The Roots of Obama's Rage (8 page)
Read The Roots of Obama's Rage Online
Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
Next let’s consider Obama’s response to the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As torrents of black oil gushed toward southern shores, Obama sounded lethargic, almost bored, with what was going on and what needed to be done to stop it. Even Democratic strategist James Carville expressed amazement at Obama’s personal and emotional remove from the situation. “I have no idea why they didn’t seize this thing. I have no idea why their attitude was so hands off here.” Listening to Obama talk on the subject, TV host Keith Olbermann responded: “It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days.”
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Finally, addressing the TV cameras on May 14, 2010, Obama managed to work up some enthusiasm. He condemned “British Petroleum”—an interesting term since the company long ago changed its name to BP. Given our anti-colonial theory, it’s no surprise that Obama wanted to remind Americans of what BP used to stand for. He was equally outspoken in whacking the other oil companies for their “ridiculous spectacle” of “pointing fingers of blame.” Actually these companies were not responsible for the spill, and the only blame, in addition to that of BP, belonged to the Obama administration for its Katrina-like incompetence in responding to the disaster.
Addressing the nation on the spill on June 15, 2010, Obama stressed that Americans “consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s resources.” Obama went on to say that “for decades we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, “time and again the path forward has been blocked” by, among others, “oil industry lobbyists.”
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Now, on the face of it, this is a perfectly reasonable statement from a liberal politician who thinks this is what the American public wants to hear. But ask yourself, what does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the oil spill have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10 percent of the world’s resources? Of course not. The point is that for Obama the energy and environmental issues reduce to a simple proposition: America is a neocolonial giant eating up more than its share of the world’s resources, and in doing so America is exploiting the scarce fuel of the globe; consequently, this gluttonous consumption must be stopped. This is the heart of Obama’s energy and environmental agenda: not cleaning up the Gulf or saving the environment in general, but redressing the inequitable system where the neocolonial West—and neocolonial companies like BP—dominates the use of global energy resources.
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Now, on the face of it, this is a perfectly reasonable statement from a liberal politician who thinks this is what the American public wants to hear. But ask yourself, what does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the oil spill have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10 percent of the world’s resources? Of course not. The point is that for Obama the energy and environmental issues reduce to a simple proposition: America is a neocolonial giant eating up more than its share of the world’s resources, and in doing so America is exploiting the scarce fuel of the globe; consequently, this gluttonous consumption must be stopped. This is the heart of Obama’s energy and environmental agenda: not cleaning up the Gulf or saving the environment in general, but redressing the inequitable system where the neocolonial West—and neocolonial companies like BP—dominates the use of global energy resources.
When Arizona passed a law in April 2010 authorizing state police to check the papers of people whom they had reasonable cause to suspect were illegal immigrants, Obama reacted with immediate disdain. “Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth, it’s a matter of faith,” he declared. The first part of this is right—American citizenship is not a matter of race, and immigrants can become citizens—but the second part seems absurd. Does Obama mean to suggest that a guy who lives in Mumbai or Mexico City and has no relationship with America can automatically become an American simply by having faith? “I have faith in America” automatically translates into “I have a right to U.S. citizenship”? Obama also said that the immigration problem cannot be solved “only with fences and border patrols.” True, but fences and border controls could well be part of the solution. Businesses, Obama said, should face consequences for employing illegal aliens. Once again corporate America is the bad guy here, not the government which is negligent in controlling the American border. Finally, under political pressure, Obama agreed to deploy an additional 1,200 National Guard troops to the border, a woefully inadequate response to an out-of-control situation.
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At the same time, the Obama administration filed a lawsuit against Arizona to overturn the immigration control law on constitutional grounds. So the federal government was basically taking Arizona to court because of a state law that sought to accomplish what is already required under federal law. Now laws do have to pass the constitutional test, but the ACLU had already challenged the constitutionality of the Arizona legislation. Some provisions of the law have been struck down, and the litigation is likely to go on for some time. So why did Obama get involved? Why would the president risk the political fallout on such a controversial issue when it was already in the courts?
In his book
Culture and Imperialism
, the anti-colonial scholar Edward Said (who turns out to have been one of Obama’s professors at Columbia University) wrote that “the old divisions between colonizer and colonized have reemerged in what is often referred to as the North-South relationship.” Said notes that “Europeans and Americans now confront large non-white immigrant populations in their midst,” and these represent “newly empowered voices asking for their narratives to be heard.”
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From this anti-colonial perspective, the nonwhites are the descendants of the colonized, and they are now returning to claim their rights and their lost territory. Not surprisingly, Obama will not settle for federal inaction; he wants to make sure that his administration is on the right side of this issue.
