Obama's Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, the Backlash, and What the U.S. Really Brings to the World
by Larry Everest | February 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Vast stretches of North Africa, the Middle East, and much of Central Asia—Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Libya, Nigeria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan—all and more are being turned into hellish cauldrons of unimaginable terror and suffering by the escalating clash between Islamic fundamentalism on one side and the U.S. and other Western imperialist powers under the banner of enlightened democracy on the other. Some commentators have called this expanding ideological, political, and military conflict Jihad vs. McWorld, or Jihad vs. McCrusade, and it’s a major, horrible, and defining element of the world today.
As Obama was mouthing soothing phrases about “humility,” “peace,” and “love,” his administration was preparing a new authorization for war—supposedly only for three years but without any geographic boundaries. Thousands of U.S. troops are again being deployed to Iraq—where the U.S. has already caused millions of deaths or displacements—and the U.S. is again carrying out hundreds of airstrikes. In Afghanistan, thousands of U.S. troops are there indefinitely, continuing to terrorize people with drone strikes and night raids. Meanwhile, the U.S.-run or -supported dungeons of Guantánamo, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia continue to carry out barbaric torture. AP photo
On one side, Islamists kidnap hundreds of school girls, slaughter the populations of whole villages, behead and burn prisoners alive, massacre religious minorities, execute members of the staff of a French parody magazine, ban music, destroy irreplaceable historical treasures, and brutally enforce women’s enslavement. On the other side, the U.S. and its allies launch wars that murder, cripple, or displace millions, occupy countries and install governments whose rule is enforced through massive torture and terror, and carry out drone strikes wiping out whole families—all to protect global capitalist empires of sweatshop exploitation, natural resource plunder, and environmental devastation.
Both sides represent violent oppression, brutal enslavement, and the crushing of the human spirit in one form or another, and their toxic clash is helping propel the planet into darker horrors, and more needless death and suffering.
The Furor over Obama’s Criticism of Christianity
On February 5, at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama waded into the global ideological battle raging for hearts and minds. His mission was to justify and legitimize U.S. imperialism’s wars and interventions around the world, but it was his passing criticism of Christianity’s history that sparked a headline-grabbing backlash from right-wing commentators and Christian fundamentalists who denounced him for not recognizing Christianity’s inherent superiority to Islam, for raising any criticisms of the U.S. and Christianity in the face of Islamist atrocities, and for refusing to state straight-up that the U.S. is at war with a current within the Islamic faith.
Here’s what Obama said that sparked all the outrage:
[L]est we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.
Obama included this one passage in his speech in the context of insisting on the superiority of the U.S. system over Dark Ages Islamic theocracies, and to argue that mechanisms to correct things like slavery and Jim Crow—based on the U.S. Constitution—are a big part of what makes the U.S special and distinguishes it from the Dark Ages fundamentalism of the Islamists. (Obama’s speech was also aimed at building support for U.S. imperialism and its allies in countries where Islam is the predominant religion at a time of great upheaval and conflict, by arguing the U.S. is not waging a religious war against Islam, as the Islamists argue, just a war against radical jihadists. Making this distinction “is vital to our success in the war on terrorism,” one ruling class commentator argued.)
Regardless of the context, the fact that Obama even made this comment set off powerful ruling class forces who filled the media with outrage that Obama dared even compare the Inquisition (a campaign of Catholic persecution in Spain, Portugal, and other European countries that started in the 12th century and lasted hundreds of years and included the widespread torture of Muslims and Jews to force them to convert to Christianity) and the Crusades (a series of holy wars by Christianity against Islam that lasted some 200 years, from 1095 until 1291) to crimes committed in the name of Islam. The fact that even mentioning these events set off such fury highlights why it is not hyperbole to call these forces Christian fascists and to identify how influential they are in the halls of power.
Volumes could be written about why Barack Obama felt compelled to make brief mention of the Inquisition, slavery and Jim Crow—to not even mention them would have discredited the speech for people in other countries and many here at home. And Obama's list is far from complete. Not only slavery was justified by invoking the Christian Bible. So was lynching. The genocide of the Native people's was justified by painting them as "heathen savages." George Bush called the so-called "war on terror" that has brought misery to so much of the world a "crusade."
