Irony, tragedy and progress, part II (or, doing the wrong things for the right reasons)

I watched President Obama’s speech to the West Point cadets this evening. I found it disturbing and disappointing, though it did leave me with plenty of food for thought. It was many of the things we’ve come to expect from an Obama speech – polished, articulate, clear, with powerful and masterful use of language. It is not the style of the speech I quibble with, however, but parts of the content.

I sympathise heartily with President Obama’s predicament here, which looks like a massive juggling act. He is trying simultaneously to chisel out a realistic foreign policy which gets what we want out of Afghanistan, i.e., a state which can stand on its own without collapsing and guarantee some modicum of regional security; to heal a country split neatly down the middle and form some kind of consensus; and to equip the United States economically for the coming decades when we are no longer the sole world power (decreasing the deficit, improving health-care, protecting our industries and jump-starting our green technology sector). It is a job not for a president but for a miracle-worker, and President Obama is not the latter (however much some of his supporters wanted to see him that way). Perhaps not surprisingly, this speech hit at least briefly on each of these tasks facing the country, but failed to satisfy in each.

I fully realise that none of the options facing him as commander-in-chief are palatable. Though I completely disagree with it, I even understand Obama’s rationale for escalating the number of troops in Afghanistan for the short-term, and the extent of our continued responsibilities in the country after what was essentially a war of choice. What I didn’t like about Obama’s reasoning was his mixed message with regard to our overall foreign-policy outlook. On the one hand, he managed to convey a tone of humility with which I agree entirely – that we are (in the long haul) not interested in occupying Afghanistan or turning it into a client state or a protectorate. He stressed that we should not be expected to carry the role of hegemon or world policeman, since ‘no one nation can meet the challenges of an interconnected world acting alone’. He point-blank ‘refuse[d] to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, our or interests’ in foreign affairs, which was heartening.

On the other hand, some of his rhetoric was remarkably naïve, though probably partially of political necessity. Obama’s speech failed to make it clear, even in light of this tone of humility and realism, that Afghanistan and Pakistan were and continue to be problems of America’s own making. Both are spectres of the Cold War – our political predecessors funded and armed the mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets; at one point, we liked the Taliban because they were so forthrightly and stalwartly anti-Communist. But in our brief, passionate partnership born of the political necessities of power politics we failed to foresee that the same zeal they brought to their fight with the Soviets could be exploited to our own disadvantage by radicals like Osama bin Laden. Likewise with Pakistan – the nuclear arms about which Obama is so concerned have American fingerprints all over them, and our long-standing partnership is a reminder of a day when we both distrusted the newly-independent republic of India for being too democratic, too protectionist and too non-aligned for their own good. In light of the new realities President Obama must face down, born of our national sin of hubristic pride, his rhetoric about our difference from the ‘great powers of old’ thanks to our country’s innocence, our ideals and our exceptional virtue among nations was wrongheaded to say the least, and his subsequent hope for our responsible use of our assumed continued global leadership and authority came off, to me, as downright farcical. Obama claims Reinhold Niebuhr among his favourite political philosophers, so he should damn well begin to show it!

… though this could also be seen as a shrewdly-considered but poorly-executed part of the juggling act. Obama is, after all, trying to restore America’s confidence in itself and its citizens’ trust in each other by appealing to a common set of shared values and ideals. Which is well and good, but we want that confidence to be placed on firm, sustainable ground. Is it too much to ask that we approach the world with greater humility and regard ourselves with less pride? In weathering Obama’s prophesied ‘darkest of storms’ in our battered fishing vessel, we must always turn back to the Way of Him who calmed it: by loving our neighbours as ourselves, by caring for even the least of them, by living in greater simplicity, and by moving lower at the banquet table rather than expecting the seat of honour.