Obama on Foreign Policy

He said:

I would like somebody [as a running mate] who knows about a bunch of stuff that I’m not as expert on, I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more Commander-in-Chief-like. Ironically, this is an area–foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain.

It’s ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags ‘I’ve met leaders from eighty countries’–I know what those trips are like! I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then–you go.

You do that in eighty countries–you don’t know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa–knowing the leaders is not important–what I know is the people. . . .

I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college–I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . .

Zuzu thinks this is both ridiculous and a sexist dogwhistle:

1) He lived in Indonesia from the ages of 6 to 10, 40 years ago. I lived in New Jersey from birth to age 13. Can I be governor when Corzine leaves office? 2) As I discussed in comments to this post, dismissing the diplomacy that Clinton did as “having tea” or being “just a wife” or doing no more than watching “children do native dance” is sexist, because it diminishes the role of women in diplomacy and it ignores the fact that a lot of diplomacy is, in fact, simple schmoozing.

I don't think it makes as much sense to read these comments in the context of the Obama campaign's sexist dogwhistles—of which it certainly has a history—as it does to read these comments in the context of their mistrust-of-Washington dogwhistles, on which Auguste wrote a great post yesterday. For one, unlike "having tea" or "being a wife," Obama's description of diplomacy isn't really a gendered one. In fact, he says he's been on those trips, in that role, himself. Sure, he downplays Clinton's experience in foreign policy, but there has to be a way to do that without being the same as those who say "Clinton is unfit to be Commander-in Chief because she's a woman." Instead, I think Obama argues that the kind of experience we have conventionally valued in foreign policy isn't the kind we should value in this election. He argues that interacting exclusively with the global elite won't help solve the problems of the global poor. He argues that he can step outside of our clearly broken system of interacting with the world by virtue of his lack of conventional experience. Those are all fairly compelling arguments in light of a Bush administration that was both profoundly experienced and profoundly misguided. Diplomacy may be simply schmoozing, but doing foreign policy means more than seeing the world through the lens of the policy-making elite. Obama means, I think, to point out that his set of foreign experience helps him look outside that lens better than McCain or Clinton could.

"Summer's here and the time is right/for dancin' in the streets!"

The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida … would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror.

This was what Steve King (R-IA) had to say about what would happen if Barack Obama were elected president. One funny thing about this little quip of Steve's is that he wasn't even basing it primarily on Barack's stance on the war in Iraq; rather, King's special brand of reasoning led him to this conclusion:

his middle name (Hussein) does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was.

Beg pardon? "The al-Qaida" will be dancing in the streets because Barack's father was Kenyan? Huh?

But really, the most absurd thing about Steve King is that the doomsday scenario he identifies is really not all that bad. In fact, it says something about the neo-con mindset that making sure Islamists are never happy is their primary goal. Never mind the human cost in American and Iraqi lives: it's more important to make Islamists angry. Let's think about this "dancing in the streets" concept for a second. Islamists are happy, and it didn't (unlike Sept. 11) cost us anything, especially not any lives, to get them that way. Happy Islamists are less likely* to go blow themselves and/or their neighbors and/or American troops up. So really, Steve King thinks that his own pride in not having other people think they've won is worth the continued deaths of American troops. (Once again, the right demonstrates that it hates the shit out of our troops). In reality, Bush's war on terror is a lose-lose situation. We can never win, because we're trying to stamp out the people who hate us, and the more we do that, the more people hate us. They can never win, because they want us to stop being douchebags in our foreign and economic policy, and the entire premise of the war on terror is foreign and economic douchebaggery. The world King proposes actually transforms this lose-lose situation into a win-win. We win because we are no longer hated, and therefore no longer attacked—and let's be clear, this is a war to defend our way of life, according to Dear Leader. The moment we are no longer attacked, we win by the Bush administration's definition. They win because...well...according to King, they think they've won. They're dancing in the streets declaring victory. I don't really care why they think they've won as long as they stop attacking us and their countrymen and -women.

King cares though, because at the end of the day, the lives of Americans, Afghanis, and Iraqis just don't matter very much to him.


*This is one situation where the "embolden the terrorists" scenario is even less credible than usual. Let's think about why Islamists would dance in the streets. Well, it would be because they perceive the U.S. as having installed a president who was Islam-friendly. Is there any mindset in which it would make sense to then turn around and attack the entity that you just celebrated?

Dear second-wavers who keep saying feminists have to vote for Clinton:

Fuck you, and please stop hurting our movement by framing it as a gender war. Don't get me wrong. I would love to see a woman in the White House, and I would be pleased to see Hillary Clinton in the White House. I support Obama because of his better foreign policy stance, his in-depth knowledge of domestic issues like farm policy, and his profound star power (which will be valuable in the general election and in office). Claiming that I am not a feminist because I am supporting a man is so deeply problematic I hardly know where to start.

Supporting Obama does not imply the belief that we live in a postfeminist world in which candidates run without gender. That assumes an insulting level of naivete on the part of young feminists. It implies that someone's genitalia determine her political stance. Isn't stepping beyond that determinism, I don't know, the point of feminism in the first place? Ann Coulter, while a woman, has a stance almost diametrically opposed to mainstream feminist view on almost every issue. Should I vote for her simply to prove a woman can become president?

Supporting Obama does not imply that I am uncomfortable with women in power, any more than supporting Clinton would imply that I am uncomfortable with men in power. That is just silly. The essentialism that produces that line of thought boils Clinton down to an objectified stand-in for her gender.

Supporting Obama doesn't make us afraid to be feminists. It makes us wary of anyone who tells us that feminism is as simple as being pro-choice, pro-equality, and pro-women-in-male-dominated-workplaces. It makes us hesitant to believe that feminism stops at women's liberation, that there isn't a tremendous amount of work to be done reparing the damage patriarchy does to men as well. It makes us reject the notion that feminism is about a SCUM-manifesto-style gender war in which every contest between a man and a women is a battle.

Whether or not we support Clinton isn't the same as whether or not we see her as a walking vagina we need to get into the White House, and it's insulting to Clinton's supporters to say so. It means we evaluate policy issues and electability issues, and make political decisions based on those evaluations.

So I never thought I'd say this, but fuck you, Gloria Steinem, and get out of the way while the rest of us try to repair the political damage you've done.

Love,
Will

P.S. It's worth pointing out that I don't mean to direct this to all second-wavers, or even imply that this "gender war" is a viewpoint that the mainstream second wave espoused. It is a viewpoint that can be traced back to submovements of the second wave, though, and it's a viewpoint that increasingly frustrates the third wave.