It’s only ‘Hasta la vista, baby’…Hillary deserves to return as Madam President

Rarely do American Secretaries of State leave their mark as indelibly as the man behind the Oval Office desk. Most retire into obscurity and, apart from rare exceptions – perhaps remembered more for ineptitude than diplomacy – few leave a legacy of achievement to match that of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Naturally, no-one can hold public office without detractors and the legion of Hillary-bashers will continue deriding her as, variously, The Wicked Witch of the West Wing, Shrillery, The Bride of Clintonstein and worse.

Unforgiving feminist ultras will also ceaselessly attack her for sticking like a *dingleberry to her philandering hubby, Slick Willy, during a presidency frequently mired by scandal and tales too tall, they’d shame Baron Munchausen.

Somehow, though, both Clintons redeemed themselves and even Bill has reclaimed a measure of affection most thought unimaginable, especially after his outrageous claim that although Monika Lewinsky had sex with him, it wasn’t reciprocal (‘Ah wuz enjoin’ a ci-gar at the time,’ was his laughable excuse).

Hillary, meantime, was said to have only been given the job as US foreign minister by Barack Obama to stop her having a hissy fit after the ugly mud-slinging of the Democratic Party’s joust between the pair for the presidential nomination.

Without any prior diplomatic experience – except as hostess to foreign dignitaries in her eight years as First Lady – she was tipped to be a lame duck and cannon-fodder for the State Department mandarins.

Except, no siree, she wasn’t. In fact, she was anything but. And, though guile, charm, acute perception and hard-nosed determination, she refashioned American foreign policy following the gung-ho era of G ‘Dubya’ Bush – despite Obama making it transparent from Day One of his term the US would no longer be the world’s cop.

If anything, she has consistently outshone and outperformed her aloof Commander In Chief, leaving him exposed as more professorial more presidential, a ditherer not a doer, or – to use grid-iron football parlance – a quarterback who can’t deliver a Hail Mary, killer pass.

So, while Obama pondered, Hillary ploughed on, enduring one of the roughest, toughest rides of any Secretary of State.

Because, in stark contrast to the certainties of a Cold War nuclear stalemate between the West and the communist East, the world has disintegrated into an unpredictable, shifting morass, where – as Mali has just shown – conflict could ignite anywhere almost without warning.

As the old, secular dictatorial order throughout the Middle East tumbled like dominoes in a gale, Hillary gamely sought to maintain US influence on new regimes, mainly as anti-democratic as those they deposed, even if they gained power via the ballot box.

Undeniably, she was slow in confronting the Arab Spring, which overthrew Mubarak in Egypt, hoping against hope – reflecting the aspirations of all freedom-seekers – a tenable, democratic government would ensue, after the bloody sacrifices of the students and middle-classes in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Instead, it heralded the dawn of the repugnant Muslim Brotherhood and is plunging the nation into fresh turmoil.

But, through Hillary, America sub-contracted assistance to the anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya to Britain and France, and wisely stayed out Syria’s civil war, where there’s every likelihood the opposition will replace Assad’s secular tyranny with Sharia-based despotism.

She also did her damnedest to bring sanity to prevail over the Israel-Palestine impasse. But Muslim Brotherhood cohorts, Hamas, only want to obliterate the Jewish state and fork-tongued Fatah, on the West Bank, can’t get their thick heads round the benefits of a peace dividend.

MADAM PRESIDENT? Hillary would be a shoe-in for the White House in 2016

Meanwhile, Hillary urged Burma’s military to edge its way to democratic reforms, convinced China of the wisdom of distancing itself from the lunatic North Koreans and airbrushed nationalistic Russia off the diplomatic map, except where the pariahs of Syria are concerned.

And throughout all this, she had to deal with a United Nations General Assembly united on only one principle: its vehement hostility to the West (unless they were talking hand-outs).

Hillary also did her best in trying give the purblind Iranians a way to have nuclear power, minus a nuclear bomb, but there’s only so long anyone can be expected bang their head on a mosque wall.

