Guest post by Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi
There is currently a viral video circulating on right-wing blogs, in which Bill Ayers purportedly admits to having been the ghostwriter of Barack Obama’s book ‘Dreams from my Father’. Originating from a post by a writer named Jack Cashill at The American Thinker, the story has spread to sites such as WorldNetDaily and Weasel Zippers. Trouble is, it is obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense that Ayers is joking with the intention of mocking the conspiracy theorists who peddle the notion that Ayers was the real writer of Obama’s memoir. As Ayers himself puts it, to the sound of laughter from the crowd:
‘Did you know I wrote it, incidentally? I wrote that, Dreams from my Father…Yeah, if you could help me prove it, I’ll split the royalties with you’.
The number of right-wing bloggers who failed to detect Ayers’ sarcasm is truly shocking. The problem is that this is not an isolated incident for so many on the American right. Indeed, what can only be termed ‘Obama Derangement Syndrome’ (ODS) extends to all sorts of imbecilic ideas about the president. For example, here we have Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch entertaining as plausible the theory that Obama is a secret Muslim, arguing that ‘his public policies and his behavior are consistent with his being a committed and convinced Muslim’. This does not go quite as far as his insane colleague (whom Spencer calls a ‘warrior for freedom’) Pamela Geller’s explicit reference to Obama as a ‘Mohammedan’.
Of course, what Spencer means is that Obama’s policies are designed to advance the cause of Islamists and jihadists throughout the world. Some very basic facts Spencer appears to have forgotten include Obama’s ‘Afghan surge’, with around 100,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and Al-Qa’ida, the increase in drone strikes against militant hideouts in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas of Pakistan, the deployment of Special Forces to conduct secret operations against suspected Islamist terrorists in around 75 countries, and the tough sanctions against Iran to impede the country’s nuclear program. Now, it turns out that I firmly disagree with the first two of those policies listed (the others I cannot comment on owing to insufficient knowledge). However, to suggest that Obama is aiming to empower Islamists is idiotic, to put it mildly.
Spencer will undoubtedly point me to what he sees as Obama’s support for protestors in the Arab world, whom he says are largely campaigning for Islamic law, to be contrasted with his allegedly muted response to the Iranian protestors he claims are mainly secular. The latter is a frequent theme on the right, with Melanie Phillips asserting that if Obama ‘had put America stoutly behind the protestors and championed them against the regime, by now they might have toppled it’. Really? What else could Obama have done? How much leverage does she think Obama has over the Iranian regime? Unlike Egypt, Iran is not the recipient of billions of dollars of American aid every year. Indeed, contrary to the mythical meme advanced in right-wing circles, Obama did in fact offer his solidarity and support to the Iranian protesters in 2009, and Hillary Clinton has done likewise, whilst being firmer and clearer, on behalf of the U.S. in 2011. Spencer and Phillips also ignore the fact that a significant faction of the Iranian protesters is actually just pro-Mousavi (i.e. ‘Islamist-lite’), and not in favor of overturning the system of the Islamic Republic per se.
ODS has even come to afflict conservative bloggers who, in the early days of the Obama presidency, were warning against the very sort of madness from which they are now suffering. Consider the case of influential right-winger David Horowitz, who initially cautioned conservatives against resorting to such silly caricatures as ‘Obama is a Marxist’, ‘Obama is a radical socialist’, ‘Obama is a Muslim’, ‘Obama stands for weakness’ etc. Yet as a subscription to his mailing list and quick glance over his writings now show, he has fallen into repeating those same smears he rightly derided back in late 2008 and early 2009. The commentator Horowitz refers to in his article opposing ODS is one ‘Ali Sina’, a Canadian-based Iranian blogger endorsed by Robert Spencer and by Mary Jackson, who denounces all Greeks as ‘corrupt thieves’, has been banned from commenting at Harry’s Place and writes at the New English Review. Sina not only believes that Islam should be banned, but also that Obama should be ‘brought to justice, tried and preferably electrocuted for high treason’. Excuse me one moment whilst I roll on the floor laughing.
