The slight strabismus or better known as the cross-eye of Venus, the Goddess of love and beauty, became famous in the outstanding paint by Botticelli, meaning that all people with that small imperfection where touched by God; but in politics the person who operates with strabismus means that he has a double approach to face different issues, and therefore very often it concludes in negative results. The person who looks with one eye to the past and the other to the future, or he confuses the inside with the outside, shows two souls often in opposition, that follow different paths, most likely unproductive and with a conflicting leadership deeply influenced by a cross-eye condition. Often, associated with a strabismus problem exists the short-sightedness of some managers, which are not really decision-makers because they prefer adopting the strategy of driving with ‘’the emergency brake pulled’’, considered more convenient for their own electoral or economical personal interests. Other people adopt the more common approach of ‘’wait and see’’ or ‘’laissez faire’’ and, by doing so little or nothing, of course they make no mistakes, but they create the worst stagnation condition in a country. In the case that such behavior is kept by the leader of a powerful Nation, many problems and troubles may arise at a global level; if you let sectarians and terrorists find their own environment, and gross violations of human rights and religious fundamentalism are not fought, then you may expect, with no surprise, some of the worst and sudden popular rebellion. That may explain the anti-Americanism arising in the Arab regions and in the Mediterranean countries: it was sufficient to give to small groups of fundamentalists an excuse of an innocent movie that supposedly had criticized their religious guide to start a revolution of the Islamic world against the Americans. That spark has created an explosion in most countries, not only in those where the Arab Spring took place, but in various regions such as Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Niger, etc. Not just a surprise, but a pre-ordered form of violence against Americans abroad, from a mix of Islamic groups, al-Qaeda terrorists and salafits that waited for the nine-eleven recurrence to raise hell and kill some American people, with the real aim to exclude the US presence in those countries to avoid any kind of future linkage with their government. The explosions have been ignited artificially to achieve the Islamic dream of a ‘’caliph- state ‘’and the related ‘’Sharia’ which are not exactly a form of democracy. We, living in the Western World, have fostered that project with our spirit of hypocritical tolerance, sinking more and more in the quicksands of the language ‘’politically-correct’’, while giving up our civilian, social rights and freedom, accepting an incredible confusion between democracy , civil and religious law. The end-state, for these people, is to derail and kill the Arab-Spring results, so by destroying the relationships between these transitional governments and the Western ones, they try to set the conditions to install Islamic integralism regimes. We, in the Western part of the world, are a little bit cross-eyed, but we have to realize and remember that there are many others capable of a straight sight to create troubles. It was a mistake to officially condemn the offences to the Muslims for that bad movie (that appears to be just a pretext), instead of banishing and punishing severely the killers of the poor ambassador Stevens and his staff: it meant to deceive the reality and formally recognize the supremacy of a religious faith over the invaluable human life and over freedom. An incredible result followed by limitations to our liberty due to a threat not to exceed the ‘’red line’’, dictated by the Egyptian neo-president Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, for criticizing their prophet. By putting a limitation on freedom of opinions, censuring the media according to ‘’ Muslims red-line’’ it means that you can criticize all the different religions, but one: Islam. In fact if you dare to cross that red-line, you touch an electric high voltage wire, and then you are to die! Just a question we need to answer: which are the reasons, the behaviors, the kind of leaderships and the ‘’cross-eyed’’ approach based on the concept of ‘’laissez faire’’that allowed the increase of such a dangerous situation for the Western world? All this without putting in act some kind of countermeasures (including Intelligence) neither to stop the local explosion of violence, and their supremacy over any kind of freedom in the democracy of many civic Nations? As the outbursts across all the Arabs countries are directed mainly against American people, we need to analyze the US foreign policy adopted towards the Islamic world and in the Middle East; provided that as the presidential election approaches, foreign policy and national security issues are surely rising in importance. In a way Obama, according to his program, showed in 2009, sought to wind down the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while focusing on attacking al-Qaeda still operating particularly in Pakistan and in other parts of the world. Really he offered an outstretched hand to Iran and he kept looking from the window to the dramatic war in Syria as he did during the Arab Spring events. After his election in 2009, he promised to improve the US image and reputation abroad, especially in the Muslim world; end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, dialogue and cooperate with Iran and bring peace in the Middle East. But it was not so easy to implement his idealistic and preacher vision to change history in the right direction of a more peaceful, stable world. There was an inevitable tension between a soaring