The New Republic

In one crucial respect we all share the same overlapping experience in a common humanity: Our birthday. On the day we are born [and for many, many weeks afterward] we do not construe the world around us as male or female, Arab or Jew, black or white, liberal or conservative, catholic or protestent, sunni or shia, believer or non-believer. Instead, we are enculturated to internalize these arbitrary distinctions as part of a world we will come to know. As we are indoctrinated...brainwashed...to know it. Isn't that how it works for all children, in all cultures, in all historical eras? Only as we grow older and acquire a greater or lesser degree of individual autonomy will we begin to question these accidents of birth more fully. And then of course we must ask: What distinctions between us are more or less fortuitous and thus are more or less within our capacity to explore and [perhaps] change? Thus we can look are the "world economy" and ask: How does it function in terms of the manner in which we have been taught to understand it? Who taught us? What was the motivation behind their lessons? What did they have to gain or lose by sustaining one arrangment rather than another? And this will lead some [though few] to explore the relationship between moral and political narratives on the one hand and the raw, naked impact of power on the other. Likewise, the concept "America in opposition" is born of these demographic distinctions immersed in the reality of political economy. lw: Everybody regards their world as the world: the United States under Bush was not wanting in allies, and Obama, too, has his preferred company for America. People admire Obama, at home and abroad, because his America is like their America; which is to say, they admire Obama because they admire themselves. george: Why is it that, given how, at birth, none of this has any relevance for any of us [aside of course from children effected by the ravages of poverty and imperialism] these ethnocentric tendencies prevail? Because we are taught to believe them, of course. They are the ideological artifacts of those who have been the "winners" in human evolution. None, however, are necessarily moral or immoral. And if Obama truly believed in "common ground" how do you explain the manner in which the ground folks on Wall Street tread is so much more sacred to him than the less gilded paths strewn throughout the heartland? In this crucial respect, of course, Obama fits right into the Bilderberg world narrative the winners of today have constructed. This, of course, is what Wieseltier more or less leaves out: the role political, economic and military power plays in ordering our lives. He wants to largely confine this to a philosophical discussion of human interaction. Similarities and differences: how do they function in our relationships with others? How can we understand this "intellectually"? Wieseltier lugs around his own "halo", of course. We all do. But why do we acquire so many dramatically divergent reconstructions of them? Because we all acquire dramatically divergent narratives in the course of actually living our lives. The difficulty with "common ground" of course is that everyone insists that what is in common for them should be in common for others as well. Unless of course the difference [the wrong God, the wrong race, the wrong ethnicity etc.] is such that you must be destroyed instead. george walton d/a

- iambiguous

October 27, 2009 at 2:41am

Loony tunes George Walton: "Wieseltier lugs around his own "halo", of course. We all do. But why do we acquire so many dramatically divergent reconstructions of them? Because we all acquire dramatically divergent narratives in the course of actually living our lives. The difficulty with "common ground" of course is that everyone insists that what is in common for them should be in common for others as well. Unless of course the difference [the wrong God, the wrong race, the wrong ethnicity etc.] is such that you must be destroyed instead." The autodidact and miseducated pretentious mumblings, are beside the point. George needs to create his own blog where he can post his self declared "wisdom."

- jacksondyer

October 27, 2009 at 11:27am

Great article Leon: I was especially impressed by the following paragraph: "Obama believes above all in common ground. The search for it is his most characteristic method in politics and in government. His diplomacy consists in underestimating differences and overestimating similarities. In Cairo, and at the United Nations, he argued that we must not be "defined by our differences." Actually, definition is the very work of difference; but I do not wish to be clever. For Obama, difference is the source of conflict. "So long as our relationship is defined by our differences," he said in Cairo, "we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace." This notion of the essential bellicosity of difference is odd in someone who exalts diversity. It has led Obama to some of the most amateurish formulations in modern American diplomacy. "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation." "No balance of power among nations will hold." Hope should be more intelligent than that. Obama has succumbed to one of the great fantasies of our time, which is that we have millenially broken the grip of zero-sum logic upon human affairs: "In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game." In his search for similarity among nations, he often cites the slogan of "an interconnected world"; but an interconnected world is not a homogeneous, or a harmonious, world. Common problems do not entail common perspectives."