Hence, there was never a more propitious time for her to quit office than now.

The US has all but exited Iraq and Afghanistan is on the back burner in relative diplomatic terms, after she forced Obama to agree to General David Petaeus’s ‘surge’ against the Taliban.

Whatever happens next to a Kabul regime so blighted by corruption, it make Spain’s money-grubbing sleazebags seem like choirboys, is up to her successor, newly-appointed, John Kerry.

Small wonder the former senator says, ‘I’ve got big high heels to fill.’

As an addendum, it’s well known within the Washington Beltway that taking out Osama bin Laden was at Hill’s behest. Again, Mr. President was a pretty passive bystander, not that it will inhibit him from claiming the credit.

So, after flying a million miles in US – and Western – interests, is it goodbye or just hasta la vista, baby for Madam C?

The political runes point to a ‘No’. On the contrary, with three years before the holographic reign of Obama fades away, if her health holds out, Hillary should be a shoe-in as the Democrats choice for the 2016 White House race, even aged 69 – a year younger than Ronald Reagan when he became President.

The world has witnessed Hillary Clinton as the consummate politico-cum-diplomatic high-achiever and the notion of a second Clinton in charge of America is making the Republicans wince.

After the debacle of Mitt Romney’s failure, their anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-immigrant philosophy is an auto wreck. It plays to no-one but the red necks, mainly in the old Confederate South and, as they’ll begrudgingly admit themselves, their antediluvian opinions don’t count for a mess of beans.

As Lloyd Green, former research counsel to the George H.W. Bush campaign, says, ‘Unlike her husband, Hillary is personally disciplined. Unlike Barack Obama, she has demonstrated an ability to connect with beer-track voters across the country.’

But will her gender be an impediment to her landing the ultimate office in the land? Not a bit, say pollsters, who reckon Romney’s lack of appeal to female voters was another reasons for his undoing.

So way to go, Hill, as the Yanks would say.

*Dingleberry: A small ball of excrement that sticks to the wool of a sheep’s backside (Dictionary of Slang)

The Obama Report: Must do better next term, Mr. Re-Elected President

Whatever the 2012 Presidential election demonstrated, it’s that the USA is nowhere near United as its name suggests.

Not for the first time the country is pretty well split asunder, more precisely 50/48. The centre largely remains steadfastly Republican red, while the densely-populated fringes Democrat blue.

In terms of the popular national vote it was, as Wellington noted after Waterloo, ‘a damn, close-run thing’ – something tellingly not reflected by the arcane Electoral College (EC), which allocates ballots per state populations.

However, as the brouhaha boiled down to a cluster of predicted swing states, maybe the contenders could have saved $6-billion and America a bout of national nausea over tedious telly ads, each candidate hell bent on trashing the other, and simply fought the contest on the see-saw battlegrounds of Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

The chatterati are pretty well agreed rustbelt Ohio (18 EC votes) was the clincher and what copper-bottomed it for Obama was his bail-out of near-broke automobile industry, one of the state’s major employers. Oddly, businessman Romney’s idea of allowing car giants, like General Motors, to go into ‘Chapter 11′ administration would have had the same, net effect, but let’s not get into the dark arts of corporate crisis accountancy.

Omni-storm Sandy was also a contributory factor. It gave Obama the brief chance to appear presidentially above the fray and, crucially, he visited New Jersey, one of the worst hit regions, comforting the homeless and promising aid. Romney (big boo-boo, Mitt!) stayed away and Democrats milked every second of air-time apropos his absence.

To be fair to the Republican challenger, he did far better than most pundits originally imagined. His wealth, Mormon faith – a heretic cult in the eyes of many Bible Belt Christians – and propensity to occasionally put his foot where his mouth was were undoubted impediments.

But, in hindsight, he was the best of an ill-starred bunch from the Right – some almost certifiable (Google: Michele Bachmann for confirmation), which says little for a schism-ridden party more divided than the nation itself.

