Right and left wing extremists form de facto anti-peace coalition to condemn Obama

Extremists on the far-right and the ultra-left who dislike President Obama, oppose peace, or hate the Islamic world or the United States respectively, joined forces across the Internet today in condemning the President’s outstanding speech in Cairo. It is worth reviewing some of their reactions, as they constitute both some sources of resistance to serious moves towards peace and a de facto coalition for continuing the conflict and generally making things worse.

The right and left wing anti-peace extremists have been extremely hard-pressed to come up with convincing or legitimate grounds for taking issue with President Obama’s approach generally, or even many specifics of what he had to say. The dilemma for many of them was that the very excellence of the President’s performance both increased the need for condemnation while at the same time making it more difficult. As a consequence, most online critiques coming from the anti-peace coalition today have ranged from the preposterous to the pathetic, and almost all of them either focused on what was left unsaid (a tactic that could be deployed against virtually any set of remarks) or, more typically, some fanciful version that the extremist critics imagine that they heard this morning but which was not in fact what the President said. Indeed, one has to wonder what the hell speech Obama’s extremist critics were watching, although I suppose that all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.

The fanatical neocons at the National Review’s notorious “corner” are in predictably full dudgeon. Michael Rubin complains that Obama “abandoned democracy” in the speech, although of course he never did anything remotely of the kind. Marc Thiessen claims the speech was “damaging, wrong, and at times simply shameful” and “echoed al-Qaeda’s calumnies against” US military and intelligence personnel by drawing a distinction with Bush administration policies. To buy into this, one has to believe that any criticism of Bush administration policies is tantamount to a criticism of the entire military and intelligence communities and all who serve in them. Under such circumstances, serious policy debate is scarcely possible. Moreover, this ham-handed attempt to link President Obama to al-Qaeda never seems to lose its appeal to the extremist right, even though it is as transparent as it is nasty and absurd. At any rate, it’s obviously ludicrous to suggest that criticizing wrongheaded policies that had to be carried out by military or security personnel, but were determined by political higher-ups, amounts to “throwing them under the bus.” Another National Review corner-dweller, Andy McCarthy, condemns support for peace in the Middle East by both Obama and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as “blather," which I suppose is not surprising since we’re dealing with what amounts to the pro-war and conflict constituency.

Robert Spencer’s take on the speech could constitute grounds for involuntary committal: comparing the President to Rodney King, alleging that the “humanitarian crisis [in Gaza] is a product of the Palestinian propaganda machine,” asserting that a Palestinian state would only “be used as a base for further jihad attacks against Israel” and arguing that the “idea that Islamic culture was once a beacon of learning and enlightenment is a commonly held myth.” This man is so consumed with blinding hatred that can’t even admit to himself that Muslims have played a significant role in advancing human civilization. As I have noted before, Spencer is among the most passionate Islamophobes in the country, and is deeply committed to a religious struggle on behalf of his version of Christianity against all forms of Islam. I suppose the clinical terms for his condition are paranoia, or possibly phobic obsession, but any reader with psychiatric qualifications should feel free to correct me or elaborate.

Ultra-right wing blogger Hugh Hewitt dismisses the speech as “deeply dishonest in its omissions” and “rhetorically misleading its assumptions,” and imagines that Obama has committed some sort of “profound betrayal of Israel” by suggesting “that Israel has done to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to Jews.” He arrives at this bizarre conclusion because the President had the decency to acknowledge the suffering of both peoples. It goes without saying that in no way did the President make any comparison between Israel and the Nazis, and that no one in his Arab or Muslim audience would understand his words in this way. In a very odd aural hallucination, Hewitt has heard something the President simply has not said.

