The Roots of Obama's Rage (25 page)
Read The Roots of Obama's Rage Online
Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
But when we look more closely we see that Obama is up to something quite different. A few months into his presidency, Obama embarked on a kind of world tour. Visiting London in early April 2009, Obama told his English audience he had come “to listen, not to lecture.” In Germany, he confessed, “I don’t come bearing grand designs.” Rather, “I’m here to . . . share ideas and to jointly... help shape our vision for the future.”
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The Europeans got the message: Obama was on an apology tour, repenting for the sins of the Bush administration. The real message of his “sharing” was that without European approval, there would be no more U.S. invasions, no more unilateral American military action. In a way, Obama was paying the former colonial powers the compliment of using them as a restraint on American power. Barely able to contain its excitement, the Norwegian Parliament promptly conferred on Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. Not that he had done anything to deserve it. The honor was basically for endorsing the Norwegian view of America’s role in the world.
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The Europeans got the message: Obama was on an apology tour, repenting for the sins of the Bush administration. The real message of his “sharing” was that without European approval, there would be no more U.S. invasions, no more unilateral American military action. In a way, Obama was paying the former colonial powers the compliment of using them as a restraint on American power. Barely able to contain its excitement, the Norwegian Parliament promptly conferred on Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. Not that he had done anything to deserve it. The honor was basically for endorsing the Norwegian view of America’s role in the world.
Next Obama carried his self-abasement routine from the colonizers to the colonized, from Europe to the more hostile regions of the world. At a meeting of South American nations on April 17, 2009, Obama told the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti, “I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and no junior partner. The United States will be willing to acknowledge past errors where those errors have been made.” How nice for this motley Third World crew to discover that henceforth they would be operating on an equal plane with the United States. Warming to Obama’s promise to acknowledge American misdeeds, Hugo Chavez presented Obama with a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s
The Open Veins of Latin America
. The book’s theme is conveyed by its subtitle,
Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
. The continent, of course, is South America, and guess who is doing the pillaging? Too bad the book was in Spanish, a language Obama doesn’t read, because its anti-colonial themes would have thoroughly resonated with him. Chavez may have addressed Obama in the wrong medium, but he was entirely on target in his message.
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The Open Veins of Latin America
. The book’s theme is conveyed by its subtitle,
Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
. The continent, of course, is South America, and guess who is doing the pillaging? Too bad the book was in Spanish, a language Obama doesn’t read, because its anti-colonial themes would have thoroughly resonated with him. Chavez may have addressed Obama in the wrong medium, but he was entirely on target in his message.
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Visiting China in November 2009, Obama did not hesitate to criticize the Chinese government for its violation of human rights. But this criticism was carefully balanced by his lamentations for America’s own human rights record. Obama noted that while China was responsible for forced abortions and the coerced trafficking in women for prostitution, “We are not perfect.... If you talk to women in America, they will tell you that there are still men who have a lot of old-fashioned ideals about the role of women in society.” Obama struck a similar note of moral equivalence in Turkey, where his criticism of the Turkish genocide of Armenians was qualified by his acknowledgment of America’s own sins, such as its “treatment of native Americans.”
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Some conservatives chastised Obama, pointing out the indignity of an American president giving such short shrift to his own country. These critics also noted the absurdity of Obama’s comparisons between America’s past misdeeds and the ongoing, and vastly more serious, abuses by the nations the president was addressing. This criticism became even louder when Obama cancelled the deployment of antimissile defenses to Poland and the Czech Republic. Many on the right faulted Obama for his inability to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies. Summing up these arguments, Victor Davis Hanson argued in a recent broadside that when you treat your enemies well and your friends badly, it seems that you have lost your compass.
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But these criticisms in a way miss the point, not because they are wrong but because they are not strong enough. Obama is too intelligent a man to intend his “you do sex slavery but we have husbands who won’t do the dishes” analogies seriously. His larger point was to telegraph to the world that he intended to be a different kind of president, one whose main focus would be not on controlling the destiny of other nations, but rather on controlling the actions of his own country. Rather than American foreign policy seeking to regulate the world, Obama was soliciting the world to help regulate American foreign policy. In other words, Obama hasn’t lost his compass, as the critics allege; he seems to be operating with a different compass.
