President Obama’s “Address to the Nation on the End of Combat Operations in Iraq,” was consistent with his first public speech expressing his opposition to the war. He stood by the same principles, as he was fulfilling his responsibility as head of state, President for the entire nation and not only those who support him and his partisan position.  To paraphrase one of his standard lines, he was not speaking as President of the Blue States or the Red States, but as President of the United States of America.  The night of the address and in the days that followed, this most basic quality of his speech was overlooked.  Instead, there were misleading interpretations, from Obama’s critics and his supporters, revealing a fundamental problem in our public life.

The Partisan Interpretations

From his partisan opposition, the criticism was strong.  <<Obama should have declared victory,>> Senator John McCain and his interviewer Sean Hannity, agreed. (video) He should have given President Bush full credit for the victory.  He should have apologized for his opposition to the surge.     Lindsey Graham concurred and was particularly critical that Obama did not acknowledge the terrorists’ defeat and the need to extend our momentum in Afghanistan. (video) The emphasis on withdrawal instead of victory was the fundamental problem with the President’s speech.  “It’s not about when we leave in Afghanistan.  It’s about what we leave behind.”    Charles Krauthammer, in the instant analysis following the speech on Fox News, observed that the speech was “both flat and odd.”  Flat, because it did not celebrate the victory, but rather emphasized the withdrawal almost as a lamentation.  Odd, because of the way he linked his topics, from Iraq to Afghanistan to, most disturbing for Krauthammer, tacking on an “economic pep talk.”  There should have been a coherent speech about our missions abroad.  Instead there was a speech by a man who is only interested in his domestic agenda. (video)
And from his partisan supporters there was also serious criticism, mirroring the rage on the right.  <<Obama should have declared defeat,>> Frank Rich seemed to be saying in an interesting op-ed. piece yesterday.  Rich’s complaint was the exact opposite of Obama’s critics from the right. “What was so grievously missing from Obama’s address was any feeling for what has happened to our country during the seven-and-a-half-year war whose ‘end’ he was marking…‘Our unity at home was tested,’ he said, as if all those bygones were now bygones and all the toxins unleashed by this fiasco had miraculously evaporated once we drew down to 50,000 theoretically non-combat troops … Obama asked the country to turn the page on Iraq as if that were as easy as, say, voting for him in 2008. “  For Rich and many other critics of the war in Iraq, including me, there is a desire to properly learn from the disaster that the war in Iraq has been.  And he is quite critical of the speech because Obama did not directly confront this issue.

Deliberate Considerations

Yet, the critics from the left and the right overlook what the President was trying to do, indeed what he had to do.  He understood that this was a serious moment, requiring a serious and non-partisan address from the Oval Office, by the President, as the head of state.

A war, which required huge commitment and sacrifice, was drawing to an end.  The outcome of the conflict would be more determined by politics than by military action, and the primary responsibility for the outcome was passing from American to Iraqi hands, for better and for worse.  There has been no clear victory, but also there has been no clear defeat.  There are, rather, a series of serious political challenges in Iraq and in the United States.  President Obama was marking this situation, its gravity, while working from his judgment about the Iraq War, which dates back to his first anti-War speech.  He sought to speak to the whole nation, and to find a common ground. To recognize that the end of the combat mission left our country with profound challenges, the war in Afghanistan, a weakened economy and society.

When he spoke up against the impending “dumb war,” he reminded his anti-war audience that he was not against all wars, referring to the war in Afghanistan, and when he spoke up against the war he warned that it would weaken the American economy and society and would frustrate the pursuit of the American dream.  As the American combat mission ended, the President returned to these themes.  He sought to return all Americans, both war hawks and anti-war doves, to his early point – the need to face the challenges of the day, turning away from the divisions of yesterday.

Obviously, there was resistance to this message, resistance supported by the media and political environments.  There is a pressing need to work against these tendencies.  Obama tried.  In my next post, I will analyze his words against cynicism.

This week President Obama gave an important speech in the Oval office announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq.  In October 2002, before the war was declared, he distinguished himself as one of the few political leaders to express clear opposition to the Iraq war.   There is an important connection between his words and his actions, then, which I will consider in today’s post, and now, which I will consider in following posts.

