Israel Matzav

More on President Obama's anti-colonialist thinking

You may recall Dinesh D'Souza's Forbes article on President Obama's anti-colonialist thinking that I discussed at length here. That article created quite a stir when it came out, and not just among supporters of Israel. Now, there will be more of a stir.

D'Souza has published an entire book called The Roots of Obama's Rage, which discusses the same issues at much greater length. He sat down for an interview with National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez this week. I'm going to give you a small excerpt below, but you should read the whole thing.

LOPEZ: You write that “Obama recognized that he had to deliver radical and even revolutionary themes in a bland, anodyne way so that they could cross the threshold of political acceptability.” Isn’t that just smart politics?

D’SOUZA: Yes. We can all admire the skill with which Obama does this. Somehow he has the ability to translate the dreams of his father — a Luo tribesman from the 1950s — into language that mainstream America can understand. So Obama doesn’t say, “I don’t care whether Iran gets a nuclear weapon; my goal is to reduce America’s nuclear arsenal because I consider America to be the world’s rogue nation.” Instead, Obama says, “I want a world free of nuclear weapons.” And the only practical action he takes in this connection is to reduce America’s nuclear arsenal, while North Korean continues its nuclear buildup and Iran continues to move closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb.

...

LOPEZ: What are some clear examples of how this anti-colonialist mindset can be seen in the presidency of Barack Obama?

D’SOUZA: Ramesh Ponnuru and others say Obama is a conventional liberal. But conventional liberals don’t come out for the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Conventional liberals don’t return the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. Conventional liberals don’t block oil drilling in America while subsidizing oil drilling in Brazil. Conventional liberals don’t try to turn the space agency NASA into a Muslim-outreach program.

My anti-colonial theory beautifully explains all these facts. If Obama views America as the neocolonial occupier of Iraq and Afghanistan, then Muslims fighting against America are anti-colonial resisters and deserve a measure of sympathy; no wonder Obama has no problem with releasing the Lockerbie bomber. Obama hates Churchill because Churchill was the prime minister who cracked down on an anti-colonial uprising in Kenya, one in which Obama’s father and grandfather were both arrested. Obama’s oil-drilling double standard is fully understandable when you see that he wants the neocolonial oppressors to have less and the former colonized countries to have more. If Obama sees NASA as a symbol of American power — not only are we the world’s superpower, but now we are trying to colonize space — then we can see why he might want to convert NASA into a symbol of international achievement, not American greatness. So plug in the anti-colonial theory and you can explain the facts; remove it and Obama’s behavior becomes almost impossibly difficult to account for.

And although conventional liberals today do advocate for a 'Palestinian state' (they didn't 30 years ago), D'Souza's theory does a neat job of explaining President Obama's obsession with the creation of a 23rd Arab Muslim state - and a terror state to boot - in the Middle East. In Obama's mind, Israel is just like the United States - another colonialist state.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:11 AM