Culture and Imperialism
, the anti-colonial scholar Edward Said (who turns out to have been one of Obama’s professors at Columbia University) wrote that “the old divisions between colonizer and colonized have reemerged in what is often referred to as the North-South relationship.” Said notes that “Europeans and Americans now confront large non-white immigrant populations in their midst,” and these represent “newly empowered voices asking for their narratives to be heard.”
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From this anti-colonial perspective, the nonwhites are the descendants of the colonized, and they are now returning to claim their rights and their lost territory. Not surprisingly, Obama will not settle for federal inaction; he wants to make sure that his administration is on the right side of this issue.
Obama’s judicial nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court are also understandable in the context of the anti-colonial theory. Sotomayor is the voice of the oppressed. Her controversial statement, “I would hope a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” probably commended her to Obama. Sotomayor was saying, in effect, that white male judges reflect one narrow point of view while nonwhite women reflect a quite different and superior perspective. The former can be seen to represent the colonizers and the latter the colonized. We’re ready for your promotion, Sonia! The most controversial facet of Elena Kagan’s career has been her decision as dean of the Harvard Law School to kick military recruiters off campus. During her hearings, Kagan insisted that her decision still permitted the military to recruit at Harvard, which was true, though they were limited in a way that other recruiters weren’t. When Kagan, as dean, backed down from her original decision, it was done in order to avoid jeopardizing Harvard’s eligibility for federal funds. But it would not be surprising if Kagan’s hostility to military recruitment caught the approving attention of President Obama.
Let’s turn to foreign policy and continue our application of the anti-colonial thesis to see how much it illuminates. In July 2010, Obama fired America’s top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for his insubordinate remarks as revealed in a
Rolling Stone
interview. Whether or not the magazine used not-for-attribution quotations, as McChrystal’s staff alleged, the firing in my view was justified because military commanders should not speak so disrespectfully of their civilian commander in chief.
Rolling Stone
interview. Whether or not the magazine used not-for-attribution quotations, as McChrystal’s staff alleged, the firing in my view was justified because military commanders should not speak so disrespectfully of their civilian commander in chief.
Even so, the content of what McChrystal and his aides said is telling. Most of them were contemptuous of Vice President Joe Biden, regarding him a buffoon. McChrystal apparently found Biden’s solutions for the region silly, saying they would lead to “Chaos-istan.” The McChrystal team’s reaction to Obama, however, was quite different. Obama frustrated them because they found him unreachable and impenetrable, basically uninterested in the facts on the ground and what the coalition forces were trying to do. McChrystal and his staff officer tried to explain the counterinsurgency strategy to the president, but Obama didn’t seem to care. As a McChrystal aide put it, the president “didn’t seem very engaged.”
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Now why would a president who has a big political stake in Afghanistan not care about proposed strategies to successfully prosecute the offensive and maybe even win the war? Short answer: Because he doesn’t want to win. If Obama views Afghanistan as a war of colonial occupation, then his only concern is how fast he can get America out.
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Now why would a president who has a big political stake in Afghanistan not care about proposed strategies to successfully prosecute the offensive and maybe even win the war? Short answer: Because he doesn’t want to win. If Obama views Afghanistan as a war of colonial occupation, then his only concern is how fast he can get America out.
But wait a minute! Didn’t Obama order an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan? Yes, but the Obama “surge” was a political necessity. Recall that Obama had campaigned on the position that Iraq was the “bad war” and Afghanistan was the “good war.” We don’t know at this point if Obama actually considered Afghanistan a good war; later I will show that he did not. At the time, however, Afghanistan was a convenient way for Obama to seem tough on terrorism while calling for an American pullout in Iraq. The rhetorical strategy worked; it helped Obama get to the White House with his anti-terrorist credentials intact. But then Obama, who might never have favored a victory in Afghanistan, was presented in 2009 by McChrystal with a strategy for success that required additional troops. Obama agreed to send them, but grudgingly—and he sent fewer than McChrystal said were necessary. As Thomas Friedman wrote in the
New York Times
, “The ugly truth is that no one in the Obama White House wanted this Afghan surge. The only reason they proceeded was because no one knew how to get out of it—or had the courage to pull the plug.”
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New York Times
, “The ugly truth is that no one in the Obama White House wanted this Afghan surge. The only reason they proceeded was because no one knew how to get out of it—or had the courage to pull the plug.”
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But while announcing the surge, Obama also insisted that he would withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in a year. “There’s got to be an exit strategy,” Obama said, and then added, going into his very subtle translator mode, “There’s got to be a sense that this is not perpetual drift.”
