The Long Road to Change: Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan

It is rather difficult to conceive of the person capable of writing the following passage from Dreams from My Father as being particularly open-minded vis-a-vis the unknowable “other” that threatens our fair shores with its mindless desire to wipe us from the face of the earth (to borrow a popularly misquoted phrase):

“Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another’s heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.”

This grotesque simplification of the attack down to a single element—a nihilism present in only the most history-free of appraisals—bodes ill for any significant change in U.S. foreign policy in the next administration. The perception that there are whole societies with which one cannot negotiate—as with the “bugs” in the film Starship Troopers or the video game Gears of War—is a mindless and nuance-free extension of American foreign policy, both over the last century in general and specifically sharpened to a bigoted point during the Bush years.

This attitude goes a long way toward explaining why most Middle-Eastern countries were lukewarm in their attitude toward both McCain and Obama. It’s almost as if anti-war progressives supporting Obama have neither read his books nor his articles nor actually listened to anything other than his more uplifting—and content-free—stump speeches.