Obama in Cairo
I caught the speech on the gym this morning and wanted to jot down some thoughts before exposing myself to too much RSS and listserves that contaminate me with other people’s ideas. For one thing, the underlying idea of this speech seems a bit odd. It’s hard to know how to even characterize what it was.
But the execution first and foremost reminded me of why Obama has always been the writers’ candidate in American politics. This is a guy who’s not afraid to try to express complicated or difficult ideas. He wasn’t afraid to do it in Dreams From My Father and now that he’s long past writing his own material as a solo act, his whole team is clearly imbued with the same spirit and that same mandate to try to really explain the complicated and difficult ideas rather than sweep them under the rug.
This seems connected to me to the remarkable way in which this speech is being pushed out in multiple media—on television, but also on Twitter and on Facebook and via SMS and all in multiple languages—to a global audience. Part of the rise of Obama is the rise of a post-television, post-sound bite technological paradigm. You can deliver a speech at 7 AM Eastern Time and know that even though relatively few Americans will be up to see it, anyone who’s interested will be able to Google up a transcript. And if people like the speech, it’ll become a YouTube classic. It creates a whole new world from one in which the point of a speech is just to field test a couple of zingers in hopes that one or two of them gets picked up for the evening news.
98 Responses to “Obama in Cairo”
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June 4th, 2009 at 8:47 am
I can’t believe you’re trying to cover up the revelation that he speaks fluent Arabic, based on the fact that he said “shoukran.”
June 4th, 2009 at 8:53 am
yeah, i like your vision of the post-soundbite world, but i’m doubting it.
or rather, i’m doubting it applies to the vast majority of low-information voters in america. 10% of us will google the speech and read it–tops. 90% will hear a soundbite on the radio or tv–if they hear anything at all.
still, it’s progress, i suppose.
June 4th, 2009 at 8:54 am
I like Obama and he is an extraordinary public speaker. But solving our problems with radical Islam via a speech? C’mon.. I get a nagging doubt that Obama believes too much in his “let us change everything” bs.
I lived in the Middle East for some years and have first hand knowledge of the (somewhat mystifying) hatred for America. This is true (or especially true) amongst the population of our so-called allies in the region. Personally I never faced any problems and people were very polite/nice. The anger and resentment seems directed at the American government/foreign policy, than at individuals. I think the Palestinian issue has something to do with it. However, the bigger problem is likely our reputations as sin central; the land of all vices. People in the Middle East are highly regulated and cannot speak out against their local dictator/ruler. Hence it becomes convenient to direct their pent-up frustrations against the big bad non-Muslim foreign power. And that is especially true where the ruler is friends with America.
June 4th, 2009 at 8:54 am
oh–and you are going to follow up on this, right?
“the underlying idea of this speech seems a bit odd. It’s hard to know how to even characterize what it was”
that’s a pretty strong allegation of incoherence, and i’ll be interested to see you go into detail.
June 4th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Is anyone else surprised that Yglesias was at the gym?
June 4th, 2009 at 8:58 am
“This is a guy who’s not afraid to try to express complicated or difficult ideas. He wasn’t afraid to do it in Dreams From My Father…”
Don’t get me wrong; I’m a huge Obama fan. But I can’t say I remember any complicated or difficult ideas in that book. What I do remember is that, more than most people (or at least more than me), Obama seems to be compelled to construct grand narratives to explain events in his life. He comes across as someone you’d expect to end up as a liberal arts professor, not a professional politician. Anyway, too idealistic and navel gazing for my taste, to tell the truth.
Happily, he turns out to have a huge talent as a politician as well, so who cares if he happens to have these quirky qualities?
June 4th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Two things- (1) I agree with Matt that the whole meta-reason for the speech is unclear, or maybe it’s just hopelessly utopian. I’m not sure that a lack of mutual understanding is the problem, to tell you the truth. (2) I think the attraction of Islamism in the Muslim world is that it’s their only comparative advantage. They’re losers, for want of a gentler word, on all other fronts when it comes to dealing with the modern world; even those countries and mini-countries blessed with humongous oil reserves have ended up highly dysfunctional in important ways. The only thing where they can whup us is religious extremism, and by god they’re going to run with it. Nobody wants to be losers in everything.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:00 am
“somewhat mystifying”
You’re kidding, right?
June 4th, 2009 at 9:02 am
6: This kind of ‘my life is a great narrative’ narcissism is exactly what I’d expect from a politician. Professors, not so much. Pretentious in a much different way, I’d say.
2: The low information voters don’t even get sound bites though. They get opinions distilled from mainstream thought. The problem is that pundits and supposedly informed observers of the political process did not read transcripts or remember old speeches- they just paid attention to sound bites themselves (people are really lazy). Obama is inviting them to do more.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:03 am
[...] TROVE: Yglesias [...]
June 4th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Put me down on the “agree with kid bitzer” list.
Also, seeing Obama pull back from the Bush-era levels of belligerent condescension in foreign policy rhetoric is certainly welcome–but it hardly seems like any kind of genius move to me.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I too was at the gym this morning and will challenge Matt to a race in the 100 yard dash.
I found the speech strange. I agreed with what he said but found the way he said it off in some way. Perhaps I felt it was condescending. Or moralizing. Or just simplistic. Or trite.
Regardless, I had to keep reminding myself that not even he believes this is a formal strategy but rather one part of a broader strategy. Still, all the times he used the word “must” to tell either the Israelis, the Iranians or some other group what they should do.
I found myself getting cynical. Here’s what I wrote on Twitter:
“I hadn’t realized that all the Middle East needed was a stern finger-wagging. And bullet points”
June 4th, 2009 at 9:09 am
I confess to an extreme amount of ignorance when it comes to the tenets, practices and minutiae of various religions. Yes, I read quite a bit and the inevitable bits of info get absorbed. However, being an atheist the sheer magnitude of learning required to be versed in a world I find a bit ridiculous is both daunting and personally irrelevant. When it comes to reaching an accommodation with Islam I shudder to admit I share some of the antagonism and suspicion of those on the Right, yet for sometimes different reasons. Here is where I need educated and corrected if required. My impression of Islam is its adherents follow a crude and repugnant practice of misogyny. Women are less than human in some ways. They often can’t drive, work, get an education, court and date men free of constraints that men don’t suffer while courting, are subject to emotional and physical abuse sanctioned and accepted by their peers, spouses and clergy. I see Muslim women protest the West has these perceptions in error and actually women are respected and revered in their societies. Yet what I read and hear tells me otherwise. I read these practices are not truly part of Islam, rather perversions and deviations from the religion. Yet they persist and seemingly little or nothing is done to rein them in or end them. Now, why should free, progressive, democratic societies seek understanding with peoples determined and accepting of practices that disenfranchise fully 1/2 their citizens? These are nations saying “You will respect us, trade with us, treat us as equals and desist in your aggression. By the way, we’ll continue to rape, kill, imprison and oppress our females and you can go to hell if you don’t like it, it’s none of your business.” We subject many nations to sanctions and shunning for human rights abuses. Rarely do I see the State Department raising hell with Muslim nations for massive abuse of their entire female populations. Why should we beseech these coutries to coexist peacefully? Some clamor for us to intervene in Darfur for the misery inflicted there, maybe rightfully so. How is the misery and abuse so different suffered by women within the practice of Islam?
