While some signs of recovery are emerging, Barack Obama has a long way to go to overcome the results of failed policy during the Bush years, writes Ahmed Naguib Roushdy* In his speech in Cairo on 4 June, President Barack Obama called for an open dialogue between the United States and the Islamic world based on transparency. He promised to mend relations with Muslim countries, and also called for a new era of democratic and pluralistic Islamic societies. In his presidential elections campaign, Obama promised his fellow Americans and world nations a new beginning, a "new era of responsibility". His eloquent fluency and enunciation made many consider him a prophet for change. But sadly Obama's actions, like those of other US presidents, prove that promises are but promises only. Many in America and elsewhere have felt cheated by Obama's high language as they see him doing things he campaigned against. After seven months in office, analysts have started to assess Obama's policies. Indications are that some domestic and foreign relations problems will make or break his presidency. In my article in Al-Ahram Weekly of 11-17 June 2009, I tackled US policy on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in other prisons abroad, explaining that Obama reversed his campaign promises and his first decisions in this regard after his inauguration on 20 January. I should add that President Obama announced in May (he repeated this announcement late in June) that he was going to seek Congress legislation to authorise him to detain future detainees and some of the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility indefinitely in what he called "prolonged detention" -- a kind of a preventive detention unheard of in a democracy. Under the Obama administration, detainees' treatment and constitutional rights violations did not change much from what they were during the Bush administration. "The new president's excessively cautious approach to national security and civil liberties outrages of the Bush administration are unacceptable," said Bob Herbert, a civil rights advocate and respectable columnist of The New York Times. Herbert, a black American who was a strong Obama supporter during the presidential campaign, devoted his column on 23 June to criticising Obama's policy on detainees. Herbert urged "organisations and individuals committed to fairness, justice and the rule of law -- the Centre for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union and many others... to intensify their efforts to get the new administration to do the right thing." One resort is to the Supreme Court, the guardian of the constitution. But under its present formation of four conservatives and four liberals with a swing vote siding with the conservatives, the court appears a lost cause. OBAMA UNDER SCRUTINY: It seems that President Obama's detainee policy is derived from two angles: the first is a partial conviction that he is doing the right thing to protect the country from terrorism, notwithstanding the illegality of indefinite detention, thus showing that he is not soft on national security as the Republicans claim he is; the second is a partial tendency to compromise with the Republicans to get their support for his plans to revamp the economy and for other projects. One aspect of this compromise that became the core of his way to govern is Obama's refusal to put on trial those Bush officials responsible for detainees' confinement and torture. But there is a new push to look back. News media reported on 13 July that President Obama has been under pressure from leading Democrats demanding investigation of the CIA's highly classified counterterrorism programme that was kept secret from Congressional leaders on the order of former vice-president Dick Cheney. And President Obama was reported to have said that he ordered White House staff members to investigate the killing of thousands of Afghan prisoners of war by Afghan local forces allied with the United States after the defeat of the Taliban (this would constitute a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War and the Nuremberg court decisions). United States Attorney-General Eric Holder is also about to appoint a prosecutor to investigate whether detainees in the war on terror were tortured. And there is an investigation in progress about the eavesdropping programme the Bush administration introduced. Indeed, it seems that Obama had no choice but to yield to pressure from Congress and human rights groups to bring Bush officials to account for their crimes. Obama can make more progress if he gives detainees their constitutional rights and puts on trial the people responsible for their illegal confinement and torture. Probably the economic and financial crisis will, besides human rights and constitutional violations, be the test that will make or break the Obama presidency. Obama governs a country in severe economic crisis and at the brink of falling into a titanic depression that might dwarf the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the view of many economists, writers and observers, rehabilitation of the financial system and the restoration of the rule of law by Obama might allow critics to forgive his mistakes or compromise in other issues. Many writers -- including myself -- have related the present economic crisis, in part, to the gross negligence of the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. President Obama, after a period of hesitation that worried most