Neoconservative figures lash out at Obama tour
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Hürriyet Daily News
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Nisan 14, 2009 00:00
ISTANBUL - Well-known figures of the United States neo-conservative movement strongly attack President Obama’s tour and decry the ideas he put forth in his speeches during his visit to Europe, Turkey and Iraq. One of the critics define the tour as the "President’s Traveling Circus".
Michael Reagan, the elder son of late President Ronald Reagan and a syndicated columnist and radio host, strongly criticized U.S. President Barack Obama’s tour to Europe, Turkey and Iraq in an article headlined "President’s Traveling Circus" in a Philadelphia-based newspaper yesterday.
Like Reagan’s son, other conservative voices such as Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and William Kristol strongly attacked Obama’s tour and did not share the ideas that he put forth in his speeches during the visit. The neo-conservatives’ main theme was Obama’s speech at the Turkish Parliament, in which he briefly apologized for the massacres in U.S. history and said the United States was not a Christian nation. His photograph with the king of Saudi Arabia at the G20 summit also became one of the critics’ most important arguments.
Michael Reagan said that while the United States was writhing in the agony of the current financial mess, Obama, always accompanied by a horde of worshipful media to record his every spiel, toured the "Old World" like a show-off.
’Bread and circuses’
In his criticism, Reagan also mentioned Obama’s stop in Turkey: "In Turkey, this alleged Christian, who hasn’t been in church since becoming president (they can’t seem to find a suitable church - or mosque - in Washington), informed his hosts that the United States is not what our founders said it was Ğ a Christian nation. He put icing on the cake by subserviently bowing deeply before the king of Saudi Arabia, who happens to be a Muslim."
Reagan blamed Obama for presiding over the biggest left turn the United States has ever taken and said Obama has only made promises and that has made matters worse. "The Romans called what he’s doing a policy of ’bread and circuses,’" he said.
The other strong spokesmen of conservatives, Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and William Kristol, also attacked Obama’s tour and speeches. The outrage began when Obama greeted Saudi King Abdullah by leaning into a double-handed handshake. Hannity at Fox Cable News said: "We got this video of Barack Obama bowing to the Saudi King Abdullah. Now look, watch how low he gets. Way below the shoulder."
Camille Paglia denounced it as "the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia."
Representative Michele Bachmann called the greeting "shameful." She also warned: "We are still finding out what happened during that G20 summit. I think that there may have been agreements made behind closed doors that we aren’t even aware of that could be ceding American sovereignty."
Most conservatives had little trouble criticizing the part of Obama’s address to the Turkish Parliament in which he declared that the United States was not at war with Islam. Radio personality Rush Limbaugh challenged the president, saying that if the United States is not at war with Islam then the Somali pirates must not be Muslims.
Obama’s address to the Turkish Parliament also enraged Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. He complained to Brett Baier of Fox News on April 6: "We have defended Muslim nations against terrorists. It would have been nice if President Obama could have said a word about the young Americans who went to Afghanistan and Iraq. But could Barack Obama say something that would be mildly unpopular to an audience [to] which he was speaking? No."
Christian nation
The theocrat Karl Rove complained that Obama had declared that the United States is not a Christian nation and had sympathized with Turkey’s separation of religion and state. The notorious betrayer of CIA agents opined to Hannity on April 8: "America is a nation built on faith. I mean we can be Christian, we can be Jew, we can be a Mormon. And to somehow go to Turkey and in order to sort of identify yourself with this Turkish secular movement that began in the early part of the previous century and try and somehow make Turkey and America equivalent is to deny each nation’s reality."
Aside from complaining that their pleas for Christian state-making have been ignored by the president, conservatives were reduced to alleging that Obama was just doing and saying all the same things as George W. Bush had, but was getting more credit for it. Bill O’Reilly said on April 6: "There’s no question that the Islamic world likes Barack Obama better than President Bush. OK, but before it’s all over, they may hate Barack Obama. We get hit again, Barack Obama’s going to have to wipe out a few countries. OK?"
The great right-wing freak-out
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, historian of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history and president of the Global Americana Institute, defined all these conservative critics as "the great right-wing freak-out" in his article published on the Web site Salon.
According to Cole, greater concentration on minutiae and the investment of more passion in matters of no moment, signals the bankruptcy of conservative philosophy and its proponents have stared transfixed as the ruthless implementation of their most cherished principles produced a series of economic, social and foreign policy calamities from which it may take decades to recover.