And the US is not simply split, but increasingly factionalised as the polling statistics icily demonstrate.

COCK-A-HOOP: Obama celebrates his re-election in a victory shower of tinsel

Whites, predominantly males, voted 60/39 for Romney; African-Americans, Hispanics and Latinos balloted almost en block for Obama. Clearly Obama’s vow to legalise the status of 11 million ‘illegals’ – mainly Spanish speakers – resonated (and think of the tax revenue this will scoop, not to say the hole it will blow in the ‘black’ economy).

The key constituency that garnered most supported for the incumbent, however, was women. This will rattle the Christian fundamentalist Right – as exemplified by Sarah Palin’s head-banging Tea Partiers – who tried to ram their anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage social agenda down the nation’s gullet.

Mainstream women understandably demand freedom to control their own bodies and even though Romney distanced himself from the extremists, he was viewed by many female voters as a risk too far.

So where does this leave Obama? Last time out, in 2008 he caned John McCain, a nice man in need of a personality transplant, winning the national vote by a margin of nine-and-a-half million and the Electoral College by a cricket score of 365 to 173.

This time, though, there’s a bitter-sweet tinge to victory. Despite how my irate detractors will fulminate, Obama is tarnished goods, an ideologue, who’s patently failed to deliver on his war-cry of ‘Change’ for the better.

Admittedly, not everything was his fault. He inherited the greedy banks’ ‘sub-prime’ mortgage crisis, G-Dubya’s inept attempt to impose democracy on Iraq – now a vassal state of the Iranian maniacs – the stalemate war in Afghanistan and a stuttering economy.

But, the glaring question is where did he nearly screw up, having been swept to power on a tsunami of popularity four years ago?

Baldly, the facts are: free-spending, uber-liberal Obama failed to halt the rise in a US deficit that impacts on the world – not that the financial imbroglio in the Eurozone is any help – failed to lift the US out of recession and failed to recognise his worthy, but ambitiously expensive ‘Obamacare’ NHS-style initiative was the right policy for the wrong time.

Mostly, he’s failed as a political operator at mending fences with a Republican-dominated House of Representative, in contrast to Bill Clinton. And if Obama – by all accounts a stubborn, aloof and irascible figure, inclined to throw his toys out of the pram if he doesn’t get his own way – continues his battle of attrition with Congress, ‘Change’ will be a hollow slogan.

Because, as Clinton seminally reminded George H. Bush back in ’92, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ and the squeezed middle classes of Blue Collar America want actions, not platitudes. To deliver, Obama needs friends in high places – Republicans at that – and learn the art of compromise with grace.

CRESTFALLEN: Republican challenger Mitt Romney bows his head and admits defeat

Though foreign policy was way down the election agenda, it’s clear the President must also radically revise his brief. He was blindsided by the Arab Spring-cum-Islamic Winter and the US can’t rely on the freemasonry of tyrants that once ruled the region, filling their personal coffers with American aid.

He’s been fortunate, though, to have had Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, because she’s a far savvier oracle of the international horizon than her boss, whose only marquee achievement was hastening Osama bin Laden wish to enter Paradise, succoured by a harem of nubile virgins (and, by all accounts, cutting the snake’s head off Al Qaeda was Hill’s idea).

Mrs. Clinton, however, is reported to be quitting office – possibly for a stab at the White House herself in 2016 – so replacing so sage a voice on foreign affairs is going to be tough challenge for the President.

Meanwhile, China – as the BBC’s John Simpson pointed out on election night – thinks Obama’s a wimp (an opinion echoed by Vladimir Putin); the Muslim Brotherhood sees him as a push-over; and the Taliban are just waiting to give the corrupt, quasi-democratic Afghanistan government a murderous kick up their shalwar kameez’d backsides when US troops exit in 2014.

At least, so far, Obama’s demurred from getting his hands dirty in the Syria civil war, where what constitutes the ‘rebels’ are a total conundrum to Washington.