Americans, started a regulation crackdown in late June. New legislation was prepared that gives the Federal Reserve, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insures investors' deposits in banks, more authority to regulate and scrutinise the banking system. I share with many writers the view that Obama should also reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited banks from trading in the stock market using their own capital and customers' deposits. This was a necessary shield that saved the banking system from a larger crash than the one it faced in 1933, which would have ruined the country if not for president Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" and new rules that added more muscle to the Federal Reserve. Ironically, Lawrence Summers, President Obama's leading economic adviser, was the one who persuaded president Clinton to repeal that law when Summers was Clinton's secretary of the treasury during the latter's second term. And when he was the governor of the Federal Reserve of New York, Timothy Geithner, Obama's treasury secretary, along with other governors of the Federal Reserve, failed to interfere to stop destructive deals by the banking and financial sectors. It is expected that Republicans in Congress will do whatever they can to block new regulations or make them ineffective. Unemployment was high when Obama entered the White House and reached 9.4 per cent in April. The New York Times reported 23 June that in a new report the White House predicted that unemployment would reach 10 per cent in the coming months, up from its earlier estimate that unemployment would reach 8.9 per cent by year-end. This report caused the stock market to take a tumble after a period of relative security. Further, millions of Americans are without health insurance. In time doctors, hospitals, medicine costs and monthly insurance premiums became unaffordable, especially for elders and the middle class. Obama's advisers have written up a new and ambitious -- but very costly -- health plan that will provide health insurance to all Americans and will remove life caps on coverage. On 15 July, the plan passed its first test in Congress when the Senate Health Committee approved the bill containing the plan. But it is expected that the bill will face a hard time with the Senate Finance Committee whose approval is crucial, and from the full Senate, under pressure from health insurance companies who too often put profits ahead of patients. Congressional investigators found that many insurance companies followed a shameful practice by which they cancelled coverage for sick policyholders instead of paying their claims. The question is now whether President Obama can keep his campaign promise to overhaul the healthcare system by spending cuts and tax increases for incomes over $250,000. OBAMA'S MIDDLE EAST PROBLEM: Last year, energy costs reached an unprecedented high at a time the United States is heavily dependent on foreign oil, especially from the Middle East. But the price of oil fell recently to $66.93 a barrel despite the post- presidential elections chaos in Iran. The brutal crackdown on angry protesters by the Iranian government raised the question of the stability of Iran, a large oil producer in the Middle East. The price of oil was expected to hike but went down instead. The losses to Arab oil producers as a result of the fall are significant. The failure of the global economy and the effect of the global recession on China and oil producing countries started to show in a lack of new investments in US Treasury bills and other kinds of investments that could help the US economy. It was reported at the end of June that the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that global demand for crude oil over the next five years would be lower than previously forecast. Demand reportedly will fail to return to 2008 levels until 2012 because of sluggish economic growth. On Monday, 29 June, the benchmark of crude oil futures contracts settled at $71.49 per barrel, up $2.33 in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But experts fear that the resumption of increased oil prices as a result of improved economic activities may damage economic recovery, even when prices are still well below the levels reached last summer of more than $145 a barrel, thus acknowledging uncertainty inscribed deeply in the global economy. One of President Obama's goals is to promote alternative energy sources like windmills and nuclear power in order to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil and to reduce greenhouse effects. Some experts see the future of clean energy in the controversial coal mining encouraged by the White House plan for a future federal scheme to build clean coal power plants. They claim that technology already exists that helps in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal. The theory behind alternative energy sources is that it will not only provide clean energy but also will create million of jobs for Americans and reduce the costs of -- and dependence on -- foreign fossil fuel. This is the right thing to do, but it will take years to achieve and it should have begun in the 1970s after the oil price crunch. The plan has already met strong resistance from Republicans in Congress. On the other hand, for the first time, the US House of Representatives on 26 June passed an energy bill that approved a mandatory ceiling on gases linked to global warming. This was a second, rather