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Obama Bonaparte's Campaign

09/06/2009

By Dr. Hamad Al-Majid

"Is he Obama Bonaparte or Obama the awaited?"

"Is he Obama Bonaparte or Obama the awaited?"

These two opposite descriptions summarize Arab reaction to
President Obama's Cairo speech. On the one hand, some
analysts like our colleague Fahmi Huwaydi, saw in Obama's
speech the "awaited Obama" who will fill the world with
justice and fairness, which will replace the widespread
injustice and oppression. Others saw him as ill-intentioned,
witty, and cunning and a reminder of the famous French
leader Napoleon Bonaparte, who visited Cairo as a
conqueror, whereas Obama visited as a speaker.
It has been said that Napoleon Bonaparte led a military
campaign in the outskirts of Cairo, and so did Obama when
he launched a cultural campaign through its streets.
Bonaparte entered Cairo holding the Koran, dressed like an
Arab, admiring their food, and promising Muslims to lead
their march [for pilgrimage] to the holy places in Mecca. It
has been said that Obama did the same. He entered Cairo
through his former Islamic religion, African complexion, and
the religious connotation of his middle name -- Hussein. He
even transformed himself during his deceptive campaign into
a "mullah," as he recited so many verses of the Holy Koran.
Objectivity and realism are absent in many of the analytical
writings. Realists, who do not look at people from the
perspective of "saint or Satan," realize that the welfare
and prosperity of the Islamic world are naturally not among
Obama's priorities and that Obama -- the beautician -- is
seriously trying to rectify the damage caused by the "Bush
era." The political, economic, and military interests of the
United States suffered badly under President Bush, and
some analysts have described his era as the beginning of
the decline of US hegemony and world leadership.
Consequently, when it comes to a new US President, with a
different color and a reconciliatory policy based on
partnership, this should be regarded as no more than an
emergency plan to improve the image of the United States
in the eyes of the Islamic world.
This process needs practical steps to be taken whereby the
United States persuades the Islamic people and their
governments that it was serious in trying to avoid the
mistakes of the previous US Administrations. Otherwise,
Obama will not be in a better position than his
predecessors.
Obama's speech contained many positive points, the most
prominent among them was his desire to establish relations
with the Islamic world based on partnership, his
unprecedented open opposition to the building of Israeli
settlements, his implied recognition of the popularity of
Hamas and more importantly, not describing it as a
terrorist organization, and his clear desire to create a
historic rapprochement between the United States and the
Arab and Islamic worlds.
At the same time, the contradictions in his speech should
not be overlooked. Because even though he called for
withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan and Pakistan, he
doubled their numbers there and put pressure on his
Pakistani allies to fight the Taliban, which resulted in killing
thousands of civilians and made hundreds of thousands
homeless.
The first thing that Obama proved through his speech in
Cairo was that he does not have an inferiority complex
because of his Islamic and African backgrounds. Many have
thought that Obama, after entering the White House, will
try to prove his innocence and rid himself of the residue of
that background and will be oversensitive in his behavior to
the extent that his position will appear indistinguishable
from that of the fanatic Christians or the white
extremists.
Not only he has proved that this was a mere delusion, he
further increased his endearment of himself to Islam and
Muslims, in a way that none of his predecessors has done
since the days of the founding father George Washington.
The echo of Obama's speech and the international media
interest that accompanied it made an Arab thinker and a
friend of mine make a proposal that I find appropriate --
that the Islamic world arranges for a similar speech to be
delivered to the Christian world from an important Western
capital. Such a proposal is certainly unprecedented because
all speeches made by Muslim leaders in the past have been
made at elite conferences in which Western people played
no major role. Moreover, we are unaware of any speech by
a Muslim leader addressed to the Western world, in the
way Obama addressed the Islamic world.