To Speak Freely

So the right wing radio host Michael Medved is the latest to chime in on how America lacks a foreign policy and how Obama has made the world into the most dangerous of places.  Mostly he was crying about how badly Obama has treated Bibi Netanyahu who spoke today at the United Nations.  For him, the world is now a struggle between the forces of modernity and medievalism.  As if we need a new ideology in which to fit the entire international community.  Obama is right not to allow Israel to dictate U.S. foreign policy.  Can you imagine if the French president would go on record telling the United States how to behave in the international community?  Of course, these conservative voices would be insulting the French ad nauseam.  Israel should not dictate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.  What the conservative voices including the Republicans and their Presidential candidate call a lack of leadership is nothing more or less than a refusal on the part of the Obama administration to define the world ideologically.  The moment ideology enters the dialogue there is no dialogue.  As I said before, when there are only moral absolutes, diplomacy is defined as weakness and mocked as appeasement.  Obama does not want the United States to fight another war in the Middle East.  He does not want to draw a line in the sand that limits one to military action.  But drawing lines, threatening military action, and delivering ultimatums is the kind of foreign policy that the Republicans bring to the table, a foreign policy that is itself the farthest thing from Netanyahu’s modernity.  Many nations in the Middle East are struggling to establish democracies in their most rudimentary form—rule by the people.  After years of dictatorships, they are expressing themselves.  Among these voices are reactionary Muslim voices— whether these voices form a majority or not, only time will tell. 

Think about this hypocrisy.  The conservative political groups in the United States desire to affirm the connectedness of the U.S. government with its godly beginnings.  So we hear from them, “God this and God that.”  From them, we hear how morally impoverished the U.S. has become, since God has been removed from so many places.  We hear from them, how Christians are made to feel embarrassed of their faith because we live in an American culture of anything goes.  First of all, Christians are not persecuted in the U.S.  Because Target or Wal-Mart might say “Happy Holidays’ instead of “Merry Christmas,” should not send Christians to start identifying themselves with any of the Christian martyrs who were thrown to lions, shot through with arrows, burned to death, crucified, or beheaded.  Maybe businesses should be religion-free.  And if all retailers would start wishing customers a “Merry Christmas” during December, no one should suddenly feel that these organizations now have a Christian mission statement.  The political right actually wants to move the U.S. back toward theocracy.  How can these same people lament the fact the fledgling democracies in the Middle East have certain theocratic voices that would respond angrily to anyone who would question, criticize, parody, or openly insult Islam. 

It seems to me that there are only two policies:  the one is to continue to draw lines in the sand and initiate military action when that line is crossed.   It was not that long ago that the United States was drawn into the war in Vietnam because of its anti-communist ideology.  And it was less than a decade ago that America invaded Iraq because of its stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and its links to Al Qaeda neither of which was true.  The war against the non-existent terrorists in Iraq was quickly renamed Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the U.S. was once again violating another country’s sovereignty.  At some point, the United States has got to realize that it is not our way or the highway.  There are many problems in the United States that one would not wish upon any free country—the number of deaths caused by the easy access of guns, the number of children who are hungry and impoverished, the purchasing of the American Presidency by millionaires.    

The one element, however, that the U.S. shares with all of these emerging Middle Eastern democracies is the desire for freedom.  That should be the single most important U.S. foreign policy operative.  Of course there will be no democracy in Arab states in which reactionary theocracies rule.  To draw lines and give ultimatums, however, is to throw the baby out with the bath water.  If some of the hatred is directed toward the United States, some of it no doubt comes from an Arab historical perspective—the support of dictatorships, the invasion of Iraq, even the U.S. businesses that have made huge amounts of money at the expense of indigenous groups.  The other part of the anti-American sentiment expressed by Muslim extremists is pure demagoguery. 

Obama did not preach to the Arab world when he took the podium at the U.N.  He explained how very important freedom of speech is.  And there is evidence that there are voices in Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere that are rejecting extremism and fundamentalism in favor of freedom.  In fact, to emphasize freedom of speech was exactly what the President should have done.  If democracies are to emerge in this world, they must be predicated on the ability for human beings to speak freely.  Curses and shouts have no power—they have no meaning and are easily and rightly dismissed.  Real power comes from intelligent, persuasive arguments.    

While Obama was at the U.N., Romney was at the Clinton Initiative Project.  His solution for the international community was not freedom of speech but free enterprise, the very last thing that anyone in charge of U.S. foreign policy should be talking about.  As nations in the Middle East are working out their new democracies, they are not doing so in order for the U.S. entrepreneur to arrive and exploit them for profit.  I understand that for Romney free enterprise capitalism is democracy.  For a good deal of the world, this looks more like old-school colonialism.  Slow down, Mitt.  How about letting nations establish themselves before trying to capitalize on them.  Sometimes the solution is not economic.  Some things, Mitt, whether you believe it or not, are vastly more important than money. 

The good news is that the United States for all its problematic history in its relationships with other countries has the very real ability to lead the world in the development of democracies.  To underscore the power that comes through freedom of expression is a very good place to start.  I would suspect that in the coming years that reason will prevail in the Middle East not because individuals in the world need to become like Americans, but because apart from ideologies, religions, and politics, the human individual craves a voice.  Even in America where, in economic terms, the rich are so much freer than the majority of Americans, it is the freedom of speech (from the worst tabloid to the rawest rapper) that prevents widespread disorder and anarchy.  It is the responsibility of the intelligentsia in the Arab world to use the power of their words to demonstrate how any government that would prohibit free speech undermines both a just society and the authentic expression of one’s own faith.