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June 04, 2009 03:59 PM UTC

Obama Not a Secret Muslim After All

  • 34 Comments
  • by: Yokel

So I had the pleasure of watching CNN-International’s coverage of the exciting speech in Cairo by our President.  On the whole, it was standard Obama – long on platitudes, short on reality, and full of your standard community organizer “You kind of suck, but if you do what I say, you’ll be better” shtick.  Which I think is fine, in this case, because the audience does kind of suck at the modern world.  

But something kept bugging me:  The great, bolded sub-title emblazoned on the screen:

OBAMA SPEAKS TO MUSLIM WORLD.

That bugged me.  At first, I thought it was because it seemed rather “President of the World” presumptuous.  But that wasn’t it.  

Then it hit me.  It was the concept itself.  Barack Obama claiming to “Speak to the Muslim World” was absurd, ignorant, and dangerous.  

It was absurd because the “Muslim World” ought not really care what Barack Obama has to say to them.  What does he matter – he’s still going to act as The Instrument of American national interests, not theirs.  It’s his job description.

It was ignorant, because the “Muslim World” is comprised of over a billion people, spread all over the world, of all different races, ethnicities, languages, and even beliefs: Arabs, Persians, West Africans and Indonesians, Sunni and Shia, Salafist and Sufi.  They aren’t a homogeneous “world” to whom a person can speak – not even President Obama.  And, as someone who seems to consider it a strength on this topic that he spent some of his formative years in Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim country, but a country that’s clearly not Arab, and where Islam is strongly tempered with mystical Sufi practices and beliefs, as well as hybridized with local indigenous animism.  He should know better.  But it’s clear he doesn’t.

And it was dangerous, because there is someone else who tries to talk about the “Muslim World” as a homogeneous entity of the Ummah: Osama bin Laden.  That is the chief objective of the grand strategy of al Qaeda – unite all Muslims under one banner of Islam again.  Western ignorance has played into that hand in the past, and apparently it may do so in the future.  But it cannot be so, if we hope to defeat al Qaeda.  We need to divide that imaginary group into its real components, and treat them as they are, not as the enemy wants them to be.  (Insert more blah, blah, blah, Global Counterinsurgency Theory that doesn’t really apply here).  

Turns out there was someone else with the same aspirations of “Muslim World” unity:

Khomeini reduced this all to one big idea: Being a Muslim means opposition to the West, especially the United States. This is Khomeini’s Muslim world-not a caliphate or a wonderful mosaic of various practices and beliefs, but a unity forged on the anvil of resistance. This concept is what bridges, for instance, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization, and Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Shiite militia.

Read the linked article, if you want more info.  It’s really quite interesting.  Besides, you don’t want to take a conservative hack who’s read too much counterinsurgency theory at his word, would you?

In the end, we learned one thing: When it comes to understanding Islam, Barack Obama is as ignorant as George Bush was.  That rather disappointed me, to be honest.  

How hard would it have been to say “Arab World?”

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34 thoughts on “Obama Not a Secret Muslim After All”

    1. CNN’s banner had more to do with the American audience who, by and large, probably don’t know that Arab and Muslim are not synonyms. Congrats, Yokel, for understanding those distinctions, but you’d better find some better basis for criticizing Obama for this. It’s not like he had that as a big banner reading “Obama addresses the Muslim World” behind him, is it?

    2. The White House sends out the media prep and gives them the “theme.”  Some days it’s “Helping Children” some days it’s “Saving the Environment,” and last night it was “Addressing the Muslim World.”

      After all, the Obama campaign and administration have been well known for their ability to “control the message,” have they not?

      1. You keep using quotation marks as if you’re quoting someone, when in fact you’re just making stuff up.

        “Control the message” is a term that was actually not invented in the past four months. Here, look it up.

        And the fact that you have a “theory” about how the “news media works” based on your “extreme resentment and bitterness” doesn’t actually work as evidence.