rhetorical and fundamental change with a lot of compromises and a scarce pragmatism, apart from the electoral field (more than 47% of US citizens live on a Welfare status); very often his political caution appears as ‘’whether he has a strategy at all or … merely responding to events’’. Some issues are particularly painful: the attempt to weaken al- Qaeda didn’t go the right way (recent murder of Ambassador Stevens and his staff) and, apart from the killing of Osama bin Laden, the rests bad news and the overall actions seemed to have failed. The intent to reset the relationship with China, Russia and India eliciting a better understanding and cooperation, is advancing with ups and downs, but with a final negative trend. In the effort of rebuilding US’s international reputation, apart some success in resetting the relationship with Russia and ratifying the New START treaty on the nuclear arms reduction, there is a lot to do; the withdrawal of US troops has been accomplished but Iraq is becoming a failed State and right now stability is precarious heading towards a civil war. There aren’t many successes, but some notable setbacks; including no progress on resolving the Middle East’s conflict between Israeli and Palestinian, and no defined policy to Iran and North Korea allowed them to continue developing their nuclear arsenal. Obama has conciliatory policies towards the Muslim world, almost as a socialist one even in internal affairs, with a balanced leadership obeying to the politically-correct concept to please ‘’middle class’’ and people on welfare and to the ones that never wanted to work. Today we can observe that all the attempts to better change the conflictual issues in the Islamic world even fostering the cooperation and dialogue had no much success. In fact the Administration’s relations with the Muslim world have provided the most surprise; Obama has always intended to continue combating terrorism, but he didn’t share the Bush concept of GWOT (global war on terror); he withdrew the troops from Iraq to gain ‘’some kind of global reputation ‘’and in the same time making happy Americans families to get out of a war that caused so many deaths among their soldiers. Remarkable was the frustration of the President who couldn’t reach an accord with the Iraqis to keep the troops deployed there longer to support the ‘’transition’’ of that Nation toward democracy, due to the disagreement to guarantee a normal legal framework of immunity for the US soldiers there; neither has he reached in the Middle East, a kind of Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories. Speaking in Cairo, during his visit in 2009, Obama promised to repair relations with Muslims, but there were no corresponding visit to Israel or speech to Israelis with the dramatic results to lose Israeli public opinion early on. But when he proved unable to fulfill his promises to solve the Palestinian problem and to close Guantanamo, the Arabs became disillusioned and after were mad when he turned his back on them getting closer to Israeli positions as his reelection was approaching. During Arab Awakenings, Obama thought he had managed the turmoil relatively well saying that these revolutionary uprisings were not about the US, maintaining in a sort of ‘’limbo ‘’ with limited ability to affect their outcomes. Even in Egypt things didn’t go well; betting that the Muslim Brotherhood, winners of recent elections against the military, wouldn’t impose ‘’Sharia’’ but preferred the stability that comes from cooperating with the US, and preserving the peace treaty with Israel, was just a bad judgment , an illusion and Obama lost the strategic game again. Neither in Damascus things went better; it’s true that Assad is more and more internationally isolated with several internal challenges, but Obama seems to ‘’wait and see’’ only reacting to emergency or when events are really hard to recover. Also in terms of internal politics, things don’t look too great: a notable structural problem of low growth and GOP; a high unemployment rate, and an unsustainable trend on debt with China; and even if the US has the strongest armed forces in the world, now as funds are reduced , there is a decline in the country’s economic future and in her overall security: he might not have been wrong General Mc Chrystal – ex-US Force Commander in Afghanistan removed than from his duty- when he said about Obama (paraphrasing) ‘’an academic teacher, too weak and unable to produce decisions in short orders to be a real Commander in Chief in war’s actions..’’ It’s true that his foreign politics were and are characterized by a lot of compromises, based ideally on dialogue and cooperation, trusting the Muslims and staying away from the wars, showing a one-way global strategy that’s never the best one. Anyway even if the anti-Muslim film that triggered the outbursts against Americans, could be a foolish reason, nobody in the world could put limitations on people, on press liberty, on different civil, opinions, drawing that ‘’ uncross able red line’’ dictated by a faith. ‘’Give to Caesar the things of Caesar and to God the things of God….’’. The basic and fundamental individual freedoms (the press, freedom of writing and speaking, of expressing different opinions, of believing in any religious faiths, of moving without restrictions, etc..) among democratic and liberal Nations are inviolable and cannot be limited at all, not even from religion’s binding behavior: then killing a person who crosses that red-line is an act of pure barbarity. We don’t need presidents ‘’ rhetorically gifted and friends of everybody in the world ’’; not Superman but we do need someone able, in the western world, to keep a defined course; somebody who can look straight on arising issues, without hypocrisy or strabismus: which, in the long run, never pay!
Giuseppe Lertora