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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Obama’s “Bush Did It” Narrative |
| 2009-11-05 |
| Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson FP: Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. I’d like to talk to you today about radical Islam and the Obama administration’s ability and inclination, or lack thereof, to confront it. What’s the best way to begin this discussion? Hanson: Thanks Jamie. The paradigm of discussing radical Islam is entirely different after January 20. Jihad has been institutionalized now as a benign personal odyssey rather than explicatory of the sort of murderous attacks we have seen since 1979 directed at the West, most recently with the four Islamic plots to kill Americans by radical Islamists since Obama has taken office. Obama’s interview with al Arabiya and his Cairo speech had two clear themes: his own personal heritage makes him uniquely qualified to undo the Bush damage; and we in the West have been equally culpable for the strained relations. This sort of moral equivalence is little concerned with any redress of pathologies that in fact led to 9/11: Western appeasement of, or indifference to, radical Islam, whose extremism was the natural dividend of a region torn by enormous oil wealth, and age old statism, tribalism, gender intolerance, and dictatorship. In the era of Obama, radical Islam and the West merely have different narratives, rather than a fascistic creed trying to destroy the notion of Western freedom and tolerance. Abroad as both sides refocus on the Afghanistan theater, somehow Obama is more demoralized by our victory in Iraq than the Islamists are by their defeat; and we have forgotten in the Bush ‘reset’ button rhetoric that support for bin Laden and suicide bombing–given the terrible dividends they earned–had plummeted in polls in the Middle East. In addition, in the “Bush did it” Obama narrative there was no mention of the arrest of Dr. Khan, the Syrian exit from Lebanon, the surrender of the Libyan WMD stockpiles, or the absence of another 9/11. The result is that many in the radical Islamic world–especially after Obama’s serial trashing of the Bush-era security protocols like retaps, intercepts, and Guantanamo– may well be emboldened to think that either America questions its successful efforts at thwarting another attack since 9/11, or in some strange way sympathizes with some of the writs against itself. FP: What explains the Obama administration’s behaviour and viewpoint in this context? Hanson: a) Obama is a product of his education and early life, in which America being culpable for a variety of sins was the gospel , as we see from his associates like Ayers, to his minister like Wright, to the general force of his community organizing in Chicago, to his most partisan voting record in the Senate; b) Obama, like many elites on the left who thrived in the academic and organizing/grant-giving world, understood that his exotic name, his mixed heritage, his father’s Muslim roots could all be combined to present some sort of revolutionary aura within the confines of the university that would pay career dividends, and then among the general public, if packaged with a charismatic and conciliatory persona, could make one feel comfortable and good about one’s supposed liberality; he thrived on being a ‘revolutionary’ lite figure in a non-threatening manner, and it’s hard to give up a winning hand at this late stage; c) Obama has almost no real experience with an America outside the victim politics of Chicago and the melodramas of the university. He has never run a business, never worked hard with his hands, never had to meet a budget, never understood how money is made, but instead essentially pleaded his cause to win fellowships and grants, dispensed someone else’s money as a board member, made claims against government (”organizing”), and written his autobiographies at a young age. Life, in other words, was pretty easy, as the path from Harvard Review to Nobel Prize Winner was characterized by smoothing rhetoric and a host of people who, for a host of psychological reasons of their own, wished to give him something for something he didn’t earn. Now he oddly seems surprised that not all those abroad are as wowed as the 2008 American electorate. Rest at link |
| Posted by:ed |
| #7 In defense of man Bill, like most of us, angry, snorting Hildebeast sex is simply not his forte. Particularly when other opportunities abound. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-11-05 11:12 |
| #6 Snake eyed Weasel? It's Bill endearing term for his wandering appendage. You know, his dowsing stick of |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-11-05 11:08 |
| #5 Snake eyed Weasel? |
| Posted by: Karl Rove 2009-11-05 10:39 |
| #4 What else can I say. After the fork is stuck in this bozo, I'll look like a pretty good President. Now if I can just get Hillary to quit sucking up to the Islamonazis, my legacy is looking better all the time. Heck, I was talking to Jimmah the other day and he is exciting about moving up a notch on the Best President's list (from dead last). I wonder what that snake eyed weasel Rove has to say about this? |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2009-11-05 10:37 |
| #3 Is that related to "A wizard did it"? |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2009-11-05 09:14 |
| #2 Being |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-11-05 08:54 |
| #1 Barry is a weak man-child. |
| Posted by: newc 2009-11-05 08:45 |