NWO.
The Arab Spring was President Obama’s test case. How should a diversity-minded, inclusive, neoliberal leader respond to a mass movement dominated by anti-globalist Islamic revivalists? The answer was pretty much to do what George W. Bush did: try to remake the Middle East in his globalist image.
But wait, weren’t Bush and Obama opposites? Not where it matters. Obama could not be truly, fundamentally different from Reagan, Bush or Clinton. Obama’s ambition was to hone and perfect a New World Order that was born in the wake of the world wars and which came of age with the Soviet collapse.
At home, he would do this through his social agenda. Abroad he would extend it to those last resistant corners of the globe.
Flip side.
Sure, there were differences. Bush’s team was inspired by neoconservative thinking; Obama’s was neoliberal. But they are two sides of the same ideological coin. They share an overarching dream of a perfected global society in a unified world of free trade, democracy and human rights.
The differences that loomed so large to their partisans are in details of social balance and the state’s role in fostering capitalism-based welfare. But the dream is the same. Both envision an imminent culmination of history, whose mythological arrow points along a line of progress that assures us of a happy ending.
Nowadays, just about everyone believes in it. It is most people’s truest religion. The faith is bolstered by great leaps forward in technology that do indeed make our lives (if we are born in the right countries) longer and on the whole more pleasant.
If this ignores the side-effects of technology, such as resource exhaustion, or the inconvenient truth that tech’s first priority is how to kill masses of people more efficiently, so be it. A very happy planet lies just over the horizon! Anyone within spitting distance of power agrees on that, even if they do quibble over the means to get there.
The end of history.
To be clear, when I say religion, I do not suggest that either Jesus’ or Buddha’s teachings agree with this materialist salvation. They were not believers in the end-all and be-all of material or political life.
But Christendom, Jewish messianism or their Islamic, Marxist and Globalist stepchildren are another matter. The end of history, be it through Islam’s perfect rule of Allah, or Christendom’s political millennialism, or Marx’s Workers’ Paradise, is based on an ideal of perfected life. Let’s call such ideas antichrist religion. It’s appropriate, because the promise is of total salvation in terms anti to Christ’s philosophy.
Just consider the latest trend, which promises nature’s surrender to human will, even to the extent that aging and death would be no more. What might the Apostle Paul say? “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (There is a lot to think about there, but more on this subject in a later post.)
Then the serpent said to the woman, Ye shall not die at all, But God doth know that when ye shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods….
Hope.
What I’m getting at is that progressive globalism is a dream more in tune with religion than it is with mundane governance.
Now, I know this sensitive. The suggestion that they are religious embarrasses some liberals to the point of denial. Whereas religion was explicit with Reagan, liberal progressives don’t easily acknowledge that they too hold to a sanctified creed. But they do. Their worldview has universal and proselytistic intent. And its tenets are rooted firmly in millenarianism.
Reflect, if you will, on candidate Obama’s iconography. It was built on the word HOPE. That’s a religious word, and as I’ve written elsewhere, the candidate’s Christ-like tilt towards heaven and promise that from now on all would be different, is undeniably an appeal for people to be saved by coming to his faith.
Echoes of Reagan.
That’s why Obama often sounded like Reagan—both men evangelized politics that promised heaven on earth. They just had to convert enough people to their way!
To cite one example, in his inaugural address, Obama said that it was time for a new age. He promised to rid the world of “worn-out dogmas.” Had he read Reagan’s 1985 CPAC speech? “Being a revolutionary,” Reagan said, “is knowing that you don’t have to acquiesce to the tired, old ideas of the past.”
And there is that idea again! We must continually move forward toward an ideal state, at any cost. If we haven’t reached our goal yet, it is only because our revolution has not as yet succeeded.
Of course, historical directionality is apocalyptic religion’s premiere concept. So my point isn’t that their remarks are original, but that they share the same pagan outlook.
And unfortunately, it is a lie. The revolutionary cycle never ends. As it deposes the old for the promise of the new, it creates the ills that the next wave will promise to cure. It is advertising’s premiere concept too, and as you know, that never ends either. No, this is no line moving forward; it is more a treadmill.
Kingdom right here on earth.
Sometimes, with the right audience, Obama could even sound like Reagan as a man promising to fulfill Christian millenarian prophecies. Candidate Obama told a crowd of thousands in South Carolina that he aspired to be “an instrument of God”. Then he went full antichrist: “I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”
That’s a mighty big promise. Christ himself didn’t even make such a claim! Quite the opposite: Jesus specifically refused political power. His message was that our material, social, civilized worldly existence was fraught and imperfectible; while here, we are to exercise compassion and restraint; don’t look for a messiah who offers ultimate solutions through a change of regime.
