The National (UAE)

Globalization has become so synonymous with our contemporary, interconnected existence that the word hardly merits usage anymore.

Throughout the campaign that culminated in his inauguration yesterday, President Barack Obama called America’s dependence on oil its greatest threat and outlined ambitious plans for energy independence – the American politician’s favorite buzzwords. His energy plan has called for oil savings equivalent to the amount that the United States imports from the Middle East and Venezuela, and he expects these savings to eliminate entirely imports from the Middle East.

Again the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live, on television. The western media justifies it. Even some Arab outlets equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. None of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt. The international community is guilty for this latest massacre.

I’m in the driver’s seat of a 2.5-ton armoured truck somewhere west of Baghdad in December 2007, navigating a main supply route used by the American military. Next to me is a Lebanese private security contractor named Abu Layla, who is monitoring the roadside for potential bombs. Suddenly, we get ambushed – a “contact,” as contractors call a violent encounter with Iraqi insurgents, sectarian fighters or al Qa’eda. I hit the panic button on the dashboard, and our signal alerts the nearest US military unit.

In August of this year I flew in to Kabul, a bustling city undergoing a construction boom, with shopping malls, new banks, restaurants and traffic jams, where I stayed in a hotel catering to weary journalists and aid workers. I arranged to meet two Taliban commanders who agreed to take me to their province, Ghazni – about 100 miles south of the capital. They picked me up one day from a posh Kabul neighbourhood in an innocuous-looking car and we headed south.

“My greatest fear about Emanuel is that he might perpetuate a ‘false choice’ orientation towards Israel in Middle East affairs that he’s going to have to compensate for and get under control,” said Steven Clemons, the founder of the Washington Note website and the director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation.

“There are no rational alternatives in the Middle East than actually delivering on a Palestinian state and finally putting the Middle East peace business out of business,” he said

“Both Muslims and Arab-Americans have been ill-treated in this political environment,” noted Steve Clemons, a veteran observer of American politics and popular blogger who is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank. “There has been some tacit acceptance of that, even by people around Barack Obama,” he added. LINK

Sadly, the trajectory of Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and the 1990s suggests that Saudi Arabia indeed altered its course to accommodate its most conservative elements.

In Foreign Policy magazine, Ken Ballen and Peter Bergen said: "When a federal judge ordered the release of 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees earlier this month, it was the first real chance in the seven-year history of the prison camp that any of the prisoners might be transferred to the United States. In making his ruling, the judge categorically rejected the Bush administration's claim that any of the released prisoners, who are all Chinese Muslims, were 'enemy combatants' or posed a risk to US security.

On May 12, a few days after street fighting erupted in Beirut, I drove to Majd al Anjar, a Sunni stronghold in Lebanon’s Bekaa, close to the Syrian border, where gunmen were still blocking the motorway from Beirut to Damascus.