Erick Erickson of redstate.com makes the same bizarre claim, alleging that President Obama suggested that, “what happened to the Jews the same issue as what is happening to the Palestinians.” Compounding this ludicrous twisting of the President’s words, Erickson demonstrates precisely where he’s coming from: “the Palestinians have been willful terrorists.” Simple as that. Meanwhile, he argues, Palestinians have the power to determine how they are treated by Israel, while Israel does not have any power to affect how it is treated by Arabs, “unless you assume Israel is happy to commit national suicide,” which is apparently his codeword for a reasonable peace agreement.

While the far-right fulminates about “apology tours,” “betrayals of Israel,” and how evil the Palestinians are, the usual suspects among ultra-left Arab-American commentators have stepped forward to speak for those unwilling to take yes for an answer. They seem to be so addicted to condemning American presidents and their remarks that they simply could not resist another opportunity even in the face of an extremely constructive and responsible address.

The Angry Idiot, Assad AbuKhalil, calls the speech “part vapid and part sinister,” (which is actually not a bad description of his own blog). He denies there was anything new, even in Obama’s tone and substance, to the point of asserting that the speech was “compiled together” [sic] from a series of earlier speeches. I suppose this makes it some kind of “Franken-speech,” made from the remains of other, lesser, speeches. This extraordinarily foolish claim is apparently based on the fact that some elements of the speech could be seen as recalling some elements of earlier speeches by American presidents, and is oblivious to the obvious changes in policy, tone and emphasis Obama has introduced. AbuKhalil repeats his earlier claim that, simply on the basis of being the American president, Obama “speaks for the White Man” (whatever that means), in this instance suggesting that the President believes in “White Man standards: that only Israeli lives matter.” Am I the only one to detect something distinctly racist about this attempt to tarnish the first African-American president with the supposed sins and faults of “the White Man,” or to notice how absolutely ridiculous this kind of rhetoric is coming from anyone (as the Angry Idiot and I both are) from Lebanon?

Writing on the Guardian website, Ali Abunimah describes President Obama as nothing less than “a Bush in sheep’s clothing.” Suffering from a similar hearing impairment as Hewitt and Erickson, Abunimah somehow managed to get the impression that Obama “seemed once again to implicate all Muslims as suspect,” in a speech that was replete with gracious overtures to Muslims and included no such sentiments. He was, of course, thoroughly dissatisfied with Obama’s clear-cut calls for a settlement freeze, complaining that the new administration position “focus[es] only on continued construction, not on the existence of the settlements themselves” and predictably condemned Obama’s advocacy of “an unworkable two-state ‘vision.’” The truth is that Abunimah, being categorically opposed to Palestinian independence, would necessarily reject anything Obama or any other president does to pursue that important goal. It’s also the case that Abunimah is more or less locked into an anti-Obama position given the stridency of his opposition to the President during the election campaign. For both reasons, there is really nothing Obama might possibly have said that would have satisfied him, having both a personal and political stake in the President being seen as a failure.

No doubt there are many other objections circulating around the fringes of the blogosphere that attempt to somehow take issue with the President’s remarks, but I think these are the main elements of the critique from the far-right (he somehow betrayed the United States/the military/Israel) and the ultra-left (he is “no better than Bush” and continues to pursue imperialist policies based on racism). What’s remarkable is the way in which these arguments work together in a vain attempt to tarnish a stellar performance that has enhanced American standing in the Middle East and advanced the prospects of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, among other useful things.

The enemies of peace are out there, and they are blogging. Whether they come from the far-right or the ultra-left, they share a mutual antipathy to serious efforts to resolve the conflict and craft a reasonable peace based on two states. Anti-peace forces, both in the Middle East and in the United States, have a common purpose and a de facto alliance, which should be recognized for what it is. They find themselves on the same side attacking President Obama’s speech, for different reasons. But they are nonetheless effectively on the same side. Their attacks are extremist and irreconcilably anti-peace, as well as shamelessly dishonest. These perspectives represent some of the political forces that stand in the way of progress towards peace. Thankfully, they are distinctly marginal. Let us all ensure that they stay that way.