Some Thoughts on Obama: A Follow-up

My recent post bothered some people, which was, I suppose, to some extent inevitable; but some of that could have been avoided, and I must take the blame for that.  If you were bothered by the melodrama, then you may be on the wrong blog, since for me, it's hardly worth writing about unless it's worth getting a tad dramatic about (perhaps I read too much Shakespeare in my adolescence).  But if you thought that some of the rhetoric about Tea Party Republicans, particularly the line about tactics of "disgraceful depravity or delusionality," was perhaps overblown, and indeed, calculated to heighten the polarisation that the post laments, then that is a fair complaint, and for that I apologise.  I should also re-emphasise that of course I consider that there's still plenty of blame to put on everyone else involved, and that during Bush's days, many Democrats resorted to equally childish tactics at times--the only difference is that they weren't risking such a disaster.

But the most bothersome part, I think, was a paragraph that could easily be quite misread--my paragraph on Obama.  So since I've decided to come out of my insulated British closet and say what I really think of American politics, I might as well say what I really think about Obama.

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The Late Great United States: A Lament

Today, August 2, 2011, the US Congress managed to agree not to send the country headlong into bankruptcy.  While we may be glad that the threat of financial Armageddon was averted for the time being, it would be an understatement to call this a Pyrrhic victory, coming as it did at the cost of the last shreds of American credibility abroad and unity at home.  Indeed, perhaps someday this day will be remembered as a symbolic milestone in the decline and fall of the American Empire.  Certainly, whether you mourn or celebrate the end of American hegemony, it is an occasion that calls for a pause for sober reflection.  

It is a perhaps clichéd now to declare that we live in the twilight days of America's world domination; indeed, I suspect that just as the 20th century is now seen as the "American Century," the verdict of history will mark 2001, the turn of the century, as the turning point, the year when the engine of American economic growth sputtered to a halt, when America sought to flex its muscles in response to external attack and gained nothing from the exercise but the hatred of former friends, when a maverick Texan president decided to take the country on a glorious John Wayne expedition against the enemies of civilization that ended up as a ride into its own sunset.

Yet it was only the events of the past couple weeks that succeeded in bringing the fact of our decline home to me--the recognition that we live at the end of an era, on the cusp of uncertain and perhaps unhappy days.

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Bin Laden is Dead: The Speech Obama Could Have Given

Obama’s speech last night about the assassination of bin Laden offered, on the whole, much to be appreciated.  Certainly, it avoided the excessive martyrology and jingoistic Americanism that has characterized other Presidential speeches.  And certainly, it was far better than many of the lamentably vengeful and nationalistic sentiments that it seems to have called forth from so many citizens.  But, if I may be so bold, what would Jesus say?  What might Obama’s speech have looked like if he’d really had courage and conviction?  I can’t really claim to know the right answer to that.  But here, at any rate, is what I might have wished for: 

My fellow Americans, after ten years and a million lives lost, I can announce to you today the death of Osama bin Laden, the man our country has long pursued as its arch-enemy.  It is not my purpose here to rejoice in this death or any death, but rather to recall with sadness all the deaths on that September day and on the bloody trail we have since pursued.  For all the harm he has done us, we did not, for our part, wish death on bin Laden; even our enemies deserve our sympathy.  Vengeance should not be sweet; the path of vengeance is the road to perdition.  Today, our forces closed in on bin Laden with the intention of capturing him and bringing him to due justice*; unfortunately, he was killed in the resulting firefight, as were members of his family around us.  

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Bombs over Benghazi

I concluded my post on Thursday by reflecting that we had no right to blame God for the deaths of tens of thousands in Japan’s tsunami as long as we went around screwing up the world in manifest acts of evil on our own account.  Alas, I had no idea those words would prove so immediately relevant.  On Friday, following a frenetic month-long media blitz to convince us that Gaddafi was an evil war criminal exterminating his own people and must be stopped, the US, Britain, and France achieved their ambition--a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire or else our militaries would act to impose a “no-fly zone” in Libya to prevent airstrikes on civilians.  The cease-fire was immediately announced, but somehow two days later here we are not merely having established a no-fly zone, but having proceeded immediately to bombing soldiers, convoys, and according to many reports, plenty of civilians of our own. 

How on earth could we be pulled into this madness again so easily?  With the bitter taste of the Great Iraq Deception and its disastrous effects still in the mouths of the UK and US public, with the memory of the shameless propaganda that led up to it and our shameful capitulation to it still so fresh, how could we possibly let this happen again?  Back then, I was young and stupid, and I bought the warmongering hook, line, and sinker...now I know it what it must’ve felt like for the few who kept their senses back then and watched as the godlessness unfolded around them--angry, confused, helpless.

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