  3. It’s a bad deal. I know. We’re turning away from the “agree with us or we’ll kill you”, “the end justifies the means” philosophy that made us appear less than we really are morally. That put young Americans in the crosshairs needlessly. We’ve figured out that you can’t kill everybody that disaggrees with your “good christian values”.

    But then you never had to go when uncle awol said “bring ’em on”, (he never did either) did you? Others, nameless GI’s, did. 4,000 plus died following orders issued by an administration so incompetent it boggles the mind. Invading a soveriegn nation, toppling a government, occupation…..for no reason other than to “transform the middle east”.

    Easy to root on endless wars against anonymous “enemies” if you ain’t goin’.

    Tougher to figure a way to stop the insanity.

    Thank God somebody finally has control of the rudder.    

    1. Yokel is an Iraq vet. I don’t know if he was in any of the hottest zones at the hottest times, but he has earned his stripes, as they say.

    1. Today’s praises are superficial at best.

      I can understand the US viewpoint on limiting existing settlement growth.

      His efforts to force Israel into a deal that they see as a security compromise with Iran won’t fly.

      He’s walking a fine line giving the Iranians time to weaponize thier uranium.

      AIPAC is quite strong. This won’t doom him to defeat in 2012, but if Iran acquires a bomb, then expect open war rather than the insurgency that Iran now sponsors with arms to HAMAS and Hizbollah.

  5. A president has the willingness to do the heavy lifting of public diplomacy that his predecessor never had the courage to do.

    Meanwhile, back at home, instead of supporting their president while abroad, the chuckleheads bitch and moan that the president isn’t buying into their belief that his job is to send the boys and girls off to fight and die in search of their favorite monsters to destroy so that chests can be pounded in nutty DC think tanks. They think that US foreign policy should serve the beck and call of a couple thousand messianic ultra-right settlers in Israel, instead of our own national security.

    I guess elections do have consequences.  

    1. .

      The thing I find ironic about invoking the Bible as proof that God gave the land in question to the Israelites,

      one of ’em, anyway,

      is that those settlers are mostly not at all religious.  

      Devout religious Jews trust in God to provide for them; these settlers seem to focus on helping themselves.  I think “messianic” is a mischaracterization, like confusing the modern nation-state called “Israel” with the people of that same name who followed Moses through the wilderness.

      .

  6. Especially when the speech is targeted at both Arabs and non-Arabs.

    Egypt – where Obama delivered his speech – is not considered “Arabic”, though they speak a local variant of the Arabic language.

    Morocco is Arab-Berber, and the Berbers are as Islamic as the Arabs.

    The Iranians, who figure prominently in today’s Muslim dialogues, are mostly not Arabic either.  Nor are the Pakistanis, nor the Turkish people, nor the Kurdish population of Iraq.

    Obama wasn’t just addressing Arabs, even when you leave out Indonesia (or the United States Islamic community for that matter…)  Perhaps he should have named each and every ethnic group in the region – that might have been more precise (if a bit long-winded…)

    2. If even “Arab World” is incorrect, “Muslim World” is more so.  

      Furthermore, while it’s inaccurate, the term is worse because it plays right into the hand of the “America vs. all Muslims” meme that the Ayatollah and Osama want to create.  He’s making an assumption that accepts the enemy’s primary strategic objective as true.  

      In other words, he doesn’t “get it” any more than Bush does.  

      And that’s the irony of the lefties coming out of the woodwork here:  I’m criticizing Obama for being too much like Bush, not for being too far left.  But no, we can’t have any criticism of Obama stand.

      1. Obama doesn’t say he’s speaking “to the Muslim World”.  He says he’s speaking to “Muslims around the world”.  Go sue CNN for trying to make a short headline.  If I had a penny for every misleading headline shown on cable news and newspapers, I’d be able to retire.

    3. .

      To me, “Arabic” connotes having grown out of Bedu/ Bedouin stock from North Arabia.  I’m pretty sure that applies to most Egyptians.  

