If you were John McCain, how would you sell a Vision of Hope for the Middle East?
June 18th, 2008John McCain has a daunting task ahead of him. He believes deeply in securing a victory in Iraq, at a time when the American people’s support for the war is at an all time low. He believes deeply that Islamic extremism is the transcendent issue of our time, at a time when Americans are preoccupied with economic woes. He believes deeply in cleaning up the environment, at a time when Americans are facing the prospect of $5 a gallon gas.
One of the hurdles that John McCain will have to overcome is that of credibility. The Iraq War was sold to the American people on dubious grounds, some of which have since been proven to be untrue.
It now seems likely that Saddam Hussein was not sitting on stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, even though he had previously used such weapons against Iran and against the Kurds. It now seems likely that Saddam Hussein was not in cahoots with Al Qaeda, even though Al Qaeda has since penetrated the conflict. And while the Bush administration has touted the idea of spreading freedom and democracy throughout Iraq, as a model for the whole Middle East, such an outcome, considering present realities on the ground, is far from being realized.
Despite these setbacks, one thing that John McCain has going for him is the intuitive wisdom of the American people. Americans are not stupid. Between the lines, Americans have come to the realization that the Iraq War, despite all that has been said, is mostly about oil. There are plenty of hot spots around the world where America could choose to fight, and to spread democracy, but she chooses, not coincidentally, to fight in the Middle East, where so much of her oil comes from. It is not the case that the U.S. was after Iraq’s oil. It is more about wanting to secure that region to assure an uninterrupted supply of oil, because for now, at least, oil is the lifeline of the engine that drives the American, and Western, economies.
And now, with $5 a gallon gas in the offing, Americans can easily see that what happens in the Middle East directly affects their pocketbooks, and their way of life. And with 9/11, Americans could also see that the threat of ideological extremism is real, and that there are people out there plotting the demise of America in particular, and of the West in general; people who are emboldened by ideological conviction, and who are not particularly deterred by the prospect of death.
And yet, even though most Americans perceive what John McCain perceives: the need to secure their oil supply, the need to switch over to green energy, and the need to deal effectively with extremism, still, this realization, in an of itself, is not exactly the best way to move the electorate to your way of thinking. More is needed to close the deal. When you’re asking people to put blood and treasure on the line, you better have something more to say than, “We’re fighting a war on terror,” or even worse, “We’re fighting a war to keep oil prices in line.”
So in effect, there is currently a disconnect between our real reasons for being in Iraq, and the pronouncements being made by our leaders. And the reason for this disconnect is that saying the truth may not be palatable to the American mind, or so it is assumed, even though Americans know full well that a lot of our preoccupation with the Middle East is about oil, and the need to secure our access to it, at a reasonable price; because in a very real sense, our way of life depends on the availability of oil.
John McCain often takes pride in his reputation for “talking straight” to the American people. It’s time to do just that, and to level with the electorate, but to do it in a way that inspires a sense of hope in things to come. John McCain could say, for example, that while he remains committed to weaning us from our dependence on foreign oil, by promoting green technology and domestic energy production, that until this is achieved, we need to secure our oil supply in the Middle East, because a failure to do so will threaten our way of life. It is straight talk to say that we need oil to live as we do, and that we have no choice but to protect our interests in that regard.
John McCain could also point out that the ideological extremists have their agendas in full working order, and that it becomes incumbent on us, therefore, to oppose them with all our strength, and with all our might. The writing is on the wall, so to speak, that they are fully committed to our demise. Someone has to win, and someone has to lose. If the ideological extremists win, it will be at the expense of giving up our way of life, the life we have fought so very hard for, so many times before.
But how would you convey such a message to Americans who are war weary, and who are fed up with the past several years? The answer for John McCain is not unlike the answer for Barack Obama: you have no choice but to sell America on a Vision of Hope.
He could say something along these lines: “The global threats we face: from ideological extremism, from the destruction of the environment, and from the repercussions of extreme poverty, are best handled by selling each other on a Vision of Hope. We will not allow the extremists to set the agenda for our future as a nation. We have better ideas than they have, and more resources to put on the table. We will beat them at their own game and marginalize them in the eyes of their own people. We will use a new ideological framework, an Ideology of Common Sense, to speak to one another with common sense and with a sense of personal dignity. We will invest in one another to create good paying jobs which inspire a sense of hope, which protect the environment, and which neutralize extremist thinking. We will use Ideology and Investment to sell people the world over on a Vision of Hope. We will sustain the hope with a serious commitment to Public Diplomacy. And when necessary, and it will be necessary my friends, we will fight, and fight hard, against the forces of extremism, but we will also position the fight within a Vision of Hope. We will raise the fight on the ground to a higher moral plain by giving the fight a moral clarity of purpose. We are not fighting a “war against terror.” We are fighting a war to realize a Vision of Hope. There’s a big difference.”
Just as Selling a Vision of Hope could give substance to Barack Obama’s call for hope and change, by moving him a little bit to the right, so too could it give substance to John McCain’s call to stay the course, by moving him a little bit to the left. The American people, for their part, continue to remain somewhere in the middle, somewhere between extremes, somewhere where truth resides, and common sense holds sway.