America – and the West’s – one ally in the Middle East, Israel, not unreasonably doesn’t trust Obama an inch, despite their congratulatory rhetoric. This is especially so since his insistence the Jewish state retreats to pre-1967 borders – the so-called ‘Auschwitz Lines’, as Benjamin Netanyahu reminded the President in one acerbic tete-a-tete.

While the Palestinians are locked in an internal squabble between Fatah on the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza, Obama has breathing space on that front, although meddling by the ‘bearded ones’ in Egypt’s new, Islamic regime may cause irritation.

What the President must do, however – and not merely at Israel’s behest – is take a tougher stance against Iran, who have lied, obfuscated and patently run down the clock over their nuclear ambitions.

Hillary Clinton could read the runes. Taking tiny Israel out of the equation, she knew if the crazy ayatollahs had a finger on the nuclear button, it would trigger an arms race for weapons of mass destruction and Saudi Arabia will be first in line for US know-how in building its own bomb.

However, probably the biggest imponderable facing Obama is how to deal with the emergent super status of China, especially with a new leadership in Beijing ready to be rubber-stamped.

Tellingly, in his final debate with Romney, he referred to the inscrutable Chinese as ‘both adversary, but also a potential partner.’

Obama might like to chew on a phrase attributed to Winston Churchill (though, Napoleon said something similar): ‘Beware the sleeping dragon. For when she awakes the earth will shake.’

Well, Mr. President, you’ve been granted four more years to sort out that dilemma and stop China throttling world trade. If you don’t, indeed the world will quake.

All the presidents’ women…from snarling French she-wolves to mumsy, US power gals

There’s an historic strain of common purpose between France and the USA, not simply because both nations threw off monarchies in the 18^th Century and adopted pretty similar presidential styles of government.

There are other parallels, not least in the type of ballsy females who exert immense influence on the guys or hommes who hold the keys to the White House and Elysee Palace, though that where the two nations diverge.

It probably began when Josephine was said to have told Bonaparte, apropos bedroom gymnastics, ‘Not tonight, Nappy!’ (she probably added, ‘I ‘ave zee ‘eadache and, frankly, for a Frenchman you are a beet saggy in ze sack,’ though that’s unconfirmed).

In fact, despite all the hype of Frenchmen claiming the mantle of the world’s greatest ‘loovers’, La Belle France’s politicians have had a pretty dicky time of it, so to speak, from their respective partners.

Francois Mitterrand was said to have been in awe of his mistress Anne Pingeot; neo-fascist Jean Marie Le Pen’s missus, Pierette, ridiculed his multiple infidelities by posing nude for Playboy; and Cecilia Sarkozy got her retaliation in first…by eloping with a lover before the petit but perfectly-formed Nicholas could get his hands on the presidency and Carla Bruni.

Let’s not forget, either, Anne Sinclair, who finally kicked out her adulterous husband, Dominique Strauss Kahn – he of the yo-yoing trouser zipper – notwithstanding unproven allegations he raped a New York hotel chambermaid.

MICHELLE, MY BELLE: President Obama shares a joke with – and appreciation for – his charismatic wife

Now, in the best traditions of French farce  we hear the country’s newest leader, Francois Hollande – whose unassuming facade apparently hides a lusty seducer – is utterly intimidated by his volatile partner, Valeria Trierweiler. According to a new book, The Rebel, by two journalists who claim to know her snarling tantrums well, every time she throws a wobbler (often) he’s banned from her bed.

By contrast, on the other side of Le Pond, where politicians dance to the tune of US Puritanism, such scandals are rare as hen’s teeth (apart from the foibles of Bill Clinton, which were excusable, since he never had sex with Monica Lewinsky, even if she did with him).

Hence, in comparison with France’s political she-wolves, the likes of Michelle Obama and Ann Romney appear dutifully benign. Nonetheless, don’t mistake their mumsiness; the pair are ruthless tigresses, teak-tough power gals, who’ve made a telling impact on the build-up to the November 6^th election.