      If I’m wrong, I’d appreciate being corrected.

      .

      1. What’s your take on using “soft power” to play right into the strategy of the enemy, rather like “hard power” has played into their hands in the past?  

        Am I seeing things here?  Or is the “Muslim World” formulation a little excessive?

        1. .

          I frequently tell my wife just how smart I am.  Why do I have to keep reminding her, I wonder ?  Anyway, I assume that’s where you heard that I am so smart.  That’s the only place I ever hear it.  

          But anyway, if you think I’m smart, then I think you’re good looking and a great singer.  

          .

          I don’t take offense at CNN US Edition running a banner that says Obama is talking to the Muslim World.  Americans, after all, are his primary audience, and it helps us understand the speech if we know it is an effort to reach out and reset our relationships.  

          I wonder if the same banner was on CNN airport edition, or CNN International edition.  If it was, then I expect Muslim people might have taken offense at being lumped together into one big lump.  It could further perpetuate the notion that Americans can’t tell, for example, a Malaysian from an Indonesian, or an Arab from a Persian.  Which in many cases we can’t.  

          As for “soft power” backfiring on us, I kinda thought that you worked on a PRT.  Don’t know where I got that idea.  

          I am totally negative on the whole PRT concept, because it leaves American military personnel in charge of making key decisions on civilian matters.    

          Except that, that’s the only “soft power” game in town, when the town is Kunduz.  I would much rather see Reconstruction and development aid channeled through USAID.  Even with all the corruption, inefficiency and confusion in that agency’s programs, the work is done with civilian hands.  But USAID refuses to venture out without massive firepower and PSD’s and MRAP’s, so they have glommed on to the PRT’s.  

          I think that USAID ought to support NGO’s that are already in place, who are making modest progress, rather than bringing in the same 20 implementers (contractors) who run their programs worldwide.  

          With the ability to plug a camera into a laptop, which is plugged into a BGAN SatCom link, I think most Monitoring & Evaluation can be done by local nationals.

          So I’d rather see educated Hazaris and Pashtuns managing aid projects in their home regions than expatriates.  What’s been missing in our stupendous efforts in Iraq has been showing respect for local leaders, culture and values, and that one missing element has led to serial failure.  Turn that around and Iraq becomes a success.

          .  

          1. I’m not on a PRT or anything, but I am a “taxi driver” landing at fields getting upgraded by USAID programs.  It’s kind of my “area of interest” as one might say.

            And considering your area of interest somewhat overlaps, I thought you’d have something interesting to add.  And you did.  I’ll have to think about that one…

          2. The subject of foreign contractors providing all of the aid and reconstruction services has been noted in the past by greater lights than you or I, but it was never really in question under the previous Administration.

            The current Administration could do much worse than taking a serious look at revamping the aid package.

          3. The outsourcing (yeah, it’s not exactly, but it’s shorthand) you talk about is great in theory, but to apply to a larger overarching strategy, a project still needs to have an American flag on it.  That doesn’t mean exclusive American identification, and that doesn’t necessarily mean an explicit one.  The danger is in paying and organizing all these projects, and letting the local equivalent of Hizb’allah or the Taliban or the MILF claim credit.  

            Theoretically, that balance can be reached.  In an bureaucratic organization where multiple individuals need to be identified with the project on their performance reports, I’m not sure if it can be accomplished.

      2. Mostly because of its diverse history.  Ancient Egyptians were a distinct North African ethnicity with some traces of European and Middle Eastern / SW Asian.  The modern Egyptian people have a strong mix of Nubian, Greek, Dom, Berber, Bedouin, and other ethnicities in their genetic soup, but remain distinctly “Egyptian” and consider themselves as such.

        You can peruse the great source of meta-knowledge, Wikipedia’s entry on Egyptian Origins for some starting points on genetic, anthropological, and self-identifying ethnicity of Egyptians…

        1. .