Consider Obama’s decision to deny Poland and the Czech Republic missile defense technology. The ostensible purpose of this was to appease Russia, and the goal of appeasing Russia was to win Russian cooperation on sanctions against Iran. If this was the goal, it manifestly failed. The Russians—just like the Chinese—have been dawdling on sanctions since the idea was first proposed. Neither country believes it is in its interest to impose severe sanctions on Iran because both have valuable commercial contacts there. The Chinese continue to buy Iranian oil; the Russians sell military technology to Iran. Every time the Russians signal, however tentatively, that they will consider sanctions, the White House is ecstatic. But somehow the Russians never come through in supporting strong sanctions—the only kind of sanctions that have a chance to make an impact.
Actually, it’s doubtful that any kind of sanctions would work. They haven’t worked in restricting nuclear weapons anywhere else; for instance, military analyst Graham Allison points out in
Foreign Affairs
that America has had sanctions against North Korea for decades, and the North Koreans have gone ahead and built ten nuclear bombs.
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The reason sanctions are a long shot with Iran is simple: the mullahs really want to build a nuclear bomb. If you and I were mullahs, we’d want to build a bomb. The Iranian regime has two good reasons to acquire nuclear weapons. First, there are Jewish and Christian bombs in the Middle East, but there is no Islamic bomb. An Iranian bomb would strike real fear in both Israel and America; no longer could the West have its way—not with Iran capable of setting off a regional nuclear holocaust. Second, several Muslim countries are vying for supremacy in the Middle East. The leading contenders are Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Certainly the Muslim country that goes nuclear immediately emerges as the top dog. Yes, the Saudis have the two holy sites, but we have the nukes, baby. Nukes bring you real respect. Twentieth century proverb: what do you call a dictator who has nuclear weapons? Answer: Sir!
Foreign Affairs
that America has had sanctions against North Korea for decades, and the North Koreans have gone ahead and built ten nuclear bombs.
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The reason sanctions are a long shot with Iran is simple: the mullahs really want to build a nuclear bomb. If you and I were mullahs, we’d want to build a bomb. The Iranian regime has two good reasons to acquire nuclear weapons. First, there are Jewish and Christian bombs in the Middle East, but there is no Islamic bomb. An Iranian bomb would strike real fear in both Israel and America; no longer could the West have its way—not with Iran capable of setting off a regional nuclear holocaust. Second, several Muslim countries are vying for supremacy in the Middle East. The leading contenders are Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Certainly the Muslim country that goes nuclear immediately emerges as the top dog. Yes, the Saudis have the two holy sites, but we have the nukes, baby. Nukes bring you real respect. Twentieth century proverb: what do you call a dictator who has nuclear weapons? Answer: Sir!
So the mullahs desperately want a bomb, and they have the capability to build it. Is there a way to stop them? Actually, yes. It is to support Iranians who are eager to overthrow their repressive government. This does not require an American invasion of Iran or any kind of a direct military operation. Rather, it requires supporting indigenous groups ready to fight for freedom in their own country. This would be akin to what America did with the Afghan mujahedeen who were trying to push out their Soviet oppressors. America did not send troops, but it did send military and economic assistance. The Afghans did the fighting; Afghanistan became what Gorbachev termed a “bleeding wound,” and the Soviets got out.
Is there a similar window of opportunity with Iran? In June 2009, there was. And think of the significance: Iran is the one important country whose government is in the hands of the radical Muslims. Countries like Syria and Egypt, for instance, are under secular rulers; Saudi Arabia and other sheikdoms of the Gulf are actually fighting their own wars against Al Qaeda. If America could help eject the Iranian regime, it would be a devastating blow to radical Islam. Not that there have been easy openings to do this. But just six months into his term in office, Obama had a rare chance when tens of thousands of Iranians took to the street to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s blatant rigging of the Iranian presidential election.
Of course the Iranian mullahs have been rigging elections since 1979 when Khomeini first came to power. But this time many people had had enough. Controversy over the election rapidly led to demands for an end to the regime. True, the protests lacked a unifying leader, someone with the capacity of a Lech Walesa or Boris Yeltsin who could have rallied the people into effective action. Yet with the right kind of encouragement, such a leader might have emerged. So here was a magnificent opportunity for the Obama administration to embrace the rebel cause and actively support efforts to topple the regime.
In fact, Obama did nothing. He let the opportunity pass. And while the mullahs were cracking down on the protesters, Obama remarked that “they are in the middle of an extraordinary debate taking place in Iran.” Debate? I suppose you could call the sight of Iranian police beating up civilians on the street a debate. Obama also specified what he intended to do: “We are going to monitor the situation and see how this plays itself out before we make any judgments about how we proceed.”