- jacksondyer

October 27, 2009 at 11:29am

“We will soon discover that the popularity of an American president is a fact of minor strategic consequence.” Exactly. It is my experience that “WIIFM” (What’s in it for me) is the number one issue on the table at all times. And the “me” in that is usually the person in power and his/her inner circle. The People get whatever crumbs are necessary to keep them in their place. I won’t pretend to be a foreign policy expert, and I am certainly not a philosopher of the caliber of Mr. Walton (I don’t even understand what he is saying most of the time). I just know from my experience in the real world that governments in general, and people in power in specific, look out for themselves. I suspect that when considering how to position themselves on any issue vis-à-vis the United States, WIIFM is the number one consideration. They will use Obama’s popularity to their own advantage.

- nacnud1

October 27, 2009 at 12:19pm

In Greek tragedy, heroes have a tragic flaw, for which they might deserve a little comeuppance but reap a boatload. Leon has deftly identified Obama's tragic flaw, a severe case of common grounditis. It is pervasive, coming out with Olympia Snowe, as well as with Iran It is grounds for concern about his Presidency. My hope is that some of the smart, strong people around him will proactively help him see and understand this blind spot.

- JackR

October 27, 2009 at 12:23pm

To evaluate Obama's approach without considering the effect of the Bush years is to ignore the most compelling reasons for seeking common ground and engagement. I am not sure that Obama isn't as naive as is suggested in this article, and I cannot say with any confidence that the president's popularity abroad has a tremendous value to our foreign policy objectives (though I suspect there is some value). I do believe that we needed to swing the pendulum a bit, and to present to the world a distinctly different face than that of the Bush regime -- if only to create the possibility that, where we do indeed have common ground, that we might be effective in leading the world to achieve shared objectives. As for Iran, we have no desire for war, or for escalating in that direction. We already have one war in Iraq that we all regard as a mistake, and a war in Afghanistan that no longer seems absolutely necessary. So we were bound to try engagement, even if we will end up with sanctions. Obama inherited this mess; it is not the product of his common-grounditis. It is impossible to read the accusation that Obama has "demoted" human rights without wondering where Leon has been these past eight years. Read Andrew Sullivan's piece in The Atlantic if you have any doubt how low a place Americans set aside for human rights under the previous administration. There is much wisdom in this article, but on the whole I think it overlooks the impact of recent history and therefore misjudges Obama's character and competence.

- purcellneil

October 27, 2009 at 1:28pm

I think most of the people here are in general accordance with Leon and his identification of this flaw of Obama. I do agree with Neil that it is understandable, and well intentioned. I do have one minor complaint: Actually, definition is the very work of difference; but I do not wish to be clever. Yes, but what about the word synonym? Its definition is the very work or similarity or sameness. Bush was the Presidency of antonyms. Obama of synonyms. I agree that both are flawed, but as I am fairly optimistic about humanity I understand Obama's motivations more easily. Hopefully in time Obama will appreciate this flaw and guard against it. I don't quite agree with JackR that it is a blind spot, more like rose colored glasses, a blind spot prevents you from seeing the bus bearing down on you, the glasses just delays your reaction.

- blackton

October 27, 2009 at 2:04pm

You're whining. Actually we've seen some pretty solid victories for "common ground" action in the past year, namely, the way the governments responded to the global financial crisis with a minimum of beggar-thy-neighbor behavior and in the response to the swine flu. And President Obama -- your naive commongroundisto -- is deciding how many additional troops to deploy in Afghanistan.

- aarong

October 27, 2009 at 3:00pm

Useful criticism. I hope O takes it on board. This is going to be a long, strange trip...