The standard way to account for the connection is through cynical interpretation, explaining the texts of these speeches by referring to their context.  Much is lost in such cynical interpretation–here, the two speeches are Deliberately Considered.

The Context

On October 2, 2002, Obama was a relatively obscure politician, a State Senator considering a run for the United States Senate.  He had some significant movers and shakers in Chicago eyeing him, realizing his promise.  One of them, Bettylu Saltzman, who was organizing the anti-war demonstration, asked him to take part.  His political advisors calculated the costs and benefits, seeing a real problem if he sought to run in a state wide race.  As an African American, he might solidify his support among white liberals, fortifying the black – white coalition base of a potential run, but he may have appealed to them in any case, and he clearly would lose conservative Democratic support and the support of many independents, who at that time were overwhelmingly supporting the President and his impending war.  Nonetheless, since he actually did think that war would be a big mistake, Obama decided to give the speech, notable for its moderation in his opposition to the war:  “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war” was the recurring theme.  (See David Remnick, The Bridge).

The moderation of the speech served his immediate purposes and it later helped his candidacy in the Democratic Presidential Primaries.  On this point, David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political consultant, has bemoaned the fact that there was no decent video of the speech.   Obama opposed the war, but tried to demonstrate at the same time that he was not soft on fighting terrorism.  It was a strange speech to give to an anti-war gathering, since he emphasized his support of war.  It was a speech which distinguished just from unjust war, raising serious theoretical problems as it addresses serious practical concerns (which I will address in a later post on his Nobel Prize acceptance address).

The calculation was real.  Obama, like all politicians, is not pure.  Politicians can’t afford to proceed without considering whether they can bring the public along with them.  But in order to actually be effective leaders, they must also base their actions upon their principled commitments.  This is a crucial difference and in this, Obama distinguished himself.  His text reaches beyond its context, and in this way it has enduring significance.

The Text

In his anti war speech he declared:

“I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that…we vigorously enforce a nonproliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe…

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.”

The Deliberate Consideration

Obama was then a local politician, representing a liberal racially mixed district in the state legislature.  Later as a national politician, he was able to contrast his clear position from his primary opponents because of his early and consistent opposition to the war.  The speech addressed his immediate political calculations, no doubt.  But what is most striking is how his words capture his political commitments and policies now even more than the political calculations then.  He was underscoring his major concerns:  nuclear proliferation, peace in the Middle East, fighting for tolerance, energy independence, and social justice.  He predicted that the war would deflect national attention from these pressing issues, before the war began.  He has been struggling to work on the issues in the aftermath of a war that had the results that he publicly feared.  And the speech was continuous with, not at odds with, his present stance in the wars in Iraq, as the combat mission ends, and in Afghanistan, for better and for worse, as the war continues to pose fundamental problems.

Yesterday’s speech could have been given today.  And today’s speech could have been given yesterday, as I will explore tomorrow.

“[I]t is high time that honest people outside the region .. conceive of [the Palestinian Israeli conflict] as a tragedy and not as some ‘Wild – West Show,’ containing good guys and bad guys.  Tragedies can be resolved in one of two ways: there is the Shakespearean resolution and there is the Chekhovian one.  At the end of the Shakespeare tragedy, the stage is strewn with dead bodies, and maybe there’s some justice hovering high above.  A Chekhov tragedy, on the other hand, ends with everybody disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, disappointed, absolutely shattered, but still alive.  And I want a Chekhovian resolution, not a Shakespearean one, for the Israeli – Palestinian tragedy.”

I completely agree.  A persecuted people, after centuries of oppression and exclusion in Europe, culminating in genocide, find a place for themselves in what they perceive to be their ancient homeland.  A peaceful people are forced off their land, displaced, homeless, subjected to second class citizenship.  As Israelis and Palestinians fight against each other in their pursuit of justice, justice is denied.  The majority on both sides, at least at times, have even agreed on what they perceive as a just solution, a two state solution, with Jerusalem as the capital of two nations, but getting there from here has made the solution elusive, if not impossible.   Repeated failure has led to despair and aggression.  On both sides, majorities are convinced that the other side is not serious about a just resolution, not serious about peace.  Against these majorities, some try to keep alternatives alive.  Their activities remind me of small things I had observed in the U.S. and in East and Central Europe.

