American people are angry and frustrated; men are particularly fed up with the two-party system and the mainstream 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 want 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 to 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 they did!

Next come 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 of 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 meets to debate a no-fly zone over America 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, and spread poverty and famine from coast to coast. Erasing the effects of such a catastrophe would require a generation or two, under optimal circumstances.

The Real World

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, the USA for Syria, China and Russia for the USA and France, and RTV and BBC for Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya... Of course, many other changes need to be done given the numerous and monumental differences between the mighty United States and puny 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, or homogeneous enough...to withstand a barrage of propaganda, money, weapons, armed men, and foreign meddling all aimed at it from so many regional as well as global powers.

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 or 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 is or what the contradictions inside US society might be. America is simply too powerful for anyone to mess with. Not only are US domestic affairs off limits, but 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 60s. 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.”