I both agree and disagree with Richard Clarke:
Obama’s election has taken the wind out of al Qaeda’s sails in much of the Islamic world because it demonstrates America’s renewed commitment to multiculturalism, human rights, and international law. It also proves to many that democracy can work and overcome ethnic, sectarian, or racial barriers.
Obama’s commitment to withdraw from Iraq also takes away an al Qaeda propaganda tenet: that the U.S. seeks to occupy oil rich Arab lands. His commitment to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan also challenges their plans. Most of all, by returning to American values the world admires, Obama sets al Qaeda back enormously in the battle of ideas, the ideological struggle which determines whether al Qaeda will continue to have significant support in the Islamic world.
It’s true that a portion of the rest of the world thinks Obama’s election will usher in a set of “values the world admires” in America, but Obama’s just replacing an illusion with an illusion. American values were the same under George. W. Bush as they were under Bill Clinton or George H. W. Bush. And they’ll be the same under Obama. Any perception to the contrary can be blamed on people like Clarke. Let’s not forget his starring performance in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11–a project whose sole function was to broadcast a message of American dishonor, deceit, and immorality to the world. Clarke is the guy who admitted personal responsibility for the bin Laden family’s hasty post-9/11 exit from the U.S., before going in front of Moore’s cameras to let Arab citizens know that the American president was nothing more than a stooge of the oppressive Saudi oligarchy. And now he’s worried about our image?
Clarke, Moore, the liberal news media, and virtually all of Hollywood worked at nothing else for the past seven years other than convincing the world that American values were in a dangerous slump. This, during a time their country was engaged in a war to preserve the very values being doubted. These domestic propagandists never had to cite evidence to prove their case. The simple fact of America’s military engagement was all the proof they needed. The funny thing is, these people never needed to make a case against the U.S. to begin with. Despite all the blather about squandered sympathy, the rest of the world didn’t much “admire” American values before U.S. troops set foot on Iraqi soil. Here’s Robert Kagan:
According to a Pew Research Center poll released in August 2001, 70 percent of western Europeans surveyed (85 percent in France) believed that the Bush administration made decisions “based only on U.S. interests.”
[…]
When the shock and horror wore off, it turned out that the September 11 attacks had not altered fundamental global attitudes toward the United States. The resentments remained. A Pew poll of opinion leaders around the world taken in December 2001 revealed that while most were “sad to see what America [was] going through,” equally large majorities (70 percent of those polled worldwide, 66 percent in western Europe) believed it was “good that Americans know what it is like to be vulnerable.” Many opinion leaders around the world, including in Europe, said they believed that “U.S. policies and actions in the world” had been a “major cause” of the terrorist attacks and that, to borrow a phrase, the chickens had come home to roost.
So, we move from false cause to false cause. After trumping up the case against the American government for seven years, Clarke and company conclude that Barack Obama will help repair the global image of the American government. I’d say that’s nerve.
While Obama may help us finally win the PR war against Islamists, a premature withdrawal from Iraq would help us lose the real war against the same. In any case, if Obama is as savvy as he seems, he’ll reward Clarke with the job he so obviously wants. And if he does, let’s hope this personal travel agent to the bin Ladens has learned from at least some of his mistakes.
