They All Look the Same to Me
Suppose some Mideast leader found himself a podium at Copenhagen U from which to exhort “The Christian World.” Would we not snicker at his naivete—least of all because few Westerners can stake a credible claim to piety? Any serious diplomat would recognize that, distant spiritual kinship notwithstanding, Georgia’s issues and interests aren’t the same as Germany’s.
President Obama, suave cosmopolitan that he is, wouldn’t make such a mistake. Not only wouldn’t he address “The Christian World,” he wouldn’t dare label America a “Christian Nation,” lest a thousand liberal furies descend. But in his Cairo speech, he had no problem addressing the Islamic world as one. He allowed, “Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype”—then went on to lump them into a single community, as if Jordan were not a very different place from Uzbekistan.
I can’t help but recall an uncomfortable evening back in the Bush days when one of the president’s men took up the challenge of persuading me that the U.S. should just level Iran and be done with it.
“All Arabs understand is force,” he avowed, with all the conviction of devoted Michael Savage listener.
“Do you think it makes any difference that they’re Persian?” I inquired.
“It’s all the same thing.”
“Sort of like Shia and Sunni in Iraq?”
“Precisely.”
No wonder why they didn’t see the civil war coming.
Presumably Team Obama wouldn’t be so crude, but a strain of the old hubris lingers. The great failure of 9/11 was to ascribe the terrorist attacks to religious fanaticism rather than strategic calculation or historic grievance. Not only is the new president staying Bush’s course in Iraq, bulking up our forces in Afghanistan, and concocting new variations on indefinite detention, he continues to view a broad swathe of the world in undifferentiated religious terms. He patronizes nearly as well as his predecessor—thanks for the algebra; that’s really swell calligraphy.
Obama seems to believe that the force of his person is a substitute for changed policy: MuslimWorld will surely play nice now that it knows he heard calls to prayer as a tot and met Muslims in Chicago who found “peace.” But they’d probably prefer that an American president could tell the difference between Morocco and Malaysia.
I agree in principle, but the substance of what he said was more important, some of which even contradicts your exaggerations of his policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For God’s sake, he conceded Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy, to say nothing of all the smaller and more subtle points he put across.
Not that I’m swooning, on the contrary, I can hardly ever stand to watch the guy’s speeches, which is why I’m usually pleasantly surprised when I read about them afterward.
I usually like the writers at AmConMag, but this article is just stupid.
Obama indicated quite clearly in his speech that he understands that speeches, by themselves, will not solve anything. At the same time, there is still value in speeches, as long as there is follow-through afterward. For that, we will have to wait and see. He just gave the speech this morning, after all. How quickly do you expect to see results?
It is true that he oversimplified the nature of Islam, but he could easily have talked all day about the divergences of opinion that exist within Islam, or, for that matter, Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism. Would there have been a point to that? It seems obvious to me that Obama intentionally characterized Islam as he did in the interest of making it clear that he does not see Muslims as merely a bunch of violent fanatics who cannot be reasoned with, and to appeal to those aspects of Islam that he wants to encourage. His rhetoric was clearly designed to promote the idea that the violent extremists do not have legitimacy on their side. If you cannot understand this, what business do you have writing about politics?
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty guarantees Iran an “absolute right” to a peaceful civilian nuclear energy. How low are our standards when we’re impressed that a U.S. politician acknowledges this fact — especially when the same administration repeatedly claims Iran is developing or pursuing nuclear weapons, contrary to the findings of their own intelligence agencies?
That was a pretty nuanced speech. I’ve read parts of it and don’t find it to be really problematic. Yes, Obama thinks that the power of his rhetoric and person can change things (at least in the short term). But he’s probably not so dumb as to believe that he alone can change the way the “Muslim World” reacts to the U.S.
He’s far too much of a centrist to make American foreign policy sane. But he’s about as good as late stage American democracy can offer at this point: forcing Israel’s hand, opening up ways to talk to the Iranians. These are not small things, and one would only need to contemplate how John McCain would’ve acted these past 6 months to realize that Obama may be marginally better, but that margin is important.
Because Bush mistook 19 angry men for the clash of civilizations, he couldn’t undertake a police operation to shake out their desert nests, but had to attempt a makeover of the entire Middle East.
While conciliatory rhetoric goes down easier than cowboy-speak, Obama has similar trouble with scale. His scope is no less sweeping—“I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” It’s impossible for him to comprehend that women’s rights in Bangladesh really aren’t his business. Neither are “creat[ing] green jobs, digitiz[ing] records, clean[ing] water, and grow[ing] new crops” in “Muslim-majority” countries. While better than invasion, this is still an intrusive posture. The old arrogance has simply been repackaged.
The problem is that Obama was actually speaking to two audiences – Muslims in general, which as Kara points out, constitute a rather disparate group, and to Americans who want a simple message without too many frills. How it will all play out is not yet clear, but Obama is a clever man and he pushed a lot of buttons. It is to be hoped that he will succeed in dissipating at least some of the hostile miasma of the Bush years. I suspect most thoughtful Muslims will welcome both the messenger and the message but will wait to see if anything actually changes apart from rhetoric. Most Americans who have negative feelings about Islam will likely not change their views, but some will at least accept that the the Bush Doctrine’s underlying message that American interests were all that mattered has not made us any safer.
This author mocks Obama for not differentiating among Muslims as if Obama is making the same mistake that Bush is. The author fails to understand that the Bushian non-differentiation of Muslims was a feature, not a bug, of the Bush years and meant to demonize all Muslims as terrorists. It was necessary to incite rampant Islamophopia.in the US in order to create and maintain support for the series of wars that were to constitute the War on Terror, including Iraq and Iran. Conflation of all Muslims also allowed the Palestinians to be dismissed as terrorists who Israel was bravely battling and killing so that the issue of a Palestinian state could be set aside.
Islamophopia in the US is what Obama is battling when he said, “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” I’m actually taken aback that the author does not understand how important this is to preventing further wars in the Middle East while she sneers at Obama’s arrogance and ignorance.