In the 2006 midterm elections and the 2008 elections, Barack Obama was the most successful at drawing voters towards the Democratic Party and its candidates. Today, he promises to avoid appearing alongside his party's candidates in the November elections, after a drop in his popularity among voters, who hold him responsible for the results of George Bush's “debacles”, from the stifling economic crisis to the losing foreign wars. After 17 months in the White House, Obama's record and his achievements seem clear. He has ratified incentives to stimulate the economy reaching 862 million dollars (the Americans decided to come out of the crisis by spending on it and the Europeans by taking austerity measures and reducing spending), has obtained the healthcare reform law in spite of its original text being cut down in Congress, has issued the financial reform law to keep the work of large banks in check, and has reached an agreement with Russia to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, one which awaits ratification in Congress after the summer break. On the other hand, there are those who hold against Obama his weakness in facing the pollution in the Gulf of Mexico, although he undoubtedly behaved much better than did George Bush towards Hurricane Katrina which struck New Orleans, as well as the fact that he failed to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as he had promised. I could add the Palestinian issue, but I myself had never expected him to resolve it, in 17 or in 700 months, with an Israeli Congress more extremist than the Knesset. Comparing certified achievements with alleged or imagined failure certainly tips the scales in favor of the President. Yet an opinion poll showed last month and for the first time that only 44 percent of Americans support his policies, while a majority opposes them, that the Democrats are behind the Republicans by six points in the electoral campaign, and that a clear majority of voters are against the war in Afghanistan. The one consolation for the President in the poll numbers is the soaring popularity of First Lady Michelle Obama, reaching up to 66 percent. The economy is the number one reason for the decrease in President Obama's popularity, although the one responsible for the financial crisis is George Bush, who borrowed money from China to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as to fight terrorism all over the world, and who did nothing but lose wars and the economic battle. Then there is the war in Afghanistan, which is unpopular, as all US opinion polls have shown this year. Tens of thousands of secret documents about this war were recently published, including the years 2004 to 2009, i.e. Bush's term. These documents fully condemn the former president in what they revealed in terms of mismanagement, corruption, failure and killings of civilians which were covered up to prevent them from reaching the media. This war has so far cost 350 billion dollars, and when the US House of Representatives ratified emergency spending for the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at a cost of 59 billion dollars, voting showed strong opposition from the Democrats and a high level of support from the Republicans. This means that the Republicans are those who started the war and continue to support it, but that it is Obama who pays the price for it among voters. He has now promised to start withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan in mid-2011, and polls have shown that a majority of voters support the withdrawal plan. Nevertheless, this has not yet reflected on Obama's personal popularity. What I personally fear are the “other solutions”, if the war goes on and the administration is unable to win it or to withdraw US troops. When the US was losing the war in Iraq under the blows of legitimate resistance and criminal terrorism, Joe Biden, who is now Vice President, came up with the idea of dividing Iraq between the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Today I read a suggestion from Robert Blackwill, a senior National Security official under the administrations of Bush Senior and Junior, to divide Afghanistan into a Pashtun-majority South and a multi-ethnic North. Then I read that Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, who is a moderate and does not stand accused in my book, is suggesting decentralization in Afghanistan as a solution, although I view this as dividing the country into zones of influence ruled by warlords, a situation which originally gave rise to the Taliban and to all the calamities that followed. I fear that the day will come when the US Administration will leave Afghanistan to face its destiny alone under the pressure of public opinion and economic realities, which would mean the return of the Taliban regime to power, with all that it represents in terms of human backwardness and ignorance of religion, a return which would encourage obscurantist forces in other countries. And in the end, Afghanistan has no oil.