- Robert Powell

October 27, 2009 at 5:46pm

Weiseltier makes a good point. Obama seems to have, at best, an inconsistent international view of American interest and its relation to morality and human rights. In Afghanistan, pace his policy pronouncement in March 2009, he displayed a traditional conception of American interest in his willingness to confront the Taliban and their symbiotic relations with Al Qaeda. In that he was continuing the foreign policy in Afghanistan of Bush and was greeted with approval by many Republicans and Ne Conservative thinkers. He also displayed that sense of interest and continuity in maintaining rendition and some of the FISA polices and practices and some of the Patriot Act policies and practices. But then he goes public as Weiseltier catalogues with a bad case of common groundism. There is a time and place for most things. A big reason why liberal democracies don’t war with each other is because their common ground is significantly set in the values and first principles they share, however modified by unique national experiences. The notion that that commonality can undergird American dealings with theocracies, oligarchies, dictatorships and totalitarians is misconceived. Obama in these early innings is showing real amateurish naiveté in his international dealings as witnessed by the rebuffs of Russia, Iran and even little, liberal democratic Israel on the issue of the settlement freeze and in his dithering over Afganistan, and in that theatre lags behind NATO's endorsement of McChrystal's recommendations. It's beginning to look like the Obama Carter school of foreign policy: piety, in a word.

- basman

October 28, 2009 at 1:49pm

First - thanks to the TNR staff for actually putting the comment box at the bottom of the comments. Second ... The article in contradictory at its core and demonstrates the - sadly - all-too-common critique of self-satisfied savants of Obama's alleged naïveté. Moreover, as Neil points out, it is acontextual and, I would argue, simply nonsensical as a result. Let me first get to what I think is a serious contradiction at the heart of the article. Wiesel* refers to Obama's comments about "common ground" and his idealistic-sounding "no domination" platitudes as evidence of Obama's simplemindedness. Then he goes on and talks about Obama's approach to Iran. "In his policy toward Iran, Obama has so far honored one commonality and dishonored the other." As Rhubs mentioned at the beginning of the Troubles in Iran, the commonality Obama is honouring relates to the strategic interests of the United States; the second commonality, for all that I as an Iranian-born Western human rights and democratic advocate and activist might bemoan, is not at this point central to the strategic interests of the United States. You can't at one and the same time argue that Obama is a wide-eyed idealist and then allege that in echewing idealistic and unrealistic policies, he is being too cynical or not paying attention to his own precepts. And of all the idiotic platitudes, surely this one is the worst: "Where there is no common ground, the common ground man is useless. It is just him and his halo." There always is a common ground, as indeed Wiesel* notes in respect of Iran - one that is manifestly not "without end". And so it is with his speech in Cairo and his repositioning of the United States in Europe. But these are mere intellectual quibbles - Wiesel*'s articles are invariably contradictory when they are not nonsensical and they are usually written with the savant's tut-tut when they are not written in faux-intellectual convolutions - compared to the basic sin of the article: its acontextuality even as it notes the context. Now, I have served in multilateral diplomacy for seven years for a Government friendly to the United States; on many occasions, when the US had, through design or simple hamhandedness, isolated itself - threatening to undermine the Western position - I stepped in and tried to relieve the isolation; on more than one occasion, I sought instructions to support the US position - almost despite the US - to protect the system (anti-Americanism is no good for multilateralism, no matter how contemptuously America views the multilateral system). I never got thanked for any of this - not that I was looking for any - but but it was not uncommon for me to have to call my American counterparts to tell them that if they don't appreciate our support, at least they could refrain from undercutting us when we give them support. This was the Bush world, and it permeated not just the political but also the diplomatic staff, right down to junior diplomats and others working for multilateral fora. No one working with the US bilaterally or multilaterally expects the US, through the agency of Obama, to suddenly let go of its national interests; to suggest otherwise, as Wiesel* does, is a calumny against the rest of the world. Those of us who have been the target of US anti-international spittle even as held the spitoon for the soi-disant hyperpower neither expect nor believe that Obama will turn the US over to the service of mankind. It is, however, a better world where your main interlocutors does not begin every meeting and every session and every discussion and every paper and every call and every appointment with a muscular reminder of His Big Stick and his capacity to dryfuck not just the enemies but his friends as well. To repair the damage Bush left, Obama's platitudes - whether or not heartfelt and whether or not implemented, and no one expects either - are an absolute minimum. To bemoan this, is not just to ignore the context, but rather to continue to rush Cheney-like into the abyss.

