fatman17
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The story goes that President Barack Obama left Washington on Air Force One last Thursday morning for a visit to every country that genuinely respects America. He returned to the White House early next afternoon.
But one trip from which he returned recently was not entirely a jest because it was amateur week for its organisers and unhappily demonstrative of America’s regally scornful attitude to nations that are considered unimportant. That unfunny foray was his majestically counterproductive visit last week to a supposedly allied state – Afghanistan.
The only entertaining part of the pathetic charade was when the name of the CIA station chief in that war-torn wreck of a country was provided by mistake to media representatives. It was circulated to the press corps accompanying Obama and then distributed on what is called the ‘pool report’ sent to other news organisations. The spook was also depicted in a widely-circulated photograph, but that doesn’t matter either, because anyone who really wants to know the name of any CIA station chief already knows it. Their names are hardly a secret, but it is the policy of the US government to keep as much as possible undisclosed to the American public and the world at large.
So it follows that the visit by the president of the United States to Afghanistan would be kept secret from everyone, and especially from the president and government of the unfortunate host nation until the very last moment before the Obama air circus zoomed in, with Air Force One being escorted for thousands of miles by successive phalanxes of fighter aircraft before its night landing. Goodness knows what the performance cost the US taxpayer.
It is intriguing that Obama had to visit in darkness. Indeed it is amazing that the president of the United States of America could not land in daylight with appropriate public ceremony in a country his armed forces have occupied for over a dozen years. The chief executive of the world’s strongest military power that has missiles, soldiers, aircraft, marines, and spooks and ships and drones and knuckle-dragging special forces operating from over a thousand bases around the globe had to whiffle in clandestinely to a tin-pot little country so that his mighty cavalcade would not be threatened by a bunch of raggy-baggy insurgents armed with rifles and a few vintage rocket launchers having all the sophistication of firework-loaded catapults. How humiliating.
Quite why Obama decided to take such a death-defying risk is not absolutely clear, but domestic politics may have had something to do with his flight into danger, as there is growing concern in the US that all is not well with medical care of the countless thousands who have suffered dreadfully, physically and mentally, in fighting Washington’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So perhaps Obama wanted to bolster the Democratic Party’s standing by getting on the veterans’ bandwagon.
Obama’s Afghanistan antics didn’t begin with bandwagons, however. They started with insults and plain old-fashioned but oh-so-familiar arrogance and went rocketing downhill from there. Not only was President Karzai not informed of the Obama visit until the last moment, he was then summoned as an afterthought to come to the US base at Bagram to tug his forelock to the visiting monarch.
While Obama was dancing his public relations fandango, somebody in his entourage telephoned President Karzai’s office to suggest that the president of Afghanistan should get up in the middle of the night and present himself at the colonial power’s fortress at Bagram to say hello to the illustrious night-tripper.
Mockingly, a ‘White House official’ told the docile US press corps that Karzai refused to obey the command. The official’s condescendingly sarcastic comment was that “We did offer him the opportunity to come to Bagram, but we're not surprised that it didn't work on short notice.” The rabid insolence of that arrogant pronouncement would be hard to replicate.
There have been some unintended insults offered by national leaders to other national leaders over the years, but all presidential statements are scripted and delivered with the aim of influencing a target.
So who was Obama’s target in Afghanistan? Was it the dreaded Taliban whose rusty old rifles present such a massive threat that the president of the United States could avoid their menace only by slinking in and out in darkness? Or was the target the president of Afghanistan whose rigged election in 2009 was endorsed by the president of the United States?
Obama’s visit to Afghanistan was timed to take four dark hours. The flight plan required that Air Force One leave as scheduled (although its departure time was not notified to the Afghan authorities who were ordered to close down Kabul airport throughout the entire performance).
So even if President Karzai, the highest representative of the nation of Afghanistan, had agreed to the presumptuous summons to attend the court of the visiting sovereign there would not have been time for arrangements to be made for his travel and reception. How would he have journeyed from Kabul to Bagram? Afghan air force helicopters can’t fly at night and use of a US helicopter would have been admission of even further subservience to the imperial power. Travel by road would have been perilous because neither US nor Afghan forces could have secured the route.
Obama’s four-hour stay would not be extended. It was set-up city. Obama couldn’t be bothered to meet Karzai and treated him with contempt, adding insult to injury.
The message to Afghanistan and the world is that the United States presidency considers itself above all precepts of civilised protocol and convention. This comparatively tiny incident of spiteful conceit has demonstrated a deep-seated policy of utter arrogance.
In a speech last week at the US army’s military academy at West Point Obama declared that “America must always lead on the world stage” and that the military “always will be the backbone of that leadership.”
Who else believes that America ‘must always lead’? In recent years its leadership and its military have created total disaster in Iraq and a debacle in Afghanistan. Its current leader believes “in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,” but it’s a pity he doesn’t believe in affording common courtesy to fellow presidents.