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Great speech, Nissim, inflammatory in a very positive sense!
But how will you be able to convince the Muslims when their hooly book has the following:
Koran 5:51 O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.
Magnus, the Quran is all over the place. There is a theory that early in his career the Prophet Muhammad was relatively tolerant of other religions, but as his career progressed, he became less so. And therefore, there are Quranic passages which are on both sides of the fence.
What we do know is that all three religions worship the same God. That Ishmael and Isaac were both sons of Abraham, whom all three religions venerate. That the Quran acknowledges that God made covenants with Jews, Christians, and Muslims. That 1/3 of the Quran is devoted to stories from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. That Muslims believe that Abraham, the first Jew, built the Ka’ba, the holy shirne in Saudi Arabia, where some two million Muslim pilgrims make pilgrimage every year. That 1/3 of all suras mention Moses, a Jew. And that Jesus was born a Jew, and Islam accepts Jesus as a phrophet to be revered.
Magnus, with all these roots in common, it doesn’t make much sense to be at each other’s throats. Does it?
And so, when necessary, people the world over will have to step away from certain scriptural passages, those which make no sense. Common Sense, which is really the language of God, will become our guide, our moral compass.
Here is an example of common sense. If you know something to be true, then go ahead and believe in it. If you don’t know if something is true, then ask yourself: is this thing worth believing in? If it is, then believe in it. If it isn’t, then have the sense to let it go.
Judaism and Christianity have both undergone a purging of sorts by which people agreed to believe in certain things, and to let go of other things, which were not palatable to the modern mind. Islam has to go through a similar process, and hopefully from within, but we, on the outside, can help by Selling a Vision of Hope.
So I don’t worry too much about the particular passage you quote. I can show you some loony passages in all religious traditions. The trick will be to sort out the good from the bad, and to see with clear eyes what makes sense and what doesn’t.
Nissim, valued fellow man, the Koran is all over the place because of its totalitarian demands. It is according to the Muslims the perfect word of God from which nothing can be taken away, so it doesn’t help that there are some good verses in it because all the bad ones are just as valid which is something Usama bin Laden, Abu Qatada and all the rest of their kind know.
ND: “Magnus, with all these roots in common, it doesn’t make much sense to be at each other’s throats. Does it?”
You are a very good man, Nissim, always looking for what can peacefully unite people. Thus you are very far from prophet Muhammad who bragged about being victorious through terror; you are his extreme opposite. I do not want to be at anybody’s throat; instead I want to carefully tap on everyone’s shoulder with important religious scriptures, requesting them to read or re-read the texts with the common sense both you and I praise and then come to a standpoint.
ND: “And so, when necessary, people the world over will have to step away from certain scriptural passages, those which make no sense. Common Sense, which is really the language of God, will become our guide, our moral compass.”
We certainly agree about common sense, Nissim, but like I have proved in an earlier thread it is not possible in Islam to only stick to the good verses. What is it that you do not understand in the latter part of Koran 2:85? True Muslims are, by the way, not even allowed to discuss this, which emphasizes the totalitarity of the ideology:
Koran 6:68 And when thou seest those who meddle with Our revelations, withdraw from them until they meddle with another topic. And if the devil cause thee to forget, sit not, after the remembrance, with the congregation of wrong-doers.”
ND: “If it isn’t, then have the sense to let it go.”
If the Muslims would think this way the world would be a much better place.
ND: “Islam has to go through a similar process, and hopefully from within, [...]”
Like I have said earlier, this is a mission impossible. You can not save something that is rotten to the core; you can just exchange it. Islam without the prophet Muhammad is nothing. Why is there a need for revering a warlord and massmurderer like Muhammad?
Magnus, with all due respect, I have to differ with you on several important points.
The most important point is that you seem to single out Islam as being “rotten to the core,” and impossible to reform. I disagree on both points. Islam is not “rotten to the core,” and in fact, contains much good, but suffers from the same kind of extremism that has affected other religious traditions. And secondly, reform is always possible, and there is a strong call for such on this website, and among millions of Muslims around the world.
You don’t have to look far to find exmples of lunacy in other relgious traditions. The Spanish Inquisition, which lasted some 600 years, in which Catholic priests were charged with torturing people for the sake of who knows what, is an example of religion gone awry.
The Book of Revelation in the New Testament, which spells out the events leading to the End Times, is also an uncompromising account of the mass murder that is about to take place in the name of God.
And as I mentioned before, there are passages in the Old Testament which make no sense, and which Jews, for the most part, have ignored, such as the passage in Deuteronomy which says that if you marry a woman, and she turns out not to be a virgin, that you’re to kill her on her father’s doorstep. To the best of my knowledge, Jews have always ignore this, in favor of the view of the sanctity of every single life.
I am not a scholar of religion, but I think it’s fair to say the all religions contain scriptural passages, and events in history, which are not palatable to the modern mind, and which do not conform to the tenets of the religion.
