The Geopolitics of Nice Speeches
Lee Smith makes a reasonable point in his Slate article on Obama’s Cairo speech. He criticizes Obama for speaking across borders to address to Muslims as such (rather than Arabs or, better, Egyptians/Jordanians/etc.) and insists that this encourages Islamist fantasies about a supranational caliphate when we really need to be reinforcing the nation-state system in the Middle East and encouraging Muslims to render unto Caesar. But his argument contains the seeds of its own rebuttal, at least as it pertains to Obama’s approach. He writes:
Islam, despite the simplicity of its profession of faith—there is no God but God, and Mohammed is the messenger of God—is an esoteric creed with more than a millennium of jurisprudence and philosophy behind it. Islam is complicated. But Khomeini reduced this all to one big idea: Being a Muslim means opposition to the West, especially the United States.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. If a posture of resistance is the unifying force for Islamist political identity, then blurring the outlines of the object of this resistance, the United States, could weaken or dilute or confound this resistance. It might raise the psychic profile of the national identities that would be an antidote to this transnational fantasy. After all, as Smith himself writes, the Islamic world is fabulously complicated by a bunch of things, some religious, some not. If this historical-cultural-political multiplicity is, as he implies, the natural state of Islam, then lowering the American profile as a unifying enemy might allow these other forces to assume their natural priority, no matter what obama says in a single speech. I’m not saying this will work, but it’s a long slog in any case. One artfully conciliatory speech would probably move us closer to Smith’s own goals than a comparable portion of moral clarities. If the last eight years have taught us anything, it’s that just because the terms of your speech imply certain noble outcomes, it doesn’t mean those outcomes will actually come out. If Obama is successful, it won’t be because he’s transcended geopolitics. It’ll be because he’s brought it back.
Teacher: Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many. We found a new solar system, dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed, a process taking decades, to support human life, to be new Earths. The Central Planets formed the Alliance. Ruled by an interplanetary parliament, the Alliance was a beacon of civilization. The savage outer planets were not so enlightened and refused Alliance control. The war was devastating, but the Alliance’s victory over the Independents ensured a safer universe. And now everyone can enjoy the comfort and enlightenment of our civilization.
Young River: People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.
— matoko_chan · Jun 4, 07:34 PM · #
I’ll see your Serenity, and I’ll raise you Notes from the Underground:
“Some need to be meddled with,” says the rabbit to the coyote. “We’re building better worlds.”
— Sargent · Jun 4, 11:53 PM · #
Ah, but “better worlds” are relative.
And if we meddled in Iran and Iraq, why not Dafur? Why not Rwanda?
Why not eveywhere there is a need for the SuperAwesome World Police?
In’shallah Obama has not Bush’s sin of arrogance.
The Christian arrogance that there is is but one way.
— matoko_chan · Jun 5, 01:04 AM · #
Lee Smith is good at pointing out the fissiparous nature of Islamic identity, and reminding us that “secular” and “sectarian” aren’t mutually exclusive.
One other thing that he discussed a few years ago: pan-Arabism and post-Khomeni pan-Islamism are both vehicles of Sunni domination.
— Matt Frost · Jun 5, 04:20 AM · #
I know that, I’m a Sufi.
The Sunni freakin’ invented the caliphate to crush the Mu’tazhili and the Shi’ia back in the dawn of al-Islam.
I was pointing out the subtext of Obama’s speech, that we are done meddling, but we will properly and legitimately defend ourselves if attacked.
Another thing I guess I should point out is that Obama’s target audience isn’t really the “muslim world”….its the muslim world under 30.
— matoko_chan · Jun 5, 12:28 PM · #
Matt:
I thought for a while now that media outlets like Al’Jazeera will, counterintuitively, prove to be our Trojan horse. In the beginning, Al’Jazeera was seen as the truth-teller of American evil in Iraq and the region. Accordingly, authoritarian governments allowed Al’Jazeera to beam its message straight into the minds of the people. Since then Al’Jazeera’s popularity has crossed the Rubicon into cultural necessity. It’s an untouchable fixture, a political third-rail.
As we’ve seen in America, conflict, populism, gotchas and comeuppance are the predictors of 24 hour TV News programming. What happens when American evil is no longer feeding that insatiable appetite? Where will Al’Jazeera turn to pique the interest of its viewers? Probably inward, no?
And when that happens, we’re going to see a lot of governments try to touch that third rail.
— Sargent · Jun 5, 02:09 PM · #
Well…the baseline is that Israel/Palestine was going nowhere as long as GW was president.
He is loathed and hated and distrusted by 99% of MENA population under 30.
Kinda like under 30s in the US.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jun 6, 06:46 PM · #