Protesting the US

The recent attacks on US embassies and consulates and the Mideast protests against the US have shown just how out of touch President Obama's administration is with the Mideast and with foreign affairs in general. The news media all seem out of touch as well. Story after story keeps repeating the meme that the protests are a response to a video, Innocence of Muslims. And while such a symbol as the video may indeed spark off unfortunate events, to take seriously the notion that all those riots and attacks are about a video, not about American principles and power and policy, is silly.

White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, defined the naive White House view saying:

We also need to understand that this is a fairly volatile situation and it is in response not to United States policy, and not to, obviously, the administration, or the American people, but it is in response to a video, a film that we have judged to be be reprehensible and disgusting.

This attitude highlights the paucity of modern liberal thought. First of all, it demonstrates blind duplicity which we can uncover by asking: "If the Bush Administration had blamed a movie instead of its foreign policy, would the left have agreed?" The answer, of course, is no, since the left attacked Bush at every opportunity in very nearly the same situations.

But more damaging to understanding and dealing with the Mideast is the leftist dogma of multiculturalism and tolerance. What Carney, and the Obama administration says is, that if we, as Americans, were only just a bit more sensitive to our Muslim brethren, they'd all love us and we'd all just get along. This is the old 1960s ideal, expressed in the John Lennon song Imagine. In effect, the leftist dogma says: "We will give up any and all of our principles in order to get along with the rest of the world."

Unfortunately for leftists, the world really doesn't work that way. Putting aside the suspected movie, the movie maker (who is now under investigation for being "insensitive" to those "pleasant" Muslims in the Mideast), and putting aside the doctrine of multiculturalism, here are three reasons the current US foreign policy is naive:

1) There is a fundamental difference between what the US views as basic rights and what many Muslims, living in Arab nations, view as basic rights. Americans view freedom of speech as a cherished value, to be upheld no matter the circumstance. The Arab world sees that religion and its values must not be violated for any reason. Is there a more foreign concept to leftist thought than the value of religion? I'm not talking about selling out Christianity in order to appease Muslims, as is common in leftist dogma. I'm talking about truly understanding the value of religion, which completely stymies the left.

2) While the Obama administration has desperately tried to play both sides of the fence when it comes to the so-called Arab Spring, years of American support for Arab dictators has left US Mideast policy with zero credibility. Obama's duplicitous conciliatory apologies to dictators and authoritarian states have further weakened the US position. The US is viewed with suspicion for supporting democracy in one area, like Libya, then supporting dictatorships in other areas, like Bahrain. Such a foreign policy jeopardizes long-term strategy in the Mideast.

3) The newly formed governments and popular uprisings in the Mideast need the banner of legitimacy in order to cling to power. Creating an enemy of the US is one way for nascent governments to create legitimacy. In some cases the new governments have encouraged open riots against the US (as in the case of Egypt) in order to prop up their own legitimacy. Again, to blame the video without acknowledging  the machinations of government, shows a deep blindness when it comes to foreign policy.

The US simply cannot play the appeasement game without getting burned. The Obama administration cannot place public blame on a silly movie, while ignoring the deep-seated resentment of the Arab nations. To do so shows the world that we are more than willing to abandon our basic principles (free speech) in order to appease the angry mob. To debate the right of an American to criticize religion does not indicate sophisticated sensitivity to the feelings of others but a willingness to turn tail and abandon our principles at the first sign of a fight.