Bursting the Obamaballoon

Filed under: US Elections

CARI.Obama.gif Remember how some of us thought that when the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR collapsed, this meant that the people of Russia would then be able to show their true colors and build a civilized, democratic nation that would not terrorize the planet any longer? It's amazing how naive and just-plain- stupid that attitude seems now, as we watch the people of Russia freely elect a proud KGB spy as their leader and allow him to reestablish an imperials neo-Soviet state, isn't it? When will we ever learn?

Writing in the Washington Post, an Iranian expat named Reza Aslan tries to help us, by brutally bursting the bubble-gum bubble that is Barack Obama. He points to the argument made by such as Andrew Sullivan, Dominique Moisi and the editors of the Boston Globe:

Imagine that a young Muslim boy in, say, Egypt, is watching television when suddenly he sees this black man -- the grandson of a Kenyan Muslim, no less! -- who spent a small part of his childhood in Indonesia, taking the oath of office as president of the United States. Suddenly, the boy realizes that the United States is not the demonic, anti-Islamic place he's always been told it was. Meanwhile, all around the Muslim world, other young would-be jihadists have a similar epiphany. "Maybe Osama bin Laden is wrong," they think. "Maybe America is not so bad after all."

The possibility that this little Muslim boy will do exactly what Osama bin Laden would do, namely to attack all those supporting Obama in the U.S. as traitors, just as he attacks all the Muslims who support the U.S. in Iraq, and redouble his efforts to destroy us, seems not to occur to any of these brilliant pontificators.

Aslan states that he knows differently, from his own personal life experience:

As someone who once was that young Muslim boy everyone seems to be imagining (albeit in Iran rather than Egypt), I'll let you in on a secret: He could not care less who the president of the United States is. He is totally unconcerned with whatever barriers a black (or female, for that matter) president would be breaking. He couldn't name three U.S. presidents if he tried. He cares only about one thing: what the United States will do.

In other words, if Obama intends to sell out to Osama and bring U.S. policy into line with Al Quaeda's agenda, then sure, Osama will love him and call off his jihadists. But he'd do exactly the same thing right now if George Bush were willing to be so obliging. Otherwise, imagining that "new face" is going to change anything is wildly patronizing to the Islamic fanatics, exactly the type of insult that electing Obama is meant to supposedly cure. Ironic, isn't it? Of course, maybe accommodating America's enemies is exactly what the left-wing editors of the Boston Globe want. But that's an issue for another day.

It seems that the sages don't recall history very well, either. Aslan does, though:

When the idealistic Democrat came to Iran in 1977 to ring in the new year with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country's much-despised despot, throngs of young, hopeful Iranians lined the streets to welcome the new American president. After eight years of the Nixon and Ford administrations' blind support for the shah's brutal regime, Iranians thrilled to Carter's promise to re-brand America's image abroad by focusing on human rights. That call even let many moderate, middle-class Iranians dare to hope that they might ward off the popular revolution everyone knew was coming. But at that historic New Year's dinner, Carter surprised everyone. In a shocking display of ignorance about the precarious political situation in Iran, he toasted the shah for transforming the country into "an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world." With those words, Carter unwittingly lit the match of revolution.

The next thing you knew, our embassy staff in Tehran was being held hostage. So much for all the good will flowing from America's "new face."

Aslan castigates the Boston Globe for its childish assessment:

In their glowing endorsement of Obama, the editors of the Boston Globe noted that "the first American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must." True enough. But such "intricate realities" are not best dealt with through "an intuitive grasp of global politics" -- Obama's chief asset, according to the Globe -- but through an intimate knowledge of those realities and of the nuanced responses necessary to address them. Obama may possess all the intuition of a fortuneteller. But as chair of a Senate subcommittee on Europe, he has never made an official trip to Western Europe (except a one-day stopover in London in August 2005) or held a single policy hearing. He's never faced off with foreign leaders and has no idea what a delicate sparring match diplomacy in the Middle East can be. And at a time in which the United States has gone from sole superpower to global pariah in a mere seven years, these things matter.

If we can't get over our silly idea that a single magical event will solve all our problems, then those who operate without any such illusions -- like Vladimir Putin and Osama bin Laden -- will continue to victimize us.

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