The writer is a South Asian affairs analyst. Website: Brian Cloughley
But one trip from which he returned recently was not entirely a jest because it was amateur week for its organisers and unhappily demonstrative of America’s regally scornful attitude to nations that are considered unimportant. That unfunny foray was his majestically counterproductive visit last week to a supposedly allied state – Afghanistan.
The only entertaining part of the pathetic charade was when the name of the CIA station chief in that war-torn wreck of a country was provided by mistake to media representatives. It was circulated to the press corps accompanying Obama and then distributed on what is called the ‘pool report’ sent to other news organisations. The spook was also depicted in a widely-circulated photograph, but that doesn’t matter either, because anyone who really wants to know the name of any CIA station chief already knows it. Their names are hardly a secret, but it is the policy of the US government to keep as much as possible undisclosed to the American public and the world at large.
So it follows that the visit by the president of the United States to Afghanistan would be kept secret from everyone, and especially from the president and government of the unfortunate host nation until the very last moment before the Obama air circus zoomed in, with Air Force One being escorted for thousands of miles by successive phalanxes of fighter aircraft before its night landing. Goodness knows what the performance cost the US taxpayer.
It is intriguing that Obama had to visit in darkness. Indeed it is amazing that the president of the United States of America could not land in daylight with appropriate public ceremony in a country his armed forces have occupied for over a dozen years. The chief executive of the world’s strongest military power that has missiles, soldiers, aircraft, marines, and spooks and ships and drones and knuckle-dragging special forces operating from over a thousand bases around the globe had to whiffle in clandestinely to a tin-pot little country so that his mighty cavalcade would not be threatened by a bunch of raggy-baggy insurgents armed with rifles and a few vintage rocket launchers having all the sophistication of firework-loaded catapults. How humiliating.
Quite why Obama decided to take such a death-defying risk is not absolutely clear, but domestic politics may have had something to do with his flight into danger, as there is growing concern in the US that all is not well with medical care of the countless thousands who have suffered dreadfully, physically and mentally, in fighting Washington’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So perhaps Obama wanted to bolster the Democratic Party’s standing by getting on the veterans’ bandwagon.
Obama’s Afghanistan antics didn’t begin with bandwagons, however. They started with insults and plain old-fashioned but oh-so-familiar arrogance and went rocketing downhill from there. Not only was President Karzai not informed of the Obama visit until the last moment, he was then summoned as an afterthought to come to the US base at Bagram to tug his forelock to the visiting monarch.
While Obama was dancing his public relations fandango, somebody in his entourage telephoned President Karzai’s office to suggest that the president of Afghanistan should get up in the middle of the night and present himself at the colonial power’s fortress at Bagram to say hello to the illustrious night-tripper.
Mockingly, a ‘White House official’ told the docile US press corps that Karzai refused to obey the command. The official’s condescendingly sarcastic comment was that “We did offer him the opportunity to come to Bagram, but we're not surprised that it didn't work on short notice.” The rabid insolence of that arrogant pronouncement would be hard to replicate.
There have been some unintended insults offered by national leaders to other national leaders over the years, but all presidential statements are scripted and delivered with the aim of influencing a target.
So who was Obama’s target in Afghanistan? Was it the dreaded Taliban whose rusty old rifles present such a massive threat that the president of the United States could avoid their menace only by slinking in and out in darkness? Or was the target the president of Afghanistan whose rigged election in 2009 was endorsed by the president of the United States?
Obama’s visit to Afghanistan was timed to take four dark hours. The flight plan required that Air Force One leave as scheduled (although its departure time was not notified to the Afghan authorities who were ordered to close down Kabul airport throughout the entire performance).
So even if President Karzai, the highest representative of the nation of Afghanistan, had agreed to the presumptuous summons to attend the court of the visiting sovereign there would not have been time for arrangements to be made for his travel and reception. How would he have journeyed from Kabul to Bagram? Afghan air force helicopters can’t fly at night and use of a US helicopter would have been admission of even further subservience to the imperial power. Travel by road would have been perilous because neither US nor Afghan forces could have secured the route.
Obama’s four-hour stay would not be extended. It was set-up city. Obama couldn’t be bothered to meet Karzai and treated him with contempt, adding insult to injury.
The message to Afghanistan and the world is that the United States presidency considers itself above all precepts of civilised protocol and convention. This comparatively tiny incident of spiteful conceit has demonstrated a deep-seated policy of utter arrogance.
In a speech last week at the US army’s military academy at West Point Obama declared that “America must always lead on the world stage” and that the military “always will be the backbone of that leadership.”
Who else believes that America ‘must always lead’? In recent years its leadership and its military have created total disaster in Iraq and a debacle in Afghanistan. Its current leader believes “in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,” but it’s a pity he doesn’t believe in affording common courtesy to fellow presidents.
The writer is a South Asian affairs analyst. Website: Brian Cloughley
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