The Speech
(Blog Post) What struck me most about Barack Obama's speech today in Cairo is what was missing: Iraq. He didn't skip Iraq entirely, but his discussion of it was perfunctory and incomplete. Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar CampwalaReview
Classic conservative relativism whose generic line of logic is, 'Well, if you think such-and-such issue is bad here, check out what this third world dictatorship is doing." According to Hayes, Iraq's fragile government should be praised as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, despite its deep corruption, factiousness and instability. And apparently the United States government is absolved of responsibility to its women because women in Saudi Arabia can't drive. This kind of outrage dominates conservative talk of American exceptionalism. Wholly unoriginal and poorly reasoned. The author does make a more careful point at the end -- that Obama seemed to contradict himself in his passage about "elevating" one group or nation over another. American ideals make the country exceptional, he says, thus an "elevation" is necessary. This should have been the bulk of the piece.
What’s so vexing about Obama’s gleeful rejection of American exceptionalism (again) in the context of American power is that he embraces it in other ways. The United States, he frequently argues, must lead by example. Americans must close Guantanamo and end torture, he says, because “we must never alter our principles” or “act contrary to our ideals.” And those principles and ideals make America something worth emulating — they make it exceptional.
I welcome a great conservative perspective on Obama's visit to the Middle East. But the Standard can't steer away from these base talking points and cheapshots. Kristol et al. seem incapable of intellectualizing an issue -- they tend to just make rhetoric of it.