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a grand master of the art of confrontation…

Posted on Thursday 4 June 2009


President Obama today delivered an exemplary speech that has the potential to significantly advance America’s national security interests in the Middle East. He spoke, as he has here at home, over the heads of established political leaders and directly to the Muslim world to marshal the vast majority of Muslims to assist US policy goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan by describing them as Muslim policy goals as well.

President Obama spoke to Muslims, convincingly, as a believer – and opened the door to a reshuffling of loyalties. Instead of Muslims against the West, the President implied a strong Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritage allied with humanist principles. At a minimum he created more political capital for himself and for the United States while buying time for US policy options in the Middle East to be considered.

Although the speech acknowledged past transgressions [colonialism, the US overthrow of the democratic Mosadeq government in Iran in the 1950s, and an implication that the US invasion of Iraq was at least ill-considered if not a violation of international law] it did not apologize for them. He simply noted them matter of factly as a source of our tension with the Muslim world and moved on to discuss what the future might hold, directing a Muslim world that is very alert to past and present grievances toward a problem-solving perspective.

Interestingly, the President’s only mention of a political party was of Hamas. By noting Hamas’ acceptance by part of the Palestinian population, the President was drawing a distinction between those Salafist Islamist forces the US is combating in Afghanistan and Pakistan and those that have political constituencies and accept the legitimacy of electoral processes. Hamas leader Ahmed Yusuf’s first response to the speech was positive, flowery, effusive, and defensive all at the same time.

The President has also done Israel a great favor. No leader – anywhere – has ever presented the Zionist narrative of European oppression as a necessitating factor for a Jewish homeland – to a Muslim audience so directly and with such empathy while linking it directly to the Palestinian narrative of dispossession and oppression under occupation. He firmly linked the right to statehood  for both peoples in one sentence. By contrast, the message from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden yesterday appears self-serving and irrelevant.
During this piece of Obama’s speech, I thought the obvious comparison between the plight of the Jews in Europe and the fate of the Palestinians in the Middle East was simply [and brilliantly] stated in a way that couldn’t be ignored. Later in his speech Obama said, "The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings" and "There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us."

It hadn’t occurred to me that "No leader – anywhere – has ever presented the Zionist narrative of European oppression as a necessitating factor for a Jewish homeland – to a Muslim audience so directly and with such empathy while linking it directly to the Palestinian narrative of dispossession and oppression under occupation." And Obama’s trip continues with:
Mr Obama travels this morning with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, to the camp where more than 56,000 people were killed by the Nazis [Buchenwald], then to a US military hospital in Landstuhl, western Germany, to visit soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, before heading for the D-Day ceremonies in France.
People talk about Obama as being "cool" or "unflappable." The right wing pundits see him as "weak" or as an "appeaser." But he is, in fact, a grand master of the art of confrontation. In the world of psychotherapists, the term confrontation does not mean getting in someone’s face or getting aggressive. It simply means telling someone something they don’t want to hear – and doing it effectively in a way that might bring about change…
  1.  
    Joy
    June 5, 2009 | 7:52 AM
     

    I had a friend whose father died in Buchenwald. I had to stop talking to her after she told me Bush had to go to war with Iraq because Saddam was a bad man like Hitler and Glen Beck was wonderful. She lived in Vienna and her Dad sent her to NJ before he was captured by the Nazis. I couldn’t argue with her reasons for supporting Bush because she had a right to her feeling after going through so much but I couldn’t talk with her anymore for my sanity.

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