President Obama’s candid and reasonable speech in Cairo has generally been taken as a sign that American foreign policy in the Middle East may finally be coming of age. Arguing, yet again, for a middle ground (as he did during his campaign with a landmark speech on race in America and, just a few weeks ago at Notre Dame, with abortion) Obama pre-empted a great deal of predictable criticism through the Clintonian sleight-of-hand strategy of cooption – ‘triangulation’ as it used to be known. Sounding simultaneously like a centrist Israeli and a moderate Palestinian, Obama has wrong-footed critics on both sides of the equation. This rhetorical flexibility is bound to yield short-term rewards – renewed dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians, an open discussion of the region’s nuclear ambitions – but it also risks deferring America’s hard choices dangerously far into the future. Unless he can follow this bold start with measurable diplomatic progress, delay leaves the door open to unilateral action by Israel, and to unpredictable complications from further trouble in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq.
Obama is a better salesman than Bush largely because he has a more sophisticated view of his audience. In Cairo he referred to a non-orientalising plural – “Muslims” and “Muslims around the world” – rather than the monolithic “Muslim world” which his predecessor constantly addressed. But the political courage that this speech required goes beyond these nuances. Speaking plainly about settlements, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, mistakes in Iraq and other elephants in the room, Obama showed his audience that he was part of their world, not merely parachuting in for a photo opportunity with the usual group of Middle Eastern tyrants. His empathy was manifested in other ways too. His decision to say Shukran (Arabic for “thank you”) to the king of Saudi Arabia, raised more than a few eyebrows back in the United States and it set the lunatic fringe of the GOP raving about his apparent ‘bowing’ to foreign leaders, and his willingness to ‘apologise’ for America’s misconduct. In other circumstances most of this would be harmless and amusing. Sadly, with the recrudescence of America’s culture wars, it is not.
The ongoing saga of the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor provides a telling example of the kind of Washington politics that Obama is trying to escape from during his Mid-East tour. Sotomayor’s critics – and they are legion – allege that she is ‘racist’ because she has said that a judges’ decisions are likely to be shaped by their life experiences. Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and their ilk are particularly irked by her suggestion that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” They have used this remark, and a handful of other scattered assertions, to create a straw-woman liberal ideologue who stands poised to undo the good work of the Supreme Court with her ‘activist’ meddling. Despite growing evidence of her lack of emotional “concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless” – and striking examples of her adherence to the letter of the law – prominent Republicans persist in labelling her a racist. When asked on television to clarify their positions on this word, and whether it should be thrown around so lightly, many Republicans (even some Senators) have refused to issue outright repudiations, smirking at follow up questions and hiding their complicity in the smear with platitudes about everyone’s right to an opinion. Such is the courage of Obama’s most strident critics. They hesitate to brand a Supreme Court nominee a racist, but refuse to condemn those who have done so.
Seen in this context, Obama’s speech in Cairo is all the more remarkable. With an ongoing financial crisis that would have had Bush and McCain in perpetual paralysis, he has shown extraordinary grace under pressure. A less confident president would have stayed at home, especially when a trip to the ‘Muslim world’ runs the risk of reactivating paranoid conspiracies about his covert Islamic sympathies and ‘foreignness.’ Instead of being cowed by any of this, or by the complexity of the Mid-East and the multiple domestic crises he leaves behind, Obama has dared to carry on re-sophisticating America’s image in the wider world. It is a fine start and a necessary antidote to the Bush years, but the President knows as well as anyone else that much will depend on the months ahead. Bush proved that America cannot wage wars on several fronts as competently as it once thought. If Obama’s early initiatives are overtaken by events, he may end up proving that America cannot maintain peace on several fronts either.
