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A Moral Mission and Moral Vision for America

by Darrell W. Pack

The U.S. State Department now claims that forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad have recently used chemical weapons. The information comes via the U.S. consul in Istanbul and based on interviews with doctors, Syrian defectors from the Syrian Army, and activists, who together make a compelling case that the Syrian military had used Agent 15, or BZ gas, in Homs last month against the Sunni-majority opposition. Then again the State Department challenges the report and conclusion, stating that it “found no credible evidence to corroborate or to confirm that chemical weapons were used.” Is anyone getting confused here?

Last August Obama pledged that “seeing movement on the chemical weapons front, or the use of chemical weapons” by Assad would mean the Syrian dictator had crossed a “red line” and would trigger a U.S. response. But what kind of response? Our officials and the administration is making significant errors on every Muslims world issue. Why? How?

Myopic fixation on their image as the liberal radical who is standing against “The Man” has kept them from seeing and facing the complicated realities in the Muslim world. They have been desperate to say that the bad guys in the Muslim world are al-Qaeda and little else; further, they say we’ve nearly got those bad guys whipped. Wrong on both counts. The liberal political and media elites are philosophically and dispositionally inclined to dislike those leaders in the Arab world that conservative American administrations worked with and whom they see as the establishment. This often pushes them to being overly sympathetic to the worst of the worst as long as these are the (in their view) anti-establishment. The result is that they tend to paint those groups and individuals in much too nice of colors if they are outsiders.

Of course I am being simplistic here, but it is a real issue and one that they keep getting wrong. Mr. President, Sir. You are the very center of the establishment now. You are the establishment. You are “The Man.” Face facts and get past the adolescent desire to “burn in all down.” The anti-establishment groups you tend to like are often morally bankrupt and even more despicable than the tyrants who have been in power.

We must find the moral center of our message and our mission. Simple slogans like “supporting democracy” are meaningless. What is the core of our moral message to the Muslim world? What is the mission we will struggle for? Why will we struggle for this? How does it further our nation’s best interests? How does it promote what is actually good? These questions cannot be left unanswered. This administration has lost its message to the Middle East, simple because it has not clarified its moral center. Not more theater and optics, more reflection, honesty, and communication of a message based on a moral reality are what is needed.