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From one Cairo speech to another
Watching President Obama's speech today in Cairo was like déjà vu all over again for me. I played a part in that other Cairo speech, and today brought back memories of how exciting an event like this is, how taxing it can be on those involved (I was sick and borderline hallucinatory back four years ago), and how a U.S. motorcade can grind traffic in Cairo to an absolute halt. I remember seeing one furious driver standing beside his car shaking his fist at us as we whizzed by back in 2005. Hearts and minds, hearts and minds...
As a kind of veteran of Cairo speeches, I give Obama mostly high marks, bearing in mind what the speech was supposed to be. It was gauzy sentiment, expressions of principle, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand ecumenism, gestures of courtship, sweet nothings, and some harmless pandering -- and that is what it needed to be. The context for Obama's Cairo speech was quite different than Rice's Cairo speech. A lot happened in the past four years. Whether you think recent U.S. policy was necessary or not, we can all agree that it was unpopular, that it produced tension and mistrust. A speech won't resolve that of course, but any president at this moment would want to try to clear the air a bit and signal a fresh start (even if the policies are often similar). And Obama did that without really rubbing anyone's nose in it. As for whether this was more of his "apology tour," well, Rice told her audience in Cairo that, for 60 years, the U.S. government sided with autocrats over democrats for the sake of stability, and failed to achieve it. That's an apology if ever there were one, and it was effective. Soft power has its limits, but also its purposes.
Ambrose Bierce once called diplomacy "the patriotic art of lying for one's country." Obama, instead, committed himself to "speak the truth as best he can." Which he did, sort of. He spoke truths, but not particularly hard ones: The United States is not at war with Islam. We're not an empire either, and we don't want to be in Iraq forever. Democracy and human rights are great things. So is freedom of religion. Women have rights too, and deserve education. We'll engage with everyone respectfully, at least the ones who renounce violence first. A world without nuclear weapons is a great goal, especially if it includes Iran. Israelis and Palestinians both have legitimate concerns, but also urgent responsibilities -- essentially what's been in the Roadmap for years: renouncing and fighting violence for Palestinians, and freezing settlements for Israelis.
You could call this truth-telling. You could also call it difference-splitting. Either way, none of it is really earth-shattering, but it's what Obama had to do, and he did it with his characteristic thoughtfulness and gravitas.
Still, I can't help but feel frustrated that I've been watching Obama closely for more than two years now, and after an hour-long speech in Cairo today, I still don't have a clear read of which way he'll come down on the looming hard decisions for which there is no middle ground, try as he may to carve some out. He talked about violent extremist groups and democratic elections. Well, Hezbollah is about to win one (partly) in a few days. Then what? He talked about democracy and the non-linear path that it often takes. Well, I'm not sure where on that path the Egyptian or Saudi governments are, and surely today's speech won't stop them from imprisoning peaceful dissidents, and worse. So, then what? How hard will Obama strain those relationships for the sake of human rights, if at all? Will he then speak some truth to our authoritarian friends about how America's support for democracy is being harmed by their abuse of their people? Or for that matter, how hard will Obama push his own Congress and State Department to restore the funding that was recently cut for democratic reformers in Egypt? He also talked about the war in Afghanistan, which may very well get worse before the new commanders, troops, civilians, and resources can make it better over the coming year, and many in Obama's own party may start heading for the door. Then what? I have no idea.
Today's speech in Cairo wasn't the time to get into plans and specifics, but that time is coming. It's a truism to say that rhetoric can't solve all or even most problems, and that actions matter most. Well, some really unpleasant realities are about to intrude on this "new beginning." And as the last several years have shown, reality has a nasty habit of stinking up the place. For all the things Obama needed to say (and that I support him saying) to his Muslim audience today, I as an American am still left with more questions than answers.
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Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition.
Try as you may - you cannot
Try as you may - you cannot understand.
What's there to understand. Obama is clueless on the issues - period. He pushed the chicke-button all his life. Jones of Springfield made him a Senator. What's there to understand? He's got staff to advise him, all with contradictory ideas, and as the man with no vision but who is supposed to see, he plays the part of blah-blah man.
What's there to understand - that you are let down, and you didn't listen to Alain de Botton and read Seneca? (his latest in Standpoint)
@editorials at FP - why not organise debates with Standpoint?
Too soon to tell...
A consequence of the television and internet-fed data addictions that pervade contemporary American society is the never-ending thirst for new information. We try to slake it with an expansive cloud of analysis that blossoms around every new datum in an unending quest to know every aspect of every happening and incorporate this information into our general understanding of the world, usually with a healthy dose of politically-motivated interpretive coloring. Unfortunately for us, reality plods along at its stubborn pace, no amount of prodding on our part can "fast-forward" to 2012 or 2016 so we can reflect on Barack Obama's accomplishments.
Given this, it is simply a remnant of bloated campaign posturing to dismiss Mr Obama as the silver-tongued but empty-headed puppet of fractious cabals of advisers, just as it is to hail him as a faultless savior who has come to our humble nation to wash it clean of sin and bring forth a new age of utopian human fraternity.
