Obama and his hope
St. Paul called faith ”the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” It’s a definition Barack Obama and his supporters should reflect on. Because it would seem that the louder and more insistent the shouts for “change” and “hope” are, the more hollow it sounds. What exactly is being hoped for, and what must be done to accomplish it? These are questions which “hope” always avoids answering. That’s the nature of hope – it avoids. It cowers away from what challenges it, and just curls up in a ball and wishes its problems away. It prefers insulation to action.
By the ferver of the Obama campaign, this sort of tepid and shallow brand of optimism would be the last thing to accuse Barack Obama. But what should we make of Obama’s “hope”? He calls for a victory in the war in Afghanistan, but an end to the war in Iraq? What an unusual distinction–victory in war, and an end in war. It would seem to be a new military strategy, to “end” a war. How would it differ from winning a war, or loosing? Perhaps ending the war in Iraq would return the nation to its pre-war dictatorship. Or maybe it would involve stabilizing Iraq through the help of the good-willed intentions of Iran or Syria; throw in a gentlemen’s agreement with Al-qaeda — I don’t bomb you, you don’t bomb me — and there ya go, we’ve successfully ( or more aptly, satisfactorily) ended the war. Anyone, though, with a rudimentary understanding of geo-politics would tell you that any sort of policy which would “end” the war like this would more likely postpone it.
Is Obama and his followers really so naive to think that the problems we are facing in Iraq — ethnic factionalism, Islamic fundamentalism, and terrorism — will just go away with hope. Do they honestly believe this? Or more likely, do they just not recognize the importance in confonting them? If this is how we should deal with our security concerns, why not end the war in Afghanistan in similar fashion? Let’s do away with all that messiness of actually fighting the war and just end it — truly brillant. This is apparently Obama’s idea of hope in confronting American’s problems, to just ambigously end them. How should Iraqis take Obama’s brand of hope, or the Iranian youth, or the Israelis? How should Africans take Obama’s message — that the last eight years of a presidency which tried to solve the continent’s problems were wasted, that all along we should have “ended” them?
It’s clear that Obama’s idea of hope is really nothing more than the celebration of fatalism; it’s the comforting acceptance that things can’t change. There is something very pleasing in the idea that the stuggle of the last five years has been based on sensationalist and fictional threats and visions. We wish to believe that at the stuggle’s core is the irrational and reversible policies of a delusional president rather than a genuine and irreversible chasm in the international order, requiring direct and unyeilding intervention from United States and all democratic countries. Obama’s hope is anything but. It’s a warm tranquilizer, which calms our national anxiety — if only briefly. It’s our self-righteous indignation against our democratic calling and responsibility. It’s the last vestage of collective doubt and yearning for the past, which has its echos throughout history — for a dependent and subjugated colonial status, a sectarian and enslaved union, an imperialist and facist order, an authoritative monolith of communism, and now the ever-disappearing line between the developed democratic nations and the petty, despotic ones – a line which so protected the West and maintained our sense of security after centuries of turbulence. Obama’s hope may be the hope we want, but is this the hope we need? Perhaps, what we need now is not hope at all, but faith. It may seem bitter, but we better get used to the taste, for without even tempting to take a bite we may find it shoved down our throat.