- icarusr

October 28, 2009 at 2:17pm

Blackton says: "I think most of the people here are in general accordance with Leon and his identification of this flaw of Obama." I'm not. Leon's article amounts to extended name-calling. It offers no substantive analysis of anything. It says, essentially, "I don't like the cut of this guy's jib." Yes, well, what else is new? Leon has always harbored a distrust of Obama based on what I think is a sour misreading of him. Leon thinks and writes in broad abstractions, which, together, comprise his worldview. He has struggled to fit Obama into one of those abstractions. The result is something like this column, which says that Obama "underestimates" this, "overestimates" that, should be more thus-and-so, but not too much, because that's bad too, and so on, never applying any of that to the real world. Talk about lack of substance. Leon's main point, I guess, is that "Obama believes above all in common ground." No he doesn't. Not "above all." That means that Obama prizes common ground above all else -- that he regards broad agreement as a precondition for action. But if that's what Obama thought, he would never sign any piece of contested legislation, because Republicans are putting up near unanimous opposition to everything. Obama has and will sign such "partisan" legislation. He is plainly more committed in principle to his substantive agenda than to achieving consensus. So, what's the problem? It must be that Obama *seeks* common ground. But that's just good sense! You would have to be stupid -- i.e., George Bush -- not to seek common ground, in both foreign and domestic policy. Critics of the common ground thing from a political perspective don't understsand its real audience -- the voters. Obama holds the middle to the extent he appears to be the open-minded, rational decisionmaker he is, and the nutty right becomes increasingly marginalized. People may be getting impatient with Obama, and they certainly want the jobs picture to improve quicker than it possibly can, but the other side has emerged as the loony party of no, and that rings out loud and clear. Leon doesn't like the adminsitration's stance toward Iran. Either it's too realistic, or too naive. Which is it this week? Meanwhile, Leon offers not a hint as to what *he* would do about Iran. We are left to conclude that Leon doesn't actually have a specific, intelligent disagreement with anything Obama has done or will do. No, Leon doesn't like some of the president's words. What is it about Obama's rhetoric that bothers him? All Leon hears from Obama is "world society." I think that if Leon actually listened to Obama, instead of listend only for red flags in a Fox News-ish sort of way, he might pick up on the fact that Obama is a pretty traditional American exceptionalist and that he does not pretend -- in his rhetoric or in his actions -- that everyone can be magically brought around by the power of Obama's warm embrace. It's just that Obama adds something like the following. "So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." Yes, he seeks common ground. Leon has not explained what's wrong with that. He says, basically, that substance should not be sacrificed for common ground, but he doesn't explain where Obama is doing that. So, this is impressionistic drivel. For those liberals among us who are sick and tired, etc., we need to keep in mind that the Democratic Party only has a big majority because it has embraced a not trivial number of conservatives, and, as Joe Biden memorably put it at one of the debates I believe, "Hey dumbass: You need 60 fucking votes in the fucking goddamn Senate, you stupid fucking moron." Obama can change shit, but he can't change that, and the whiners to the left, even as they make good arguments, need to get hip to those crucial facts and stop habitually ignoring them.

- jhildner1

October 28, 2009 at 5:18pm

Basman, we're doing fine on Russia and Iran -- more-or-less on schedule. Yeah, I wish Obama would do what he's gonna do on Afghanistan, but, you know, he doesn't want to make a bad decision like Bush. He wants to know what he's doing before sending us into shit city. Israel is on hold. Nothing here justifies this "naivete" verdict. This is an example of a story that people make up to fit their preconceptions. Let's keep watching before pronouncing, "See, I knew it all along. This guy's Jimmy Carter." You know, because I really don't think that that holds water.

- jhildner1

October 28, 2009 at 5:34pm

I just don't have the will/energy to engage the larger debate running through this thread but: ...Basman, we're doing fine on Russia and Iran -- more-or-less on schedule... Can you give me the specifics of that? I'm all for giving him time and letting things work out, and I hope they do, but my impression he is that he is nowhere on either brief. So what's the schedule and what's working fine? Help me Wanda. On Afghanistan, I just don't understand the time it's taking.

