6-9-09 The Rhetoric of the Cairo Speech

President Obama has redeemed rhetoric as a tool of policy. He did it again with his speech in Cairo to the Muslim world. More importantly, that speech restarted America’s dialogue with the Arab-Islamic world and marginalized Al Qaeda.

Wikipedia says that rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Yet, in our American practicality, an appealing style of speech is suspect. “Mere rhetoric” is a damning judgment, claiming that the statement, speech or argument is so much hot air and not worthy of reasoned response.

Despite this, we honor Presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy for their rhetoric. Obama has a gift that clearly puts him in their company. Each of his speeches, since his 2004 explosion on the political scene with the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, has always been right on target with an inspiring, empathetic call to unity and progress.

Rhetoric is actually intended as such a tool of good. From ancient times to the 19th century, rhetoric was appreciated and even taught as a central part of a liberal education. Speeches of the past were memorized and studied. We know, for instance, that in preparing the Gettysburg Address Lincoln used Pericles’ funeral oration for the fallen Athenians.

I don’t know if anyone a generation from now will remember or study Obama’s speeches. If people do not remember, it is not because Obama has been vague and wandering.

Obama starts with the idea that words and convictions have power. Listeners start out captured by his sincerity. The trope that he uses most is his identification with some transcendent moment that all can share, which most often is a call for hope and change. He uses his personal story to bridge the gap between opposing groups whether they be black/white or Islamic/Christian. If the intrinsic meaning of what he says is not specific we all create in our own mind an acceptable idea of what he means.

Obama can pull all this off because he is a “boundary walker,” “The Brother from Another Planet.” He places himself as an outsider to both sides and that permits him to be genuine to both when he calls for unity.

Islam is particularly vulnerable to Obama’s use of rhetoric because it appreciates the written and spoken word. Islam understands the meaning and use of the concept of logos, or the word, as it appears in the beginning of the Gospel of John. With John, Islam identifies God with the Word.

The Bush administration gifted Obama with the situation almost tailored to his talents. The rhetoric of crusades and a war on terror (which sounded so much like “war on Islam”) is relatively easy to reverse. Obama’s candor (he admitted for the first time that we had instigated the 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran) contrasts glaringly with the Bush/Cheney secrecy, denial of torture and language manipulation.

In the end it was Obama’s words of respect for Islam and for the aspirations of the Arabic population that created the possibility for connection.

Al Qaeda is probably the biggest loser.

Wars of choice, torture and imprisonment created such a successful recruiting program for Al Qaeda that they cost us years of warfare. This speech clearly undercut that effort through its appeal to the Arab street and its calling out of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes.

Dissident groups throughout West Asia and Africa heard a call to freedom from the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood, which now opposes everything American, must have been startled for it was originally set up to overthrow the Egyptian government.

The best part is what Obama has done to Osama bin Laden. Osama in his message at the time did not mention the Obama speech. Instead he condemned the American efforts to clear the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of Pakistan. Those efforts are clearly successful enough to disturb him. We are, finally, taking the battle to him.

President Barack Hussein Obama now has the opportunity to cut off not just the supply of suicide bombers but the whole stream of money and logistics going to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – if he can deliver enough of what Islam sees as necessary.

President Obama remains in a “conciliator” role that serves him well domestically, much to the dismay of his most ardent supporters on the left.

But if he wants to crush Al Qaeda completely, sometime in the not-too-distant future, he’s going to have to give up some of that and some of the convenient Bush doctrines that have us still imprisoning, torturing and killing far too many people in Islamic countries.