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In other words, he intended to do nothing. He would wait for the protests to end and then he would figure out how, if at all, to respond. Eventually the protests were shut down, and Obama decided that no response was, after all, necessary. So that was the end of that.
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In other words, he intended to do nothing. He would wait for the protests to end and then he would figure out how, if at all, to respond. Eventually the protests were shut down, and Obama decided that no response was, after all, necessary. So that was the end of that.
Having ignored the best chance to stop the Iranian bomb, and to help overthrow the regime itself, Obama continues with his laborious exercise of collecting signatures for sanctions. And as we saw in an earlier chapter, there is a second tier to Obama’s strategy: example-setting. Obama has managed to convince the Russians that both America and Russia should substantially reduce their nuclear arsenals, presumably so that other countries like Iran will appreciate the gesture and decide not to build their own nuclear weapons.
There is a certain preposterousness to all this that Obama’s conservative critics have highlighted and even thoughtful Obama supporters have quietly recognized. Anyone who thinks Iran will not build its bomb because America and Russia are paring down their stockpiles needs his head examined. Moreover, the Iranian government is clearly not scared of sanctions. Iran is an oil-rich country and it can always find a market for this most useful product. Besides, sanctions would only hurt the Iranian people; no one in the Iranian parliament would miss a meal. Not that Iran is even close to having to endure international sanctions. The Obama regime’s slow-motion attempts to build diplomatic support for sanctions have only moved the ball a few yards down the field. We are a long way from the goal line, and even if we get there, it may not matter.
What, then, is the point? If you plug in the anti-colonial model, you will see it right away. The point is to allow the Iranians to get nuclear weapons while the Obama administration pretends to try to stop them. I’m not suggesting that Obama actually favors placing nukes in the hands of mullahs. Rather, I’m saying that he has no interest in using American power to prevent that from happening. For Obama, it is the huge American arsenal, and possibly the Israeli arsenal, that pose a far greater danger to world peace and stability than a single bomb or a handful of bombs that the Iranians may build. For political reasons, however, Obama can’t adopt a ho-hum attitude toward an Iranian bomb. He has to make it look like he’s doing something. So he selects the strategy that is least likely to work.
Actually, from Obama’s point of view, it’s even better than that. Obama’s strategy works beautifully in achieving his own anti-colonial objectives. In denying the Poles and the Czechs missile defenses, Obama weakens America’s association with two key allies. Then Obama sits down with the Russians and negotiates steep mutual cuts in the two nations’ arsenals. The Russians don’t have to do much: their arsenal is mostly old and decayed. The Russians can just junk some of the old missiles that aren’t much good anyway. Meanwhile, America cuts its arsenal by a third. Thus, in the name of building support for sanctions and setting a good example for Iran, Obama has managed to substantially reduce America’s military power as well as its links to two small but reliable European allies. Far from being clumsy and stupid, the Obama approach seems to have been both ingenious and largely successful in doing what it set out to do: reduce the power of the neocolonial United States.
If we follow Obama’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, we see Obama acting with the same singularity of purpose and ingenuity in executing that purpose. This is not to say that Obama always gets his way. He has to operate within the parameters of what is politically possible. But within these goalposts Obama does exactly what the anti-colonial model predicts. His rhetoric is also illuminating in revealing what he wants to do. We have to read him carefully, because his statements are meticulously packaged for domestic political consumption. But even so, Obama cannot completely hide what he intends because he needs other people in his administration to actually carry out his wishes. So his packaging needs to have real content, and if we look we can usually get a peek at what’s underneath the fine rhetorical wrapping.
Obama’s first important foreign policy statement was on October 2, 2002, when he spoke at a rally in Chicago and condemned the looming Iraq war. In the Democratic primaries, Obama was able to use this fact against his main rival, Hillary Clinton: Obama claimed that his criticism of a then-popular but now-unpopular war had been prophetic. Obama’s anti-war rationale, however, was hardly stable or consistent. During the primary debates, Obama implied that his original opposition to the Iraq war had been based on the absence of weapons of mass destruction. Yet Obama himself admitted in
The Audacity of Hope
that “I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences.”
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So Obama’s view on this matter was actually very close to that of President Bush.
The Audacity of Hope
that “I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences.”
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So Obama’s view on this matter was actually very close to that of President Bush.
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