Whose Lens: McCain's Or Obama’s? [Must Read]

"Mr Obama describes the world as is; Mr McCain as it seemed to be during that fleeting unipolar moment. America’s voters will decide in November which of these lenses they prefer to look."

Well, this voter prefers to look at Obama’s lens. It is prettier and more comforting. But I knows that taking my eyes off the McCain lens will put my life in jeopardy. For the world is not as Obama describes it and Islamist terror has nothing to do with the fleeting unipolar moment. If the US and Israel disappeared tomorrow would Jihadist stop their terror campaign agaist India where they only last week they killed 80 in Jaipur in order to “blow part of your tourism structure” and, second, to “demolish your faith in the dirty mud, in the name of Hanuman, Sita [and] Ram”.?!

Stephens is not alone in his wish to make the world go away. Rather, his mood is representative of that of the liberal/leftist transnational elite that believes it found a champion in Obama. If avoiding reality means expunging the historical record and making mass executioners like Che Guevara into heroes, wannabe Hitlers like Ahmadinejad into a trustworthy negotiating partners, and putting up with a “reasonable number” of terrorist attacks as India has been so virtuously been doing, it is a price they will gladly pay. After all, what are the chances that they personally will be the victims?!

Moreover, they resent Bush for selfishly keeping terror away from America. So doing merely is increasing terror elsewhere, they argue. They also insist that war in Iraq created more terrorists and so has the war on terror as a whole. Evidence to the contrary be damned or at least covered up. For it, like progress in Iraq, will merely strengthen the hands of inconvenient realists like McCain and his old fashioned patriotic supporters. Already, these appeasing transnational elites have succeeded in convincing the British government not to use the term “war on terror” anymore and the American government not to talk of Jihadists.

President Obama, Europeans believe will enable them to be the Swisstype free riders, another FT columnist Gideon Rachman explains Europeans so yearn to be and, indeed, already are. Moreover, Obama will not challenge the morality or wisdom of their choice. If anything, he will hold them up as the example America should follow.

"The Swiss can feel secure because they are surrounded by Europe. The Europeans can only feel insecure because they are surrounded by an arc of instability, from north Africa to the Middle East, from the Balkans to the Caucasus. . . . . while America is protected by the vast Atlantic ocean, Europe feels . . . Islamic anger directly because of its geographical proximity to the Middle East and its large domestic Islamic populations."

In other words, the average European like the average American has reasons for feeling insecure. They have real enemies, of the kind the “annoying” McCain worries about. But do not assume that Kishore wants Europe to join the war against terror. No, he wants Europe to rely on Asia instead of on the US because Asia will solve Europe’s Jihadist problem. All it would take is patience and forgetting (at least for the time being) about such unimportant issues as democracy or human rights:

"The real irony here is that Asia is doing much more to enhance long-term European security than America is. The Asian march to modernity, which began in Japan and is now sweeping through China and India, is poised to enter the Islamic world in west Asia. When this march enters the Islamic world, Europe will be surrounded by modern, middle-class Muslim states. Hence, Europe should encourage Muslims to look at China, India and Asean as their new development models. The success of the Beijing Olympics could help to ignite new dreams of modernisation among disaffected Islamic youth, who will ask why their societies cannot prosper like China. In short, if Ms Merkel and Mr Sarkozy could think strategically and long-term, they should enthusiastically participate in and cheer the success of the Olympics. When the Islamic world is finally modernized, Europe can go back to being a giant Switzerland again."

Sounds very convincing, doesn’t it? The trouble is that no where is Jihadism as strong and virulent as in West Asia. Moreover, Singapore where Kishore lives borders Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia both of which have strong Islamists movements. In other words, Asian Kishore is just as blind as European Rahman and American transnational supporters of Obama. They all deserve the “disrespect” with which David Brooks complains we treat them. For they are not real Alpha Geeks. Real Alpah geeks are mathematicians and physicists like Einstein, pacifists who do not shirk reality but write a letter to FDR warning him not to stand idly by while Hitler may be developing a nuclear weapon.

As Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion said and as I believe American John McCain, though not Barack Obama, would second though replacing Israel with the US, national security trumps all:

"I have many values I hold dear, some are Jewish and others universal. . . . I care about literature, philosophy, science and social science. But I have to confess to my narrow point of view: Nothing is more important to me than national security. If they give me a choice between the highest human ideals and the national security of Israel, I will choose unhesitatingly Israeli security and not because I do not believe in ideals but because “not the dead will praise Thee.” We have the right to live and that I consider the primary right and the primary concern.”

For the first time in American history we may elect a president who does not share Ben Gurion’s view and that is scary.

This is what Barack Obama said following 9/11:

“In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

Stand with the muslims cheering in America? It happened even if it is politically unpopular to remind people of it.

There was a Pakistani on the city payroll in Houston who wrote in an email to someone else (internal office) that he was happy about the attacks. His email was uncovered as he was under investigation for soliciting a co-worker for prostitution.

Stand with the muslims cheering in America? It happened even if it is politically unpopular to remind people of it.

Of course, he didn't say that, now did he?

Accurate quote:

"Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
“The Audacity of Hope,” 2007, page 261 (paperback version)

He wrote those words in 2007 which I guess, technically, is "following 9/11" as you state. He's talking about the mistreatment of American citizens, specifically immigrants and uses Muslims as an example. You have a problem with that?

The jihadist movement is not a single movement. It is an array of individual gripes that have the common thread that all of the fighting individuals happen to be Muslim (hmmm . . .odd that the commonality is a religion).

They would barely know the other fights existed if it weren't for the internet. They were also fighting before the internet.

Naturally the destruction of Israel and US would not cause them to stop, because their grievances are often local.

Vietnam had more to do with Vietnam than with Communism per se. The fighting was just made part of a larger struggle by the great powers.

In India and China, this is most certainly the case with their minorities.

I personally believe that victory in the battle against these various foes will best be achieved through a divide and conquer strategy. “With us or against us” is just too simplistic and creates many more battles than necessarily need be fought. Are the Uighurs in China committing terrorists acts because of they are crazy Jihadis or is the Chinese government policy creating a reason for them to do so?

It is as equally foolish to pursue a policy of the US against everyone as to believe that with nicer talk and smiles there will be no problems.

Unfortunately, politicians think people are stupid and say things that simply complex issues. On the other hand, when they try to explain complexity they get skewered. Maybe people are too stupid.

A few points about Obama's statement on 9/11:

I'd hardly classify "hard stares from neighbors" as "persecution," although, of course, CAIR does. There were very few incidents of actual acts of violence against Arabs or Pakistanis after 9/11.
The overwhelming majority of those detained were not citizens. Many of them were here illegally, were subsequently deported, or they self-deported.
The US government never gave any consideration to "internments" of any ethnic group after 9/11.

These are all rather elementary facts which Obama should be well aware of, since the words you quoted were written at least five years after 9/11 -- but Obama is not really about facts or accuracy, is he?

For the first time in American history we may elect a president who does not share Ben Gurion’s view and that is scary

I beg to differ with this statement. We already had a president like this. His name was James Earl Carter!

We survived his presidency, barely. And I believe we'll survive Barak Hussain Obama's too, though I hope we don't have to go through that again. We should have at least 50 years between really bad presidents!

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