Obama Should Follow His Own Advice on the \u2018Moral Force\u2019 of Non-Violence
\nby Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis, May 21, 2011<\/p>\n
Given that President Obama daily authorizes the firing of hellfire missiles and the dropping of cluster bombs in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, it was awful odd seeing him wax eloquent this week about the “moral force of non-violence” in places like Egypt and Tunisia. But there he was, the commander-in-chief of the largest empire in history, praising the power of peaceful protest in countries with repressive leaders backed by his own administration. <\/p>\n
Were we unfamiliar with his actual policies \u2013 more than doubling the troops in Afghanistan, dramatically escalating a deadly drone war in Pakistan and unilaterally bombing for peace in Libya \u2013 it might have been inspiring to hear a major head of state reject violence as a means to political ends. Instead, we almost choked on the hypocrisy. <\/p>\n
Cast beforehand as a major address on the Middle East, what President Obama offered with his speech on Thursday was nothing more than a reprisal of his 2009 address in Cairo: a lot of rhetoric about U.S. support for peace and freedom in the region contradicted by the actual \u2013 and bipartisan \u2013 U.S. policy over the past half-century of supporting ruthless authoritarian regimes. Yet even for all his talk of human rights and how he “will not tolerate aggression across borders” \u2013 yes, a U.S. president said this \u2013 Obama didn\u2019t even feign concern about Saudi Arabia\u2019s repressive regime invading neighboring Bahrain to put down a pro-democracy movement there. In fact, the words “Saudi Arabia” were never uttered. <\/p>\n
It was that kind of speech: scathing condemnations of human rights abuses by the U.S.\u2019s Official Enemies in places like Iran and Syria and muted criticism \u2013 if any \u2013 of the gross violations of human decency carried out by its dictatorial friends in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen. <\/p>\n
Obama predictably glossed over the reality of U.S. policy and, in an audacious attempt to rewrite history, portrayed his administration as being supportive of the fall of tyrannical governments across the Middle East and North Africa, ludicrously suggesting he had supported regime change in Hosni Mubarak\u2019s Egypt \u2013 a claim betrayed by the $1.3 billion a year in military aid his administration provided to Mubarak\u2019s regime right up until the moment he resigned. The president\u2019s revisionism might fool a few cable news personalities \u2013 what wouldn\u2019t \u2013 but it won\u2019t fool Egyptians, less than one in five of whom even want the closer relationship with the U.S. that Obama offered in his speech, at least one that involves more military aid and economic “reforms” imposed by the International Monetary Fund. <\/p>\n
And Obama\u2019s remarks shouldn\u2019t fool their primary audience: American voters. <\/p>\n
Contrary to the rhetoric of Obama\u2019s speech, if the U.S. has sided with Middle Eastern publics against their brutal dictators it has not been because of their dictators\u2019 brutality, which in the case of Mubarak was seen as a plus in the age of the war on terror. Nor has that support for the oppressed come in the form of \u2013 hold your laughter \u2013 non-violence. Rhetoric of change aside, how best to use the liberating power of bullets and bombs continues to be the guiding principle of U.S. policy in the Middle East. …more<\/a><\/p>\n