June 4th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Eventually, President Osama, like his hero Neville Chamberlain, will learn a hard lesson, namely that appeasement doesn’t pay. He would be far better advised to consider the approach of Hafaz Assad, the late and unlamented dictator of Syria. The only language that the Muslime terrorists understand is Hama Rules.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Again, Obama is benefiting from eight years of Bush. The non-specific oratory gives him an opening, but pretty soon an actual plan with specifics will be required.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:13 am
This is a guy who doesn’t assume that his listeners are too stupid to handle a complicated or difficult idea.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:13 am
It may not be a “genius” move but it’s one that takes a lot of cajones. Recall that for the past decade there have been only the following two widely held opinions on foreign policy in Washington: the Republican one, which was extremely belligerent, and the Democratic one, which was less aggressive but still markedly hawkish (if only designed such in order to not look like pussies compared to the GOP). For him to counter this stream requires him to chart a new course… or, to put it differently, not a single one of the other presidential candidates, D or R, could/would have given this speech had they one. It’s Obama, and the rest…
June 4th, 2009 at 9:15 am
His speeches play largely the same role that sound bites did before. They make him seem cooler than his opponents.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:15 am
re MR SLC
Hama rules Osama drools! Pig-fucking to the horizons! Your mother is a whore!
June 4th, 2009 at 9:16 am
SLC,
Ok. I trust that you also consider Reagan an appeaser as well for his talks with Gorbachev?
June 4th, 2009 at 9:17 am
SLC, you do know that calling him President “Osama” destroys your credibility, right?
June 4th, 2009 at 9:17 am
“I like Obama and he is an extraordinary public speaker. But solving our problems with radical Islam via a speech? C’mon.. I get a nagging doubt that Obama believes too much in his “let us change everything” bs.”
Obama said himself yesterday that “one speech isn’t going to solve everything.” Which doesn’t mean he DOESN’T believe we need to “Change everything”, just that you don’t know what’s going on in his head.
Neither do I, for that matter, but let’s be clear that this speech was a campaign promise. Until we get other evidence, let’s not assume it was intended to be anything grander than that.
And no, sweeping oratory and a complicated thesis do not count as “other evidence”- that’s kind of par for the course with Obama.
“But I can’t say I remember any complicated or difficult ideas in that book. What I do remember is that, more than most people (or at least more than me), Obama seems to be compelled to construct grand narratives to explain events in his life.”
I dunno, it depends on what “complicated” means, and even then it’s pretty subjective. You’re definitely right that Obama tried to wrap himself in grand narratives, and especially “American” ones at that. But I don’t feel like that was such a “simple” idea, especially given how much it was tied into race, identity, and notions of Americana and American myths.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Re CSL
1. Its Dr. SLC.
2. Correction: goat fucking to the horizon.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:19 am
True story: the definition of “appeasement” is “talking.” Seriously.
You might have thought it meant offering your enemy blandishments, but nope.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:20 am
@13 – unlike the United States, such Muslim countries as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Turkey have all had woman heads of government. It’s not so simple as to say that Islam disenfranchises women – most of the countries where women are really disenfranchised are ones where there’s no democracy to speak of, to begin with.
@14 – “appeasement doesn’t pay” if you’re dealing with a Hitler. Because the word “appeasement” was very specifically used as a moniker for the policy of appeasing Hitler, the word has come under a bad name. But, really, for the most part appeasement does pay. You just have to figure out who you can appease and who you can’t. “Appeasing” Sadat seems to have worked out fine, for instance.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:27 am
I believe he said: “on the gym”; which leads me to believe he is referring to a jungle-gym. And so, no, I am not surprised. I do find it disturbing, however, that there are playgrounds with televisions; playing CNN, no less. Someone could get distracted, fall down, and hurt themselves. Safety first. Matty, make sure the other kids get their turn.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:28 am
The underlying idea of this speech seems a bit odd. It’s hard to know how to even characterize what it was.
You can’t be serious. The ‘underlying idea’ came through loud and clear in the Middle East:
No more settlements.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:30 am
okay, i read it now.
and, yeah, if not outright incoherent, it is at least a bit, umm, loosely-textured shall we say?
the part that bugged me the most was where he said that the u.s. is “dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: “Out of many, one.”"
you can’t use “dedicated” in that way without setting off gettysburg echoes, and obama knows that too–he is never shy about ringing the lincoln bell.
but when you compare “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”, and “dedicated to a simple concept: e pluribus unum”, you see that they are entirely unlike.
for one thing, “e pluribus unum” has no authority in any founding document. it is neither in the constitution nor in the declaration. no one ever voted for it, as they voted for the declaration and the constitution.
second of all, e pluribus unum is simply a doctrine of administrative organization, arguing that a group of loosely-federated sovereign states should move beyond federation to a full consolidation into a unified state.
that’s all fine and dandy if you are interested in debates over federalism.
but unlike “all men are created equal”, it has nothing to do with human rights, or any more general moral principle. it really has no *moral* content whatsoever.
yeah, i can see that obama wants to refashion it as a slogan of diversity and multi-culturalism. but that’s deeply a-historical. just not what it ever meant.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:31 am
YAY!!!!1!11!! SLC GOT TO SAY ‘HAMA RULEZ’ AGIN!!!! YAAAAAYYY!!!
June 4th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Re John #25
The late President Sadat was not a Muslime terrorist or Islamic extremist. On the other hand, the current rulers of Iran and their toadies in Hamas and Hizbollah are both. Amadinejad, Nasrullah, and Maashal talk like Hitler; they differ in not having (yet) Hitlers’ power. The object should be to stop them before then acquire Hitlers’ power, which is where Chamberlain went wrong. Had he stood up to Hitler at Munich in 1938, there is every reason to believe that the German General Staff would have engineered a coup to remove him from power which would have avoided the slaughter of WW2.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Re Tom
Settlements today, settlements tomorrow, settlements to the far horizon.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:38 am
kid blitzer,
Obama is a writer. He writes for an audience.