That was Jesus. But like the other champions of the New World Order, Obama had other ideas.
A New Beginning.
This is how the Arab Spring becomes the test case. Having criticized Bush’s attempt to bring the Middle East in line with the world order (presumably via those “worn out dogmas”) President Obama was at pains to prove that his fresh dogmas would work.
To show he meant business, not six months into his presidency, Obama travelled to the Middle East to make his case. Islam’s prestigious intellectual heart was his proving ground. In June 2009, he gave an unprecedented speech, titled “A New Beginning,” co-sponsored by Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. People across the Middle East tuned in.
This was not a feel-good pep talk. He who sought to create God’s Kingdom called for “governments that reflect the will of the people” across the Middle East. Dictators and secularists shuddered.
In a telling turn, the latter part of his remarks referred to America’s unique calling. Espousing Manifest Destiny was peculiar for a liberal. But he did it, openly evoking the Puritan dream of America as the Promised Land and light of the nations. “The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known…shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: ‘Out of many, one.’”
Come and be baptized into the unity of the New World Order! was the message. “Out of many, one.”
A few months later they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize for it. The award cited him specifically for championing this very dogma. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”
Majority.
One wonders how significant that majority must be. Is 51 percent enough? Do the other 49 percent just eat what they are fed? Whatever the case, the idea is clear: one world family, a global consensus and a unified order. Muslim? Fine. Christian? Fine. Atheist. Great! But first and foremost you are part of the great Unity. Again, this is Reagan’s legacy, already articulated by President H.W. Bush as the New World Order.
At the time, I wondered if it was a subliminal appeal to Islam’s cardinal doctrine of tawhid, the indivisible unity of God. Obama’s unity did sound like the Muslim confession of faith, especially when read in Arabic translation. If that was his intent, he failed to recognize that many Muslims do not want to be unified with Western liberalism. For millions of Muslims, to make this association between their confession and the West’s ideals was blasphemous.
The people.
It didn’t matter. It was the other thing he said that resounded across the Arab world.
His listeners, who presumably were “the people” to whom he referred, understand perfectly the denunciation of their rulers. Whoever they were, President Obama endorsed “the people’s” will to power. And of course, they certainly knew who they were. They also knew for certain that anyone who disagreed with them could not be counted as the people. “We are the light, they are the darkness; whatever he is, I am its opposite.” Henceforth, the others were the dark forces, never the people.
Orientalism.
“Obama upended three decades of American relations with its most stalwart ally in the Arab world, putting the weight of the United States squarely on the side of the Arab street,” judged the reliably Obama-friendly New York Times.
In February 2011, the president rebuked Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in a telephone call and then immediately appeared on television in a hastily-called news conference to say that Mubarak must go. It looked and felt like a superior dressing down a subordinate, and that’s what it was. A white conservative president would be accused of Orientalist bullying. But Mr Obama’s intentions were unimpeachable since he sought liberation for the freedom-loving Arab masses.
Mubarak, now without a superpower ally, duly resigned and democracy had its day in Egypt. In this way, Obama echoed Bush who overthrow Saddam and gave democracy to the Iraqis. And in both cases democracy proved to be anything but liberal. The Iraqis splintered, a majority favoring Iran’s theocracy, a very large minority espousing its opposites (like the Islamic State), and the Kurds going off on their own. The “people” of Egypt chose the Muslim Brotherhood to rule over them. Nowhere, except among the Kurds, did Christians or lapsed Muslims count for anything.
Muslim Brothers.
If you don’t know too much about the Muslim Brotherhood, you are in good company. Neither did the American president. If you want a full briefing, please follow the link at the bottom. I’ve written a concise history for you.
In short, for the Muslim Brotherhood, the first order of business was to be rid of Westernized Arab elites. They would replace them with genuine Islamic states based on Islamic law. Then the overarching universality of God’s sovereignty would supersede local secular nationalism.
Did the president understand this was the ‘freedom’ so many sought? Did he understand the situation better when, just eighteen months later, the streets again filled to attack US diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya? The latter resulted in the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and Hillary Clinton’s Libya debacle, while in Cairo the protesters burned effigies of their liberator President Obama. ‘Democracy’ soon erupted in Yemen, Bahrain and Syria also, and the president’s responses indicate that he remained as blind to the reality as Bush had been.
Arrogance.
