IN A wide-ranging press conference covering the economy, domestic and foreign policy, president Barack Obama yesterday denounced Republican obstructionism, expressed confidence that Democrats would fare better than predicted in the November midterm elections, asked that Israel continue its partial moratorium on settlement building and warned Americans that they must live with the threat of terrorism for the foreseeable future.
Between now and the elections, Mr Obama said he was “going to remind the American people ... that the policies that we have put in place have moved us in the right direction, and the policies that the Republicans are offering right now are the exact policies that got us into this mess ... I think the Democrats are going to do fine in November”.
Republicans have blocked a small business Bill which they helped to draft, hold the president’s plan to permanently cut taxes for 97 per cent of the population hostage to an extension of tax cuts for the rich, and have filibustered scores of government appointments.
“They’re just playing games,” Mr Obama said. “It’s time to stop playing games.”
It would have been easier for him not to take on controversial issues like health care and financial regulatory reform, Mr Obama said.
But “I don’t think that’s the kind of leadership that the American people would want from their president”.
Asked how the US could lecture the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, about corruption when so many corrupt Afghans were on the US payroll, Mr Obama noted that Afghanistan was “the second poorest country in the world”, with “an illiteracy rate of 70 per cent ... a multiethnic population that mistrusts often times each other” and without “a tradition of a strong, central government”.
He pointed to the fact that 86 Afghan judges had been indicted for corruption this year, compared to 11 four years ago, as a sign of progress.
Citing “rejectionists” and “cynics”, Mr Obama said negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians “are going to be tough”.
Contrary to what Palestinians expected, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s partial moratorium on settlements “has actually been significant”, the president said.
He had told Mr Netanyahu that “it makes sense to extend that moratorium so long as the talks are moving in a constructive way”.
The president said that “capturing or killing [Osama] bin Laden and Zawahiri would be extremely important to our national security” and “remains a high priority of this administration”.
It was nonetheless important for Americans to understand that “it’s going to take some time” before the US is “ultimately ... able to stamp [terrorism] out”.
Speaking on the eve of the anniversary of September 11th, 2001, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in al-Qaeda attacks, Mr Obama said, “America’s strength in part comes from its resilience”.
It was important not to “start losing who we are or overreacting”. Americans should continue going about their business, be “tougher than them”.
Americans’ values gave them strength, he said.
“And we are going to have this problem out there for a long time to come. But it doesn’t have to completely distort us. And it doesn’t have to dominate our foreign policy.”