The Hussein Factor
There’s some sensible stuff in this Tom Friedman column, but I don’t think one can condemn those who were chanting “vote McCain not Hussein!” and then let this go by without comment:
So, I was speaking to an Iranian friend about what a mind-bending thing it must be for people in the Middle East to see Americans, seven years after 9/11, electing someone named Barack Hussein Obama as president. America is surely the only nation that could — in the same decade — go to war against a president named Hussein (Saddam of Iraq), threaten to use force against a country whose most revered religious martyr is named Hussein (Iran) and then elect its own president who’s middle-named Hussein.
I mean, look. Obama’s not a Muslim. He’s not a Muslim when people are trying to smear him by suggesting he is, and he’s also not a Muslim when people are trying to suggest that he shares a secret connection with the Islamic world in a good way. Obama’s just not a Muslim. His dad was from a Muslim family, but he didn’t practice the religion and wasn’t involved with raising his son. Meanwhile, the idea that there could be no Hussein-on-Hussein violence is belied by the fact that Iran and Iraq fought a vicious war with each other in the 1980s. Nor was there any love lost in the 1990s between the America-aligned King Hussein of Jordan and Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
50 Responses to “The Hussein Factor”
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November 9th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Neither of them called the other “The Great Satan”, though.
November 9th, 2008 at 6:17 am
George Washington fought George III! Mind-bending!
November 9th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Matt asserts:
“Nor was there any love lost in the 1990s between the America-aligned King Hussein of Jordan and Saddam Hussein of Iraq.”
Actually, the two Husseins were aligned during the Gulf War.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:10 am
who sane?
November 9th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I think it’s quite impressive that we elected a man who’s middle name is Hussein. To suggest that wasn’t some sort of barrier for a lot of people is pretty absurd, even though he isn’t a Muslim. But it wasn’t enough of an issue for a majority of people and that’s one of the thing’s that’s special about this country.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Tom Friedman is so proud of himself but then again he couldn’t stop himself from conflating the 9/11 attacks with Saddam so he’s not exactly the go-to guy on overcoming reflexive animosity to brown people from the Middle East.
Hey Tom, way to set a low bar. How about America elected a man who opposed the Iraq War for reals (not pretend like some mustache asshats we know) and rejected macho bullshit posturing that included quotes like “Suck on this” to Arab nations from one Tom Friedman. That’s the story here.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:51 am
both can be true. Obama has no connection to the Islamic world. But he did live there for 4 years and go to one of their schools. His name does demonstrate a certain degree of identity ecumenicalism. It says to the world that the US is unusually capable of moving beyond the happenstances of birth.
If Iran had just voted for a white guy named John Weinstein McCormack I think there’d be a few raised eyebrows here. Come on.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Someone might also point out to Friedman that this country did, after a long and bloody war of independence against a king named George, elect as its first president a man named George. There is, in fact, precedence.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Pretty facile stuff there, MY. The important bit is the predecessor — was King Hussein’s precedessor named Strom Thurmond? Clearly all Middle Eastern leaders are likely to exist within some definable Middle Eastern spectrum of possibilities, which means that the name or identity (as a Middle Easterner) does not factor in. But when you go from Bush (or Clinton, or Carter, or Reagan, or Adams) to BHO, there is a sense in which, on the most basic level, the name of the leader went from communicating something like “Our leader has no particular orientation or connection to the Middle East aside from our country’s interests” to something more like “Our leader might have some connection to the Islamic world.” That has to matter.
More interesting, of course, is the likelihood that Obama’s foreign policy won’t be much different than Bush’s, in practice. He says he will bomb Pakistan if he has to, and it’s difficult to imagine his response to e.g. Georgia or the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war being any different than what Bush did. For that matter, people underestimate how much Bush moderated his foreign policy after 2004. For many reasons, there are going to be constraints on how different Obama can be here.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Bosch’s Poodle, I lived in Jakarta at the same time the President-elect did. First he attended a Catholic school. Then he attended a public school. In Indonesia any public school, outside of Bali or an area where most folks are Christians, e.g. parts of Moluku, is likely to have a good many Muslims. His school, being in the part of Jakarta called Menteng, no doubt had many Muslim students and teachers. But it was a public, not a religious school. In 1969, as I recall, the Indonesians banned all religious schools, leaving only their public schools and those schools explicitly connected to foreign embassies, so the Jakarta International School became the Joint Embassy School.
MY, antone wanting to know about Friedman just needs to read his May 2003 OpEd piece, “Because We Could.” In a serious world, I’d think, Friedman would end up before the ICC on the basis of that piece alone.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Frankly, i can see both sides of it. As a positive, that we were able to overcome the guy’s middle name, and as a negative, that the guy’s middle name was even an issue.
Unfortunately, i think the latter is more likely to fall within the claim of “only in America”. But i’m not too smart so take that with the requisite grain of salt.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:57 am
The Iranian went away muttering to himself that Americans have the stupidest journalists in the world.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:23 am
I think this latest column sums up what I really dislike about Tom Friedman. I’m a reasonably well-educated guy who’s interested in the world. I tend to form opinions quickly, and I’m pretty good at expressing those opinions with some authority, even when my arguments rely on the most miniscule shred of evidence. I’m also witty enough to make a couple of referential jokes and wisecracks while forming my argument.
