So the US presidential primaries are looming, and the actual election is only a mere 21 months away, and already people are getting excited even on this side of the pond. Why? Because of Barak ‘i’m much better at dealing with a past involving drug-use than Clinton, and did you notice i’m black?’ Obama.
There’s a lot of fuss being made about this man - and rightly so. In a country which is in many ways still deeply prejudiced against people of African descent, the emergence of a black candidate who stands a realistic chance of challenging for even the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, is heartening news indeed. But i’m somewhat apprehensive about the potential outcome of a successful Obama nomination. Here goes…
On the one hand, there are a some pluses attached to an Obama win. Firstly, it would prevent the possibility of a presidential history that runs Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. That’s important for two reasons. First, because in any country professing to be a democracy, the notion that the ultimate political office comes to resemble merely the periodic alternation between two competing dynastic families is worrying and troublesome for a whole host of reasons i don’t want to bother spelling out now. Second, because i don’t like Hilary Clinton. While i think her gender is important – having a woman president is as groundbreaking as having a black president – I don’t trust this bitch one inch. From what i can tell, she is cold, calculating, cynical, deceptive and ruthless. To what extent she picked up Old Bill’s ability to be a double dealing bastard, get caught, and still walk away looking like the Golden Boy, I don’t know. But i don’t much want to find out. While Clinton 1 may have been the paradigm of political excellence (in the cynical sense of how to be a successful politician and get away with everything and anything), i don’t much care to find out how far Clinton 2 can emulate that. Especially when Bush 2 was even worse than Bush 1.
But here’s the problem with an Obama nomination. Postulate that he ‘does a Cameron’, and sweeps onwards and upwards, buoyed by a feeling of optimism, and a desire for radical change long over-due in the Democratic Party (incidentally, it is the Democratic Party, contrary to much popular belief, partly born of a policy by Republicans to refer to them only as the Democrats in a subtle war of words). Now imagine that, unlike Cameron, Obama can produce genuine policies. This is not unthinkable: proposing a whole new stance on Iraq (for example bothering to listen to the Iraq Survey Group), adopting a new less aggressive and arrogant approach to foreign policy, rejecting Neo-Conservatism, even if only in glistening rhetoric with little intellectual substance (as surely only the most staunch of American right-wingers could still see the Neo-cons as on anything more than borrowed time, so ripping on the Neo-cons is free points right now), plus proposing to actually do something about the environment and climate change, and advancing economic policies that don’t involve mounting up billions of dollars of foreign debt, while allowing attempting to claw the US balance of payments deficit back from the obscene, will go a hell of a long way. Unlike the Blair Administration and the Tories in Britain, the Bush Administration’s mountain of cock-ups and inadequacies has made things relatively easy for the Democrats.
So Obama is seen as a real alternative: a fresh change after eight years of disastrous, incompetent rule, the pinacle of which being a war nobody wants to be fighting. It thus seems there’s a real race on for the Presidency. But wait, what’s this? John McCain has been chosen as the Republican candidate. And his years of experience in the workings of national government give him one major, and generally perceived, advantage over Obama.
But that’s OK, say the Democratic Party: McCain is old guard, the people want a change. Obama’s inexperience plays into his own hands: he reminds the people of Lincoln, and possibly Kennedy. He doesn’t have baggage from years of being a Republican, watching happily as Republicans did bad things. Obama, they say, will capture the people’s hearts. But will he?
I don’t think the following scenario is particulary hard to imagine. In 2008, America goes to the polls. The Eastern Seaboard States will do anything to get rid of the Republicans, and they go overwhelmingly Democrat (as they always do). California of course follows suit, as do the other usual suspects. In the Republican heartlands like Utah and Texas, (some of which of course retain their disproportionate number of votes in the electoral college), the notion of a Black Democratic President scares the shit out of voters, and those states go Republican like never before. But this is all child’s play. What we all know really matters is which way the swing states go, the ones that really decide the election. And my pessimistic fear is this. That despite eight years of really fucking things up, despite an illegal war in which thousands of Americans (will) have died (i’m sadly not convinced tha the figures for Iraqi deaths will cut much ice in the key US states), and despite the fact Bush will probably end his second term as the one of the worst presidents in US history, second only perhaps to Nixon, the people of middle America just aren’t ready to be ruled by a nigger. My fear is that at the last minute, the choice between an experienced, WASP McCain, and an inexperienced black man will tip too many people’s scales. And the low levels of literacy, voter-enrollment and political interest among black communities will ensure black votes are not enough to offset this. The result? Four more years of Republican rule; a disaster not only for America, but for the entire world.
So is it worth the risk, Barak? Is it worth the risk? Now of course, it may be that Clinton puts us in the same unpleasant situation: can swing-state voters come to put their faith in a woman? I’m not sure they can. But it seems more likely than for a man with the wrong colour skin. That’s the Rock, as i see it.
The Hard Place is that I am inclined to feel that for the sake of America and the World, the Democrats must find a white, experienced, moderately liberal 50-year old male to ensure victory in 2008. And i don’t like saying such things. But then again, while i use the word ’ensure’, at the last attempt the Democrats produced John Kerry, possibly the least charismatic or convincing candidate imaginable – so bad in fact he did what from this side of the Atlantic seemed impossible; he lost to Bush.
The question is, America, how far have you really come, and how brave can you really be? The world watches and waits in desperate anticipation. Prove me wrong, and don’t let us down.
