This Weekend’s New York Times Week in Review gives a fairly detailed view of the four candidates, placing them side by side. The newspaper tries its best at giving an objective view to both sides and a fair description of John McCain despite the endorsement the paper gave Obama last week. I even thought the descriptions might turn out to be a little more negative toward Obama by including such details as him having spent the proceedings from book sales by purchasing his dream house and by allowing Antoin Rezko, whose corrupted activities became the target of the mass media, to help him.
I think one of the most important contrasts between the two candidates other than the tax or health insurance policies they present is their handling of terrorists. Obama does not trust generalizations such as labeling terrorists as “axis of evil” while McCain clearly sees them as a threat transcending all others and is ready to punch an enemy from his temperament of “going across the street to punch a person”.
This kind of extreme hawkish attitude taken by the Bush administration positioned this nation in danger. And McCain, who so far has failed to prove that his politics will not be a continuation of the Bush administration, surely will put us in the same peril. On Sunday Opinion, by referring to a password protected Islamist Website, Nisholas D. Kristof aptly states that Al Qaeda prefers McCain as a president, because it will make recruitment easier. These Islamists’ views are not a surprise to security specialists such as the former White House counterterrorism director or the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool.
Kristof further states the danger of labeling an Islamic movement as a threat by taking an example from Somalia where an umbrella movement called Islamic Court in 2006 almost united the war-loaded country and then was failed by the US, which allowed Ethiopia to invade the country.
“A movement that looked as if it might end this long national nightmare was derailed, in part because of American and Ethiopian actions,”
a Somalia expert professor stated.
On the other hand, Obama will be one of the short-listers (or incomparable other) who can look at the situation by trying to put himself in the terrorists’ shoes. That attitude has invited the Republicans and John McCain’s attacks by saying that he is ready to sit down with Ahmadinejad (who by the way doesn’t have any actual power) without any preconditions. As multiplicity and globalization prevail on earth, it comes to the time that all of us, especially a nation with power like the United States, should realize that there is no absolute righteousness. One may say that they (the enemy) are the ones who insist that they are absolutely righteous. And sure, violence and terror are evil in any time and any place, but trying to pound them with more violence will only make violence prevail even more.
Sometimes, it is necessary that we “pretend” that we agree with the other side for the sake of peace, for the sake of avoiding the situation in which children are bombed or children see soldiers with weapons and corpses on the way to school. Nothing is wrong in seeking peace first. That is also a legitimate form of patriotism.
