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Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor
Good question - why would America be at war with a religion?
I wasn't proclaiming that we were / ever had. The better question is, why would Obama go to Turkey and proclaim this in a speech to muslim people? Why did Obama feel it was necessary the muslim people heard him say this in person? I am thinking on my own and I truly wonder why Obama would say such a thing???
For myself, I believe there is somewhat of a difference in the motives behind the way Bush smoothed things over with the muslim people compared to the way Obama has. I think the Bush motive was lower oil prices while I believe Obama felt the need to publically apologize for the American people and the way we view muslims.
Sounds to me like your the one listening to Rush and watching Fox......
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I think it's fairly obvious why Obama would go to a Muslim country and proclaim "the us is not at war with Islam" or whatever it was exactly. It's because there is a widely held perception that the US is at war with
difference, or to put it another way, attempting to undermine specific cultures. This is one of the founding tenets of many Islamic anti-globalization groups ("terrorists" if some prefer). The same could be said about other countries and cultures as well. For example, I am an American living in Hungary. There is a fairly large radical Nationalist political party here, called Jobbik (which means "better" in Hungarian), which views America and the EU in a similar light. Groups like this exist all over the world, or at least in areas where the US has some hand in economic/political/social/cultural affairs, which is just about everywhere. Often times, as is the case in Hungary, much of the population holds less extreme sentiments, but still markedly anti-US, anti-EU, or more generally anti-Globalist notions. All of the major political parties in Hungary have to play on this if they are going to have any chance of being elected. The center-right party Fidesz, who is currently in power, recently passed a law restricting the media from not portraying Hungary, or Hungarian history in a positive light. It's one of many highly controversial subjects that has plagued this administration; not to mention the lovely EU presidency debacle, and the pre-Treaty of Trianon maps of Hungary in some of the EU government buildings. The point I am trying to make is that there is a largely held perception that the US is importing a specific culture where they are not necessarily welcome. Obama's relative "genius" as a politician is his ability to tap into people's perceptions and criticisms of the US and play on those for his own agenda. From what I have seen, he has been very successful at convincing the world that he understands their plight and that he is going to do his best to consider them. Bush was exactly the opposite. Bush was a popular president precisely because he represented a very "popular" view of the US from a US perspective; he embodied the hegemonic ideology and used that to get re-elected. At the same time, this is also the reason why he is a total buffoon. He did very little to play on the sentiments of the people he was dealing with, foreign and domestic, and worked to appease only his constituents. If you have never left the United States, it's very easy to not see the havoc that Bush administration caused when it comes to US foreign relations. The man is almost universally demonized and it is in my view that his administration is largely responsible for a pervasive distrust that has stigmatized the US throughout the 2000s. So I'm not really sure where you're getting this idea that the Bush administration smoothed over anything with the Muslim world. If anything, he is something like a figure head for US imperialism.
I see both of them as working toward the same project: the proliferation of US capital domestically and abroad. Bush was hands-down more "honest" about the project. Obama is more into appeasing people. He is simply working to improve US image abroad, and I think much of the world is expecting an apology. Obama is crucial for maintaining US hegemony in this respect. As such, I think Obama is one of the greatest presidents the US has seen in a long time. I don't think he's doing anything for "hope" or "change" or whatever, but I think his ability to convince people that he is on their side and is working for them is astounding. I would say that all great presidents pushed some sort of "agenda" and were able to convince the people this was the right thing to do. Jackson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Reagan, etc.