Naturally, after four years exposure as the nation’s ‘Mom In Chief’, as she styles herself, the charismatic Michelle is familiar with the First Wives’ Club battleground, as much of a beauty contest as the one their husband are locked in.

Which is why you can read the indignation in her blazing eyes if ever Barak wilts in a verbal slug-fest, as he did in the first televised debate with Mitt Romney. Some even wonder if Michelle might have made a better boss of her nation than her sometimes ponderous hubby.

Meanwhile, Ann has campaigned as the archetypical, all-American wife, though, married to a multi-millionaire businessman and former Governor of Massachusetts, she’s anything but. Nonetheless, the story of her personal courage in overcoming breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, while bringing up five, feisty sons, resonates with the countless undeclared voters.

What both wives are accomplished at is ‘humanising’ their spouses, portraying them as something other than hard-nosed, combative politicos and, in Romney’s case, a robotic plutocrat, more at ease in a boardroom than on the hustings.

PLATFORM QUEEN: Ann Romney gives husband Mitt her total support in his US presidential bid

As new girl on the block, Ann, a vivacious, 63-year-old blonde who belies her years, actually stole the edge over Michelle, whose life story has been chronicled so often – the smart chick from a struggling, yet aspirant Chicago family, who wondered if Barak was good enough for their daughter – the handles have dropped off.

Ann talks of her roots, too; of how her Welsh grandfather worked down the pit from the age of six, until an industrial accident curtailed his career as a hewer of coal. So he emigrated to Detroit in the 1920s, founded the family fortune and realised the Great American Dream.

Michelle tells of how Barak ‘tucks me up in bed each night’ and boasts she’s the family gagster. Ann counters, saying she fell for Mitt at high school, married him at 19, and their early poverty forced them to live off tinned tuna and use the ironing board as a dining table.

Such anecdotes play well in the swing states of Florida, Wisconsin and Colorado, but rustbelt Ohio is the keystone, which is why both women have zeroed in there to use their schmooze and woo the hoverers.

So why Ohio? Because, quirkily, US Presidential jousts are not won by garnering an overall national majority – if so Al Gore would have taken the White House in 2000, not G-Dubya – but by winning individual states, each of which is allocated a number of Electoral College votes according to its population (i.e. Ohio has 18, Florida 29, Wisconsin 10 and Colorado 9).

Hence, out of the 538 Electoral College votes up for grabs, the first man to hit 270 wins.

According to early polls – maybe because of Ann’s influence – women voters tilted in Romney’s favour, men preferring Obama. There’s been a reversal since then, but, as the incumbent, the reigning President is marginally the bookies’ favourite.

There’s only one certainty: whoever wins, much of his success will be down to the power behind the Oval Office throne that wears a skirt.

Oh, how those masters of the French political universe must envy their US counterparts, with spouses who know the value of fidelity and adhere to the tacit American principle of standing by their man.

Time to show true grit and take on the Islamic fanatics, Mr. President

If a PR man was to invent the template for a ‘designer’ US President, Barak Hussein Obama would be it – young, educated, slickly televisual, a snappy dresser, head of a model family, ethnically mixed race and a self-made politico.

In 2008 a majority of Americans bought into that vision and his battle anthem, ‘Change’.

Well, they (and the rest of the world) got change, all right – mostly for the worse. And, but for his Republican challenger Mitt Romney being relentlessly smeared as ‘gaffe-prone’ by the liberal media, Obama would be staring down the barrel of defeat in November, consigned to history’s wastebin as the US’s second worst, post-WW2 leader after the serially incompetent Jimmy Carter.

For, like Carter, he shares common flaws, notably a lack of substance and true grit, which no amount of posturing can paper over.

The peanut farmer from Georgia was undone by his monumental cock-up over the Iran Hostages crisis and ham-handed stewardship of the economy; Obama deserves to fall over his grovelling appeasement to Muslim fanaticism and his lack of economic nous.

