Sullivan On Obama

The key to winning the war against radical Islam? To look and be more like them, of course.  It's 6500 words if you want to wade through it all. I took this excerpt from here. Must be one of those conservative positions of his.

What does he (Obama) offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.

Comments

[km]

Alternate view: It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. He turns to his mother and exclaims, "Hey Mom! We won!"

[Bilby]

I tried to read Sullivan's piece when I saw it pop up on memeorandum. I only made it through a couple of paragraphs until my eyes started glazing over and I realized the whole thing could be summed up with "I heart Obama," but I didn't get to the part you quoted. Geeze, how convoluted.

[k]

Why not just elect a mirror as President?

That young Pakistani will be delighted by the new face of America. And so would everyone else.

[Terry Gain]

How naive. We have nothing to fear from people who want to establish a world wide caliphate. The real enemy are those who resent us. My goodness, they coud kill us with their sneers.

OTOH, war could be avoided altogether just by surrendering. Think about it. No loss of life. No wasting of money. No anti-war protests. No resentment in Europe. Sounds almost like heaven.

[jj]

And here I thought that Muslims were killing other Muslims right and left over in Iraq, so having a brown face didn't help them. My thoughts on Sullivan's suggestions---sheer lunacy!

[tsarbomba]

OR:
Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. *"Allahu Akbar! Now we have a VERY LARGE foot in the doorway of the USA. The coming of the new Caliphate is underway!"

[Capitalist Infidel]

It took Sullivan 6500 words to just say "let's surrender?"

[Fred Beloit]

"The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this."

Andy, Andy, Andy. All of us have seen the soft side, but where may one observe the hard power that you seem to have seen...somewhere?

[LOL]

the irony is that conservative pundits prove right what is wrong about america with their smears of Obama being a muslim and Calling him Osama or B. Hussein, etc.

The right is truly a revolting movement

[Fred Beloit]

Your comment is too amorphous to answer, LOL, so I'll just give you a little good news to cheer you up.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071103165342.jt3960rv&show_article=1

[docweasel]

The politics of race and identity.
Elect me because I'm black.
Elect me because I'm a woman.

How about we elect the most qualified with the best plan for America?

[David Gillies]

A logarithm? Does anyone think that Excitable Andy could even furnish one with a definition of a logarithm? The whole point of logarithms is to make big changes look small and small changes big. They reduce multiplicative relations to additive ones. It's really embarrassing when arts graduates try using mathematical terms.