When we single out one religion for especially harsh treatment, we infact engage in the same kind of extremism advocated by fundamentalist thinkers. It is better to be fair in our approach, and to admit that all religious traditions have been succeptible to extremist tendencies, at different periods of their history.
I also believe, Magnus, that reform is always possible, and at certain times, is even probable. We are approaching a time, in our development as a species, when global problems like Global Warming, are going to force us to come to the realization that we must come together technologically and economically to save ourselves. And to do that, we will have no choice but to come together ideologically as well, because an ideological rift will stand in the way of bringing to the fore the solutions we desperately need right here and right now. Therefore, in our search for an ideological bridge, we will have to rely on some common sense priniples, like The Golden Rule, The Golden Mean, and The Greatest Good, etc. because those are the truths that have been around since the beginning of time, and those are the truths which God has given us to bring a semblance of order to our lives.
Problems like Global Warming, which could end up flooding 60% of humanity in as little as 40 years, by raising the sea level 20 feet, will force us, once and for all, to put aside the ideolgical nonsense we hold on to so tightly, in favor of the ultimate truth that in order to survive we need to : treat each other well by investing in one another to create jobs which protect the environment, think straight by moderating our views and using common sense as our ideology, and maximize justice by organizing ourselves around a vision of hope.
In short, Ideology plus Investment equals Hope
Well, all the religious stuff aside (because there ARE governments in the Middle East who don’t pop open a Quran whenever they make policy) I find your comments on John McCain fascinating, Nissim, but you have left out some important factors that will torpedo his campaign for quite a few voters. The main one is that the Neo-conservative, fundamentalist Christian factions within the Republican party have neither been silenced nor robbed of power by Mr. McCain’s nomination; many of his recent turnarounds on his own policies can be attributed to these groups zeroing in on him. I think that he would have been a far better president than Bush 8 years ago, but now I think he is simply not up to the task of lifting the immense baggage of mistrust, international scorn, and a reputation for, well, evil that the Republicans have generated over the last two terms. Also, for all his convictions regarding the massive swamp of unelected authority that the lobbyist community has developed into, once again he is a man representing a party that owes far too much of its fortunes to these folk. All the people who have suffered over health policy, over strip mining, over unchecked conglomerate greed destroying industry and jobs, over out of control financial speculation and practices erasing personal wealth and homes, have a pretty good idea who is both responsible for and negligent of their misery.
Barack Obama is not the best choice for me economically as a Canadian: his intention to review the NAFTA agreements, and possibly curtail the “dirty oil” coming out of Alberta could spell the end of our good times up here. However, he has come out as a largely grassroots, independant candidate, largely free of the encumbering party mechanisms that the established Democrats have built up just as the Republicans have. His inexperience is actually an asset in this climate, as people are arriving at the conclusion that political experience and connections do not equal good performance. His election would be a symbol of racial and cultural reconciliation of mammoth proportions, of a new era in North American and world politics. John McCain’s would bascially be the Republicans admitting that, well, mabye waterboarding is wrong after all.
I just don’t see him taking it, which is unfortunate, because he is one of the very best that America has to offer on the political stage. A personal dream would be to see Obama offer him the position of either Secretary of State or Defense as an extension of his campaign to end the “two-camp” mentality pervading the American scene. Still, all of this is predicated on the hope that Obama makes it to the finish line alive; as far as I know, nobody particularly wants to assasimate McCain just yet.
Eric, as always you make some very good points.
One commentator put it this way, “McCain cannot win the elction, but Obama could lose it.” In other words, the momentum is so much with Obama, for reasons you properly point out, that he will win, unless something of massive proportions comes up to derail his campaign. McCain, however, is so burdened by the heavy baggage of Republican policies, that no matter what he does, he will not be able to shift the momentum away from Obama.
I don’t think that the Republicans were wrong about everything. Some of their message could have resonated well, as we saw in the wake of 9/11. But more than anything, they did not figure out how to sell their message. And in addition, their policies were too narrow to garner public support. They could have been much more successful if they came up with a sales pitch that resonated with hope, instead of fear, and that took into account more points of view, so as to allow more people of diverse opinion to join together under the same tent.
I believe in Selling a Vision of Hope, because it is more hopeful in its approach, and more inclusive of various points of view, giving expression to such diverse approaches as: Ideology, Investment, Spirituality, Diplomacy, and Military. A message of this sort could have worked for Bush and his administration, because it would have inspired people to work together toward a common objective. We are not fighting a “war against terror.” We are fighting a war to realize a Vision of Hope. There’s a big difference.
And now, as you suggest, McCain is the inheritor of these failed messages, and failed policies, not because there was no merit in the messages and policies, but because they were not sold properly, and not structured to bring diverse opinions into the fold.
Obama, at least, is able to sell his message. Whether his message has any substance to it, and whether his policies will work, is still up in the air, and only time will tell for sure.
My guess is that sooner or later, Obama will have no choice but to take into account some of the realities with which the Republicans are currently contending. He will have to become more grounded in the realties of the moment, even as he searches for new realities in things to come. There are hints in the air that he is coming to this realization even as we speak, and that he is willing to move toward the center, even at the expense of alienating the far left of the political spectrum.