The Hindu Business Line : Obama overdoes ‘good guy’ bit

Mr Obama ought to go slow in taking any initiative that would make uncharitable persons look for any latent vulnerability. Neither the timing, nor the venue, nor the contents, nor even the diction, of the Cairo speech provide any cause for celebration.

B. S. Raghavan

I am getting to be a little concerned about the US President, Mr Barack Obama’s public postures.

He seems over-eager to play the good guy with becoming modesty and humility to rub out the image of the US as an arrogant and aggressive super-cop, determined to impose on other countries its ideas of what is good for them, even if it means resorting to pre-emptive strikes and regime changes.

He is also perhaps keen to demonstrate the difference between his administration and the preceding ‘neocons’-ridden and Bush-Cheney-driven one that has left the US in a horrible mess from every point of view.

Overall, he has adopted a leadership style that is liable to be misunderstood by people as too ingratiating, if not cloying. There are acceptable as well as problematic aspects of his style.

Among the ones that carried the distinct stamp of his personality and earned him respect round the world were his decision to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the forbidding of crude and cruel interrogation techniques, no different from barbaric torture, which were the stock-in-trade of the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency during his predecessor’s term.

He also created a laudable impression by his handling of the financial crisis, particularly his strenuous efforts to create a bi-partisan consensus by visits to the Capitol to clear the doubts of the Senators and Representatives.

Generally, as a person and as a President, Mr Obama is certainly like a fresh breeze blowing on the political landscape of the US.

But he needs to draw the line at a point where accessibility becomes excessive exposure, and the anxiety to play to the gallery affects the prestige and awe in which the President should be held. From this standpoint, watching Mr Obama submitting himself to his legs being pulled in a comedy programme anchored by Jay Leno, was not a pleasing sight.

Latent vulnerability

More disconcertingly, pictures taken on the occasion of the G-20 meeting in London in April showed Mr Obama, when he met the Saudi Arabian King, making a deep bow, which sections of world media variously described as ‘Islamic submission on bended knee’ and touching the royal feet (no doubt an exaggeration).

At least, one commentary referred to Mr Obama’s unguarded mention of ‘my Muslim faith’ in front of the whole nation while a guest on George Stephanopoulos ‘This Week’ television programme and connected it with the mode of greeting of the Saudi king as ‘the surest sign’ that what was taken as a gaffe was no gaffe at all.

It is in this background that his so-called ‘historic’ speech at Cairo on June 4 has to be viewed.

With his incisive intellect, it should have been obvious to Mr Obama that perception counts far more than reality in politics, and given his lineage, he ought to go slow in taking any initiative that would make uncharitable persons, especially the millions of diehard conservatives in his own country, look for any latent vulnerability.

One should not aspire to make history by just the flick of a finger, but should prepare the ground politically, emotionally and psychologically; extreme delicacy and subtlety are needed especially where prejudices, antagonisms and hatreds run deep.

Olive branch

Not only did Mr Obama suddenly spring on the US and the rest of the world his gushing paeans of praise to ‘civilisation’s debt to Islam’ and the ‘Muslim communities’ being ‘at the forefront of innovation and education’.

He went way farther in laying it on thick. After enumerating the great gifts of Islam — algebra, magnetic compass, tools of navigation, pens and printing, healing of diseases, majestic arches, soaring spires, timeless poetry, cherished music, elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation — he trumped it all with the categorical, but questionable, assertion: “…throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality”!

His conscious avoidance of the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’, preferring the description ‘violent extremists’ as less hurting to the Muslim psyche, his use of Islamic salutations and forms of obeisance (assalaamu alaykum, peace be upon Mohammed), his sprinkling the speech with quotations from Holy Koran — all bespeak of the lengths to which he had prepared himself to go to extend the olive branch.

Leaving aside the usefulness or otherwise of these gestures in neutralising the ‘negative stereotypes of Islam’ and the ‘Muslim perceptions of America’ as ‘a self-interested empire’, the seven issues covered by Mr Obama in his speech — Iraq, tensions among Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world, rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights and economic development and opportunity give enough room for scepticism about the sum total of their impact as a pointer to ‘a new beginning’.

Missed opportunity

They were all expositions on familiar lines, and there was nothing in them either by way of insight or inspiration, that would have fired the imagination of Muslim minds. The choice of religious freedom and women’s rights was singularly inappropriate since there is no evident prospect of any amount of homilies bringing about sea-change in attitudes and Mr Obama must have been addressing closed minds in these respects.

The topic on which Mr Obama should have pitched in with all his might was democracy, but by choosing to give to it the ambiguous and mealy mouthed treatment, he considerably diluted its importance especially to Islamic countries to most of which the idea is foreign. The words in which his stand was couched made it look as if it was a matter of indifference to him whether or not the Muslim countries made it their mode of governance.

It is respect for citizen’s rights to choose the government it considers most capable of fulfilling their expectations and needs that guarantees the efficient and purposeful working of all other institutions. Mr Obama missed a great opportunity to stress this in no uncertain terms.

Altogether, neither the timing, nor the venue, nor the contents, nor (surprisingly for Mr Obama) even the diction, of the Cairo speech provide any cause for celebration.