It was Obama himself and his friends who chose the analogy of hitting a reset button with respect to US foreign policy toward Russia and toward Islam. With respect to Islam, the actual push of the button was accomplished shortly after the inauguration, by means of the following speech given by President Obama at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, on June 4, 2009. nytimes/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html Some of us felt at the time that it featured some cringe-inducing exaggerations and distortions resulting from the Presidents strenuous effort to be as generous as possible to his Muslim hosts (choosing to applaud not that they are Egyptians but specifically that they are Muslims, for an alternative approach see SecState Condoleeza Rices speech in Cairo in 2005), along with an invitation to indulge the natural inclination of many formerly colonized countries to continue to blame a host of problems on colonialism even after decades of independence. No doubt the generosity emerged from the best of intentions, and it is of course true that colonialism caused all kinds of dysfunction. But when generosity invites denial of inconvenient truths, and when finger-pointing at others replaces essential introspection, the cause of peace ends up being inhibited rather than advanced. Chamberlain at Munich, 1938. It seemed plausible in 2009 to suspect that Islamic radicals in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya might listen to that speech and think, hes sufficiently sympathetic to us, that it might be time soon to make our next moves of insurgency, as indeed happened in Egypt and Tunisia, and American diplomats hopefully labeled it an Arab Spring. I dont think anyone guessed, though, (in 2009) that a radical Islamic insurgency could attract not only American indulgence and cheerleading but the active support of the US military, which is what happened in Libya and almost happened in Syria, certainly the source of great delight to Al-Qaeda types everywhere, watching the United States not only assisting the extremists efforts but blindly stepping into one of their traps in which (in Libya) American diplomats and soldiers died. The reset idea, the speech, and the American vulnerability at Benghazi, are all interconnected aspects of Obama administration foreign policy. I suppose it may have been an experiment worth trying, since there seem to be no better options available, and plenty of worse ones, but in my view (using the chosen computer reset analogy) 5 years is enough time to get a pretty good idea of whether or not a push of that particular reset button is going to work. The answer is to be found in questions like: how much has violence been reduced, and peace promoted, during the past 5 years in countries entirely within the Islamic world (Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia) and countries containing the borders of Islam (Turkey, Palestine, South Sudan, Congo, Chad, Nigeria, Kenya, and the Central African Republic). Its also relevant to ask: what level of popularity and support has President Obama earned for himself and for the USA by his efforts, in all of those countries? In places where President Bush was very unpopular during the sixth year of his Presidency, President Obama is pretty much equally unpopular now. Mr. President: maybe you should stop pushing that button. And stop changing your mind about things like whether using drones to blow up terrorists without benefit of trial is a good idea, or not, whether you want US troops in Iraq, or not, and whether you want to close Guantanamo Bay, or not.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 20:12:13 +0000
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