Not even 1 out of every 10,000 people in the Middle East who hear or read this speech will have ever heard the Gettysburg Address.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:48 am
The true meaning of the speech of Obama had been explained from his performance at the Forum of the so-called “alliance of civilizations” in Istanbul on 6 and 7 April 2009. The strategic idea is to reach out to those considered as “moderate Islamists”. Not very original. George W. Bush did not say anything else. Vladimir Putin said it every day. But in 2001, Lady Margaret Thatcher outraged some when noticing the reluctance of such “moderate” friends to condemn the 11 September.
Let us say on this subject, without necessarily exclude the relevance of such calculations, deserves to know that what we are talking about.
The label of “moderate islamists” was invented and began to be used to describe the AKP party, currently the majority in parliament in Ankara, and led by its founder Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan
The politically correct fallacy is to present them (the “moderate islamists”) as the oriental equivalent of the european “christian democrats”.
It seems therefore useful to know more about the ideas and references to this man and his political movement.
Some may imagine the head of the current government in Ankara as a sort of clever demagogue “populist”. Let’s correct this error. With his seemingly violent and bloody outsides, capable of slamming the door to a debate that he dislikes, it is a fine and subtle character
His biggest political blunder was known to recite, over 10 years ago, the work of a poet.
It likes the poems in the East, we understand a little less in Europe. Know Islam is also, however, to enter into this logic.
Delivered in December 1997, during an election in Siirt, a city of which he became MP in an election in March 2003, a few sentences did a scandal.
He will be tried in 1998. And even in 1999 served a prison sentence of 4 months, with deprivation of his civic rights for 5 years. At that time, and for this reason, it will take the decisive turn of his career. In fact he decides to separate, for reasons of method, its old leader Necmettin Erbakan. Recall that under the banner of the latter, he won in 1994 for the Islamist mayor of Istanbul.
The famous passage in question must be recalled: “The minarets are our bayonets, domes our helmets, mosques our barracks, believers our soldiers.”
However, at first glance it is tempting to judge the ambiguous about. It could even be interpreted as a desire for peaceful conquest by Islam, the “mosque” as the “barracks”.
How is it that for this simple extract from a poem for a literary quotation in short, it is because of this, it is time to put a ban of democratic debate?
Let’s repeat it: declared ineligible, he will wait several years before being reinstated in the area of the “Republic”. We could not do less in a regime prevailing Western values to recognize that, one year after the victory of his party, that the people had decided in his favor.
According to the criteria of the European Union, Erdogan can even switch to be persecuted by his laic opponents for heinous persecutors.
At Brussels and on the Obama-Yglesias view of the world, we prefer to discuss with islamists than with secular leaders.
The original author of the evil summons is called Ziya Gökalp, whose real name was Mehmed Ziya.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziya_G%C3%B6kalp
Born in 1876, Diyarbekir. He will take his pseudonym Gökalp, which means “blue hero” as an activist and leader of the “Union progress “it will figure as a theorist of the young Turkish revolution.
Remember that this movement was directed primarily against what was called then, the “Ottomans”. He refused the policy of reforms in the 1830s, a period known as the “Tanzimat”, and whose agenda was to establish equality between civil and military components of all the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turks were opposed to this.
Dreaming of an empire ranging from Albania to Central Asia and theorist himself this “pan-Turanian” and “pan-turciste” Gökalp went even further in detail. For him it could not give any room for Christian minorities, the “Greeks, Armenians and Jews, foreign body in the nation.” Equality could not be recognized “giaours” supposed infidels as “Islam means submission.
He wanted to force on the other hand the linguistic turkisation and ethnic composition of the Empire.
It can therefore entitled to consider this character as a precursor of totalitarianism of the twentieth century. It will be rejected and exiled between 1919 and 1922, because of its compromise with the Young Turkish crimes. We can finally say he had theorized the Armenian genocide of 1915, as Talaat Pasha implements it and Enver Pacha covered his political authority.
That is the very poetic reference to the current head of government of Turkey : Erdogan.
Can we really equate the party to harmless Christian Democracy ?
Are the Obama guys, leftist bloggers and european technocrats completely out of their mind when they praised those so-called “moderate islamists” ?
June 4th, 2009 at 9:51 am
As a rhetoric-wonk, what I find interesting is not simply that the speech itself was a big deal (it’s getting nearly wall-to-wall BBC coverage), but that almost every speech Obama gives is a big deal. This is no accident. Particularly since the post-Wright Philadelphia race speech, Obama has signaled that all major controversies will be responded to with a speech–and each of these speeches have the same characteristics. They acknowledge the depth of the problem, they attempt to speak directly to multiple stakeholders from not simply one of two sides, but of many sides, at different points in the speech. And it provides a synthesis that focuses not on a single solution but rather an advocacy of processes that help us negotiate these thorny issues. These speeches call for more speech, more deliberation, more listening. And the more attention we pay to each speech, as they become the de rigeur response to controversy, the deliberative process is modeled and further encouraged. He’s not giving solutions, he’s slowly building a new political ethic.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:01 am
> They acknowledge the depth of the problem, they attempt to
> speak directly to multiple stakeholders from not simply one
> of two sides, but of many sides, at different points in the
> speech. And it provides a synthesis that focuses not on a
> single solution but rather an advocacy of processes that
> help us negotiate these thorny issues. These speeches call
> for more speech, more deliberation, more listening. And the
> more attention we pay to each speech, as they become the de
> rigeur response to controversy, the deliberative process is
> modeled and further encouraged. He’s not giving solutions,
> he’s slowly building a new political ethic.
The problem being that at least in the profit-making world such behavior seldom works. Fast-moving, decisive organizations which spend less time listening, zero time griping, and more time taking actions generally outperform the more contemplative organizations. And excessively contemplative organizations become paralyzed because it is psychologically, economically, and just plain arithmetically impossible to satisfy everyone when mutually exclusive decisions must be made against constraints. (and in fact some, perhaps many, people derive satisfaction from being perpetually dissatisfied no matter what decision is taken)
June 4th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Great speech. Only three eye brow raising parts.
Obama said: “I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.” It seems he is waffling on the closing date which I thought was to be in January 2010.
Obama said: “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.” Ah, there was that violent incident of the Civil War that had something to do with it.
Obama said: “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.” There was that election that put Hamas into power.
Picky points I know but points that cause concern since they are not directly addressed.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I think if you guys were Muslim it would play a lot differently to you. For me, it was amazing, cathartic to hear an American president publicly respect hijab, acknowledge that anti-hijab sentiment is about denying Muslim women their identity rather than freeing us, call out Muslims who repress women, acknowledge the right of Palestinians to a dignified existence, acknowledge that Israel– while it will continue to exist– is built upon the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. To have him recognize what Muslims know, that with Christians and Jews we are ahl al-kitab, and to frame a call for a better future for Muslims in terms of what Islam asks for us, is extraordinary. Alhamdulillahi rabbi’l al-amin!
