You won’t find it in his memoir or any of the oodles of words
written about him during the campaign, but this reporter has discovered a
strikingly naive article Barack Obama wrote about the anti-war movement
as a Columbia University senior in 1983.
If Obama still has this sensibility, he could be poised to take
American foreign policy sharply to the left, notwithstanding the
centrist foreign policy team he has assembled. Moreover, since Obama
didn’t recognize the Soviet menace during the Cold War and blamed the
possibility of war entirely on the United States, there’s good reason to
think that today he could lack the moral clarity needed to fight
radical Islam.
The article, “Breaking the War Mentality,” published by the Columbia magazine
Sundial, is a wholesale endorsement of all sorts of leftist claptrap fashionable at the time.
Obama deems the Reagan era defense buildup a “distorted priority” and “dead end track.”
Writing
in the midst of the Cold War, Obama was nevertheless oblivious to the
threat the Soviet Union then posed to the United States. Indeed, he does
not even mention the Soviet Union in his article. Instead, Obama blames
— you guessed it — America and its “twisted” world view for the
“growing threat of war.”
If only Americans would change their thinking, he argues, the threat would subside. Give re-education a chance.
“Most students at Columbia do not have first hand knowledge of war,”
he begins. “Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled
into our minds through television film, and print . . . We know that
wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such
experiences down into our hearts and taking continual, tangible steps to
prevent war, becomes a difficult task.”
That’s why campus peaceniks are so important. “Two groups on campus,
Arms Race Alternatives (ARA) and Students Against Militarism (SAM) work
within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action
necessary to counter the growing threat of war. Though the emphasis of
the two groups differ, they share an aversion to current government
policy.
“These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and
grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing
their weight into shifting America off the dead end track.”
“The thrust of ARA is towards generating dialogue which will give
people a rational handle [on the threat of war]. . . this includes
bringing speakers like Daniel Ellsberg to campus.’’
Note here for Obama that rational means liberal. It’s a safe bet the
ARA’s endeavors to foster dialogue in 1983 didn’t involve bringing
Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger to campus.
The group, much to Obama’s delight, also agitated in favor of the
Nuclear Freeze movement and opposed the deployment of Pershing II and
Cruise Missiles. These positions, of course, put them against the
Reagan Administration and in favor of policies congruent with Soviet
interests.
Sounds very leftist, but Obama says the group is actually
non-political. Like other party line liberals Obama thinks have
ideology, everyone else is just working for the common good. “By taking
an almost apolitical approach to the problem ARA hopes to get the
university to take nuclear arms issues seriously.”
For Obama, the only thing wrong with the nuclear freeze movement is
that it’s not ambitious enough. One “is forced to wonder whether
disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political
issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a
problem instead of the disease itself.
Turning to the other group, Obama casts his lot with draft dodgers.
“Students Against Militarism was formed in response to the passage of
registration laws in 1980 [that required 18-year-olds to register for
the draft].”
“At this time the current major issue [for SAM] is the Solomon Bill,
the latest legislation from Congress to obtain compliance to
registration. The law requires all male students applying for federal
financial aid to submit proof of registration” or be denied financial
aid.
So Obama sided with a group that wanted students to not register for
the draft with impunity. That would strike a blow against warmongers.
“By organizing and educating the Columbia community, such activities lay
the foundation for future mobilization against the relentless, often
silent spread of militarism…by observing the SAM meeting last Thursday
night, with its solid turnout and enthusiasm, one might be persuaded
that manifestations of our better instincts at least match the bad
ones.”
Obama concludes by placing the two anti-war groups in the tradition
of America’s greatest thinkers. “Indeed the most pervasive malady of the
collegiate system specifically and the American experience generally,
is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied
from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA
and SAM try to do is infuse that they have learned about the current
situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of
Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jeffferson and Whitman to bear on
the twisted logic of which we are today a part.”
The twisted logic of these right-wing meanies who pushed for the
deployment of missiles and implemented an arms buildup is widely
credited with playing a role in bringing about the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
Obama was on the wrong side of history. Does Obama still hold to the
views he expressed in his essay? If not, when did he change his opinion?
During his presidential bid, Obama seemed to echo some of the themes
of the article. College student Obama believed war could be avoided
through better understanding. Candidate Obama promised to restore
America’s image in the world that supposedly suffered because of the
Iraq War.
Both formulations disregard the threat posed by our country’s enemies
— the Soviet Union when Obama was a Columbia undergraduate and radical
Islam today. Anti-American sentiment does not turn on the nuances of
foreign policy; it’s a function of fundamental moral differences between
America and its detractors or enemies. Lots of nations and people hated
us long before the Iraq War.
In any event, it remains to be seen if the “change” Obama has
promised includes a sharp departure from the morally obtuse and
simplistic left-wing views he espoused at Columbia 25 years ago.