- basman

October 28, 2009 at 10:19pm

Hey basman, I just wrote you a response after coming home from a long day at work. I clicked save, and was told the site was offline and my data was lost. So, fuck it. I don't have the will/energy either. Maybe tomorrow.

- jhildner1

October 29, 2009 at 1:08am

How fine. As fictions, there are roughly three archetypes that the protagonists of history conform to: the apocalyptic (e.g the monomaniacs and tyrants of Gibbon's Rome, Savonarola, Hitler/Stalin and Porfirio Diaz), the fatalistic (e.g. the Mexico of Octavio Paz, which is intoxicated with the dream of a fall without end) and the saintly-moderate (e.g. Thomas More in 'Man for all Seasons'). President Obama is a derivation of none of these. He is a problem rather than a hero. Obama is a gesticulator, a pure reflective surface. His existence is a grand solar performance; everyone recognizes him. He is a function and a perfect production of the academy from which he emerged. He has been infected with the equanimity that the school of Cultural Studies requires of its students. That is the source of his popularity and his considerable charm. But this is a time of antinomy. We are surrounded by firebugs. We need Ahab rather than a pasteboard mask.

- iqbalicarus

October 29, 2009 at 5:38am

As expressed, I have considerable foreign policy doubts about Obama, but the following is just plain silly: ...Obama is a gesticulator, a pure reflective surface. His existence is a grand solar performance; everyone recognizes him. He is a function and a perfect production of the academy from which he emerged. He has been infected with the equanimity that the school of Cultural Studies requires of its students.... and: ...We need Ahab rather than a pasteboard mask... After all the man is neither gargoyle nor shmoo. And I'll concede that Wieseltier's piece, which I for a change generally liked, is susceptible to the same tendency to reductiveness, as Icarusr noted, even though I disagree with most of his post, for reasons my still flagging energy/will don't allow me to argue out now. But let's at least start with the premise that Obama is a fully formed human being with strengths and flaws and not the dehumanized composite of anyone's overheated reckonings.

- basman

October 29, 2009 at 2:14pm

Basman, what I had in mind regarding Iran was the engagement in talks regarding the nuclear program, inspections, sending the uranium to France, etc. Obama said he would talk to Iran. They're talking. It may not work, but there have been moments of progress -- hardly a total "rebuff." And, if it doesn't work, Obama is trying to set up international agreement on sanctions. Russia said they were open to that, in a reversal, and, yeah, there have been signs from Putin that Medvedev spoke too soon, but, once again, hardly a "rebuff" or an embarrassment. On Afghanistan, like I said, I appreciate the point that delay is, as Lara Logan put it, the smell of victory for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. On the other hand, that's actually a pretty vague argument, and what's really going on here is that those who wish Obama well are simply impatient while those who don't are seizing on a talking point. As for Obama's reasons, my understanding is that we want to see who we'll be dealing with over there. Maybe that's an excuse. But what is it an excuse for? If anything, it's an excuse for taking the time to get the policy right. Leon says that Obama prizes consensus "above all" -- a ludicrous overstatement. My strong impression is that he prizes getting it right above all -- or, at least, more so than a typical politician or president. I, for one, prefer *that* to a rush to escalation. Obama came to the forefront in part based on his forceful opposition not to all wars, but, as he put it, to stupid wars. He doesn't want to be waging a stupid war of his own. That's a good thing, the temporary irritation of observers notwithstanding. The naivete business gets under my skin because I think it's based mainly on the facts that Obama is young, liberal, and new rather than on any dispassionate evaluation of Obama's actions. Nobody calls Cheney or Rumsfeld "naive" or "idealistic," even though their polcies with respect to Iraq were monumentally ignorant, stupid, shot through with wishful thinking, based on ridiculously sunny views as to what was possible, and so forth. Nobody called McCain naive on foreign policy when he said that we were all Georgians and advocated for a league of democracies, even though his plan was certainly susceptible to that criticism. But Obama did not come to the job with Rumsfeld and Cheney's well of foreign policy experience, so silly suspicions that he's a foreign policy nincompoop look for confirmation. When I look at Obama so far on the foreign stage, I see reasonable responses to tough problems -- nothing like a marked naivete. Meanwhile, Obama is blasted, sometimes by the same person -- as icarusr notes -- for both excessive idealism and excressive realism. And people like Leon try to pick out signs that Obama resembles the '70s lefties he has grown to despise. It's a pointless spectacle that says more about Leon than it does about Obama.

