Comrade Communique:
by Kieran Sprunk
President Obama has delivered his farewell address and it is never too soon to judge a legacy even as the unknowns consume. I'll start with the successes. It is too easy to forget just how good Obama has been when he has been successful. When I first saw him giving the keynote address at the Democratic Convention in 2004, I knew this guy was going to be something special. He transcended political boundaries in a way that I'd never seen any public official do before.
Goodness where do I start? 20 million more people with health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. Does it have flaws? Sure. But the good it has done has vastly outweighed the bad. He has brought America closer to universal coverage than anyone since LBJ introduced Medicare and Medicaid. I am confident that even with a repeal, Republicans will not be so stupid as to abandon every part of the ACA.
Then of course there's steering the economy back from the brink in 2009. Unemployment was in double digits back then, now it's around 5%, which is pretty close to full employment. True one could come back and say that this doesn't count people that have given up on work, but even accounting for that there's still been a massive net gain in employment. America's car companies are thriving thanks to a bailout many were skeptical about. To quote Joe Biden, "GM is alive and Bin Laden is dead."
That of course brings me to al Qaeda. While it's far from dead, Obama did something that his predecessor would not do: attack them anywhere. It took serious balls to order a strike force not just into Pakistan, but into a military town harboring Bin Laden. We still regularly make drone strikes anyplace we can find al Qaeda. Feel free to knock the drone program, but it has killed many more combatants than civilians and I quite like the idea of vaporizing men who throw acid in girls' faces, throw gays off rooftops, and strap suicide vests onto people with Down's Syndrome.
And of course there's a cause near and dear to my heart: marriage equality. When Obama first ran, he only supported civil unions. This puts him in the oh so rare category of politicians who deliver MORE than they promise in a very good way. He put two pro equality justices on the Supreme Court, both of whom sided with the plaintiffs in Obergefell v Hodges, a precedent that will go down in the history books right along side Loving v Virginia, which struck down bans on interracial marriage. Thanks to this man, I can eventually marry a man I love, whoever he may be.
I wish I could be all puppies and sunshine in this post, but I can't. Much as I think the good Obama has done still outweighs the bad, there have been failures which will haunt us for years to come.
Those of you who remember the 2012 election will remember a moment when Mitt Romney declared that Russia was the primary geopolitical foe to the United States. This was met with derision and laughter, mostly from the left. By God he was right. If Vladimir Putin can invade and annex Crimea, launch cyber-attacks on NATO countries in an effort to destabilize them, and even influence an American election (didn't clinch it for Trump, but he definitely helped), then yes: Russia is an enemy and a very serious one at that. Obama's failure to understand this and respond appropriately is going to cost us (and his legacy) dearly.
Then of course there is Syria. The most notable disaster came in Obama drawing a red line for Bashar al Assad and then walking away from it when Assad crossed it. It is NEVER a good idea to make threats you're not willing to follow through on. True, getting us involved in Syria would carry its own problems, but clearly not getting involved also had some problems, not least of all a refugee crisis unlike any since World War II. It also allowed ISIS to fulfill the wish of jihadists everywhere: the creation of a Caliphate, a place of misery and mental/physical degradation. Remember that ISIS got its big break in Syria, not Iraq. And of course refusing to get involved allowed Russia to intervene on Assad's behalf, granting victory to a despot who deserved to be thrown from the tallest building in Damascus.
Then there is the persistent problem of refusing to acknowledge that terrorism, in today's context, is far and away perpetrated more often by Muslim hands than non-Muslim. Feel free to read the Koran and you will find plenty of verses very specifically devoted to ordering the deaths of infidels. It is not bigoted to say that those who follow this particular holy book would be more likely to behave this way than those that don't. Denying this is akin to saying that someone who supports the works of Karl Marx is no more likely to be a Communist than someone who doesn't.
It is also wrong to say that those who commit these acts are not true Muslims. Actually jihadists nowadays follow a long Islamic tradition of holy war stretching all the way back to the prophet Mohammed. Just as European witch hunts were committed by true Christians (trust me, they believed in the saving power of Christ), the attacks on Kurds, Yezidis, gays, women, Christians, Jews, etc are being committed by true Muslims.
If you are wondering why this is consequential, I have two words for you: Donald Trump. Refusing to recognize the problem posed by jihadists as a uniquely Islamic problem makes someone who attacks all Muslims (unjustly) appear more reasonable than they actually are. It leaves a void in political rhetoric that can be filled by hatemongers and idiots. This in no way excuses Trump, but it does explain a large segment of his support. Democrats would do well to remember this in 2018 and 2020, or we could very well be looking at 8 years of this orange-faced buffoon.
I don't want to end on a sad note, so I will say this. President Obama will go down in history as one of the greats, even with the flaws I just mentioned, especially compared with the human dumpster fire that is soon to succeed him. In fact, all the great presidents had terrible flaws. FDR unjustly interned millions of Americans simply for their Japanese ancestry and tried court-packing. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus. Jefferson owned slaves. I would say that Obama's failures don't come anywhere close to any of those, but they do need to be mentioned. They need to be mentioned because we need to confront our own problems and adapt, just as those who came before us had to do.
Somewhere there is a young and upcoming Democrat who is serious about defending the values of the Enlightenment (with force if necessary), is willing to honestly confront the problems within Islamic culture, and is still willing to embrace many of those great domestic policies that have been so good for this country (healthcare, women's rights, gay rights, campaign finance reform). Just as the president indicated tonight, I live in hope.
Good night :)
