On Jan. 30, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post wrote a column criticizing aspects of President Barack Obama’s outreach to foreign Muslims. While I agree with some of his points, in other ways he makes errors in reasoning that conservatives commonly seem to make.
Specifically, he took exception with Obama’s statement that, “We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name.” I agree with Krauthammer that our former president often expressed exactly that same sentiment.
However, Krauthammer erred when he described Obama as coming off “needlessly defensive and apologetic” when he said in his inaugural address, “[T]o the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”
Referring to Obama’s interview on al-Arabiya television, Krauthammer described Obama’s words as “astonishing.” Krauthammer pointed out that over the last 20 years, U.S. military personnel had given their lives in five military campaigns to liberate Muslim peoples; those conflicts were Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.
He rightfully pointed out that in Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as the disastrous 1993 action in Somalia, no U.S. interests were involved — they were purely humanitarian missions by nature.
But Krauthammer doesn’t seem able to distinguish our possibly selfless motives in those military campaigns from the way they are perceived by Muslims overseas. The problem is that a huge number of Muslims abroad think that those campaigns were launched to entrench U.S. influence in Muslim lands.
This is problematic because remaining a superpower is conditional upon other countries wanting to cooperate with us and be willing to do business with us. The Bush administration’s fundamental error was the notion that we could be a superpower-in-isolation. I think that one of the key reasons Obama won the presidency was because he grasped this and was able to convey it to voters.
The Iraq War was a horrible idea and the Bush presidency became such a catastrophe because Bush never grasped that many Muslims harbor a profound distaste of foreign intervention in their countries’ political affairs. This is due to the history of United States colonialism — of which the present instability in many of those countries is a result — and also because of simple nationalist pride.
U.S. belligerence was a blessing al-Qaeda used to recruit disaffected young men. The Iraq War confirmed al-Qaeda propaganda and gave something to point to and say, “See, they really are out to dominate Muslim lands.”
Thus, Obama was merely expressing sympathy to Muslims and their perception that the U.S. has been hostile to them and their interests over the last eight years.
By so doing it already looks like Obama is undermining extremists’ ability to recruit a new generation. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denoted that better relations would be possible only after President Obama apologizes for the last 60 years of American intervention in Iran.
Likewise, Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant Ayman-al Zawahiri and European al-Qaeda leaders have been at a loss about how to rally Muslims against such a popular U.S. president.
What can they say about an American president who had a Muslim father, spent part of his life in a Muslim country, opposed the Iraq War and has an Arabic name?
Christopher Herrin is a graduate Religious Studies major and a columnist for the Daily Forty-Niner.