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Obviously the withdrawal announcement undercut the surge, because enemies are likely to hold out more tenaciously even against a bigger force if they are assured that the whole operation will end in the not-too-distant future. As the
Economist
candidly noted, “There is almost no chance that Afghanistan will be transformed by the time of Obama’s deadline.”
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Obviously the withdrawal announcement undercut the surge, because enemies are likely to hold out more tenaciously even against a bigger force if they are assured that the whole operation will end in the not-too-distant future. As the
Economist
candidly noted, “There is almost no chance that Afghanistan will be transformed by the time of Obama’s deadline.”
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Obama’s conservative critics treated this as just another Obama bungle, but it makes more sense to hold that Obama doesn’t really care about whether Afghanistan is transformed or not. His goal is not success in Afghanistan; rather, it is how quickly he can get America out. His anti-colonial strategy doffs a hat to political reality, but also ensures, win or lose, a prompt pullout from a war he doesn’t want to fight. Moreover, if America and NATO are seen to have “lost” Afghanistan, that would be a good thing, because from the anti-colonial point of view, such a defeat would discourage colonial military expeditions in the future.
Let’s move our sights from Afghanistan to the Middle East. In recent months Obama caused a stir by allowing a public rift to emerge with the Israeli government over the building of additional settlements. Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, charged that the rift was the worst political crisis between the two countries in more than three decades. Israel is so besieged around the world, even in Europe, that Washington usually takes extra care to be protective of her Middle Eastern ally. But not Obama. Sure, the Obama administration publicly denied the rift—Jews, after all, are a vital base of political and financial support for the Democratic Party—but no credible observer believes Obama’s heart is with the Jewish state.
In July 2010, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared at a joint press conference with Obama and agreed to ease Israel’s blockade of the Gaza strip; Netanyahu also pledged Israel’s commitment to making peace with the Palestinians. He told Fox News he would put East Jerusalem on the negotiating table as a possible capital of a Palestinian state.
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Obama welcomed Netanyahu’s concessions, which seem to have been the necessary price to pay for Israel to mend fences with its most important ally and protector. Obama had humbled Netanyahu and he had also made his own feelings clear. Obama disapproves of Israel’s actions, and he did not hesitate to warn the Israeli government that he is not Israel’s uncritical cheerleader.
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Obama welcomed Netanyahu’s concessions, which seem to have been the necessary price to pay for Israel to mend fences with its most important ally and protector. Obama had humbled Netanyahu and he had also made his own feelings clear. Obama disapproves of Israel’s actions, and he did not hesitate to warn the Israeli government that he is not Israel’s uncritical cheerleader.
Obama, in fact, has a history of siding with Israel’s opponents. During the presidential primary campaign, Obama stirred controversy by telling Democratic activists in Iowa, “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.” In reality, lots of people in the world are worse off than the Palestinians; still, Obama’s statement clearly indicated how strongly he felt about the Palestinian cause. While he was a state senator in Illinois, Obama befriended the scholar Rashid Khalidi, who has strongly defended the right of Palestinians to use armed resistance against Israel. The Muslim blogger Ali Abunimah wrote that he saw Obama a half dozen times at Chicago events organized by the Arab and Palestinian community. He recalled Obama attending a May 1998 fundraiser in which the keynote speaker was anti-colonial scholar and former PLO representative Edward Said. According to Abunimah, during the 2004 Senate campaign, Obama praised Abunimah’s
Chicago Tribune
columns attacking Israel and urged him to “keep up the good work” for the Palestinian cause. Obama also added, “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.”
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Doesn’t all of this make sense under the presumption that Obama regards Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a war of colonial aggression?
Chicago Tribune
columns attacking Israel and urged him to “keep up the good work” for the Palestinian cause. Obama also added, “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.”
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Doesn’t all of this make sense under the presumption that Obama regards Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a war of colonial aggression?
In April 2010, Obama held a nuclear security summit in Washington, D.C., in which forty-seven countries agreed to a joint statement condemning nuclear proliferation. The highlight of the event was an announcement that, after months of bargaining, the United States and Russia had agreed to new, deep weapons reductions and updated verification rules that would see their strategic arsenals drop to 1,550 warheads, one-third below previously agreed levels. Many countries—including Canada, Chile, and Mexico—agreed to dispose of their stockpiles of enriched uranium and plutonium. Italy and Argentina promised they would install radiation detectors to check cargo for fissile material. All these initiatives were at the urging of the Obama administration; as one Obama official boasted, “We used the summit shamelessly as a forcing event to ask countries to bring house gifts.”
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