Coming back to Ayers, one of the few conservative bloggers who spotted the sarcasm in the video immediately was Rick Moran, the editor of the blog at The American Thinker. In response, Jeff Goldstein at ‘Protein Wisdom’ castigated Moran as follows:
It’s nice to see that Rick Moran is still counseling (sic) us on how to look refined and in the know while we’re being bent over the setee (sic) for our “historical” buggering. How’d that work out for McCain again?…I don’t need John Hawkins or Rick Moran to point out Ayers’ tone of sarcasm. What I’m interested in is the rather pointed tone of the sarcasm- it’s too deliberate, and the question seems too staged…while Ayers wants to joke it all away, he also very much wants credit. It’s who he is. It’s who they all are.
The last two sentences in that response sum up the severe deficiency of reasoned argument at Goldstein’s blog. Perhaps there is too much protein in his ‘wisdom’ and not enough of a balanced diet. As for the assertion regarding John McCain, Goldstein proves himself not to be much of a political analyst if he thinks McCain lost because he was not ‘tough’ enough on Obama. In fact, whenever McCain and his team played one of the canards so popular amongst right-wing bloggers (e.g. Ayers, socialist etc.), they lost support.
I suspect that much of the vitriol on right-wing blogs relates to a problem with the blogosphere more generally. As I have observed at this very blog, a highly controversial topic in the blogosphere that allows the readers to exchange hyperbolic insults and childish shrill tends to attract a lot more comments and links. On the other hand, there is comparatively little discussion over more nuanced and well-informed analysis. Contrast, for example, the 200+ comments over Melanie Phillips’s bigoted remarks on ‘the moral depravity of the Arabs’, as opposed to the absence of feedback on my recent piece on Ali Abdullah Saleh (excuse the implied narcissism).
So to all right-wing bloggers I say: engaging in puerile, empty rhetoric may win you a larger audience online, but that is pretty much the only benefit. You will certainly not win a positive reputation and be heard in the mainstream, but rather become an object of derision for your opponents. If you are serious about winning the next election for your side, now is the time to give up on ODS and start afresh.
By discrediting the political right generally, right-wing bloggers make life for levelheaded conservative critics of the Obama administration’s policies a whole lot more difficult. The result is that these voices of reason are drowned out. Take the case of Colonel Anthony Shaffer. Identifying as a conservative, Shaffer offers a sensible critique of Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan. Instead of repeating the common conservative myth of Obama’s ‘weakness’, Shaffer highlights the fact that the COIN initiative has failed to deal with problems such as the excessive concentration of political power in Kabul and Al-Qa’ida’s well established presence in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. He also stresses and Pakistan’s ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan as part of its cold war with India that has included continuing support for groups like the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network. Shaffer thus proposes a reduction in troops to no more than 20,000 by July, working at limited political reconciliation and decentralizing power in Afghanistan to address local complaints of what is seen by many as an unrepresentative government in Kabul. He further suggests focusing on pressuring Pakistan to allow the U.S. to send forces into the Pakistani tribal areas to take out Al-Qa’ida and other Islamist militant bases.
I disagree with Shaffer’s last proposed change in policy, viewing it as impractical and preferring Matthew Hoh’s emphasis on the need for broader regional engagement to make Afghanistan militarily neutral. Yet is not the contrast with the usual right-wing claims that ‘Obama is weak, blah blah blah…’ so painstakingly clear? Why do we never associate Shaffer’s analysis with the political right? Do these same right-wing bloggers regard Daniel Pipes, a sane and cogent critic of Obama from a conservative perspective, as ‘weak’ for believing that overt U.S. military intervention in places such as Somalia and Yemen undermines American allies, and advocating a new approach of containment, something that has very much influenced my views on this matter?
Sadly I doubt that right-wing bloggers in general will tread onto the path of moderation. Instead, such blogs and pundits will probably continue to settle for discarding reality and common sense in favor of what Rick Moran terms ‘exaggeration and hatred’ for quite some time.
(Hat tip: Gene Zitver)