For me, however, this is something done in casual conversation. I have yet to get paid a cent out of such parlor games, much less build a career out of them. DAMN YOU, FRIEDMAN!!!
November 9th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I have a hard time understanding why this blowhard, self-absorbed, egomaniac is taken seriously by anyone.
Every now and then, I try and read one of his columns. I almost never get past the first paragraph. As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a maroon!”.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:33 am
And to finally put the “palling around with terrorist” thing to rest….Bill Ayers finally speaks
November 9th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Shorter Tom Freidman: if his name was Barack Ali Obama there would be no problem.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Tom Friedman is certainly trying hard to prove himself a bigger moron then Maureen Dowd. It’s a tough job but somebodys’ got to do it.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Intentions matter. That is why people were in an uproar about the sheriff in FL who denounced Obama by calling him Hussein. His words carried a deeper meaning - this man is different and not to be trusted, and even more sinister, you should hate him because of his name, not because of his policies.
The intentions behind me, after Ohio being called, saying, ‘omg, our next president is barack hussein obama’ are very different. They speak to his ecumenical background. It shows pride in our diversity.
Also, it’s clear that Bill Kristol wins the blowhard editorial award, followed by Maureen Dowd, then Friedman (but does Nick Kristof not rub anyone else the wrong way every time he puts pen to paper?).
November 9th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Yes, Kristof is completely annoying - I find him self-aggrandizing and arrogant. Dowd to me just sounds foolish - like drivel I’d get out of the first year women’s studies classes I used to teach. Friedman, occasionally I say “Yes!”, but it’s usually “No, No, NO!!!” What bugs me even more about Friedman is that people cite him as if his ideas are incontrovertible.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Matthew, you’re missing the Wizard’s point, as usual. The concatenation of Husseins confirms the Earth’s essential flatness. Only on a planar planet could Husseinity embody universal horizontality. More importantly, ‘Hussein’ means ‘handsome’ in Arabic, and that’s, you know, suggestive.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Not to mention friedman was a big fan of bombing a Hussein’s country. Too bad he didnt write, “America is the only country where i can play cheer leader for an administrations desire to illegally bomb a country ran by a Hussein, and five years later vote for a man whose middle name is Hussein, who, incidentely, wasnt a fan of bombing that other Hussein’s country! Yipee!”
November 9th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Yeah, there are all kinds of people in the world with Arabic names who aren’t Muslim. But it’s still hard for me to convince a lot of people I know that many of the Palestinians are actually Christian, or that there was a large population of Iraqi Catholics.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Electing Obama negates some of the negative propaganda against the US in the Muslim world. Nobody’s saying it’s impossible for Muslims to attack us now that we have a president named Hussein, but think of the millions of Muslim children who are growing up in a world where that’s true. “The Great Satan” just became a little harder to sell.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:07 am
it’s still hard for me to convince a lot of people I know that many of the Palestinians are actually Christian, or that there was a large population of Iraqi Catholics.
God, really? I can see that some people might simply be ignorant of those facts. But when confronted with them … you can’t convince them of it? Jeez.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:30 am
El Cid,
Unfortunately, a large fraction of those Arab Christians no longer live in their own countries, having been driven out by upheavals including the Iraq War. As well as Catholics there are a lot of Greek Orthodox, Monophysite and Nestorians who live or used to live in the Middle East.
Parenthetically, are there any Arab Christians named “Hussein” or is that pretty much a strictly Muslim name because of its historical resonance?
By the way, I don’t think Obama’s middle name will mean that much to people in Muslim countries. South American countries have had Arab presidents in the past, one of whom (Menem) converted from Islam to Catholicism. I don’t know that that led to especially close ties with the Muslim world.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:40 am
This confirms my suspicion: Kristol, Dowd, Friedman, and Kristof are double agents planted by the Post to undermine the credibility of the Times.
Good work, comrades!
November 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am
But his middle name is Hussein!
November 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
You need to get your facts straight on the Jordan-Saddam relationship.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Friedman should meet some Iranian Jews. His fuzzy little head would explode.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I’m waiting for the people who worried about Barack HUSSEIN Obama to start hanting about Rahm ISRAEL Emanuel.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
you see, tom friedman is a dumb-fuck…
anyone who believes that friedman has anything relevant or insightful to write is a dumb-fuck …
November 9th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Re: the Hussein-on-Hussein action. FWIW, King Hussein and Saddam were aligned during the 1st Gulf War….not that your thesis rests on this obvious fact, but it makes ya look dimwitted for not knowing it.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:04 am
I fear El Cid is right. For some reason a very large number of Americans refuse to believe there is such a thing as a Palestinian Christian. This is despite the fact they are a fairly large and well established minority. The PFLP leadership was predominantly Christian including George Habbash himself. Yet, I remember Alan Dershowitz claiming that the PFLP hijackings were early examples of Islamic terrorism.
November 10th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
‘How bad was the Bush administration?’
It was so bad we elected a liberal black man named Barack Hussein Obama.
‘How bankrupt is the republican party?’
It was so….well you get the idea.
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