It’s worthwhile remembering Carter’s dead hand on the helm of the USA and especially how, for 444 days – from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981 – 52 Americans were held hostage by Islamo-fascists in their embassy in Tehran.

With inept efforts at diplomacy floundering on the rock of hard-line Iranian obduracy, Carter was forced to order a rescue attempt. Codenamed Operation Eagle Caw, on April 24, 1980, it failed abysmally, resulting in the deaths of eight US servicemen.

LOST FOR WORDS: Like Carter, Obama’s forign policy is littered with flaws

Interestingly, the hostages were released just minutes after a new, hawkish president called Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.

Now, such are the lost lessons of history, we’re witnessing something approaching a reprise of 31 years ago.

A US President, whose first foreign policy act was to rush to Cairo and offer the hand of friendship to the Muslim world – only to have his palm spat on – continues bumbling and stumbling into an Islamic extremists’ trap he’s too blinkered to see.

The case of the inane movie mocking Mohammad (I take it I can still mention the Prophet by name without provoking more maniacal fury?) made by Christian Copts in California was the fuse that lit explosives begging to be detonate across the Islamic East…and Obama’s response: a cringing telly ad, apologising for the controversial video and insisting it was none of his doing.

As with his witless predecessor Carter, Obama cannot get it through his greying head that the fanatics who have hijacked the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ are ratching up the anti-Western ante now that the bit is between their teeth.

As many commentators (including this one) warned, the kids and cosmopolitan middle-classes who led the demos for an end to tyranny with cries for democracy in Egypt and Tunisia have been blindsided by repressive parties, intent on heralding an ‘Islamic Winter’.

Grasping and repugnant as Mubarak was in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia, they maintained a cold peace with the West, as did the lunatic Gaddafi in Libya, which – with British and French help, subcontracted by the USA – has now disintegrated into factionalist conflict.

In regard to Syria’s civil war, the Americans can’t tell which way is up. We all know the Assads ran the country as a family fiefdom from 1971. But Washington hasn’t a clue who the ‘rebels’ are or to what extent they’re under Al Qaeda’s influence.

Tack onto all this the repeatedly bellicose rants by the Iranians to annihilate Israel and the Jewish state’s understandable impatience at Obama’s dithering after a decade of Tehran’s lies over its nuclear ambitions – the boss of Iran’s atomic programme, Fereydoun Abbasi, recently admitted he gave International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors false information – and you can tell how utterly flawed US foreign policy is.

FLOORMAT FLAG: Islamic fanatics desecrate the Stars & Stripes

What the Obama administration doesn’t get (and Romney does) is that as much as Muslim nations crave US hand-outs, especially weapons, they don’t want any Crusader influence over their masses and they’ll attempt to humiliate the West at the drop of a kaffiyeh.

What they also demand is absolute respect towards their unyielding faith – Islam means ‘submission’ and, by their book, that should extend to infidels like us, too. But with them respect is a one-way street: Christians will continue to be reviled in many Muslim states, women will be denigrated, homosexuals persecuted and daily dollops of vicious, anti-Semitic bile will continue to spew from government-controlled media.

So sometime soon (urgently, I hope) during his predicted second term in office – sadly, I think Obama will shade it over Romney – the 44^th President must find some balls, stop being the pushover Islamists view him as and tell them a few hard facts about civilised Western values. Because we’ve got plenty to be proud of and he shouldn’t mince his words.

Our ancestors fought long and hard for liberty and the rights we enjoy – freedom of speech, a free Press, a division between church and state, an end to absolute monarchy, just laws that don’t discriminate, an independent judiciary, fair elections, respect for minorities, et al – and it’s time all religious fanatics learned we are not prepared to compromise our principles.

They should also understand we prefer being here, not in the hereafter.

