How often does one come across this (albeit true) cliche?
Why do some people feel the need to put others down? In order to build themselves up (because they feel insecure about themselves).
Donald Miller calls this “lifeboat” theology. I have to beat you in order to affirm (or feel good about) myself. (Hence professional sports.)
So what do we make of President Obama looking for every opportunity to take a swipe at President Bush?
Name one negative comment former President Bush made about Barack Obama after the election. Go ahead. I can wait.
Need more time? No problem. Take all the time you need.
But in the meantime let me continue. And yet President Obama can hardly get through the day without taking one or more digs at former President Bush. His first televised interview on Al-’Arabiya! is a case in point.
See – we Americans have been mean nasty and disrespectful toward the Muslim world the last twenty or so years. Ayup. (Hey. Wait a minute. Does this mean the Clinton Administration as well? Anyways.) But here comes President Barack Hussein Obama (who talked about his Muslim family members and Muslim roots – even court-jester-turned-cheerleader Jon Stewart could not let that go by without a comment) who will usher in a new era of United States/Muslim relations.
New era?
Charles Krauthammer rightly calls President Obama on this. Not so much his “gosh gee I am so kind and gentle” self-flattery (which Krauthammer concedes to every new president) but his “new and different” rhetoric:
Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years — the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world — America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved — and resulted in — the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. ….
As in Obama’s grand admonition: “We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name.” Have “we” been doing that, smearing Islam because of a small minority? George Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington six days after 9/11, when the fires of Ground Zero were still smoldering, to declare “Islam is peace,” to extend fellowship and friendship to Muslims, to insist that Americans treat them with respect and generosity of spirit.
And America listened. In these seven years since 9/11 — seven years during which thousands of Muslims rioted all over the world (resulting in the death of more than 100) to avenge a bunch of cartoons — there’s not been a single anti-Muslim riot in the United States to avenge the greatest massacre in U.S. history. On the contrary. In its aftermath, we elected our first Muslim member of Congress and our first president of Muslim parentage.
Read the whole thing at Townhall.Com. You do not have to register.
Except for royally ticking off Islamic extremists quite frankly President George Bush was if anything excessively generous toward Islam and the Muslim world. (Now if you want to debate the wisdom of invading Iraq – that is a different matter. That was about foreign policy not about Islam. Unless one wishes to agree with Islamic terrorists who proclaim otherwise and kill American soldiers and civilians of other nations – especially if they are Jewish – to drive home the point.)
“Look how different and better I am” is rapidly becoming a key theme of the Obama presidency.
Read also “Is This the Job of the President of the United States?” by Diana West.
