It's Getting Harder to Defend America... Posted by Shadi Hamid

I was having dinner with a friend last night. She's a British citizen of Arab origin. She was saying how she wouldn't really consider herself British. Having lived in England for a couple years, this wasn't particularly surprising. But it was a reminder that we - there's the royal "we" - have been able to do something unique, and rather remarkable, in the United States. I, and the vast majority of the American Muslims I know, have no hesitation in saying, proudly, that we are American. This got us into a conversation about American exceptionalism, or perhaps more accurately, an internal monologue about my conflicted feelings about who we are, what we've become, and what I still want us to be. I sometimes will say things that don't really ring true to see how they sound in words, and to see how others react to them. 

I started going on about how America is the "last country to stand for something beyond the nation-state." I said it playfully, as if I knew it would be a hard sell, perhaps most of all to myself. Oddly enough, when I used to say things like that in 2006, I said them with more conviction and self-assuredness. In a sense, it was easier to believe in American exceptionalism - whatever the hell that means - when we were living under the Bush administration. It gave us a raincheck. When I was living in Jordan in 2004-5, and again in 2008, that always my card: what you're seeing now is an anomaly in U.S. history. The Bush administration does not represent us. Just wait. Wait until we vote for a different kind of president. Wait until the Democrats take back power and put things back on the right course.

So I would just go around telling people to wait. I didn't really try to defend the Bush administration, but I did try to defend America, as an idea. Why not keep the idea alive, just as the idea was being perverted and undermined by the Iraq war, and all the other disasters? It was easy to make that separation between America as it had become, and America as it would become.

But when I was talking to my friend last night, I didn't feel like keeping the idea alive. I didn't feel like defending (although I suppose I went through the motions, albeit unpersuasively). What, now, was I supposed to defend? We all got what we wished for. We got what we fought for - a Democratic administration, one led by one of the most brilliant, inspiring politicians in recent memory. He had a Muslim name, had a Muslim family, lived in the Muslim world, and seemed to have an appreciation for the place of grievance - real grievance - in Arab life. In other words, I can't tell her - or anyone else - to wait anymore. We have, now, what we were waiting for. And, as has become increasingly, perhaps tragically, evident, it's simply not enough.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

Obama lived in the Arab world?

[Don Bacon]

Well, I'll tell you, some of us got seriously dumped on a year ago for seeing this faker for what he was (is). So don't look for any sympathy from me, Shadi.

Let's move on.

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[Greg Sanders]

Don Bacon:
Muslim world, not Arab world. He'd lived in Indonesia.

[TıkLa-Sohbet]

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[sesli sohbet]

But when I was talking to my friend last night, I didn't feel like keeping the idea alive. I didn't feel like defending (although I suppose I went through the motions, albeit unpersuasively). What, now, was I supposed to defend? We all got what we wished for. We got what we fought for - a Democratic administration, one led by one of the most brilliant, inspiring politicians in recent memory

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but I did try to defend America, as an idea. Why not keep the idea alive, just as the idea was being perverted and undermined by the Iraq war, and all the other disasters? It was easy to make that separation between America as it had become, and America as it would become.