June 4th, 2009 at 10:14 am
re MR SLC
It’s “President Obama”, pig-fucker.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:17 am
What does the “profit-making” world have to do with political discourse? The United States government is not Apple, for crying out loud. I can’t imagine what you mean when you say that deliberative “organizations” get “outperformed” by decisive ones, particularly when the issues that confront governmental bureaucracies are incredibly complicated and cannot be resolved in an immediate fashion. Just look at the Republican Party if you want to see how successful short-term thinking is over the long-run.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I very much agree with cate’s sense of Obama’s overall purpose with these speeches.
I’d also note that with this speech in particular, the Administration did everything it could to make sure it was presented directly to as many people in Muslim countries as possible. I think reading or watching it with that context in mind helps a lot: he is speaking to people who have been exposed to a lot of anti-American material, and I think much of this speech was basically about providing a rebuttal to that material.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Obama said: “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.” Ah, there was that violent incident of the Civil War that had something to do with it.
But if you place the emphasis on full and equal rights, then this is correct: the Civil War may have ended slavery, but regrettably it did not bring about full and equal rights.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:24 am
I’m off to watch the speech. I’m sure its soaring rhetoric. At what point did he mention Israel’s nuclear weapons?
June 4th, 2009 at 10:26 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias: For one thing, the underlying idea of this speech seems a bit odd. It’s hard to know how to even characterize what it was. [...]
June 4th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Re CSL
Its Dr. SLC fuckface piece of filth.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Re Alan
Nuclear weapons today, nuclear weapons tomorrow, nuclear weapons forever.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:30 am
re MR SLC
MR SLC pisses his pants because he wants to be called by another title. What can MR SLC learn from that, and use in the future, if he’s not to be considered a pig-fucker troll?
June 4th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Al-Jazeera’s English-language article:
June 4th, 2009 at 10:37 am
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/20096492421821542.html
June 4th, 2009 at 10:43 am
The late President Sadat was not a Muslime [sic] terrorist or Islamic extremist. On the other hand, the current rulers of Iran and their toadies in Hamas and Hizbollah are both.
I don’t see how the current rulers of Iran can particularly be described as “terrorists.” At any rate, that has nothing to do with the basic question which is whether making concessions can lead to peace. It didn’t work with Hitler. In most other cases, it does work. Gerry Adams was a terrorist, but Sinn Fein has still basically made peace in Northern Ireland.
Amadinejad [sic], Nasrullah, and Maashal talk like Hitler; they differ in not having (yet) Hitlers’ power. The object should be to stop them before then acquire Hitlers’ power, which is where Chamberlain went wrong.
Thousands to millions of people in the past have said very anti-semitic things, if this is how Ahmadinejad, Nasrullah, and Mashal talk like Hitler. Only Hitler actually killed millions of Jews. Beyond that, what concerned people about Hitler in 1938 was not that he was going to murder millions of Jews, but that he was going to start another war of aggression against Europe. I see little chance that Iran is going to start a war of aggression against anybody, much less Hamas and Hezbollah. The only people looking to start a war of aggression, so far as I can tell, are the Israelis.
And, of course, none of those people will ever attain Hitler’s power. Hezbollah is a militia which does a very good job of controlling some territory in southern Lebanon. Hamas is the political party of one of the most disenfranchised and powerless ethnic groups in the world. Ahmadinejad doesn’t even really control Iran, and to the extent that he does, Iran in 2009 is nowhere near as powerful as Germany was in 1938.
Had he stood up to Hitler at Munich in 1938, there is every reason to believe that the German General Staff would have engineered a coup to remove him from power which would have avoided the slaughter of WW2.
Had Chamberlain stood up to Hitler by not going to Munich in 1938 (just going to Munich was already an admission that he and Daladier were going to capitulate), there is every reason to believe that the German General Staff would have found new excuses not to carry out their vaguely discussed coup to remove him from power. And there’s every reason to think that the French would have sat behind the Maginot Line until after Czechoslovakia was defeated, and that things would not have gone terribly differently from how they actually went.
Munich was a very distasteful decision, and to a certain extent Hitler’s behavior in the lead-up to it (especially his behavior at Bad Godesberg) probably ought to have led the allied powers to realize that they might as well fight him now, rather than waiting to fight him later. But it was impossible to know for sure that Hitler was Hitler until after Munich, and one can certainly understand why the appeasers thought that it was worth a try. And unless one believes the fantasy that Halder was going to overthrow Hitler, there’s no reason to think that Munich had such dire consequences, beyond the horror of saving Prague from Warsaw’s fate. The generals couldn’t even succeed in getting rid of Hitler in 1944, when it was clear he was totally insane and that the war would soon be lost – why should we think they could have succeeded in 1938?
June 4th, 2009 at 10:51 am
> And unless one believes the fantasy that Halder was going
> to overthrow Hitler, there’s no reason to think that Munich
> had such dire consequences, beyond the horror of saving
> Prague from Warsaw’s fate. T
Per Scheier, it did convince the Soviet Union that the Western powers would not keep their treaty commitments (including France’s treaty with Russia, which the Soviets had stated they would honor) and could not be trusted. That was very unhelpful in the 1940-41 period.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Re SLC #30
The history I learned was that if Baldwin in 1935 had stopped the German rearmament in the Rhineland in 1935, the the German General Staff would have engineered a coup to remove Hitler from power. By 1938 it was much too late. The British were not prepared to fight a war:they needed time to rearm. Chamberlain put the best face on an impossible situation.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:53 am
MR SLC pisses his pants because he wants to be called by another title. What can MR SLC learn from that, and use in the future, if he’s not to be considered a pig-fucker troll?
Yes I hear that if you direct enough ad hominem at ideas you don’t like they go away for good never to trouble your sensitive mind again. Plus all that anonymous nerd rage is cathartic. You go girl!
June 4th, 2009 at 10:55 am
DTM – without the end of slavery, which was brought about by the violent Civil War, I suggest that even today there would be no “full and equal” rights for the blacks. It is silly to suggest otherwise. Had Abe let the South go, it is doubtful that slavery would have ended in fact the Confederacy would have expanded it into the Americas.
Obama states as an introduction to the remark about black people in America gaining their freedom peacefully: “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.” He goes on to say, “It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end.”
But earlier in his speech he says, “We [the United States] were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words – within our borders, and around the world.”