- jhildner1

October 29, 2009 at 3:46pm

Basman: "But let's at least start with the premise that Obama is a fully formed human being with strengths and flaws and not the dehumanized composite of anyone's overheated reckonings." It is precisely because he is a 'fully formed human being' that we cannot help but reduce him when we speak. The tattered emblem of 'humanity' that you advance is itself a mythology, isn't it? 'Every man is a system of bifurcations, between good and evil, virtue and vice, self and nothingness.' Not every reduction is a consequence of the reductive fallacy. Wieseltier is in the business of apprehending the private thoughts of public persons. He understands the historical importance of personal stances, neuroses and dreams. Our hobbyhorses can cause the apocalypse. For Wieseltier, the self, not History, is the true subject.

- iqbalicarus

October 29, 2009 at 5:09pm

J.H. Here’s (from reading and around and listening to some guys and so forth) my strictly layman’s understanding. Over the years Europe and the U.S. pursued a multilateral strategy towards Iran. In early 2006, the IAEA referred it to the Security Council for breaches of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The council passed resolution 1696. In December 2006 and then in March 2007, it passed Resolutions 1737 and 1747, introducing sanctions against Iran. But then it took a year to get more sanctions -- and a new resolution 1803 only added a few more names to those targeted by the sanctions. Since then, only an affirmation of the sanctions made it through the S. C. Russia caused a lot of the stalling, which China following it along in the same vein. Obama's “reset” strategy is an attempt to get Russia on board and its cooperation. Nice if it works cuz the West has lost years trying to work to a united strategy with tepid results and effect. But can Russia be turned around? In that regard note this from TNY a couple of days ago: http://www.tnr.com/article/putins-game Quoting Robinson: “Simple economics provides a compelling first answer: The Russian economy has not only reaped the benefits of the Bushehr deal, but it has also been bolstered by the sale of fuel and the potential sale of additional reactors. What's more, the nuclear project is only one of many economic agreements between the two countries. Total bilateral trade hovers around $2 billion, as Russia supplies Iran with consumer goods, oil and gas equipment, and military technology. Russia also enjoys privileged access (along with China) to Iran 's Southern Pars gas fields." And he offers more reasons: Iran's role in the Caspian oil trade; the potential benefits for Russia in setting up an energy cartel with Tehran; and the leverage that the Iranian nuclear program confers upon Russia vis-à-vis the West. Others too can be added: Russia sees Iran as AN entry point into the Middle East, to regaining lost influence there; Russia doesn’t see an Iranian as a big military threat since it thinks Russia is low in Iran’s perception of its enemies; and Russia remembers how poorly it fared when Iran faced West under the Shah. Pushing Iran too nuclearly could really turn Iran against Russia. Iran is a big market for Russia's nuclear and military industries. Iran can help Russia deter Western efforts to reduce dependency on Russian and Middle East energy. Iran helps Russia in its efforts to contain Western dominance. Given all that, Russia may calculate it’s better for to keep Iran as Western enemy and to keep this regime from losing control. I’ve also read that Russians may think that sooner or later, Israel or the U.S. (or both) will attack the Iranian program. So why be seen as hostile to Iran? It'll benefit, the thinking goes, politically (no nukes on their borders) and economically (Russians clearing the rubble and rebuilding the damaged infrastructure). So the argument for the futility of Obama’s Russia strategy is, in a nutshell, it benefits from the absence of war and of peace. It will continue to leave the West stuck in that place. Plain and simple, its interests are not America’s. Therefore, the attempt to get Russian cooperation on board and deny cover for China is and will be a waste of time. Therefore it can be argued that the decision to abandon a missile defense system in Europe as a quid pro quo for Russian cooperation will turn out to be gratuitous. On one reading the history of Russian maneuvers to obstruct the push for Iranian sanctions were really a tactic designed to get American concessions especially stopping the U.S. deployment of missiles in Europe. Bush was never willing to make this deal. He believed that the U.S. could not abandon its eastern European allies believed that Russia remained a serious enough threat to justify the deployment. But Obama, the argument continues, accepted the view that Iran poses the most serious threat at to Europe and in the Middle East. Obama’s leverage with Iran is to push for stronger sanctions if Iran doesn’t stop its European with Russia on board. But Russia immediately said sanctions are a serious mistake. Hillary went to Russia to confirm Russian cooperation despite its public statement but Russia maintained its anti sanctions position, neutering Obama’s strategy. Worse, the Iranians may have also neutered Obama’s strategy. Some reporting says the IAEA has concluded that Iran can make a nuclear bomb and is developing missilessystem able to carry the bomb. U.S. intelligence officials now appear ready to admit their earlier estimates were wrong. Sanctions have had way too many holes and Iran lived with them for years without changing its policy. Iranian believes it’s entitled to nuclear weapons as any of the current nuclear powers. It will endure short-term pain to become dominant in the Middle East. It calculates that as with India and Pakistan once it has the bomb, the world will accept it. So Iran plays (Obama) for more time in stringing out talks as it continues with its program. From what I gather the chances of Obama getting Russia on board to stop Iran’s nuclear development or stopping it with sanctions without Russia are between slim and none. I, a staunch supporter of and worrier over Israel, would be thrilled if Obama proved to be successful. But I doubt it.