A most compelling example of people who work against the common sense about the other is The Parents Circle, a Palestinian Israeli organization of “bereaved families for peace.”  I first met them at their Israeli headquarters outside of Tel Aviv when a student of mine arranged a meeting.  I found it absolutely remarkable how the Israeli and the Palestinian members of the organization worked with each other.  I know that when people try to work across divides of conflict and of domination, finding an equal footing is difficult.  Condescension and arrogance on the part of the structurally advantaged group members is difficult to avoid, as is acquiescence to subordination or defensive aggression on the part of the members of the dominated group.  The warm feeling and the careful avoidance of such pitfalls were striking at The Parents Circle office.

What I saw that day is depicted in Encounter Point, a moving film about the group.3  It introduces ordinary people on both sides of the conflict attempting to re-write the political culture as it accounts for them and us.  These are people who have lost love ones in the conflict, victims of wars, military raids, suicide bombings, terror of the state apparatus and of resistance organizations.  The group members are dedicated to not having their loss used to justify a politics of retribution. It started in Tel Aviv, among a group of Israeli parents.  It now has both Palestinian and Israeli branches, with the Palestinian group slightly outnumbering the Israeli one. The groups operate independently and also work jointly.  Getting together, a crucial part of their endeavors, though, is not easy.  Travel restrictions make Palestinian movements within Israel proper difficult, if not impossible.  And Israeli citizens also are restricted in their movements in the occupied territories.  In the film, we see a group meeting in Jerusalem.  What we don’t see are the obstacles and checkpoints that had to be surmounted for the Palestinians to take part.  We are shown an attempt by the Israeli group to meet a group in the West Bank, and though they finally do get through, their difficulties are clearly depicted. It includes a postscript of the Palestinian host of the gathering being arrested as a terrorist, but released from prison thanks to his Parents Circle Israeli colleagues.  Road blocks, checkpoints, official regulations and fear are the group’s immediate obstacles.  But memory and attitudes toward the other are more profound ones.

In the report of the Jerusalem meeting, we see a discussion between two families who lost their daughters to the conflict, in an anti terrorist military operation in Bethlehem and in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.  It is a quick empathetic conversation, casual, seemingly not of profound significance.  But we see more outside the meeting.  We learn that the family from Bethlehem had the bad luck of driving their late model Toyota on a shopping trip on the same day a group of suspected terrorists were driving the same model.  And when their car came into view of the Israeli army, they were attacked and their daughter was killed.  We see the funeral, a full martyr’s ceremony, with aggressive nationalist, almost militaristic, rhetoric and with the father actively taking part.  And we see the father, later, now a member of Parents Circle, as deputy major of the city.  This is a moving sequence of events.  The family, of course, has not forgotten the loss of their daughter, but in their actions, they are undermining a dominant way of remembering, trying to create another way, apparently with some success.

Their Israeli counterparts do the same thing.  We see the father who lost his daughter to the suicide bombing go to school groups and argue not only for peace and reconciliation, but also against the linking of memory and retribution.  He may not convince, but he is, at least, opening up new possibilities.

Both fathers know that as they work in their own communities, they make it possible to work together, and in doing so, they are creating new political alternatives to the logic of the central authorities, by redefining their situation and acting together based on that redefinition.  I am struck by the fact that working against memory, or, at least, “re-remembering,” collectively remembering in a different way, is a first act of transforming the common sense about them and us and reinventing a political culture.

The two fathers and their fellow members of The Parents Circle meet the other in a different way.  Even as they are part of different political communities and may not agree on the big political questions, they share a commitment that their losses are not used as a key justification for flaming the conflict.  Their attempt to de-militarized the conflict suggests a possible overcoming of the tragedy.  The obstacles they face are very real, some they are able to overcome in their interaction.  But the interaction is difficult, requiring changes in fundamental attitudes, but also requiring a subversion of structures that separate people, physical restrictions and communal attitudes.  Nonetheless these people and many like them persist.  And in their persistence off the main political stage, I believe, the script of the “Chekhovian resolution” is being written.  More about the writing of the script in future posts.