Terrorists and Torture Monday, Feb 26 2007
Current Affairs and Philosophy and Politics and Sagar's Social Commentaries Paul Sagar 11:58 pm
So Abu Qatada, everyone’s favourite Islamic extremist, has lost his appeal and is being sent to Jordan, where he was tried in absentia back in 1998 for his role in trying to blow people up. This is causing a stir as in all likelihood the Jordanian authorities will torture him before throwing him into prison until he dies. Oh, and this not just because Jordan hasn’t signed international treaties against torture, it’s also because Jordan is a backward, illiberal autocracy where power is vested in an unelected monarch with no respect for individual rights or freedoms. Yet we, the Liberal West, disapprove of torture, and so this seems morally wrong.
Now, contained in the following are some thoughts you might at first be shocked to here me of all people expressing, especially if you are on the liberal left. I ask you, however, to think carefully about what I have to say, and perhaps you’ll agree that I have a point.
To begin, i do not approve of torture. On the one hand, this is obvious; i am a humanist and don’t think hurting human beings is a good thing, especially when organised and implemented by state mechanisms. On the other, i see no justification for it by appealing to some supposed ‘greater good’. When under torture, a victim will tell his or her torturers whatever he or she thinks they want to hear. This is quite obviously so: if you are in unbearable agony, you will do anything to make it stop, not just including, but especially, lying. So various arguments seeping out of the American Right that torture will prevent terrorism - and is therefore supposedly justified accordingly – are basically nonsense. To reiterate, i do not support torture.
What i want to address here is a different issue, which goes like this. Abu Qatada, if extradited to Jordan, will be tortured, but the big question is whether we should really care. On the one hand, i am very much interested in how this plays out at a purely philosophical level, as this parallels issues arising from the doctrine of double-effect. That is, if we know Abu Qatada will be tortured when sent to Jordan, but our purpose in sending him to Jordan is to fulfil international obligations to return wanted criminals to the appropriate states, does it therefore follow that we are responsible for his being tortured? At a philosophical level, I am not in fact sure that it does. For more on this philosophical question, see Bennet’s thinking, wonderfully presented in the Tanner Lectures.
However, i want to focus on the question from a different angle. Let us think about Abu Qatada for a moment. Here is a man who advocates Sharia law, and has actively campaigned to see it introduced in Britain – and by ‘campaigning’ i mean mostly that he rants about how the West is corrupt, immoral and should be removed by force in God’s name. Under Sharia law (at least, under Sharia law as i take it he would wish to see it interpreted, i.e. Iran-style), women would lose all rights, and amongst other things could be stoned to death for merely alleged adultery. Homosexuals would receive capital punishment. Democracy would be a thing of the past. An even quasi-independent judiciary would become unthinkable. A fundamentalist, extremist reading of the Qur’an would become the law, and Abu Qatada and his ilk the sole interpreters of it. And so torture - for homosexuals, “adulterous” women, girls who have sex before marriage (read also those who have been raped), law breakers and thieves – would not only be accepted, it would become standard and expected. That is what Abu Qatada wants to happen in Britain. Think about that for a moment.
If you click on the link above, you can get a nice low-down of the grizzly plots and acts that Abu Qatada has engaged in. And then pause to reflect that he is in this country because he sought asylum. Now, my mother has done significant work with asylum seekers, and if you like i can relay some of the heartbreaking stories she told me. My particular favourites are the Zimbabwean political activist who was sent back to be murdered by Mugabe (incidentally he is dead now, thanks to the Foreign Office, who helpfully pointed out he didn’t have the right paperwork so couldn’t stay), or the 6 year old Turkish boy taken from his mother’s arms to be deported because the government computer (erroneously) listed him as having failed to be granted asylum. My point here is that the allegations that the immigration service is a complete mess are not the preserve of the Daily Mail’s closet racists. But letting men like Abu Qatada stay certainly gives the Daily Mail et al enough ammunition, and simply serves to further cheat those geniune seekers of asylum.
Abu Qatada has spent most of the last five years in British prison. Now here is another Daily Mail-esque point, but unfortunately it’s an uncomfortably true one. Namely, that it costs a heck of a lot of money to keep people in prison, and i’m finding it hard to see why British tax payers should pay for the upkeep of a man who has contributed nothing to this society except hate, despite the fact that he is only here because we extend to him the humanistic considerations he would see deny to the majority of this nation’s population (by majority read all women, all non-heterosexuals, and all non-Muslims). What is this man doing here?
Now, in general i support the work of groups like Human Rights Watch, but in this case i think they have missed the point. And my point is this. Abu Qatada rejects everything that we think is good and right with the world; he wants to destroy over 400 years of liberal progress and replace it with a theocratic autocracy; he wants to destroy our very society. I happen to think liberal democracy is a very good thing. And within that, i believe that human rights should be defended. But i do not see why i should extend my sympathy to a man like Abu Qatada, especially after we have extended sympathy towards him in the past, and he has only spat hate and contempt back in our faces. When we send him back to Jordan, he will probably be tortured. I frankly do not care. Torture is deplorable, and i will fight to my dying breath to prevent this state and government ever employing it. But i do not think – and perhaps you may agree with me, though of course many will not - that it is paradoxical to simultaneously say that if in the process of removing a man who is the antithesis of everything we value, and a danger to our very way of life, he ends up being tortured by some other group of degenerate illiberal autocrats, then it is no skin off our collective nose.
I’m sure objectors will cry out that we ought to take the moral high ground: that if we take action that leads to a man being tortured, we are as bad as he is, or as bad as states like Jordan. But are we? There comes a point when we have to tell people like Abu Qatada where to get off; that we simply do not care what happens to them, because we see no good reason why we should. Benevolence, contrary to popular opinion, need not be universal, and can indeed be forfeited. I’m proud to be on the liberal left, but part of that pride consists in facing up to hard issues. This is a hard issue, let’s face up to it.
I think I just heard the liberal shit hitting the fan.
23 Responses »