By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO –After the first debate between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, I wrote how pleased I was that it had been a civil exchange, in contrast to those nasty political commercials that fill the airwaves.
But the debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan was a comparative brawl, and the second debate between Obama and Romney nearly followed suit. Some observers at Hofstra University commented they thought the two competitors for the nation’s highest office were ready to haul off and slug each other. This was disputed by other observers, who ascribed the heat of the debate to the ticking clock of the election and the intensity of each man’s desire for the top political prize in the nation. From my seat at home, I couldn’t really tell.
However, to be frank, I was disappointed with both the Democratic president and his Republican challenger. While others may love rock ’em, sock ’em debates, I like thoughtful exchanges in which the competitors lay out their ideas with mutual respect and a desire not simply to outpoint each other but to suggest real solutions for the nation’s ailments. Frankly, I didn’t think either Obama or Romney looked particularly presidential. Both of them reminded me of two power-hungry politicians, more akin to professional wrestlers than to statesmen.
From the standpoint of national policy, one of the more interesting parts of the debate was the disagreement about just what President Obama had to say about the violence in Benghazi in which the American ambassador and three of his aides were murdered.
Romney said it took the President many days before he realized that this action on September 11th had been planned by al-Qaeda as an act of terrorism. President Obama denied that, saying he had used the words “act of terrorism” in the White House Rose Garden on September 12th while discussing the attack in Libya with the news media. Debate moderator Candy Crowley of CNN agreed such words had been used by the president, but said his administration continued to argue nevertheless that the violence had been precipitated by an anti-Muslim film that had appeared on YouTube, not by deliberate planning by terrorists. Later, the administration reversed its position to clearly label it terrorism, based on what Vice President Biden said was new information.
The significance of this argument hinges on more than what the President said or didn’t say. Romney and other critics of President Obama contend that he is slow to acknowledge excesses by Islamists, trying instead to find ways of appeasing their anger at the United States instead of confronting and out-maneuvering it. Obama, sensitive to the criticism, points out that he shifted the focus of American military power from the war in Iraq to the war in Afghanistan, home to the people who precipitated the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Furthermore, he likes to remind us, he ordered the successful hit on terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, and says he plans similar action against the perpetrators of the Benghazi attack, once they are identified.
Personally, I don’t think retaliation against this or that terrorist significantly advances the cause of world peace. Retaliation is a language well understood in the Middle East. We kill one of theirs, they kill one or more of ours, and so the cycle continues.
What the United States needs to understand is that wars are fought not only militarily. Those Islamists who want to establish a worldwide caliphate in which non-Muslims are at best tolerated as second-class citizens and women are hidden behind veils or the walls of their homes are a very real threat to western democracy. Terrorism is only one of their weapons.
Another of their weapons is the kind of propaganda that excuses violent, intolerant expansionism pursued by the jihadists and instead blames little Israel for the world’s problems. It’s appalling that so many people who profess liberalism at home turn a blind eye to the fascism practiced by such Islamic dictatorships as Iran, with the support of its clients in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, and instead try to place the blame on Israel where Arab citizens can claim more democratic rights than their counterparts in any of the surrounding Arab states.
In particular, the so-called liberal Protestant denominations have been hoodwinked by this propaganda, as is evidence by a letter from their leaders blaming Israel for the troubles in the Middle East. Numerous Jewish organizations have decided to end dialoguing with these church organizations, recognizing the futility of dealing with people who want to appease Islamists by blaming Jews.
Unfortunately, the same kind of toadying to Islamist interests has crept into the Obama administration. Constructing more apartment buildings in Jewish sections of Jerusalem is deemed by American diplomats as a threat to world peace, while the continuous firing of rockets at the kibbutzim lying along the Gaza border barely rates a mention from the State Department much less protest. San Diego Federation is in partnership with those unfortunate kibbutzim of Sha’ar Hanegev, and we all should do more to call attention to their plight and the lack of attention from the State Department, notwithstanding the words of sympathy that Obama expressed in nearby Sderot during his 2008 campaign.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com