Mr Obama might have added that his descent on Karzai was also insulting on a personal level to say nothing of disrespectful to the Afghan people generally. Not even LBJ at his most abrasive and abusive ever quite equaled the Obama performance as Great White Father Straightening Out the Little Brown Brother.
The sequel, Karzai's demonstrations of pique in the first degree, was totally expectable and fully justifiable within the context of Afghan culture, society, and political legitimacy. The consequent howls of outraged dignity emanating from the White House and allied points was not justifiable and defies explanation other than having been demonstrations of just how the elite of Washington don't get it when dealing with a traditional culture and society. (Horrors! Cultural insensitivity on the part of those who have most loudly announced in so many ways just how culturally sensitive they are and the rest of us must be. Say it ain't so!)
The need for Mr Obama to back down was and is self-evident. By denouncing Karzai the administration has made it harder, much harder to claim support for its war effort in Afghanistan from Congress or We the People. At the same time the all too obvious attempt to publicly diminish Mr Karzai does nothing to inject more legitimacy in his government. Finally, personally insulting a proud man in a culture where pride is the coin of power does not provide an impetus on his part for effective cooperation with American policy requirements.
Whether the letter will do much or anything to put diplomatic Bondo on the Obama manufactured dent in our relations with and influence on the Karzai regime remains to be seen. In view of the decent relation which exists between Karzai and General McChrystal, there is a better than fair chance the letter will prove to be effective. As long as Mr Obama, Secretary Clinton, Veep Biden, Special Envoy Holbrooke, and our ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberr, can restrain their inherent desires to lecture and exhort, there is good reason to conclude this rough patch in relations will pass swiftly and without profound, lingering effects.
There is a much larger question wrapped up inside the Obama-Karzai contretemps. That question is simply when will the Young Guy In The Oval get a grip on the stingy nettle of reality regarding the nature of Islamism and its appeal to members of traditional societies?
Traditional societies, that is societies which are not nations so much as assemblages of tribes forced by mere geographic propinquity to pretend they constitute a cohesive nation at least some of the time, are not founded on the same basis as nation-states. The imperatives at work are not the same. The definitions of legitimacy are not the same. The qualities of leadership are not the same. In short, they ain't like us regardless of superficials like membership in the UN or possession of a national anthem.
For example, traditional societies value the appearance of strength in a leader. The reality of strength is even more highly valued. The man who is ruthless, energetic, a take-charge-and-move-out sort of guy is most likely to attract and retain the largest base of support. A man who swaggers, walks tall and proud, who takes no insult, who hits before he can be hit, these are the expressions of strength valued and sought after in traditional societies.
"A wise man seeks the strongest horse," is a proverb often heard in one detailed form or another in the great swath running from Morocco to Pakistan, from the tip of the Arabian Peninsula to the towering mountains ringing the Central Asian Republics. That this great global arc coincides with most of the Arab-Muslim world is scarcely accidental. Islam values this view of strength as it is the product of a traditional society and has taken deepest roots in traditional societies.
Today, people and governments, the led and the leaders alike are closely watching the US with one goal in mind: Determining whether or not the US is the "strongest horse." A little over thirty years ago when people of this region regarded the US there was no doubt as to the answer. But, starting with the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 doubts about the strength of the American horse started to emerge.
The initially supine reaction by the Carter administration to the capture of the American embassy in Tehran and the consequent kidnapping of American diplomats particularly when capped with the dramatic failure at Desert One convinced more than a few in the Arab-Muslim world that the American horse was foundering.
The US horse seemingly was recovering its strength during the Reagan years only to once again appear freshly spavined when the "cowboy" in the White House withdrew our troops from Lebanon with unseemly haste following the suicide bombing attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. The horse once again recovered in a very visible way with its leadership in the Gulf War.
No sooner had opinion about American strength and resolve turned positive than the horse threw its shoes again. The Clinton administration's spineless cut-and-run from Somalia following the failed, badly planned, and worse executed Special Forces attempt to capture a Somali warlord switched the view of American strength one hundred eighty degrees.
The perception of American weakness and irresolution was multiplied by the Clinton administration's weak responses to attacks on American embassies and a US Navy warship. A lot of talk and the shooting of a few cruise missiles at irrelevant targets did not constitute an exhibition worthy of the strongest horse.
While the actions of George W. Bush were in one respect (Iraq) ill-advised and in another (Afghanistan) ineptly carried out, they did represent undeniable strength. But the strongest horse can be bogged down if the mud is deep enough and the horse struggles without success for a long enough time. And so the US horse was until finally more troops were sent to Iraq and, years behind the need, to Afghanistan.
The Obama administration during the past fourteen months, the last twelve in particular, has further declared the steady weakening of the American horse. The genuflections, the distortions of history, the worried seeming importuning of the Cairo Address were meant to be a sign of change, of out reach. In the ears of many in the Arab-Muslim states these were actually words of surrender, of weakness, of failure.
Also seen as palpable signs of the weak American horse were the always shifting lines in the sand being drawn by the Obama administration regarding the Iranian nuclear program. Lots of words, no action are indicative of weakness, of flaccidity, not strength. The same may be said of the one sided pressure on Israel, paradoxical as that may seem. But, if the US cannot pressure Israel successfully, just what state can it successfully lean on?
Islamic predicated traditional societies respect strength. This does not imply the strength of weapons and warriors alone. Rather, it means the strength of belief, of values, of commitment, of the willingness to sacrifice, to spend time, to expend blood and treasure if necessary in support of belief, in defense of values, in keeping faith with commitments.
Much of these seem quite antiquated, unfashionable to all of us post-modern sophisticates in the urbanized nation-states of the West. Sacrificing for values, beliefs? What a quaint notion. Keep faith in commitments? Well, times change, contexts alter, get real!
We and our society have left the imperatives, the values, the worldview of traditional societies in the dust bin of history. But, most of the world's population has not. Our enemies, the Islamists, have not. Neither have those such as Hamid Karzai and all the other Afghans.
Mr Obama has apparently learned from one (small) mistake in personal diplomacy. It is to be hoped with both sincerity and fervor that he can learn from and correct his much greater, potentially fatal mistake.
If he does not we can be sure that all through the great crescent people will conclude that the US is not the strongest horse. And, that means those who hate us will ride over our prostrate bodies.
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