Obama’s Message: What the U.S. Is, Represents, and Does Around the World—The Best Humanity Can Aspire To
While commentators jumped on one passing criticism of Christianity in the speech, Obama’s overall theme was NOT to criticize Christianity, much less the U.S., but rather to promote that what the U.S. is, represents, and does around the world is the best humanity can aspire to:
There’s wisdom in our founders writing in those documents that help found this nation the notion of freedom of religion, because they understood the need for humility. They also understood the need to uphold freedom of speech, that there was a connection between freedom of speech and freedom of religion....
And the second thing we need is to uphold the distinction between our faith and our governments. Between church and between state. The United States is one of the most religious countries in the world—far more religious than most Western developed countries. And one of the reasons is that our founders wisely embraced the separation of church and state.... And the result is a culture where people of all backgrounds and beliefs can freely and proudly worship, without fear, or coercion....
In reality, slavery and Jim Crow evolved to the New Jim Crow; police brutality and murder replaced Klan lynch mobs, and mass incarceration is a form of genocide. The institutions Obama is promoting were, and remain perfect vehicles for enforcing oppression in new forms.
And let’s look at the reality of how the U.S. operates around the world. For the rulers, whether they back viciously repressive secular regimes (like Egypt), brutally repressive military juntas (again, like Egypt), or viciously repressive Islamic theocracies (like Saudi Arabia) is a matter of taste for them. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the U.S.’s closest allies, enforces—and promotes—an extremely reactionary form of Islamic fundamentalist rule through public beheadings, floggings, and amputations.
When U.S. imperialism and its allies back (more or less) secular democracies, that simply means this is the form through which they carry out their objectives—including horrific crimes. Israel is a prime example: The vaunted “only democracy in the Middle East” is built on terrorist ethnic cleansing, is carrying out genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people, and maintains a nuclear weapons arsenal that keeps the whole region under threat of a nuclear attack.
Some liberals will argue that while Christian fascists may be as bad as Islamic fundamentalists “in theory,” they don’t present the same kind of danger because in the U.S. and the West, the actions of Christian fascists are constrained by the secular democratic principles Obama spoke of.
For one, Christian fascist forces do carry out terrorist attacks—such as the murder of doctors who provide abortions and the bombing of abortion clinics in the U.S., or the 2011 massacre of 65 Social Democrats in Norway.
But at present, the aims and objectives of these Christian fascist forces are overwhelmingly acted out WITHIN the structures of the U.S. state. Take Chris Kyle, glorified in the movie American Sniper. (See the review of American Sniper at revcom.us.) Kyle was a Christian fundamentalist homicidal maniac intent on slaughtering non-Christians—women, children, anyone he considered a “savage.” But Chris Kyle didn’t have to go outside existing formal state structures to carry out that slaughter—he simply enlisted in the U.S. military, which is more or less a perfect fit for Christian fundamentalist homicidal mass murderers.
The U.S.: An Instrument of Peace, Light, and Love?
Here’s the punch line in Obama’s Prayer Breakfast speech:
Whatever our beliefs, whatever our traditions, we must seek to be instruments of peace, and bringing light where there is darkness, and sowing love where there is hatred.
Peace, light, and love!? The truth is just the opposite. As Obama was mouthing soothing phrases about “humility,” “peace,” and “love,” his administration was preparing a new authorization for war—supposedly only for three years but without any geographic boundaries. Thousands of U.S. troops are again being deployed to Iraq—where the U.S. has already caused millions of deaths or displacements—and the U.S. is again carrying out hundreds of airstrikes. In Afghanistan, thousands of U.S. troops are there indefinitely, continuing to terrorize people with drone strikes and night raids. Meanwhile, the U.S.-run or -supported dungeons of Guantánamo, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia continue to carry out barbaric torture.
NEITHER side in the global clash between McCrusade and Jihad has any claim to light or love, to freedom or justice. Both are intolerable. Both reinforce each other—even as they clash. But there IS another way, there is a way to really emancipate humanity, and there IS a basis for it in the way the world is and the deep aspirations of people from Cairo to Ferguson... and it’s up to us to do the work to bring it into being.
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