Aren’t those contradictory assertions? On one hand he says Americans gained our freedom through a violent revolution, but on the other hand that violence is a dead end.
Look I like Obama but I assume the average guy who is under the foot of those dictators in the Muslim world is going to ask, “how come you guys can overthrow your king but we were not suppose to do it?” The closer one looks at Obama’s rhetoric, the more one wonders about whether it is just that. We’ve heard all his impassioned statements against the civil rights horrors but he follows the Bush’s line perpetuating them and preventing any disclosure of them.
For me, the Guantanamo thing will be decisive on whether he is on the level or is just talk. You might remember he was going to add three million jobs to the economy, then he changed to say he was going to add or save three million jobs. No one said anything. He said in January that the would close Guantanamo in a year. He is now saying early next year. Words matter. So far much that he has said has not been followed up on.
I like the guy. I wish him well. Every time I hear him I agree with him. But, you know, sometimes I remember how much I liked the guy who sold me the car that lasted for about a month before it totally broke down.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:57 am
I have to say that I am a little bit puzzled that Matt found something puzzling about the underlying idea of the speech. I don’t think the speech is all that different from the one people expected him to give. The idea, I took it, was to build a public diplomatic foundation for improved relations between the US and various parts of the Muslim world, by laying down historical and cultural postulates of mutual respect and regard. I thought that part of the speech was strong and welcome, but unsurprisingly strong and welcome. I think most people thought Obama would do a good job with that.
The portion of the speech that dealt the specific issues was vague, and at time awkward, as I think was expected. The speech was not billed as a detailed policy speech. The policy proposals are to be rolled out in the weeks and months to come. And the warm fuzzies about common ground between Americans and Muslims, and American respect for Muslim civilization, are obviously not easily convertible into substantive progress on issues.
The Israeli-Palestinian portion of the speech was strained and not very promising, I thought. But, well, that’s how it is with American leaders discussing the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
I have to agree with Matt Connolly that the one really strange comment that jumped out at me was the suggestion that the ending of slavery in the United States was not accomplished through violence.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:59 am
And even if they had succeeded, people tend to forget it was the German General Staff that started WWI. Having them in charge isn’t much better.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:01 am
# 37 Sumayya Says:
June 4th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I think if you guys were Muslim it would play a lot differently to you. For me, it was amazing, cathartic to hear an American president publicly respect hijab, acknowledge that anti-hijab sentiment is about denying Muslim women their identity rather than freeing us, call out Muslims who repress women, acknowledge the right of Palestinians to a dignified existence, acknowledge that Israel– while it will continue to exist– is built upon the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. To have him recognize what Muslims know, that with Christians and Jews we are ahl al-kitab, and to frame a call for a better future for Muslims in terms of what Islam asks for us, is extraordinary. Alhamdulillahi rabbi’l al-amin!
Thank you for your helpful comment as to how speech would be heard by the intended Muslim audience. Thanks also for the link
June 4th, 2009 at 11:01 am
that they might as well fight him now, rather than waiting to fight him later.
After Munich the British geared up their war production. If war had broken out in 1938 there’s a good chance the British wouldn’t have been able to fight off the German bombardment and may have lost the war.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I see Johnny Canuck beat me in making the same point.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Wow, I just read up on the Hama massacre…and while it was ruthless, and I wouldn’t endorse any US actions of the same type, SLC’s endorsement of Assad’s actions is a remarkable realism for a leftist.
So I will adopt one of his views.
Settlements today, settlements tomorrow, settlements to the far horizon.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Re John
1. Just for the information of Mr. John, General Halder was not in charge of the German General Staff in 1938. The top two generals were von Blomberg and Frisch, both of whom were convinced that Hitler was a dangerous man who would lead Germany to ruin. They were the ones planning the coup. The situation in 1944 was quite different then in 1938 as the top generals in the German General Staff who were opposed to Hitler were long gone. I would suggest that Mr. John refer to, “A History of the German General Staff,” by historian Walter Goerlitz for a full description of the coup planned by Frisch and von Blomberg which was undermined by Chamberlains’ capitulation at Munich.
2. The mullahs who run Iran are directly responsible for supporting the terrorist organizations Hizbollah and Hamas and that makes them terrorists.
3. If Iran develops nuclear weapons, that gives them the power. One can only imagine the situation in Europe today if Hitler had developed nuclear weapons by, say, 1943.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Obama said: “For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.” Ah, there was that violent incident of the Civil War that had something to do with it.
Obama said: “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.” There was that election that put Hamas into power.
Matt @ 36 – Your points don’t hold up:
The Civil War did not result in full and equal civil rights for the former slaves. Nor was that a Union war aim – embracing abolition was a tactical decision to keep England and France out of the war. Full and equal rights came a century later and were not won by violence.
We did not pick the outcome of the election that brought Hamas to power. We chose not to deal with them after they won, which is a different matter.
The thing about January 2010/early 2010 is a total nitpick. Let’s check back on that one next February.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:09 am
dan:”the suggestion that the ending of slavery in the United States was not accomplished through violence.”
But that isn’t what he said. His words:”it was not violence that won full and equal rights…”
This didn’t happen until civil rights movement of 1960’s
As to Matt thinking slavery would still be continuing. I am very skeptical. The British Empire had abolished slavery decades earlier, and the trend was there. Slavery was useful in the South before mechanization. I doubt it would have continued very far into the 20th Century.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Even if full and equal rights would not have been attained today absent the Civil War, what Obama said was still factually correct: full and equal rights were finally obtained via peaceful means. These peaceful means took place a full 80 years after the violent means of the Civil War, so there is nothing wrong in characterizing them as a separate historical chapter.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:22 am
DTM – without the end of slavery, which was brought about by the violent Civil War, I suggest that even today there would be no “full and equal” rights for the blacks.
Obviously ending slavery is part of full and equal rights, but we can’t counterfactually know exactly when slavery would have ended in an independent Confederate States, and it very likely would have ended at some point–note there are no developed worlds in which slavery still exists. And similarly, we also can’t know what post-slavery trajectory civil rights would have taken in this hypothetical independent Confederate States.
But all that said, I don’t think Obama was announcing a general philosophy of pacifism. Rather, he was talking about violent “resistance”, which in context basically meant terrorism (”It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.”).
June 4th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Re Johnny Canuck & bliekker
The notion that Chamberlain had no choice at Munich because Great Britain was not ready for war is nothing but the excuse his apologists give.
1. Germany was also not ready for war in 1938. The rearmament activities had only just begun; in particular, the Panzer divisions did not yet exist nor was the Luftwaffe fully operational. Further, Germany had almost no operational Uboats at that time. This was why Frisch and von Blomberg wanted to remove Hitler from power; they were well aware of the inadequacies of the German armed forces at that time.
