Obama and the "moral force of non-violence"

By Steve Hynd

Over at AlterNet, Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis are taking Obama to task for his speechifying hypocrisy.

Given that President Obama daily authorizes the firing of hellfire missiles and the dropping of cluster bombs in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, it was awful odd seeing him wax eloquent this week about the �moral force of non-violence� in places like Egypt and Tunisia.

...Were we unfamiliar with his actual policies � more than doubling the troops in Afghanistan, dramatically escalating a deadly drone war in Pakistan and unilaterally bombing for peace in Libya � it might have been inspiring to hear a major head of state reject violence as a means to political ends. Instead, we almost choked on the hypocrisy.

Cast beforehand as a major address on the Middle East, what President Obama offered with his speech on Thursday was nothing more than a reprisal of his 2009 address in Cairo: a lot of rhetoric about U.S. support for peace and freedom in the region contradicted by the actual � and bipartisan � U.S. policy over the past half-century of supporting ruthless authoritarian regimes. Yet even for all his talk of human rights and how he �will not tolerate aggression across borders� � yes, a U.S. president said this � Obama didn't even feign concern about Saudi Arabia's repressive regime invading neighboring Bahrain to put down a pro-democracy movement there. In fact, the words �Saudi Arabia� were never uttered.

It was that kind of speech: scathing condemnations of human rights abuses by the U.S.'s Official Enemies in places like Iran and Syria and muted criticism � if any � of the gross violations of human decency carried out by its dictatorial friends in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen.

They've got a serious point and its one I mentioned on Polizeros Radio last night too. Few in the Middle East are fooled by America's protestations about democracy when big bucks are being sent in military aid to repressive regimes right up to the point where revolts begin, or when massive $60 billion arms deals are being done while the US looks the other way on tyranny.

And then there's the American (and Western) tendency to treat other nations as a playground for their interventionist impulses, as if the West were Tiger Moms or interferring aunts. It would make more logical, if not ethical, sense if it was even applied across the board, but it isn't. We need a coherent policy that is applied to all countries, and not one where we go charging into Libya "to save the protesters" but stand idly by as they are beaten in Bahrain (because we have a naval base there.) For me, that coherent policy should begin with the Nuremberg Principles and probably end with the twin realizations that counter-terrorism is a job for law enforcement, not the military, and that the value of promises is entirely based upon keeping them even when it isn't in your selfish interests to do so. But Nuremberg is just so pre 9/11 and the rest is neither "realist" nor the perverted version of idealism practised by neocon and neoliberal alike.