The Audacity of Hype: Hamas and Hezbollah have “legitimate claims”

It’s been a busy weekend for me, but I’m somewhat surprised that so few of my fellow bloggers picked up on a jaw-dropper that came from Barack Obama’s interview with David Brooks of the New York Times.

Ironically, Brooks was trying to partially build up the Audacity of Hype, certain as he was that the Illinois Senator really couldn’t be “off in Noam Chomskyland” (nice line, by the way).  Still, not even he could stop the Audacity of Hype from revealing his shocking willingness to misunderstand evil (h/t Weekly Standard Blog, BTW).

Anyhow, here’s what I mean (from Brook’s piece, NYT link above, emphasis added):

The U.S. needs a foreign policy that “looks at the root causes of problems and dangers.” Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that “they’re going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims.”

Hamas has “legitimate claims”?  Excuse me?

Perhaps the Senator didn’t notice, but Hamas “claims” all of Israel as Palestinian territory.  Under their “claims,” Israel does not exist.  How is that “legitimate”?

As for Lebanon, unlike Brooks’ fawning assertions, Obama is actually quite ignorant about what is happening there.  An unknowingly intellectual (which describes Obama to a “t” on a number of issues) would look at the Syrian-backed terror groups political propaganda and blithely assume they’re mustbe something to it.  Thus Obama breezes on about the Lebanese government supposedly ignoring the country’s Shiite population.

What Obama (and Brooks) completely miss is that the Lebanese government has no control or influence over any territory under Hezbollah’s thumb.  They couldn’t get “social services” to those areas if it tried.  In fact, the government’s first attempt to do so (with telecommunications service) led Hezbollah to try seizing total power in the first place.  As for “electoral reform,” that’s simply a dodge designed to give the terrorists’ demand for total power a fig leaf of credibility.

Of course, Obama, like most on the left, fall for the fig leaf every time.  The key to Obama’s thinking is the previous phrase he used: “the root causes of problems and dangers.”  Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, the left used the “root causes” argument to deflect charges from Republicans and conservative Democrats that they were “soft on crime.”  By 1993 in particular, the entire left narrative (which by definition placed the blame on society at large rather than the criminal element within it) fell on deaf ears.  In fact, I can safely say that mention by the Audacity of Hype was the first time I heard “root causes” in any discussion in over a decade.

This is the window to Barack Obama’s thinking through which every American must see.  Terrorists have “legitimate claims” – apparently including the elimination of our allies.  Conflicts have “root causes” that always manage to be something other than the terrorists themselves and their tyrannical ambitions.  Once again, the Democrats are determined to nominate someone who refuses to see evil in the world – except in his own country’s political opposition.