I’ve always admired Obama’s rhetoric. It is the most soaring and lyrical since the days of Bobby Kennedy. It exudes hope. But, deep down, I’ve always had nagging doubts about what he actually stood for. Well, consider his recent foreign policy speech. This is perhaps the most sensible statement yet by a mainstream politician:
“Just because the President misrepresents our enemies does not mean we do not have them. The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate. To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for…
The President would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al Qaeda’s war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al Qaeda in Iraq – which didn’t exist before our invasion – and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan. He lumps together groups with very different goals: al Qaeda and Iran, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. He confuses our mission…
By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.
When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world’s most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.”
(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)
Now, I don’t agree with absolutely everything in this statement. The whole thing about “restoring the caliphate” is simply throwing a bone to the rapid right. Sure, there is a tiny minority of Muslims who have such an aim. But people do not support Al Qaeda terrorism for this reason. They do so because they are deeply angered by the foreign policy of the west, especially America, that appears to ride roughshod over the entire Islamic world. They abhor the sweet talking about democracy on the one hand, and the support for thuggish despots in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt on the other. With deep and abiding memories of post-Ottoman colonialism, they are enraged by American military bases and occupations. They are suspicious of America’s unquenchable thirst for oil, and its seeming willingness to do whatever it takes to keep the pumps flowing. And most of all, they detest America’s one-sided pro-Israel tilt in the core Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
But still, Obama’s speech is a breath of fresh air, especially when his Republican counterparts are constantly trying to one-up each other on who can appear the most macho, who can bomb and torture the most, who can make the most simplifying assumptions, who has the least amount of context, and who can make the world more dangerous. Here’s the best yet: Tom Tancredo thinks the US should threaten to blow up Mecca and Medina.
Richard John Neuhaus recently argued that the Catholic bishops should not be in the business of forging “policies for the conduct of foreign affairs by the U.S. government”. The particular issue was the Iraq war. This is surely a peculiar brand of Catholic nationalism unique to Neuhaus and his (ever dwindling) circle of friends, akin to the secular “love it or leave it” mantra. But since he thinks the bishops should shut up about Iraq, maybe he should listen to Obama. He might just learn something.
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