          Interesting.

          I confess that a lot of my knowledge of “history” is cliches, and you helped me identify yet another.

          I had this concept of Arabs sweeping out of the Arabian Peninsula in 650 AD and killing every male in every civilization that they overran.  I guess that the rest of the Mahgreb has just as much diversity, no ?

          .

          1. In Morocco, the Berbers and the Arabs intermarried to the point where the primary ethnicity there is now called “Arab-Berber”.  The Spanish Moors are even more ethnically diverse.  On the other hand, most of the Assyrians, Turks, ethnic Jews, and Persians (to name a few) were left to their own genetic lines without much inter-marriage.

            Sadly, the Crusades were far less tolerant of ethnic diversity than were the Arabs of the time.

  7. “Obama speaks to a bunch of people in Cairo, which is being watched by a lot of people in Egypt, and in that area of the world who happen to be Muslim, excluding those Muslims that are no where near Cairo, or those who don’t have cable, or just don’t have time to listen…

    “…Oh, and this should not be construed to say that non-Muslims will be watching, some indeed will…”

    CNN really could do a better job.  We need captions by committee.

  8. That he flies to Indonesia to address sufi/animistic-infused Islam and Iran to address Shia Islam, and Saudi Arabia to address Sunni/Arab Islam, and so on and so forth to almost infinite regression? Look, Obama wanted to address all of those components of Islam, every different type of Muslim — extremist and liberal — why is that impossible to do? Addressing a group as a whole doesn’t mean that you can’t recognize that the group is comprised of individuals.

    1. He ought to address people as they stand, not by making blanket assumptions about them and lumping them together.  Is that too much to ask?

      My problem was not with the speech.  His Alinsky-school community organizer background – the whole “You suck, here’s why, but you can be great if you follow me” method – worked quite well for what he needed to say.

      My problem is that this was billed internationally in a way that concedes the enemy’s number one primary objective.  

      1. Let’s take your interpretation of Obama’s intentions at face value for a second. Do you think that all Muslims now see themselves as a single group with a common destiny and purpose, because Obama addressed them all?

        Whatever goal al Quada or other pan-Islamicists may have, the Muslim world is not going to be united as one in fulfillment of their vision simply because the POTUS addresses them as one. That’s just silly to believe otherwise.

      2. what, exactly, does your diary title have to do with your diary’s contents? You’re saying that he IS a Muslim in that title, which was the fearmongering tactic used to fuel the “he’s an Islamic terrorist!” meme from last year. That’s demonstrably ignorant, not theoretical like the ignorance you claim Obama demonstrated in his speech.

        You make no case in your diary about Obama’s faith one way or the other. So where did you come up with this title?

      3. is a poor basis on which to develop a critique that the president isn’t drawing distinctions properly.

        He ought to address people as they stand, not by making blanket assumptions about them and lumping them together.  Is that too much to ask?

        Since you can’t distinguish between a CNN-generated graphic and the content of a 55-minute speech, your entire post is only so much gibberish.

        And the enemy’s primary objective is to convince their Muslim audience that they are the only legitimate voice on Islam–and that it is they who are to determine who is legitimately Muslim or not. Thereupon which they have a basis for their particular brand of fanatic Islamist tyranny.

        The idea that Obama’s speech somehow did what you are saying — and that years of an administration and media treating the Muslim world as homogenous “problem” to be solved, primarily through the demonstration and inept application of military power — is ludicrous.  

        1. This Politico story looks at the speech in an “Obama vs. Osama” context.

          Senior administration officials say the speech was carefully crafted to rob the Al Qaeda leader and his terrorist network of some of its chief recruiting totems, including fears the United States plans a permanent presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

          White House officials say that the tide may be turning on the world’s most wanted man. “For the first time, they’re beginning to lose the propaganda war,” said a top aide traveling with Obama during his six-day mission to Europe and the Middle East.

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