2. Given the opposition of the German General Staff to a war in 1938, I think it is a fair conclusion that Hitler was bluffing.
3. Further, the Czechoslovakian military was the best equipped force in Europe in 1938 and the Czech arms industry was the most modern; both were significantly superior to anything that Germany had to offer. By selling Czechoslovakia down the river, Chamberlain shot himself in the foot.
4. In the time period between 1938 and 1940, Germany made much better use of the time then did Britain and France so the argument that Chamberlains’ apologists make that he needed time to rearm Great Britain is piffle.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:33 am
SLC, you realize quoting Thomas Friedman makes you a laughingstock, right?
June 4th, 2009 at 11:37 am
President Obama didn’t specifically cite Israel’s nuclear weapons. He stated:
“It’s about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path. I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.”
June 4th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Just for the information of Mr. John, General Halder was not in charge of the German General Staff in 1938. The top two generals were von Blomberg and Frisch [sic], both of whom were convinced that Hitler was a dangerous man who would lead Germany to ruin. They were the ones planning the coup.
Just for the information of Mr. SLC, Generals von Blomberg (the minister of war) and Fritsch (the commander of the army), neither of whom was convinced that Hitler was a dangerous man who would lead Germany to ruin, but who were doubtful that Germany was ready for war in 1938, had both been dismissed in February 1938, months before the Czechoslovak crisis erupted. The chief of staff, General Beck, who may have thought as you describe, and who would end up one of the chief plotters against Hitler, was forced to resign in August 1938. Munich was at the end of September. the highest officials in the army were General von Brauchitsch, a lickspittle, and General Halder, the chief of staff, who was only slightly less of one, although he tried to claim after the war that he’d been plotting against Hitler.
I would suggest that Mr. John refer to, “A History of the German General Staff,” by historian Walter Goerlitz for a full description of the coup planned by Frisch and von Blomberg which was undermined by Chamberlains’ capitulation at Munich.
I would imagine that Goerlitz’s book says nothing of the kind, given the actual facts I discussed above.
If Iran develops nuclear weapons, that gives them the power. One can only imagine the situation in Europe today if Hitler had developed nuclear weapons by, say, 1943.
One can only imagine the situation in Europe today if Stalin had developed nuclear weapons by, say, 1949. London and Paris would have been obliterated by that Bolshevik maniac!
June 4th, 2009 at 11:45 am
@ 53: Even if the south had been allowed to form its own sovereign CSA, slavery would have eventually ended there. Enslaved Africans were fighting for their freedom all along. At some point they would have freed themselves by whatever means proved necessary. One of the inaccuracies of thought regarding enslaved Africans is that they passively accepted their captivity. Their fight for freedome started long before shots were fired at Ft. Sumter.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Shorter Obama: Democracy is teh suck! Dictatorship is teh awesome!
June 4th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Given the opposition of the German General Staff to a war in 1938, I think it is a fair conclusion that Hitler was bluffing.
Again, Hitler had gotten rid of those on the general staff who had most opposed war. All the evidence suggests that Hitler intended to go to war in 1938 if the allies didn’t give him what he wanted. In fact, Hitler’s tirade to Chamberlain at Bad Godesberg on Sept. 22-3 can only be explained as a desire on Hitler’s part for war even though Chamberlain was already giving him what he said he wanted.
What happened was that basically Chamberlain was so assiduous in giving Hitler wanted that it left Hitler with no excuse to go to war, which is what he really wanted to do. All accounts of Hitler in the aftermath of war show him feeling cheated by Chamberlain out of the war he had wanted to fight.
Further, the Czechoslovakian military was the best equipped force in Europe in 1938 and the Czech arms industry was the most modern; both were significantly superior to anything that Germany had to offer. By selling Czechoslovakia down the river, Chamberlain shot himself in the foot.
Arguably true – the Czechs would likely have put up a better fight than the Poles did. Furthermore, the Soviets would probably have come into the war in 1938 if the western powers had decided to fight, although they couldn’t have done much but provide air support, at least in the short run. Still, Germany is just way bigger than Czechoslovakia, and unless French were prepared to go on the offensive (which they were not) the Germans would have eventually beaten them.
I agree that the argument that Britain needed time to rearm is wrong – although some of the British statesmen involved seem to have believed that, Chamberlain certainly did not, as he thought he was creating the basis for “peace in our time.” That being said, the western powers were distinctly unprepared for war in 1938, and it’s hard to see how they would have been any more effective at aiding Czechoslovakia than they were in aiding Poland.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Shorter Al:
I can’t read ’cause I’m white.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Who the hell said that? That’s not in the speech.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:56 am
The Civil War did not result in full and equal civil rights for the former slaves. Nor was that a Union war aim – embracing abolition was a tactical decision to keep England and France out of the war. Full and equal rights came a century later and were not won by violence.
That is such absolute bullshit. Haven’t you ever read anything by guys like McPherson or Foner? Or are you still reading Vann Woodward and Catton and Foote?
Lincoln moved to a much more radical position over the course of the war on slavery – even while he maintained a more conciliatory approach to the South. Furthermore, Sumner, Hamlin, and a great deal of the North were dead-set about equal rights. Read about the Reconstruction, not the screeds that were written in the 30s, but the modern scholarship, and you find that blacks were better treated until the Federal government decided to cave to the Southern establishment than they were until the 70s. 1970s. Or maybe even 1980s.
This came about due to the extraordinary anger the North had over the increasing cost of the war, and, as Lincoln correctly pointed out, the extraordinary performance of free blacks and former slaves in even the most hopeless military actions during the conflict. Meanwhile, the South demonstrated, consistently, an atavistic rage towards black Union soldiers up to the end of the war that resulted in large-scale massacres black prisoners and their white officers.
Accordingly, when you recall how many *important* families sent kids to war, it should come as zero surprise that the political establishment of the North would rather deal with the freed slaves and the black leaders of abolition than the satanic bastards who brutally murdered their sons.
The nadir of race relations in this country was way after the Civil War, during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and it’s a result of a Southern conspiracy with Northern acquiescence to re-write history in a way that made the cause look just and to ignore that we do *not* always progress socially in this country, that no one really is aware of this.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:57 am
DTM:Obviously ending slavery is part of full and equal rights, but we can’t counterfactually know exactly when slavery would have ended in an independent Confederate States, and it very likely would have ended at some point–note there are no developed worlds in which slavery still exists. And similarly, we also can’t know what post-slavery trajectory civil rights would have taken in this hypothetical independent Confederate States.