"The spectacle of their spokesmen misunderstanding English, hyperventilating over dark suspicions of surrender of sovereignty or re-education camps, condemning a Muslim country like Turkey for setting a bad example by being insufficiently theocratic and engaging in mock auto-da-fes (act of faith) to illustrate their inner rage, raises the question of whether the Republican Party is having a collective nervous breakdown," Cole said.
Like Reagan’s son, other conservative voices such as Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and William Kristol strongly attacked Obama’s tour and did not share the ideas that he put forth in his speeches during the visit. The neo-conservatives’ main theme was Obama’s speech at the Turkish Parliament, in which he briefly apologized for the massacres in U.S. history and said the United States was not a Christian nation. His photograph with the king of Saudi Arabia at the G20 summit also became one of the critics’ most important arguments.
Michael Reagan said that while the United States was writhing in the agony of the current financial mess, Obama, always accompanied by a horde of worshipful media to record his every spiel, toured the "Old World" like a show-off.
’Bread and circuses’
In his criticism, Reagan also mentioned Obama’s stop in Turkey: "In Turkey, this alleged Christian, who hasn’t been in church since becoming president (they can’t seem to find a suitable church - or mosque - in Washington), informed his hosts that the United States is not what our founders said it was Ğ a Christian nation. He put icing on the cake by subserviently bowing deeply before the king of Saudi Arabia, who happens to be a Muslim."
Reagan blamed Obama for presiding over the biggest left turn the United States has ever taken and said Obama has only made promises and that has made matters worse. "The Romans called what he’s doing a policy of ’bread and circuses,’" he said.
The other strong spokesmen of conservatives, Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and William Kristol, also attacked Obama’s tour and speeches. The outrage began when Obama greeted Saudi King Abdullah by leaning into a double-handed handshake. Hannity at Fox Cable News said: "We got this video of Barack Obama bowing to the Saudi King Abdullah. Now look, watch how low he gets. Way below the shoulder."
Camille Paglia denounced it as "the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia."
Representative Michele Bachmann called the greeting "shameful." She also warned: "We are still finding out what happened during that G20 summit. I think that there may have been agreements made behind closed doors that we aren’t even aware of that could be ceding American sovereignty."
Most conservatives had little trouble criticizing the part of Obama’s address to the Turkish Parliament in which he declared that the United States was not at war with Islam. Radio personality Rush Limbaugh challenged the president, saying that if the United States is not at war with Islam then the Somali pirates must not be Muslims.
Obama’s address to the Turkish Parliament also enraged Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. He complained to Brett Baier of Fox News on April 6: "We have defended Muslim nations against terrorists. It would have been nice if President Obama could have said a word about the young Americans who went to Afghanistan and Iraq. But could Barack Obama say something that would be mildly unpopular to an audience [to] which he was speaking? No."
Christian nation
The theocrat Karl Rove complained that Obama had declared that the United States is not a Christian nation and had sympathized with Turkey’s separation of religion and state. The notorious betrayer of CIA agents opined to Hannity on April 8: "America is a nation built on faith. I mean we can be Christian, we can be Jew, we can be a Mormon. And to somehow go to Turkey and in order to sort of identify yourself with this Turkish secular movement that began in the early part of the previous century and try and somehow make Turkey and America equivalent is to deny each nation’s reality."
Aside from complaining that their pleas for Christian state-making have been ignored by the president, conservatives were reduced to alleging that Obama was just doing and saying all the same things as George W. Bush had, but was getting more credit for it. Bill O’Reilly said on April 6: "There’s no question that the Islamic world likes Barack Obama better than President Bush. OK, but before it’s all over, they may hate Barack Obama. We get hit again, Barack Obama’s going to have to wipe out a few countries. OK?"
The great right-wing freak-out
Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, historian of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history and president of the Global Americana Institute, defined all these conservative critics as "the great right-wing freak-out" in his article published on the Web site Salon.
According to Cole, greater concentration on minutiae and the investment of more passion in matters of no moment, signals the bankruptcy of conservative philosophy and its proponents have stared transfixed as the ruthless implementation of their most cherished principles produced a series of economic, social and foreign policy calamities from which it may take decades to recover.
"The spectacle of their spokesmen misunderstanding English, hyperventilating over dark suspicions of surrender of sovereignty or re-education camps, condemning a Muslim country like Turkey for setting a bad example by being insufficiently theocratic and engaging in mock auto-da-fes (act of faith) to illustrate their inner rage, raises the question of whether the Republican Party is having a collective nervous breakdown," Cole said.