Abeed al-beit
The title means house slave in Arabic. As reported by the Associated Press, Ayman al-Zawahri of al-Qaida says that's what Barack Obama is. The English subtitles for his speech translated the term as house negro. He also applied the label to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, while praising Malcolm X who used a similar term for black leaders that didn't stand up to whites in the Sixties.
I guess that takes some of the shine off of the Messiah label.
Putting aside American race relations, it's probably a good thing that Al-Qaida isn't enamored with Obama. It also seems to lay to rest some of the fears of the Right here in America that an Obama presidency will pander to terrorists; even if he were to try, they don't seem to want to play ball.
And, maybe that's the point of this post.
There isn't any way that Obama can cozy up to the bad guys, be they al-Qaida, the Taliban, Iran or North Korea. Talk about the naïveté of talking "without preconditions" shows a certain naïveté on the part of the talkers. All of the factors that have led to our current world are still in play.
Bush "looked into" Putin's eyes back in 2001 at the start of his first term as President:
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.
"I was able to get a sense of his soul."
BBC News, June 16, 2001.
Replacing the "cowboy" with the "house negro" won't change the playing field. Obama as President will not magically end the ethnic, religious and economic underpinnings of the hate and envy we face in the world.
Putin is still around and still is not very trustworthy. All of the rogue states and al-Qaida will be around and still not be very trustworthy 4 or 8 years from now. Obama's task is to craft foreign and domestic policy that recognizes that fact and deals with the reality of protecting our security without wasting time, energy and money trying to spread the gospel of democracy to a world that isn't going to convert.
Insisting on preconditions that presuppose fundamental change in how our adversaries think before we agree to talk to them will decrease our security and waste our diminishing resources.
4 comments:
Sorry. Pet peeve. You misspelled "Malcolm". My (legal) first name is Malcolm, though I never go by it, choosing to use my middle name instead. Actually, that choice was made for me by my parents. A little known (and completely useless) fact about old Pos for you there.
A lot of people misspell Malcolm, but the funniest one I ever experienced was at Andrews AFB outside Washington DC. My son was born at the Malcolm Grow Medical Center. on the outside of the building was HUGE lettering displaying the name properly.
They misspelled "Malcolm" on the birth certificate paperwork in the "Father's Name" field. But they spelled the name of the hospital right in the "place of birth" field.
If I had an emoticon for rolling one's eyes, I would have used it here.
I know better; but, both Word and Blogger failed to catch it during the spell check.
I think they are sending a message to see what he will do. Putin is/will do the same.
Bush was and is as naive as they come. Never even out of the country before he was president, I have heard (seems incredible). Only such an idiot would give any credence to personal relationships being important to international relations. It's all about national interests, and even those who detest each other can make win-win deals.
Obama is from Chicago. It's union country, and no organization is more devious than a union. Obama knows about power. He's also a child of the world who will be listened to if he has something important to say.
I wish I could be happier with Hillary at State, though. It would be interesting if he had to fire her before one year has passed.
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