There’s still a lot of slavery around. In India for instance. If the Confederacy was let go and slavery persisted, there’s no way to know what would have happened. “note there are no developed worlds in which slavery still exists.” is meaningless. Things could have been a lot worse. You just can’t assume progress.
There are a lot of examples where perscuted minorities/populations were/are kept persecuted forever. China, Burma, Sri Lanka, etc. etc. DTM, I never took you for being so Panglossian.
But all that said, I don’t think Obama was announcing a general philosophy of pacifism.
Well there is Afghanistan which he mentioned.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
For example, the major Confederate war monuments all date to this period, the 1890s through the 1920s.
If they tried to put up a fucking memorial to Stonewall, Lee and FUCKING JEFFERSON DAVIS (go burn in fucking hell, Sessions) in the 1870s, I guarantee Sherman would have burned Atlanta to the ground and hanged every workman on the project.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
John:
“I agree that the argument that Britain needed time to rearm is wrong – although some of the British statesmen involved seem to have believed that, Chamberlain certainly did not, as he thought he was creating the basis for “peace in our time.”
You obviously have much more recent and detailed knowledge than I. Wasn’t Churchill one who thought Britain had badly neglected rearmament against Hitler?
June 4th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Shorter Obama: Democracy is teh suck! Dictatorship is teh awesome!
I’ll add that, other than the awful section on democracy, where he was a complete sell out of American ideals, the speech was pretty good. I thought the section on womens rights was good, as well as the Israel-Palestine section.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
If the Confederacy was let go and slavery persisted, there’s no way to know what would have happened.
That’s what I said (”we can’t counterfactually know exactly when slavery would have ended in an independent Confederate States”). But I do think it is more likely than not slavery would have ended in the Confederate States at some point prior to now, probably substantially prior to now.
DTM, I never took you for being so Panglossian.
Um, Pangloss (following the real Leibniz) claims THIS world is the best of all possible worlds. Since we are discussing a counterfactual world, it is actually more Panglossian to dismiss the possibility that this counterfactual world could end up better than the real world. Indeed, I’d suggest it is more Panglossian to dismiss the fact that there was a huge gap in time between the Civil War and the Civil Right Era, which at a minimum should give one pause before assuming the real world chain of events was the quickest path to that end.
Again, though, I’m not saying the Civil War was a bad thing. I’m just saying it is true that it didn’t achieve full and equal rights for African-Americans, and we’ll never know if it was necessary to that end.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
[...] 07:45:13 μμ on Ιουνίου 4, 2009 | # | 0 Tags:Coup de cœur Obama in Cairo (Yglesias) [...]
June 4th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Johnny Canuck – it’s not so much that Britain hadn’t neglected disarmament (although my sense is that Churchill’s specific warnings in this respect were often misguided), but that, as SLC mentions, the year between Munich and the outbreak of war was better used by Germany than by Britain and France, so that the relative positions of the two sides were worse for the allies than they would have been in 1938.
I think this probably has more to do with the French than with the British – the British did do a lot of prep work in that year, but the French less, so that overall they were outstripped by the Germans. But I’m not certain of that.
Beyond that, I think the key issue is that Chamberlain was very much not of the opinion that Hitler needed to be conciliated for the moment to give England the chance to build up its army. Some members of his cabinet believed this. Chamberlain himself saw appeasement as a goal in itself, and really thought it would bring peace, or, at least, hoped that it would. Worth noting, though, is that Chamberlain’s was not a policy of weakness (as, for instance, Daladier’s was – Daladier knew better, but had no will to resist Hitler). Rather, Chamberlain was pursuing a carefully thought out policy, which was premised on the idea that another World War would be disastrous for everyone, and that it should thus be avoided if at all possible. He turned out to have misjudged whether it was possible to avoid such a war, but I’m not sure he should be blamed so much for trying to see if it could be done.
And there’s simply no reason to really think things would have worked out much better if they had gone to war in 1938. It’s not as though Hitler won.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Again, though, I’m not saying the Civil War was a bad thing. I’m just saying it is true that it didn’t achieve full and equal rights for African-Americans, and we’ll never know if it was necessary to that end.
I’d say it helped and caused full and equal rights to happen sooner than they would have. We can’t prove this, nor can we prove that had we not entered WWII things would have ended up better.
I do think Vietnam was a waste, given the direction China went, although I can’t prove it.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
DTM?
Indeed, I’d suggest it is more Panglossian to dismiss the fact that there was a huge gap in time between the Civil War and the Civil Right Era, which at a minimum should give one pause before assuming the real world chain of events was the quickest path to that end.
Naively optimistic, not Panglossian, then. So you are arguing that had regime change not happened with the Confederacy, a peacebly civil right movement there would have gain rights quicker than what happened? I doubt it. I’m a Yankee who has lived in the South.
Tianneman square, Darfur, Saddam and the Kurds, China, Burma, Sri Lanka, there are a lot of instances where 2nd class citizens stayed that way.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Obama showed that there’s a change toward peace with Muslims but to waht extent this peace could be achieved in reality: http://inspirationwriting.blogspot.com/2009/06/hussein-obama.html
June 4th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Al — “I’ll add that, other than the awful section on democracy, where he was a complete sell out of American ideals…
Where did he sell out American ideals? Is it the part where he said:
“I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.”
Or was it…
“Governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.”
Or was it…
” And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments — provided they govern with respect for all their people… This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they’re out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others.”
No… all of those passages uphold American ideals and strongly promote democracy.
Oh, wait, I forgot I’m talking to Al.
“So let me be clear: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by (sic) any other.”
I suppose if you think unprovoked invasion, occupation, and nation-building are American ideals, then Obama probably disappointed you today. So sad for you.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
steve duncan @ #13, I wish you luck. I’ve been trying for years to engage my fellow liberals on these issues with little success. And by “success” I mean even getting a response other than silence (as has happened with your post here) or kneejerk hostility and name calling. I’m as baffled by the situation as you are.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I’d say it helped and caused full and equal rights to happen sooner than they would have.
Fine, but now you are also speculating about something which we can never really know–and your speculation puts you on the side of Pangloss, I might note again.
So you are arguing that had regime change not happened with the Confederacy, a peacebly civil right movement there would have gain rights quicker than what happened? I doubt it. I’m a Yankee who has lived in the South.
First, note you’re a Yankee who has lived in the South as influenced by the Civil War. That doesn’t really tell you much about how the modern Confederate States would look.
Second, I am not arguing full civil rights WOULD have come to the Confederate States faster without the Civil War. I am just noting it is possible, in light of the long gap between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Era.
Tianneman square, Darfur, Saddam and the Kurds, China, Burma, Sri Lanka, there are a lot of instances where 2nd class citizens stayed that way.
