Obama and the Muslim World
Posted by Jonathan on January 31st, 2008 (All posts by Jonathan)
Jim Miller nails it:
But all these — and many more practical objections — are small considering the grandiose stupidity of his central idea, that our differences with radical Muslims can be worked out in an “honest discussion”. A significant minority in the Muslim world does not want to talk to us, but wants us to submit and, preferably, convert. Most Muslims do not want that, but most Muslims are not our problem. Our strategy must be to separate the radicals from the moderates, not to unite all Muslims to demand things from us.
(See also this post.)
Left and Right both err fundamentally by treating Muslims as monolithic. The Left imagines a harmonious Islam that the West has offended and should now appease. The Right is concerned about a monolithically hostile Islam that the West must defend itself against. In fact there are all kinds of Muslims, many of whom are friendly to the West, many of whom are part of the West. If our leaders don’t understand the important distinctions between Muslims then we will have great difficulty in responding effectively to events in the Muslim world.
Obama’s statements on foreign affairs reveal both foolishness and arrogance. Foolishness because appeasement as a strategy is never effective against committed enemies. Arrogance because it’s not all about us: there is big change underway in the Muslim world, it’s been going on for decades, and while we are now deeply involved and have a lot of power and influence, we didn’t start it. At best we can protect ourselves and help reasonable Muslims to prevail over the killers. But to do that effectively we need to draw clear distinctions between good guys and bad.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:34 am
“In fact there are all kinds of Muslims, many of whom are friendly to the West, many of whom are part of the West.”
I generally believe what you have to say re. Muslims in your post Jim. However, the sentence from your post above doesn’t address the problem that those Muslims who will accommodate western civilization are hypocritical (with respect to their religion) or dissembling. The Koran clearly, very clearly, is intolerant, barbaric, and vengefully jealous. Therefore the “radical” Islamist problem will be (and has been, in fact, throughout their history) repeated periodically until it succeeds. To have Muslims turn away from this is like asking Christians to abandon the bible.
A Christian believes that the highest form of personal behavior is exemplified by Christ when he walked the earth and that his words are true and precious. So to the Muslims with respect to Mohammad.
February 1st, 2008 at 9:21 am
Your post raises two issuesP
1. how do we sepagze the good from the bad among a zillion?
2. change has been “going on for decades”? But the attacks upon American installations has but taken place in very recent time, hardly for decades.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:25 am
Obama, like most Leftist, is an articulate intellectual and he seeks define all problems in such as way that they can be solved by articulation. When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails. Talking is basically the tool that Obama and others like him have in their toolbox so they therefore conclude that the only possible solution is dialog.
Defining a problem as one that cannot be solved by dialog means defining a problem as one that Obama cannot solve and he will not accept that. His skills, his view of himself and his desire for power within our society drives him to only see certain narrow solutions to very complex and persistent problems.
February 1st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
This post speaks to America’s #1 dilemma in the war against Islamic supremacism. Namely, that our ultimate victory or defeat in this war hinges in very large part on the outcome of what amounts to a civil war within Islam between the supremacists and proponents of more benign understandings of Islam, a struggle over which the U.S., on account of not being a Muslim society, has little if any substantial influence.
As Jonathan points out, Obama is repeating the Left’s standard fallacy that everything (or at least everything bad) that goes on in the world revolves around what the American “hyperpower” does or doesn’t do. This is silly in any case, and especially so when it creates the expectation that the U.S., of all nations, can somehow unify Muslim peoples who have been at each others’ throats since long before the U.S. even existed as a nation, much less unify them in our favor.
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:03 am
I guess that’s why he’d send missiles into Pakistan if he knew Al-Q’s position there.
Yall sure beat the hell out of that scarecrow, though. It’ll think twice before coming around here again.