As Syria began to disintegrate from the effects of democracy in 2011 my associates and I rushed aid to democracy’s Christian victims in the north. There, the ‘democratized street’ meant locally imposed Islamic law and curtailment of Christian rights (and in some areas outright atrocities).
In his fateful telephone conversation, Mubarak had correctly predicted this chaos, warning President Obama that he didn’t have a good grasp of how the Middle East works. Questioning Obama’s intellectual acumen was a bad tactic, which most certainly back-fired on Mubarak. Obama was used to giving lectures, not receiving them. (In the words of Congressman Dennis Cardoza, a fellow Democrat from California, “President Obama projected an arrogant ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’ demeanor that alienated many potential allies”).
Mubarak told veteran correspondent Christiane Amanpour that he didn’t hold a grudge, however, and believed Obama to be “a good man” who simply “does not understand.”
“He’s not good with personal relationships; that’s not what interests him,” said an experienced United States diplomat, adding further light to the problem. “But in the Middle East, those relationships are essential. The lack of them deprives D.C. of the ability to influence leadership decisions.”
This observation about Obama’s hectoring style was echoed again and again by a wide spectrum of leaders, from Arab diplomats to British Prime Minister David Cameron and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. (The latter two called Obama’s stance, “arrogant.”)
Stereotypes.
But in his Cairo speech, Obama assured his listeners that he considered it “part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” He meant things like ‘Islam is a religion of violence.‘
All well and good. But President Obama’s stance was orientalist: he, as an enlightened secular globalist was going to tell Muslims what they are and what they believe. What if a Muslim wants to bring change through violence? What if millions of Muslims believe this is how change will come? Apparently, non-Muslim American presidents know better than those Muslims, or at least they know what’s best for them.
Many activist Muslims perceive this condescending good will as dishonest. You see, when a gun-wielding Western superpower insists that Islam is a religion of peace, it is seen as thinly veiled pacification. It is imperialist trickery to cow Muslims into “Uncle Tom” subservience. ‘You want us to be peaceful while you have all the bombs!’
None of this was understood. Despite growing chaos, the administration (through the embassy in Syria), encouraged democracy protesters while Clinton and other top advisers urged the president to increase U.S. support to Syrian rebel groups, as if the situation could be contained and transformed into a new 1776. Surely there was a Tom Jefferson with a beard over there somewhere!
Moderates.
Obviously that did not happen. As we’ve seen, arms quickly fell into the hands of jihadists with an ideology indistinguishable from al-Qaeda’s; Iran entered the fray without reserve; and ISIS came to dominate the scene for three bloody years.
The direct death toll in the Global War on Terror is over 800,000. Forty percent of them are civilizations. The indirect deaths are estimated to be in the millions. (And I feel obliged to add: these are not like COVID deaths. Natural death of older people from a virus is not equal to young people being killed by incendiary bombs. Not to mention the irreparable dissolution of families and end of education for millions.)
Peace Prizes.
And along with the policy there are the weapons. It is a truism that reliance on armaments was one of the “worn-out dogmas” to be replaced by President Obama.
Yet, even as he made the Cairo speech, his administration was ramping up drone strikes. As democracy seized Syria and Iraq, he relied more and more on them. Far more than President Bush and so far, measured term-for-term, way more than President Trump. The old dogma was perhaps the number of American troops on the ground. They were kept to a minimum. But the drones! The Hell Fire missiles! The “signature strikes” (meaning assassinations), these broke all the records. This was the new dogma?
One measure is to look head to head at a comparable battlefield, where both presidents were active. This is especially interesting, since candidate Obama specifically called for a reversal of Bush’s Afghanistan policy. Bush was not shy with drones in Pakistan. He ordered 51 drone strikes against suspected terrorists there. Obama’s tally: 372.
Astonishing to some, arms exports rose 43 percent under Obama. He sold more American weapons than any American president since the Second World War. Most of them – the vast majority of them – to the Middle East.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying Bush good/Obama bad. I opposed Bush’s policies too. I am saying that Obama and Bush practice the same religion.
That’s it for this installment! I’ve promised to look soon at developments in Turkey and give a COVID update along with some related thoughts on hubris and prudence. Later we will look in depth at that perfectibility question.
LINKS AND CREDITS
LINKS:
Free book chapter excerpts:
Muslim Brotherhood
Barack Obama
Header image:
P060409CK-0297 President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Thursday, June 4, 2009. In his speech, President Obama called for a ‘new beginning between the United States and Muslims’, declaring that ‘this cycle of suspicion and discord must end’. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND WEAPONS:
Obama Promised to End America’s Wars—Has He?
The president’s military record, by the numbers