The Conservative Side of Barack Obama
Amid all the acrimony that has accompanied the debate over President Obama’s policies, the conservative side of Barack Obama has failed to receive the attention it deserves, especially among conservatives.
Most obvious has been his expressed determination to defeat Al Qaeda and its affiliated movements (AQAM), most visible in the surge he ordered for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In addition, Obama vastly increased the use of drones to target militants in Pakistan, and he has increased secretive operations to disrupt AQAM in places such as Yemen and Somalia.
Moreover, in the aftermath of the McChrystal controversy, Obama reaffirmed existing policy in Afghanistan, not least by choosing General Petraeus as McChrystal’s successor—that same Petraeus that President Bush designated to carry out the surge in Iraq and who at the time was reviled by many of Obama’s supporters.
While conservatives fail to credit Obama for his conservative positions, not all liberals are willing to ignore Obama’s conservative side. The liberal magazine American Prospect, for example, faults Obama for his “decision to embrace the core framework of the Bush Administration’s ‘war on terror’.”
It is worth recalling the speech Obama gave upon receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009. Ironically, on the occasion of receiving a prize for peace, he delivered an address designed to explain why war is justified in the face of evil. He cited two such instances of evil that required war in response: the case of Hitler and the case of Al Qaeda. Moreover, despite his apologies on other occasions for American misbehavior overseas, in this speech he praised as essential the role the United States played in leading the world after World War II in “constructing an architecture to keep the peace.” Because of the United States, he said, “billions have been lifted from poverty.” Because of the United States, the rule of law has been advanced.
“Whatever mistakes we have made,” he argued, the U.S. has helped “underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.” This was a speech that conservatives could only praise—and many did, even if they considered it unrepresentative of the foreign policy of the Obama administration.
When a year ago I wrote a book for students on the meaning of 9/11, I pondered how I could best refute the notion that students could easily access on the Internet to the effect that 9/11 was an “inside job” perpetrated by Dick Cheney or others in the U.S. government. I found my answer in a statement made by President Obama in his Cairo address of June 2009, designed to place on a new footing U.S. relations with Muslims around the world. What he told the world’s Muslims—and the world—was this:
I’m aware that there’s still some who would question or even justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear. Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people that day. . . . They have affiliates in many countries and they are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; they are facts to be dealt with.
More recently, in an address at West Point in May 2010, he sounded the themes of Duty, Honor, Country, explaining that the Declaration of Independence has “bound us together” as one people. He took some time to recognize and applaud the new officers’ commitment to country in time of war, arguing that the war in Afghanistan was as important today as it was in the days immediately following 9/11. He even talked about what success would look like in Iraq in terms that might just as well have been articulated by George W. Bush.
The ironic thing is that if a Republican had been elected in 2008 and carried out exactly the policy that Obama is executing in Afghanistan, opposition to the war would most likely have spiked. But with Obama in command, the opposition has been largely disarmed and many of those who might have been staunch critics of U.S. policy have instead been drawn into the mainstream. Indeed, I cannot imagine anyone who is better positioned to carry out this Afghan policy than Barack Obama.
Some of these stances by President Obama seem not to correspond to those of Candidate Obama, and certainly not to the company he kept prior to the election campaign. But then perhaps it is his role as commander-in-chief with all of its awesome responsibilities that moved him closer to the center.
Although there are many aspects of the Obama foreign policy that disturb conservatives, including this conservative, what I like about President Obama is that, for many people, he has made patriotism “cool.” And that’s not trivial.