- basman

October 30, 2009 at 12:14am

Iqbalicarus Dude: listen to yourself. Taking account of anyone is necessarily less than the full complexity of the person. But you are mixing up that, which must be the case in the nature of things, the difference between what exists and a description of it, and a reductiveness that elides the actuality of someone’s, something’s concrete existence. In that confusion you wind up with the kind of nonsense I have already cited from your post. I nowhere argued that Obama is a system of bifurcations or suggested that people in their full humanity are binary in the way you suggest I suggest: “Every man is a system of bifurcations, between good and evil, virtue and vice, self and nothingness.” I of course said no such thing. I simply said, tritely enough I would think, that as against your turning Obama into an attenuated construct, it would be better to deal concretely with what is good about him, and some things certainly are, and what is not so good, as some things certainly are. That does not obviate pronouncing judgment against him one way or the other. Nor is the fact that it is more concordant with reality to so approach Obama the equivalent of holding, which I don't, that every person is a system of binary oppositions. Your last paragraph is a continuation of your high falutin fatuity. Not only is Wieseltier, as I read him, not in the business of apprehending public persons’ private thoughts, but one needs to ask how would he ever know them? Are the public folks spilling the private beans, or what? And this stuff is errant nonsense: “Our hobbyhorses can cause the apocalypse. For Wieseltier, the self, not History, is the true subject.” It’s meaningless of course; and here's a couple words of advice for you worth everything you are paying for them: 1. try taking yourself a lot less less seriously; and 2. try not to get so seduced by your own prose and *pensées*. Methinks they make for a lousy fuck.

- basman

October 30, 2009 at 12:46am

j.h. p.s. If my analysis is right, it's worse and more than a rebuff and it's a vindication, I think, of Wieseltier's critique minus what is reductive about it.

- basman

October 30, 2009 at 12:51am

j.h. : private comment about a certain possible introduction. If you have any interest send me an email at itzikbasman@sympatico.ca. If not, that's fine of course.

- basman

October 30, 2009 at 10:39am

Given the discussion on this thread this is pretty interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/opinion/30brooks.html?_r=2 I'd add Bush 43 to the list too.

