Moral Clarity, Inverted Posted by Shadi Hamid

Today is September 11. It is almost impossible to tell. Nothing looks particularly different. Starbucks coffee tastes like it did five years ago (or does it?).

We don’t seem to act like a society at war. That, however, does not mean the task at hand – fighting terror and securing the homeland – is any less urgent. But we are losing, whether it is on the battlefields of Iraq or for the hearts and minds we began to lose long ago. A couple of days ago, a friend and I were talking about John McCain running for president. I ran through some of his good qualities: he’s relatively principled, sincere, I said, and he’s anti-torture to boot. Then I thought to myself – this is the legacy of the Bush administration: the moral bar has been set so low that now we get excited when a politician is against torture, which is, as far as I’m concerned, sort of like being anti-rape, anti-murder, and anti-child molestation. It’s really nothing to brag about, or at least it wasn’t before the Bush administration and their Republican enablers destroyed America’s moral compass. 

On the eve of this tragic anniversary, it’s baffling that the Bushies would coin as stupid a term as “Islamic fascism.” Wait, actually, it’s not. They want to rally their base with their red-meat appeals for the red states, who, so we are told, fancy hypermasculine posturing mixed in with their politics. When Bush decided to mix in faux Churchill in his garbage-man rhetoric, he put our troops and our country in ever greater danger. Every terrorist and religious extremist now has another talking point to whip up the anger of potential recruits. In short, this administration has sacrificed the safety of our troops and the security of the American people on the altar of domestic politics.

Yes, some of you might proceed to explain to me the meaning of “Islamic fascism,” and justify its usage. But what we, as Americans, think the term means is irrelevant. In today’s morass of miscommunication, what is said often has little to do with what is heard. And 1.4 billion Muslims, nearly all of them already quite angry at us, interpreted the words as distinctly hostile and an affront to their faith. In a culture which elevates honor and dignity, the spectacle of a man with little command of the English language, fronting in such a preposterous manner, is yet one more insult on top of many others. The scars of humiliation have not healed, while the indignities continue to mount.

As always, the price of such decisions, made in the name of "moral clarity," will have to be borne by us and our country, never more imperiled than it is today, five years after later. 

Comments

[Reynolds]

When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

"Then I thought to myself – this is the legacy of the Bush administration: the moral bar has been set so low that now we get excited when a politician is against torture, which is, as far as I’m concerned, sort of like being anti-rape, anti-murder, and anti-child molestation. It’s really nothing to brag about, or at least it wasn’t before the Bush administration and their Republican enablers destroyed America’s moral compass. "

Shadi, Shadi, Shadi...where to start? You seem deeply ambivalent on what to think about the Bush administration...you like democracy promotion in the middle east, you dislike dictators like Saddam or Ayatollah Khamenei (PBUH) or Assad or the Taliban but you don't like it when we mess with their countries? Are we supposed to nice-nice these guys until they come over to our side? Should we put Saddam in place again so he can straighten out the mess in Iraq, and then give him access to our satellite imaging again so he can destroy a half a million Iranians whose government we don't like? Baghdad is destroyed, no one is debating that. It wouldn't be destroyed if we didn't attack it, still, no argument there. But would you have advocated negotiating with Saddam ad nauseum? He'd never loosen his grip. Just like the Prophet Khamenei never will, just like Assad never will.

What I'm trying to say is I know you don't like the destructioin in Iraq, no one does. I know that you're upset that people around the world think America is a bully. Just don't think that actually democracy promotion in the Middle East would have happened without the chaos we see today. We're able to negotiate with Russia and China to put sanctions on Iran because they'd rather let the country starve than have us bomb it for pursuing its nuclear program (which we would, and no one doubts that, and that's why we can negotiate).

Basically, I know you didn't want the war to start, but now that it has started what do you want to do?

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