Sure. But we are talking specifically about slavery, and my point was that slavery in the developed world was completely abolished.
And I don’t offer this as some sort of point about the inherent goodness of the developed world, just to suggest there were reasons why the developed world ended up systematically abolishing slavery. My guess is that if nothing else, pressure from Europe and the remainder of the United States would eventually have forced the Confederate States to abolish slavery–basically, although the developed world was fine with brown people enslaving other brown people, and even with white people de facto enslaving brown people in brown people’s countries, it stopped tolerating white people enslaving brown people in what it perceived to be white people’s countries.
Or not. Again, my point is we really don’t know.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I suppose if you think unprovoked invasion, occupation, and nation-building are American ideals, then Obama probably disappointed you today. So sad for you.
I’m an idealist who likes Obama but I was disappointed today. To be fair to the President, I don’t know what he could have said to satisfy, and of course I don’t want a war with Iran, but I have a feeling foreign policy will be callously and coldy “realistic.”
That’s seems to be okay with people as long as there are no wars. I hope Obama asks more of our allies, democratic and undemocratic.
I really don’t see what’s wrong with wanting other countries to conform to minimum standards no matter their culture. But this seems to be a big no-no.
It will be good if Obama can make progress on nuclear reduction talks.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
John @#81
Thank you for your thoughtful response re Chamberlain.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
DTM?
Fine, but now you are also speculating about something which we can never really know–and your speculation puts you on the side of Pangloss, I might note again.
Actually you were speculating that if the warmongers in the North hadn’t invaded the Confederacy – with all of those civilian casualites! – the Confederacy would have naturally reformed itself, responding to outside and inside pressure.
This seems to me naive and Panglossian and wishful thinking. But yes we’ll never know.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I find comparisons between Chamberlain and the current situation hyperbolic and a version of Godwining.
Reality check people:
Hitler was the all powerful leader of the most industrially and technologically advanced countries on continental Europe that had one of the most effective military forces the earth has ever seen.
Iran has a belligerent and big-mouthed president who doesn’t even have much authority in his own government as contemporary head of states in the west. An Air Force that can’t seem to find spare parts for a third of their planes. A Navy of hit-and-run patrol boats and an okay Army by Middle Eastern standards.
And it might have a missle with a nuclear bomb that it can use in the future if they want to be obliterated by 400 Israeli nuclear warheads.
Then there is Osama bin Ladin, who is in a cave somewhere in Whazaristan (if not dead) and might be able to lash out with an occasional but well coordinated attack.
I’m sorry, the comparisons to 1938 seems rather shrill.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Kropotkin, I agree with you. for my part I was interested in getting a bit of education on 1938 from John who seemed to know much more about it than I.
Always thought Americans overlearned the lesson of Munich. back in the 1960’s Rusk seemed to think it applied to Viet Nam
June 4th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Not that anyone cares at this point in the thread, but:
Point: This is a guy who’s not afraid to try to express complicated or difficult ideas.
Counterpoint: For one thing, the underlying idea of this speech seems a bit odd. It’s hard to know how to even characterize what it was.
Congratulations, Matt. You’re now officially part of the media that makes America stupid.
I thought the speech was great. The underlying idea was: “Hello, Muslim world. This is America. Here are the problems we have with each other. Here are the solutions we should pursue.”
It didn’t seem much more complicated than that. Of course, I read the speech in one sitting instead of listening to it while multitasking on an elliptical, and I don’t need to spin it in a unique way to earn my paycheck.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Actually you were speculating that if the warmongers in the North . . .
Warmongers? Where did that come from? Please understand, one more time, that I am not arguing that the Civil War was a bad thing. Indeed, I think it was a good thing insofar as it ended slavery, undoubtedly well before it would have ended without the Civil War. I’m just pointing out that we don’t really know whether or not it accelerated the point of full and equal rights, since that came (at best) 100 years later, and that leaves a lot of time for a completely different sequences of events.
the Confederacy would have naturally reformed itself, responding to outside and inside pressure.
I’m not sure what you mean by “naturally”–an event that happens as the result of outside pressure by other human beings or institutions is rarely described as natural. Anyway, the phrase should be “likely would have” not “would have”, since I make no claim to know this would have happened for sure.
This seems to me naive and Panglossian and wishful thinking.
Once again, to be Panglossian is to look at the bad things in THIS world and to nonetheless claim it is the best of all possible worlds. So, it would fit a person who looked at the 100 year gap between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Era and who claimed that was nonetheless the best possible outcome. Which is not exactly what you are arguing, but by defending the status quo, you argument has a closer fit to the concept of Panglossian than anything I am suggesting.
By the way, I could understand you inaccurately using Panglossian as a synonym for “optimistic” once–that is a fairly common mistake. But I don’t understand why you would do it twice.
June 4th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
John:
Furthermore, the Soviets would probably have come into the war in 1938 if the western powers had decided to fight, although they couldn’t have done much but provide air support, at least in the short run. Still, Germany is just way bigger than Czechoslovakia, and unless French were prepared to go on the offensive (which they were not) the Germans would have eventually beaten them.
I hazily remember reading that the Soviets did offer aid to the Czechs, but even (very) informal back-channel were DOA because the Poles would never accent to a Russian army transiting across their borders.
But I think that if the war had happened in ‘38, it would’ve gone pretty damn bad for the Germans, or at least a “near run thing” if they had ultimately succeeded. When the Germans annexed the Sudetenland, both Hilter and the OKW were shocked by strength of the Czech mountain defences they found there.
And Germany only had 36 divisions (as opposed to 98 divisions in Sept of 39) in October of ‘38. I don’t think the chances for Operation Fall Grun would have been great if the French had been aggressive with a drive to the Rhine, and if the Poles got involved, then it would have been even worse for them.
June 4th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Johnny Canuck:
Always thought Americans overlearned the lesson of Munich. back in the 1960’s Rusk seemed to think it applied to Viet Nam
Frankly, our obsession with Munich is quite puzzling. I think since the cold war, certain members of our political class have adopted a knee-jerk interventionalism and Munich just serves as a ideological backstop for it. But there is a little anglophobia mixed into with it. We don’t want to bargain away our “empire” like those “pacifist” Brits did.
June 5th, 2009 at 2:12 am
[...] And there was Matthew Yglesias: [...]
June 5th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias: This seems connected to me to the remarkable way in which this speech is being pushed out in multiple media—on television, but also on Twitter and on Facebook and via SMS and all in multiple languages—to a global audience. Part of the rise of Obama is the rise of a post-television, post-sound bite technological paradigm … It creates a whole new world from one in which the point of a speech is just to field test a couple of zingers in hopes that one or two of them gets picked up for the evening news. [...]