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In dealing with the tumult in Iran, Obama is a captive of his belief in moral equivalence
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Where is President Barack Obama? The whole world wonders. As people who yearn to free themselves from the yoke of oppression look to our president for guidance, the purported leader of the free world dithers on Iran. As the great and historically unprecedented upheaval continues, one of the greatest orators of our time, has become a sideshow, his response to the crisis reduced to issuing tepid, cautious, lawyerly equivocations.
On Iran, Barack Obama is held captive to his firmly held conviction in the post-modernist concept of moral equivalence. The doctrine of moral equivalence was not only a pivotal and indispensable tool that Obama used to great effect in the election campaign (think of the justification for his long-term relationship with the racist Reverend Wright), it also has served as an underpinning of his foreign policy. If the "post-racial" candidate was capable of threading the needle on Reverend Wright, of reconciling the irreconcilable (with the able assistance of an ideologically friendly and adoring press), what is to stop him from solving the most intractable conflicts on the world stage?
The successful implementation of this strategy requires that incidents and concepts that are intrinsically inconsistent be normalized by contextualization. For example, the two decade incendiary rants of a Jeremiah Wright really are no different than a passing comment about blacks made by his white grandmother. In order to reap the fruits of moral equivalence so successfully applied in his domestic political operation to the sphere of foreign affairs, contextualization requires that Obama first level the playing field as it were, by either disparaging his own country, or by engaging in historical revisionism. In order to achieve the desired political result dictated by viewing events through the prism of moral equivalence, Obama not only perennially misstates the historical record, he also habitually accords grossly disproportionate and dissimilar historical events equal weight.
We saw it in his trip to the Continent where he bleated about the stain of Guantanamo, but refused to shame Europeans for free-riding, for the past forty years, on the back of the American defense umbrella; we saw it in his speech in Berlin, where according to him, the lifting of the blockade was not the result of U.S. resolve, but rather, was occasioned by virtue of the "world coming together"; and, the latest iteration, is on Iran, where the U.S. cannot be seen to be meddling in the current democratic uprising, because of CIA machinations that occurred well over half a century ago.
Obama views himself as a great Hegelian world figure. Each seemingly unmanageable and insoluble international conflict that has plagued statesmen in the past, represents a grand historical moment that calls upon his unique and transcendent talents to synthesize the mistakes of the past with the promise of future resolution. For Obama, moral equivalence and his presumed ability to bridge all divides are concepts that are inextricably intertwined. His conceit, is that he fancies himself a Great Conciliator, an idea constantly buttressed and stoked by a servile American media. This belief presupposes that all world conflict, both present and past, is the result of a misunderstanding between antagonists. Yet, the inherent weakness of Obama's foreign policy is that he misconstrues adulation for accomplishment.
Obama may have a receptive audience among American journalists for the idea, wholly unfounded by any evidence in his actual record or experience, that he can bring factions together, or in the words of Newsweek's Evan Thomas, that he floats above it all… a sort of God. Many foreign leaders however, with interests inimical to the United States, are simply bemused by all this fraudulent mythologizing.
As is evidenced by the increase in their provocative words and deeds, Kim Jong II, as well as the clerics in Iran, care not one whit about the historical significance of Barack Obama's election. Although American journalists are beguiled by Obama's allure, foreign despots are immune from his charms. And here, in Obama's surreal relationship with a craven and corrupt American media, Edmund Burke's admonition rings especially true: flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
Thus, in the real world, there are limits to what can actually be achieved by a foreign policy agenda premised on moral equivalence. After his serial apolozing for the shortcomings of his country during his trip to Europe, Obama came home empty handed. So too in his docile posture towards the rebellion in Iran. Despite his meticulous attempts to remain neutral throughout the internal conflict, the Iranian clerics accused him of intermeddling anyway. So, what has Obama gained by his silence? Moral equivalence by its very nature precludes choosing sides. But, to govern is to choose. Obama is incapable of making a choice on Iran because his presidency still remains an extension of his election campaign.
Obama has missed the boat in Iran because he is still wedded to the delusional belief that he can dissuade the mullahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. The conflict in Iran has now moved beyond merely a dispute about counting all the ballots. It is now about the legitimacy of the theocratic regime itself.
Though Obama likes to think of himself as an historical figure called upon to work his transcendent magic upon the world stage, history will ultimately record that on Iran, the moment passed him by.
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