Is there a smooth, mellow, placid, quiet, peaceful way of being ‘Anti-American’? Dayan Jayatilleka seems to think so (see his piece in the Sunday Island of October 4, 2009: ‘Obama or Osama? A critique of crude Anti-Americanism’). The way I see things, to be anti-American, crudely or otherwise, is an indefensible and xenophobic proposition. One can be against US Policy, or protest statements issued by the US President or Secretary of State, but being ‘anti-US’ would amount to objecting to everything that is associated with that country, including its population, large sections of which cannot be found fault with for the crimes of their elected representatives.

It should be mentioned also that the term ‘anti-American’ assumes the collapse of the whole of South and Central America, the Caribbean and Canada into the political-geography described by the hegemonic aspirations of the USA, as has often been evident in US foreign policy prerogative. The US of A is good at coming up with such Napoleonic language. The final of the baseball tournament in that country is called ‘The World Series’ for example. But I’ll let all that pass as ‘carelessness’ on Dayan’s part.

Dayan believes that there is an ‘anti-Obamism’ which, according to his preferred setters of ‘revolutionary standards,’ he thinks would not be considered ‘rational’ or ‘anti-hegemonic’. He ‘observes’ what he calls a ‘surge of insult, invective and abuse’ as being distinct from the ‘rational critique of the policies of neo-liberalism or neo-conservatism or of imperialism and capitalism as a System’.

The implication is that one cannot call out Barack Obama or anyone else for double-standards, crimes against humanity, invasion of sovereign countries, policy decisions that cause untold misery to millions of people etc etc unless one frames it in some overarching world systems theory. Each and every time the US Air Force drops bombs on a civilian target the criticism has to be couched in that terminological preference. We have to predicate condemnation with reference to neo-liberalist ideological prerogatives prompting an articulation of imperialism. That’s the line, I suppose. I haven’t seen Dayan doing it with the rigor that he is demanding from others, though. And I haven’t ever seen Dayan criticizing the Indian policy on Kashmir. Perhaps this is because he believes that no wrong is being done there or that whatever crimes are committed, they cannot be analyzed using the world systems framework and therefore are unworthy of comment.

Dayan believes that the global Zeitgeist has been shaped by Obama ‘with his style and substance, cerebration and cool, firmness and flexibility, cross cultural dialogue and deadly drone strikes, drive to defeat al Qaeda while outlawing torture under any circumstances thus "forging a framework to combat extremism within the rule of law", disarmament and climate change goals, rejection of unilateralism and establishing a new architecture of relations with China and Russia, more robust healthcare plans and a more regulated, responsible capitalism’. Wow! Talk about buying into Obamist rhetoric wholesale!

Drone attacks

I will start believing these things when I see them on the ground. ‘On the ground’ we see Obama looking the other way when an election was rigged in favour of his ally in Afghanistan, drone attacks that are ‘deadly’ to civilians, greater entrenchment in Iraq and Afghanistan with few results and much bloodshed and agony to show for the effort. As for torture, the man was unwilling to even see photographs showing what US troops did to prisoners, and closing Guantanamo Bay keeps slipping further and further down Obama’s agenda.

Dayan is right; Obama is trying to establish a different kind of relationship with China and Russia. That’s not ‘enlightened thinking’ though, is it? He has no option. Already there are informal talks about de-dollarizing the oil economy, an eventuality which would most certainly kill the dollar and land the USA in another and worse financial crisis.

Dayan is dismayed that people are not distinguishing Obama from George W. Bush. I believe that Barack is suave whereas George was crude and even comical, but that beyond this there has been no serious difference between the two men. Senator Obama opposed the war in Iraq, true, but President Obama is hardly ‘extricating’ the USA from that unhappy country. I will believe it when I see it. All I know is that Barack Obama promised (yes!) to keep 35,000 troops in Iraq even after the troop pull-out that he has planned to execute. Now that’s smooth!

‘Rational’ and ‘balanced’, according to Dayan is the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguez Parilla’s comment to the UN General Assembly. What does Bruno say, though? With Obama, he said, "a period of extreme aggressiveness, unilateralism and arrogance in foreign policy (has) come to an end and the infamous legacy of the George W. Bush regime had been sunk in repudiation." Yes, read between those diplomatic lines, all he is saying is that Obama has dropped the ‘extreme’ part of Bushist policy drives. There is no world systems framework that’s referenced here though. Just soft gloves, possibly prompted by the fact that Barack is smooth whereas George was not, not that it made any difference to a lot of people in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq of course. But then again, it’s Cuba, and Cuba cannot get it wrong, according to Dayan. Like India, I might add.

Dayan then gets into the season of silliness. If Cuba adopts a different and softer tone, style and substance in her response to the USA, then everyone else must too, he argues, after all Cuba is supposed to have suffered like no one else has at the hands of Uncle Sam. So if ever one is wronged, all we have to do is to look around, find someone who is wronged even more, assess his/her tone of response and adopt an appropriately gentler vocabulary. That’s the fault of taking Cartesian logic to a crass extreme, I have to conclude.

All of a sudden, no one can take issue with US Foreign Policy because there’s a black man as President. If one objects to what Obama says or does, one is being racist, even if one has objected more vociferously to what George W. Bush said and did. I wouldn’t call this ‘crude’. Nor ‘hysterical’. It is hilarious.

No, I think that’s not the case. Dayan’s approach and thinking goes more like this: "if you disagree with me, I shall vilify you, bombard you with the names of all the books I’ve read or heard about, I will shoot you with quotations (whether or not relevant contextually)". Talk about being ‘hysterical’!

Barack Obama is certainly a smoother talker, eloquent and of course a superior kind of politician to the likes of George W. Bush. The proof of the pudding lies in the eating, though. In the very least, though, the man is capable of offering a cogent argument, even if his premises are flawed and his promises insincere. A superior article, certainly, compared to some of his defenders.