Simply put, he is a president who exudes intelligence and confidence in public, who has continued much of the policy direction that Mr Bush had been pursuing towards the end of his own presidency, and who has otherwise yet to substantively deliver (or be able to do so) in terms of supposed foreign policy shifts, such as dealing more equitably with Palestine or defusing tensions with Iran. Sooner than denounce him for failures that have yet to really be seen, I counsel patience and either cautious optimism or constructive pessimism as befits your political predilections.
I for one find his intelligence and pragmatism reassuring. Being a left-winger, I'm disappointed that he isn't moving forward more aggressively on some his more progressive campaign promises. On the other hand, his foreign policy stance (though not yet substantivized) seems to me very promising, and in line with the sorts of recommendations I'd likely make (continuing warfare in central Asia notwithstanding). A shame to have to wait so long to find out how it's all turned out.
Apology it was not
Neither Obama nor Rice came close to apologizing in their respective Cairo speeches. What they both did is to acknowledge error in U.S. policy. This is refreshing enough, but it's far from even the most basic apology. An apology requires, at a minimum, a personal acceptance of responsibility for a course of conduct clearly labeled a mistake, an expression of remorse that includes a variant of "I'm sorry" or "I apologize," payment of restitution, if warranted, and a promise not to repeat the offending behavior.
To learn more about the elements of an effective apology, go to www.effectiveapology.com
No real mystery, look at how
No real mystery, look at how he's come down on the economy. He was a middle of the road guy (and still is) in speeches, but when it came time for action he chose the statist big-government option, placing the country on a path to bankruptcy and condemning our children to economic slavery. He has had little life experience outside government and academia, and so accepts the premises of these institutions, i.e., people cannot be self-sufficient and only the government can create jobs and provide for us. There is little room for private innovation in his America. You can also see this in his energy policy, that has caused the price of oil to double in a few short months.
He will choose a similar path in foreign policy, and will simply follow the academic left and its premises. It's tempting to consider him little more than a great actor with little brains, and there is something admirable about him, in the sense that you can't help but admire the snake-oil salesman as he unloads his wares, and you realize that people are actually forking out their money for bottles of horsepiss.
Obama's speech at Buchenwald
In reference to the denial by Iranian president Ahmadinejad that holocaust ever happened, President Obama said in Germany that ’he does NOT have patience with people who would deny history’. Here is some history that President should know and NOT deny either.
The political arm of Islam has been waging terroristic holy war on the rest of the world for centuries. It has waged this war against civilizations that have nothing to do with the West, let alone America. This is why the case of Muslim aggression against India proves so much.
Medieval India, before the Muslim invasions, was a richly imaginative culture, one of the half-dozen most advanced civilizations of all time. Muslim invaders began entering India in the early 8th century, on the orders of Hajjaj, the governor of what is now Iraq. In the aftermath of the Muslim invasions of India from 8th to 11th centuries, in the ancient cities of Varanasi, Mathura, Ujjain, Maheshwar, Jwalamukhi, and Dwarka, not one temple survived whole and intact. This is the equivalent of an army marching into Paris and Rome, Florence and Oxford, and razing their architectural treasures to the ground.
In his book The Story of Civilization, famous historian Will Durant lamented the results of what he termed "probably the bloodiest story in history." He called it "a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within. Muslim invaders "broke and burned everything beautiful they came across in Hindustan," displaying the resentment of the less developed warriors who felt intimidated in the encounter with "a more refined culture." The Muslim Sultans built mosques at the sites of torn down temples, and many Hindus were sold into slavery. As far as they were concerned, Hindus were kafirs, heathens, par excellence. They, and to a lesser extent the peaceful Buddhists, were, unlike Christians and Jews, not "of the book" but at the receiving end of Muhammad’s injunction against pagans: "Kill those who join other gods wherever you may find them."
The massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history. In sheer numbers, they are bigger than the Jewish Holocaust, the Soviet Terror, the Japanese massacres of the Chinese during WWII, Mao’s devastations of the Chinese peasantry, the massacres of the Armenians by the Turks, or any of the other famous crimes against humanity of the 20th Century. But sadly, they are almost unknown outside India. The perpetrators of these massacres were not military thugs disobeying the ethical teachings of their religion, as the European crusaders in the Holy Land were, but were actually doing precisely what their religion taught. As has been well-documented, jihad has been preached from the official centers of Islam, not just the lunatic fringe.
Condi's apology
You regard Condi's comments on autocracy and democracy as "an apology if there ever was one"?
I would call that an after-the-fact justification for the Iraq debacle as much as an apology.
Regarding hard truths, you give Obama too little credit. Acknowledging that Iraq was a war of choice, and a mistake, was too hard for the last administration. Likewise renouncing permanent bases in Iraq (and meaning it), recognizing the obligation of the US and other nuclear powers to reduce their arsenals, and calling Israel on settlements. Earth-shaterring, no, but substantial and important, and not what would have been communicated regardless of who the president was.