Obama might not like the responsibility of being the world’s most powerful man and has said almost as much. But, if he didn’t want that obligation, he shouldn’t be standing again for office.

He’s stuck with it and we’re likely to be stuck with him for a further four years.

Taking out Osama Bin Laden – said to be at the instigation of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his Joint Chiefs of Staff – wasn’t sufficient evidence for Obama to convince the West he’s prepared to get his manicured fingers dirty.

So I urge Mr. President to stop vacillating, concentrate less on reducing his golf handicap and recognise the stark truth: so far as the hard-liners in the Muslim world are concerned, they think he’s a weakling and their attitude is not going to change, only harden.

Meanwhile, the lands of the free demand and deserve a US leader who is brave enough to stand up to them and any likeminded bullies.

The mystery behind the movie that set the Muslim world aflame – and its impact on the US election

There’s a fog of ambiguity growing ever thicker behind the murders of Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, and three diplomatic colleagues when their consulate in Benghazi was overrun and destroyed three days ago.

The fuse that ignited the attack – and sparked the all-too-predictable, viciously anti-Western mayhem across much of the Muslim world, which will no doubt continue unfettered for some time – was a tacky, tasteless film, entitled ‘The Innocence of Islam’, mocking the prophet Muhammad.

Originally, it was touted as being the handiwork of an ‘Israeli-American’ called ‘Sam Bacile’ (imbecile more like it) until the Associated Press  tracked him down to southern California and revealed his likely true identity – Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a convicted fraudster.

The man appears to be a 55-year-old Egyptian Coptic Christian rather than an American-Israeli, as wrongly claimed in earlier reports. And, according to The Atlantic magazine, a ‘consultant’ working on the project confirmed Bacile was a pseudonym and not an Israeli.

If this proves correct, the devious motives of Nakoula/’Bacile’ could be interpreted as those of a dangerous maverick agent provocateur, seeking to discredit one religion and lay blame on another.

A 14-minute trailer of the movie – reminscent of the controversial cartoons published in a Danish newspaper in 2006 – is reported to have been posted on YouTube in June. Yet it has taken two months for incandescent rage to be whipped up and the shoddy, shamateurish film’s provenance to be investigated.

One fact is telling about the date of the storming of the US legation in Libya, the killings of Ambassador Stevens and subsequent outrage that exploded across Muslim lands: it happened on 9/11 and the 11^th anniversary of the mass slaughter in 2001 of over 3,000 innocent civilians on American soil.

DESTRUCTION DERBY: Rioters attacking the American embassy in Yemen

Small wonder then that intelligence sources believe the seminal date is no coincidence. And the angry, spontaneous protests, they say, were no such thing, but carefully pre-orchestrated demos, inspired by Islamo-fascist extremists to celebrate the anniversary of the dastardly attacks, hailed by many in the East as a victory over the West.

The response to the blasphemous movie also calls into doubt President Obama’s policy of appeasement towards the Muslim world at a crucial moment when he bids for re-election.

Many Americans – Democrats as well as Republicans and the vacillating undecided – aren’t convinced the words of rapprochement of the Obama administration are worth the paper they’re written on and wonder whether their first black leader is a reincarnation of Jimmy Carter, arguably the worst President elected since World War Two.

Carter’s one-term presidency was torpedoed by his dithering over the 1979-1981 Iran hostages scandal, how to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and his mismanagement of the economy, when the country was suffering from ‘stagflation’, in which inflation was high, growth low and unemployment soaring (sound familiar?).

Like Carter, despite his slick rhetoric, Obama displays all the hallmarks of being too soft on America’s foes and failing to master a flagging economy.

Although still marginally ahead of his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in the polls – and lucky he’s not facing as formidable a challenger as Ronald Reagan was for the inept Carter – seismic incidents, like the slaughter of US diplomats abroad and sustained attacks against American missions in the tinderbox of the Middle East, could blow him off course.

Obama has two months to right the ship of state, but as British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once tellingly observed, ‘A week is a long time in politics.’