Has Obama Gone Down the Wrong Road on Terror?

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

It is a commonplace of American politics: when the moving van pulls up to the White House on Inauguration Day, it delivers not only a closetful of gray suits and power ties, but a boatload of expectations.

A president, being the most powerful man in the world, begins history anew -- so at least Americans believe, or pretend to believe.  Out with the old, sordid, and disappointing; in with the fresh, unsullied, and hopeful.  Why, with the stroke of a pen, a new president can order the closing of an embarrassing and controversial off-shore prison for accused terrorists held for years on end without trial!  Just like that: done.

For all sorts of reasons, the expectations raised by Barack Obama’s arrival in the Oval Office were especially high.  Americans weren’t the only ones affected.  How else to explain the Nobel Committee’s decision to honor the new president by transforming its Peace Prize into a Prize Anticipating Peace -- more or less the equivalent of designating the winner of the Heisman Trophy during week one of the college football season.

Of course, if the political mood immediately prior to and following a presidential inauguration emphasizes promise and discovery (the First Lady has biceps!), it doesn’t take long for the novelty to start wearing off.  Then the narrative arc takes a nosedive: he’s breaking his promises,  he’s letting us down, he’s not so different after all.

The words of H.L. Mencken apply.  “When I hear a man applauded by the mob,” the Sage of Baltimore wrote, “I always feel a pang of pity for him.  All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.”  Barack Obama has now lived long enough to attract his fair share of hisses, boos, and catcalls.

Along with prolonging and expanding one war in Afghanistan, the Nobel Peace laureate has played a leading role in starting another war in Libya.  Laboring to distinguish between this administration and its predecessor, Obama’s defenders emphasize the purity of his motives.  Contemptuous of George W. Bush’s claim that U.S. forces invaded oil-rich Iraq to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, they readily accept this president’s insistence that the United States intervened in oil-rich Libya to prevent genocidal slaughter.  Besides, testifying to our virtuous intent, this time we’ve got the French with us rather than against us.

Explaining Why Is a Mug’s Game

In truth, to ascribe a single governing purpose or rationale to any large-scale foreign policy initiative is to engage in willful distortion.  In any administration, action grows out of consensus.  The existence of consensus among any president’s advisers -- LBJ’s inner circle supporting escalation in South Vietnam back in 1965, George W.’s pressing for regime change in Baghdad -- does not imply across-the-board agreement as to intent.

Motive is slippery.  As Paul Wolfowitz famously noted regarding Iraq, weapons of mass destruction merely provided the agreed upon public rationale for war.  In reality, a mix of motives probably shaped the decision to invade.  For some administration officials, there was the prospect of eliminating a perceived source of mischief while providing an object lesson to other would-be troublemakers.  For others, there was the promise of reasserting U.S. hegemony over the world’s energy heartland.  For others still (including Wolfowitz himself), there were alluring visions of a region transformed, democratized, and pacified, the very sources of Islamist terror thereby eliminated once and for all.