Daily Archives: June 16, 2016

06.16.16
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Obama and Radical Islam

 

The President in winter

 

 

Privately, Obama expresses the deepest loathing for ISIS and other radical Islamist groups. ISIS, he has noted, stands for—quite literally—everything he opposes.

Jeffery Goldberg has, somewhat surprisingly, become the great chronicler of Barack Obama’s foreign policy thinking. Goldberg, who has a reputation of being pretty staunchly pro-Israel (a reputation which often unfairly paints him as unthinkingly Likudnik), doesn’t seem like a go-to source for a President who is often painted as anti-Israeli, or at least not reflexively pro-Israeli enough. It makes sense, though: Obama has a far great love of engaging with thoughtful people with whom he has some disagreements than with people automatically on his side. Goldberg fits this, as he’s fair enough to try to understand someone’s thought process even if he isn’t a fan of the final result.

It’s this sort of thoughtfulness on behalf of the President that is a reflection of his relationship with radical Islam. Obama’s critics see him as ruthlessly partisan and completely insulated, which is far from the truth, as his working friendship with Goldberg demonstrates (also, his attempts throughout the entire first term and some of the second to work with Republicans). They also see him as indifferent to radical Islam, as at best uncaring about it, and at worst hoping that it wins. Trump saying this explicitly this week was seen as a scandal; in fact, it was little different than what Republicans have been saying since he took office.

Goldberg’s Atlantic article yesterday, “What Obama Actually Thinks About Radical Islam”, is a deep dive into the President’s relationship with one of the animating forces in global politics, and an area that has consumed much of his Presidency, in a way he was desperately hoping to avoid. He thought that through persuasion and better intentions he could reset the relationship that the US had with the Middle East, and maybe even move toward peace with Israel.

This sounds naive, and maybe it is, but it is worth noting that literally every President in the last 50 years has thought the same thing, albeit with different courses of action. But, much like reaching out to recalcitrant Republicans, this also failed. Goldberg’s discussion of what happened next sort of sums up, for me, Obama’s policy motivations.

He gave the Cairo speech in 2009. By 2012—as the revolutions of the Arab Spring were curdling, and as Libya drifted toward chaos, despite a partial U.S. intervention—Obama developed strong antibodies to what I call the Carly Simon Syndrome, which is an affliction affecting American policymakers so vain that they probably think Islamist extremism, and everything else, is about them. Obama, unlike many American analysts, does not suffer from this delusion. He sees the problems affecting parts of the Muslim world as largely outside American control. At its best, this belief keeps him from rushing into disasters not of America’s making; at its worst, it keeps him from taking steps that stand a chance of making things better.

 This is, and always had been, the dichotomy of the Obama Presidency, one rooted in a sort of vicious thoughtfulness: the idea that you can try, and if it doesn’t work, don’t beat your head against the wall. It is one that recognizes the better angels in people, and tries to engage them, but also the worst demons, and tries to step away. It is one that recognizes not just the limitations of American power, but of American influence.
In response to Goldberg’s enormous “The Obama Doctrine”, I labeled it “tragic radicalism“, because it understood that the worst in humans couldn’t really be resolved, at least not easily, and so it was better to step away. Because, while there is no doubt that many problems in the Middle East and broader Muslim world are a reaction to wesern humiliations, especially at the hands of America, it is also true that there is far more going on than that, and that there is little America can do to fix it.
While I fundamentally agree with that, there are also policy missteps that come from such a view. Because while Obama has antibodies to Carly Simon, he also is somewhat vulnerable to it, although not in such a virulent manner. He does recognize that American influence is still a force for good and ill in the world, but in trying to mitigate the ill while still balancing our interests, we do things like intervene in the wrong limited way in Yemen: drones but little political support. There is a certain hand-washing that both downplays the real influence America has, and works to obfuscate the unhelpful foot-stomping going on below.
The more I think about it, the more I think “tragic radicalism” is the wrong phrase, since it seems to place emphasis on the latter, and doesn’t make it clear that “tragic” here is in the dramatic sense of the word.  Although not as pithy, “radical sense of the tragic” might be more accurate. It’s an understanding of human motivations that has led to some great things, but also to a sort of sighing away when the worst in us burbles madly to the surface. I do think he is impacted deeply by the horrors on his watch, especially Syria, but that just confirms his view of human nature.
All that said, I’m going to quote a couple paragraphs in full. As you listen to Trump talk about, well, anything, I think it is good to reflect on what a remarkable human being we’ve had in office for the last eight years.

 

In one conversation, parts of which I’ve previously recounted, Obama talked about the decades-long confrontation between the U.S. and communism, and compared it to the current crisis. “You have some on the Republican side who will insist that what we need is the same moral clarity with respect to radical Islam” that Ronald Reagan had with communism, he said. “Except, of course, communism was not embedded in a whole bunch of cultures, communism wasn’t a millennium-old religion that was embraced by a whole host of good, decent, hard-working people who are our allies. Communism for the most part was a foreign, abstract ideology that had been adopted by some nationalist figures, or those who were concerned about poverty and inequality in their countries but wasn’t organic to these cultures.”

He went on to say, “Establishing some moral clarity about what communism was and wasn’t, and being able to say to the people of Latin America or the people of Eastern Europe, ‘There’s a better way for you to achieve your goals,’ that was something that could be useful to do.” But, he said, “to analogize it to one of the world’s foremost religions that is the center of people’s lives all around the world, and to potentially paint that as a broad brush, isn’t providing moral clarity. What it’s doing is alienating a whole host of people who we need to work with us in order to succeed.”

