a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma<\/em>\u00bb ; elle pourrait s’interpr\u00e9ter librement comme un puzzle envelopp\u00e9e dans une \u00e9nigme dissimul\u00e9e dans un g\u00e2teau app\u00e9tissant et trompeur.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00abAmong the curious spectacles of our moment, the strangeness of the Obama presidency hasn’t gotten its full due. After decades in which the imperial presidency was increasingly in the spotlight, after two terms of George W. Bush in which a literal cult of executive power or to use the term of that moment, the unitary executive took hold in the White House, and without any obvious diminution in the literal powers of the presidency, Barack Obama has managed to look like a bystander at his own funeral.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIf I had to summarize these years, I would say that he entered the phone booth dressed as Superman and came out as Clark Kent. Today, TomDispatch regular Dilip Hiro, author most recently of the invaluable A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East, points out that, as far as Obama’s foreign (and war) policy, it’s almost as if, when the American president speaks, no one in the Greater Middle East not even our closest allies or client states is listening. And true as it may be for that region, it seems, bizarrely enough, no less true in Washington where the president’s recent attempts to intervene in the Syrian civil war were rejected both by Congress (though without a final vote on the subject) and by the American people via opinion polls.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIt should be puzzling just how little power the present executive is actually capable of wielding. He can go to the U.N. or Kansas City and make speeches (that themselves often enough implicitly cast him as a kind of interested observer of his own presidency), but nothing much that he says in Washington seems any longer to be seriously attended to. In the foreign policy arena, he is surrounded by a secretary of defense who ducks for cover, a secretary of state who wanders the world blowing off steam, and a national security advisor and U.N. ambassador who seem like blundering neophytes and whose basic ideological stance (in favor of American aka humanitarian interventions globally) has been rejected in this country by almost any constituency imaginable. Unlike previous presidents, he evidently has no one no Brent Scowcroft, Jim Baker, or even Henry Kissinger capable of working the corridors of power skillfully or bringing a policy home.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbDomestically, who ever heard of a presidency already into its second term that, according to just about all observers, has only one significant achievement Obamacare (whatever you think of it) and clearly hasn’t a hope in hell of getting a second one? Just as he’s done in Syria, Obama will now be watching relatively helplessly as Republicans in Congress threaten to shut the government down and not raise the debt ceiling and whatever happens, who expects him to be the key player in that onrushing spectacle? America’s waning power in the Greater Middle East is more than matched by Obama’s waned power in this country. In our lifetime, we’ve never seen a president not even the impeached Clinton so drained of power or influence. It’s a puzzle wrapped in an enigma swaddled by a pretzel.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tLe texte d’Engelhardt est centr\u00e9 sur la situation au Moyen-Orient, et la situation de l’influence US dans cette r\u00e9gion. Mais l’on voit bien que c’est toute la position du pr\u00e9sident, y compris sa position int\u00e9rieure, qu’il embrasse dans cette appr\u00e9ciation d’une compl\u00e8te d\u00e9substantialisation de la fonction au travers de l’\u00e9volution de l’homme. A cette lumi\u00e8re, les initiatives les plus accessoires d’Obama prennent cette m\u00eame allure de l’impuissance, de l’inexistence, voire m\u00eame du ridicule. Ainsi en est-il, par exemple, du tweet du pr\u00e9sident des USA mis en ligne ce 1er octobre \u00e0 04H56 GMT, annon\u00e7ant la mise en ch\u00f4mage technique du gouvernement f\u00e9d\u00e9ral, sur un ton geignard et \u00e9ventuellement racoleur : \u00abThey actually did it. A group of Republicans in the House just forced a government shutdown over Obamacare instead of passing a real budget.