If there’s one thing I’ve learned over many years of following the political career of United States’ President Barack Obama it is to never underestimate his false-faced cynicism. Examples could fill volumes. Here I highlight a small number of instances relating to recent, ongoing, and terrible events in the Middle East.
“Trying to Put Iraq Back Together”
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly told voters that “it’s time to stop spending billions of dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together and start spending the money putting [the US of] America back together” (Janesville, Wisconsin, February 15, 2008). The candidate was far too knowledgeable and intelligent to have honestly believed that the US was engaged in a benevolent nation-building project in Iraq. He was too smart not to have understood that the criminal US invasion of that country had killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed vast swaths of social and technical infrastructure and fanned the flames of violent sectarian conflict there. (The horrible consequences of the US invasion are evident in current news reports from devastated Iraq — reports that rarely if ever acknowledge Washington’s critical role in the crippling of Mesopotamia.)
His statement was a cynical ploy for votes from citizens who had long been lied about the real nature and purposes of US foreign policy.