06.16.16
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Chicago’s “Police Lives Matter” Mini-Rally

wide_lrg_chicago-bungalow-04-ear-2

The leafy and quiet Bungalow Belt. Image from architecture.org

A lot of times, in political conversations or (ashamedly) on message boards in the past, when I have revealed that I am from Chicago there is a certain set of assumptions. At least in these forums, it doesn’t have to do with Al Capone or Michael Jordan, but rather an assumed liberalism, and in the era of Barack Obama, something shady and ugly and untrustworthy (depending on if my interlocutor is a right-wing crank or not, of course). But even Obama aside, Chicago has become synonymous with being liberal, because it is a staunchly Democratic city, and “democrats = wild-eyed libs”, even though this has rarely been true. Even now, where the party is as left as it has been since LBJ, it is still essentially moderate.

Chicago has always shown how “Democratic” is not equal with liberalism, except in one very important and telling way. When Old Man Daley was running the city, he was the bane of every liberal. He hated uppity blacks, long-haired kids, loud-mouthed ladies, reformers (especially reformers), and anyone else who wanted to tell him how to run his city. There was a way of doing things, and damn you if you tried anything else. You know what you need? A talking to from the parish priest, that’s what. I knew your father, rest his soul, and he’d be spinning in his grave to see what you’ve done with your life. (Sorry- we almost slipped into a James T. Farrell novel.)

But there was that one way which, to the right, Chicago and other machine-run inherently conservative and anti-liberal cities did seem like liberals, and that was because they made noises toward taking care of minorities. This was pure politics, of course, and was honored more in the breach than otherwise (“the wettest blacks!”), but they distributed jobs and other goods, especially the goods of having a pliant alderman and ward boss, who did what the machine wanted.

For many in Chicago, this was a bridge too far, especially as the black (and Hispanic, but that divide didn’t have deep and angry roots in Chicago) population grew, and the Machine had to pay more attention. The essentially conservative white-ethnic base grew angry, and while they didn’t have the same power, they did have control of the police forces, which more than ever became a private army for keeping the wrong people away from the right ones. This anger culminated in the vicious “Council Wars” that erupted when Chicago elected its first black mayor. We talked about how the leader of the anti-black movement, Alderman Fast Eddie Vrodolyak, was the spiritual ancestor of the Chicago-based Trump movement, a bitter reactionary who knew exactly how to play to the “Silent Majority”, stoking racial fears and hatred.

That’s still around now, despite a reputation for Obama-y liberalism. In this turbulent city, where a violent spring seems to be edging into an apocalyptic summer, the forces of action and reaction are simmering over again. We see this in today’s planned “Police Lives Matter” rally, placed at one of the two hearts of Chicago’s white ethnic redoubt.

These are to take place as a joint effort between the 38th and the 41st wards, on Chicago far northwest side, near the airport, where the city seems to blur into a grittier kind of strip-malled suburbia, bounded by some forest preserves, and row after row of bungalows. They are changing, a bit, with upscale condos in a few areas of Edison Park, but they are what they have been for decades: a mostly working-class area, with a lot of cops and fireman. Rules are they have to live in the city, and they tend to congregate at the far northwest and far southwest. Some people see this as wanting to be as near the suburbs as possible, and a sign of hating Chicago, but I think it’s understandable. It’s a tough job, and I’d probably want to feel like I’m leaving it as well. Consequently, these are safe neighborhoods, with families on the street and decent, though rarely great restaurants, and some great authentic Irish pubs.

But it is in the “police lives matter” rally is clearly the product of angry, racially-tinged reaction. Now, to be clear, police lives do matter. They do great and brave work, dangerous work. As Charlie Pierce said, in an article about a stomach-churning police scandal in Oakland, “Sometimes, I wonder how the good cops, all of them, get up in the morning and go to work. There’s something amazingly selfless in there that’s beyond my understanding.”

This, however, is not a parade for honoring good and great work. It’s a direct sneer at the activists of Black Lives Matter. You can tell it is due to the sickeningly disingenuous prattling of Alderman Anthony Napolitano, a former firefighter who is enjoying his first term.

Asked if Black Lives Matter protesters might object to a catchphrase turning the tables on their group, Napolitano said, “I have no clue why they would. There’s a Black Lives movement. There’s a Police Lives movement. That’s two totally separate things.

“What if someone came up with Puppy Dogs’ Lives Matter?” Napolitano added. “If you want to champion a cause, you should be allowed to champion it.”

This is obvious nonsense. It certainly wasn’t like “X Lives Matter” was a common phrase, and “black” is just the latest entry. Doing any “Lives Matter” is a clear choice to be in direct opposition to them; it is always prefaced with a not-so-subtle “No, actually…”  His fun example is actually more telling than it seems. “You think black lives matter? Fuck you. I think puppy dog’s lives matter.”

(If you think that in the same article, Napolitano set up a “political correctness/common sense” dichotmy, you get zero points for guesswork, because come on. That’s easy.)

There is understandable fear in the city about what is happening, but it is telling that the “police lives matter” support comes mainly from some of the safest neighborhoods. It’s raw tribalism, and you can see how tribalism in Chicago has altered due to the pressures of race. Look at Napolitano. Time was no Irishman, of which there are a lot in the 41st, would vote for a man with a vowel at the end of his name, whether it was Italian or some form of “ski”. But the tribes have coalesced. And this tribe, the Police Lives Matter tribe, is why Chicago will never be a liberal city. The tribe is by definition conservative, and if still nominally Democratic in city politics, essentially socially Trumpian. It’s why even though he can’t win, his rise will mutate politics in the entire country, especially in angry barstools on a fearful and reactionary ring around Chicago.