<\/em>\u00bb L’emploi tr\u00e8s pris\u00e9 des experts de la communication de ce moyen des r\u00e9seaux sociaux par le pr\u00e9sident, pour le rendre plus populaire, plus proche des gens et ainsi de suite, selon les th\u00e9ories de relations publiques et de communication du genre, ne parvient qu’\u00e0 le rendre encore plus d\u00e9risoire, impuissant et \u00e9ventuellement pu\u00e9ril, et d\u00e9valorisant encore plus la fonction au nom de laquelle il pr\u00e9tend intervenir. Tout s’encha\u00eene \u00e0 merveille.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tBien entendu, les termes ont leur importance : employer pour waning<\/em> le mot dissolution plut\u00f4t que diminution implique un jugement sur le processus. Le ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne que met en \u00e9vidence Engelhardt ne proc\u00e8de pas par \u00e0-coups, par les effets brutaux de d\u00e9cisions maladroites et contre-productives (bien qu’il y en ait, certes, \u00f4 combien), mais plut\u00f4t par une sorte de ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne presque mat\u00e9riellement palpable sinon visible, une sorte d’\u00e9quivalent quasiment physique (de la science du m\u00eame nom) de l’image de la peau de chagrin de Balzac. Il semblerait m\u00eame que ce processus soit d\u00e9tach\u00e9 des \u00e9v\u00e9nements qu’on aurait tendance \u00e0 lier directement \u00e0 lui, dans le sens o\u00f9 les \u00e9v\u00e9nements t\u00e9moignent du processus et le confirment plus qu’ils ne le suscitent, \u00e9tant des effets plut\u00f4t que des causes. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tDe m\u00eame serions-nous \u00e9videmment inclin\u00e9s \u00e0 ne pas voir dans Obama, sa personnalit\u00e9, sa politique (ou sa non-politique), comme le diabolus ex machina<\/em> de ce m\u00eame processus. Au contraire, il est au cur de la machine et il en est l’interpr\u00e8te sans le moindre doute ni la moindre h\u00e9sitation, sans doute compl\u00e8tement aveugle sur la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 du processus. A cet \u00e9gard, Obama convient bien comme illustrateur et \u00e9ventuellement acc\u00e9l\u00e9rateur du processus, un bon ouvrier qualifi\u00e9, en somme, \u00e0 cause de ses qualit\u00e9s intellectuelles qui se sont parfaitement inverties en d\u00e9fauts \u00e0 mesure, la ma\u00eetrise de soi devenue arrogance extr\u00eame, la distance de la pression des \u00e9v\u00e9nements devenue l’enfermement satisfait dans une bulle farcie de la narrative<\/em> qui convient, et ainsi perdant tout contact, comme on s’isole d’une atmosph\u00e8re infest\u00e9e de microbes \u00e9pouvantables, avec la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 du monde et ce qu’il pourrait en distinguer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tDe toutes les fa\u00e7ons, il est \u00e9vident que la perception du spectacle de la dissolution de la puissance US, surtout du myst\u00e8re de cette dissolution<\/strong>, telle que nous la restitue Engelhardt, m\u00e9rite bien plus que ces notes rapides. Il est \u00e9vident qu’il s’agit de la sp\u00e9cificit\u00e9 m\u00eame de l’\u00e9poque que nous vivons (par \u00e9poque, nous entendons ce laps de temps<\/strong> des trois ou quatre derniers mois, disons depuis la d\u00e9fection de Snowden et le d\u00e9but de la crise Snowden\/NSA). Il est \u00e9vident qu’il y a des zones myst\u00e9rieuses dans ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne actuel de la dissolution d’Obama et de la puissance US, qui m\u00e9ritent une exploration constante, et de plus en plus approfondie. Bref, il est \u00e9vident que nous y reviendrons…<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 1er octobre 2013 \u00e0 11H10<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
La dissolution de BHO et de ce qui va avec Pour le plus \u00e9vident et le plus proche de nous, on dira que la phase paroxystique de la crise syrienne, du 21 ao\u00fbt au 10 septembre, doit laisser des traces puissantes, dans les analyses, dans les jugements, et surtout dans les psychologies. L’essentiel de cette… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3354,10119,1381,5460,12459,3871,6208,12224,3867],"class_list":["post-75234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-chomage","tag-dissolution","tag-engelhardt","tag-gouvernement","tag-inexistence","tag-nsa","tag-obama","tag-snowden","tag-syrie"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}