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Not all Muslims are honky-dory with the speech given by President Obama as he “addressed the Muslim world.” Le Monde correspondent Patrice Claude relayed the anxiety of Ayman Nour, “the most famous lay opponent to [Egyptian] President Hosni Moubarak’s regime.”
“It looks like the support for democracy by the new US administration is waning,” he said. “This year, the United States drastically cut money that financed [the NGOs that work towards democracy in Egpyt].”
His fears are justified. Think about the logical consequences of Obama’s statement. Western ideals such as liberty cannot be imposed on other nations. On the face of it, the statement is accurate. We’re learning in Iraq that you can’t just force people to have the American experience of over two hundred years shortened into a few months (which is why this is not a conservative war, but a product of Bush’s Wilsonian tendencies. Leftists should be all over this war, seeing as it is the same as the nation-building they called for in the Balkans and Somalia and are now calling for in Darfur, but I digress).
But it overturns the entire tradition of American foreign policy since our inception. And it finally moves multiculturalism from the ivory tower of academia to the inner-workings of Foggy Bottom. If the end result of his sentiments is the removal of support of democratic movements across the globe (which it seems to be), then not only should Ayman Nour be worrying, but we should be too. It’s analogous to an ostrich sticking his head in the sand, ignoring the developing geopolitical realities in an attempt to prove his naive view of foreign policy correct. He is apologizing for America’s past “sins” while simultaneously committing a graver sin: revoking our fellow man’s God-given rights and refusing to aid their efforts to finally attain those rights.
This shall go down in history as the Obama legacy: The failure of men like Ayman Nour, who for years have fought for democracy in Egypt, only to be spurned by the man many consider the savior of America. A tragedy.
In Obama’s world of relatives, it seems that both dictators and democracy advocates receive equal legitimacy.
Liberals have (sometimes justly so) been the first to criticize America for supporting dictatorships in the name of political expediency, and now Obama wants to do the same thing.
While I’m not a fan of Obama foreign policy fan either, I think the decisions he’s making are being informed by lessons learned. I think it’s less about his “world of relatives” than it is applying what has gotten the US anywhere in the past. If you want to place this decision in the metanarrative of US foreign policy, the way we’ve handled repressive governments hasn’t had a high success rate, or not seen Leftists return to power later, or in the case of Iran, Islamists.
Take Cuba for example. Every time we’ve been critical of the Cuban regime, it fueled the anti-American rhetoric Castro was able to employ. Us taking a hard stance allows the Cuban government to give Cubans the false impression that they are under siege. For a visual, here’s a propaganda sign my friend took a picture of on a visit to Cuba:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_E_4NdyayP-A/SVZKWVtDSwI/AAAAAAAAAew/FjpWwQMBy0U/s1600-h/DSCF3058.JPG
He’s Scottish, so he was able to travel there. The same dynamic works for Iran today, Nicaragua in the 80s, and to a degree, Sudan. That’s why the ICC indictment of Omar al-Bashir has been opposed by the League of Arab States, the African Union, and the non-Aligned Movement. In effect, the ICC made Bashir a symbol of anti-imperialism and national self-determination. That’s the rhetoric he’s employed and what he will keep employing I believe in the next election, or prevent there from being one. It’s Sudan’s first election in almost a decade.
As far as Egypt, Mubarak is 81 years old. He can’t rule forever, and I think the hands-off approach is meant to look like we’re not interfering with self-determination in the Arab world. For the same reason, I believe this is why Obama has said almost nothing explicit about the Iranian election, happening right now. Let them come to us rather than telling the Iranian people who we’d rather work with. Egypt is also one of our best allies among Arab nations in gathering intel on Al Qaeda. They bomb Egypt’s resorts.
And Obama is not alone, toward the end Bush was also mellowing his language and being subtly more diplomatic. He sent Bill Richardson to speak to Chavez in Venezuela and advocated for an interest section to be built in Iran. The dynamic works the other way too. When Chavez endorsed Ollanta Humala in Peru during the 2006 election, it was easy for the opposition candidate, Alan Garcia, to paint Humala as a pawn of Chavez in “asymmetric war” against the United States. By endorsing him, Chavez effectively lost the election for Humala on the issue of national self-determination.
Because of the way we’ve conducted ourselves in the past, for now it’s best for us to keep our mouth shut. We’re toxic.
*minus a fan in that first sentence there.