Ever the prisoner of PC rectitude, President Obama wrongly fears that opposing — or evening naming — global jihadism as the enemy of civilisation is a declaration of war against Islam. By this reticence he has flung petrol on the Islamist fires.
Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War
by Sebastian Gorka
Regnery, 2016, 256 pages, US$27.99
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President Obama almost always deports himself in public with poise and dignity. His “New Beginning” speech, delivered at Cairo University on June 4, 2009, was no exception. The address was full of generous sentiment and seeming humility. At one point a member of the audience cried out: “Barack Obama, we love you!” A round of applause greeted the US president’s gracious “Thank you.” President Obama’s 2009 charm offensive throughout the Middle East promised to undo the mistakes of President George W. Bush, and yet his tenure in office has only exacerbated matters. Sebastian Gorka’s Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War goes some of the way to explaining Barack Obama’s failure and a potential way forward for his successor.
At the very heart of President Obama’s misapprehension has been his hubris, the Cairo venture being a case in point. Though Obama acknowledged scientific and other contributions of the Islamic world to the dawn of Europe’s Renaissance, he appeared incapable of comprehending that for many in his audience that day, including high-level members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (which has since been outlawed), the Renaissance and all that subsequently ensued—we might call it secular-powered modernity or individual self-determination—are deeply problematic. Nevertheless, Barack Obama blithely based his foretelling of a united world on the principles of European-style humanism and the particular experience of the United States: E pluribus unum or Out of many, one.
Islamic revivalists, as Sebastian Gorka argues, have a very different interpretation of E pluribus unum. To decode the spirit and ambition of the global jihadist movement, insists Gorka, whose father was a political prisoner in the Hungarian People’s Republic, we should not only employ the term “totalitarian” to delineate our Westophobic enemy but also revisit the origins of the Cold War and the writings of George Kennan and Paul Nitze. We must begin, as Paul Nitze did, with Sun Tsu’s cardinal rule of war—Know both yourself and the enemy if you want to win.
Gorka quotes a key early passage from Nitze’s NSC-68 to define a liberal democracy: “In essence, the fundamental purpose is to assure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual.” The global jihadist movement, in contradistinction, abhors the idea of individual freedom; to the extent an apologist speaks of choice they invariably mean the “freedom” to submit to religious authority and the “freedom” that results from submission. It is totally at odds with liberty.
The Obama administration contends that Islamic terrorism—or should we say extremist violence—is “the result of poverty, unemployment and lack of political enfranchisement”. Religion, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of Islam, does not contribute to terrorism but is a safeguard against it, or so the PC narrative goes. Here we have an explanation for Barack Obama’s forbearing relationship with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, naivety about the Arab Spring, support for Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi, intervention in Libya and Yemen, appeasement with Tehran, denial about the motives of domestic terrorists and, of course, why Team Obama insisted on front row seats for the Muslim Brotherhood dignitaries attending the 2009 Cairo University address.