narrow, victory for President Obama after his trillion-dollar bailout plan. The bill passed by 219 to 212. But Obama was not happy that the House bill included sanctions to be imposed on countries that do not accept limits on global warming pollution. The New York Times reported on 29 June that the president said the US should be very careful about sending out protectionist signals at a time "the economy worldwide is still deep in recession and we've seen a significant drop of global trade". RECOVERY AT HAND? Despite all political manoeuvring, and the scepticism of some observers, watchers of network news see signs of economic recovery -- if not rapid -- in the United States while Europe lags behind. Wall Street finished its best quarter in years. Some banks' stocks are back and some giant financial institutions are resurging, such as Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that became a bank holding company. After a loss of $2.12 billion in the final quarter of 2008, the bank was able this year to pay back the aid of billions of dollars from the federal government and to realise profits. News media reported on 15 July that the bank posted a profit of $3.4 billion in the second quarter of this year, the richest quarterly profit in its 140-year history. J P Morgan- Chase bank appears returning to health as it announced on 16 July stellar second quarter earnings of $2.7 billion. Real estate foreclosures are continuing but are expected to slow down with new government plans. Housing sales are slow while rentals are increasing. But with mortgage interest rates low, banks are also, rather slowly, back issuing mortgage loans to credit worthy consumers. The New York Times reported on 15 July that mortgage business is returning as one of the most profitable segments of the financial sector. Some economists fear that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates if inflation gets out of control and that doing so would prolong the recession. Other observers see that the stimulus plan appears to have helped, though a larger plan is needed. The Obama administration failed to attach restrictions to its financial aid to banks. The result was that some previously harmful banking and financial practices continue. All in all, we should not expect a speedy economic recovery or solution to all problems. The American economy remains in dire straits as unemployment is still high and new regulations are lacking, says Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner in economics on 17 July. The time will come to define between liberals and conservatives how much government intervention in the economy is acceptable. Many are predicting that free market capitalism with its voodoo-like invisible hand will vanish forever, or at least it has lost its muscle in spite of Republican attempts to resuscitate it. THE NEOCONSERVATIVE BACKLASH: Beside those domestic policy problems, there have been many reports that neoconservatives and some American extremists in the media and outside have been conducting a drive against Obama that goes back to the presidential campaign, when McCain supporters called Obama a terrorist and a traitor until McCain stopped that hysteria. Others called Obama the "Democrats' Arab candidate", reflecting the hate campaign against Arabs and Muslims that Bush promoted after 9/11. Two weeks before the election, two neo-Nazis were arrested on the charge of plotting to assassinate Obama. Even among Hollywood stars, actor John Voight, a Republican and father of celebrity actress Angelina Jolie, addressing a Republican fundraiser in early June, called to end the administration of the "false prophet Obama", saying that the Republicans alone were of "the right frame of mind to free this nation from the Obama oppression". What oppression? Voight seems to forget the damage that Bush and the Republicans/neoconservatives caused their country and the world. Neoconservatives and extremists do not only hate Obama -- they also fear him. They look at him as "a black socialist president" who, as many of them have claimed, "is not a naturally born citizen". Hate against Obama is also expressed by anti- abortion and anti-gay groups who are furious about Obama's abortion and gay rights record and who consider abortion murder. Bill O'Reilly, the famously outspoken star Fox News network, declared Dr George Tiller, who used to operate an abortion clinic and was killed in his church in Kansas, "Tiller the baby killer", and that he "was operating a death mill". Some anti-abortion groups claimed that Dr Tiller deserved to be murdered. O'Reilly said that Obama's policy on stem- cell research would "lead to the 'final solution'" and was the road to a "master race". Paul Krugman responded in the New York Times on 14 June that the likes of O'Reilly "have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House." Indeed, neoconservatives fear that Obama's election will block them from power for the next 20 years. So the shrinking Republican Party and American extremists are trying to destroy Obama. Not surprisingly, in mid-June, the New York Times /CBS News and Wall Street Journal /NBC News polls revealed that Republican ratings hit an all-time low. These are some of the domestic problems to be considered in evaluating Obama's presidency. Foreign trade and foreign policy also will require great efforts from Obama in order for him to succeed in office. This will be the subject of a separate analysis to follow. * The writer is attorney at law.