- basman

October 30, 2009 at 11:20am

This too (download's on the house) https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/what-price-popularity--15267?mode=addview

- basman

October 30, 2009 at 11:32am

I'm gonna' stop but there really is no end to it: For eg: http://www.realclearworld.com/

- basman

October 30, 2009 at 11:36am

Hey basman, all excellent points. You are clearly more up on Obama's Russia-Iran gambit than I am. My impression was that all was not lost and that this was a reasonable approach. Maybe I'm wrong -- obviously the news today about Iran isn't great. What do I know? Still, even if you're right, I'm not sure how well your criticism fits in with Leon's. Leon's criticism is that Obama suffers from naive "common ground-itis," as JackR put it. I'm not sure that this is a plausible or helpful way of looking at it. Obama is not the sort who would, say, look into Putin's or Medvedev's soul and divine that they're decent blokes whom he can trust. He is not the sort to be blind to the realpolitick of the situation or proceed based on blind optimism or preconceived notions. What we know about Obama is that he's a rational thinker who seeks out the best opinions and listens to them. I trust Obama a little bit on this stuff, because I trust that process -- at least more than any other process I can think of. Leon's mistake is to view Obama as the flipside of Bush -- a knee-jerk dove and/or internationalist where Bush was a knee-jerk hawk and all too ready to go it alone. The problem with that comparison is that Obama is not a knee-jerk anything. Obviously, some sort of engagement with Iran, and a re-engagement with the rest of the world -- the anti-Bush -- were cornerstones of Obama's foreign policy pitch during the campaign. He is following through on that. I'm hardly convinced based on the latest developments that anything in that ballpark -- especially the cost-free friendly rhetoric to which Leon objects most vociferously -- is cause for suspicion, alarm, or a verdict of naivete. It strikes me more as a welcome antidote to Bush-era poison. But, again, what do I know?

- jhildner1

October 30, 2009 at 3:52pm

"I of course said no such thing. I simply said, tritely enough I would think, that as against your turning Obama into an attenuated construct, it would be better to deal concretely with what is good about him, and some things certainly are, and what is not so good, as some things certainly are. That does not obviate pronouncing judgment against him one way or the other. Nor is the fact that it is more concordant with reality to so approach Obama the equivalent of holding, which I don't, that every person is a system of binary oppositions." Mr. Basman For an ascetic moralist, you certainly have an affection for the prose of logorrhea. What, precisely, does the last sentence (sic) in the paragraph quoted above mean? How, precisely, does one deal concretely with what is good and what is not so good about someone? Do we touch it? Do we smell it? Do we jot down a list? Since I am a eunuch and you are a mondain, please help me illuminate the mystery: how do we palpate goodness? Mr. Basman, rescue me from my sterility; I have another conundrum: isn't the business of interpreting character the business of a critic? Doesn't every critic of history know about the intimate relationship between 'minor causes and great events?' Do you really have a 'reading' of Leon Wieseltier? Does it involve him being, perhaps, an intelligent man? What, exactly, is more corrosive to a mind than a hobbyhorse? A diseased habit or disposition, which justifies itself with the repetition of platitudes and a hideous chorus of tattered precedents, accepts no mutinous detail. To it, there are no immutable facts. To the calm and purity of Obama's gaze, there are no arguments that are worth fighting for; his virtue is never tormented. Since you asked for a list, here is the good that we enjoy as a consequence: the affection of Europe and a president who does not nauseate us. And here is the 'not so good' (the second component of your idiotic antithesis; did you say that you weren't a dualist?): the Cairo speech in front of a captive audience, the tacit acceptance of Khamenei's mythology of a univocal Iran, the appeasement of the deep state in Pakistan at the expense of India and, finally, the impossible search for 'common ground' between totalitarian Islam (meaning much more than al-Qaeda/Taliban; the Islamists, still rapt by the essays of Sayyid Qutb, by his theorist's love of violence and spectacular death, will soon possess Egypt. Many of them speak at our mosques) and the Republic. It's about time that we stopped satisfying ourselves with our banalities, our common sense and our subliterate grunts. Wieseltier, like any decent psychoanalyst, informs us that Obama ought to extinguish his obsessions and finally begin to think. He requires other analogies and other interpretations; mainly, he needs not to ossify and become a stance. We cannot afford to be Dubliners. Your prose aspires to a greater authority than it warrants. Don't fool yourself into believing that you are a realist; you are a brutish lover of facts. I would suggest reading Pascal rather than abusing him for the benefit of a sneer. As for 'errant nonsense,' why do you speak of knights? Dude: get less mediocre

- iqbalicarus

December 16, 2009 at 6:32am