Mid-East Meets Midwest

While President Obama’s visit to Ghana was well recieved by the local population, it is easy to say that his approach toward Africa is very different than that of the Middle East.   Compared to his June speech in Cairo, Obama’s address in Accra, the capital of Ghana, this weekend was harsh to say the least.  Unlike the showers of accolades Obama rained on Muslims in the Arab world, Saturday’s speech to Africans became a lecture on local repression, corruption, brutality, good governance and accountability.

In an opinion piece featured in Forbes, Anne Bayefsky addressed this contrast:

Before the Muslim world Obama donned the role of apologist-in-chief. Over and over again his examples of shortfalls in the protection of rights and freedoms were American: the “prison at Guantanamo Bay,” “rules on charitable giving [that] have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation,” impediments to the “choice” of Muslim women to shroud their bodies.

Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation. In a rare tongue-lashing for Africans from any American president, he chastised: “It’s easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict … But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy … or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants … tribalism and patronage and nepotism … and … corruption.”

He might equally have said to the Arab and Muslim world: “It’s easy to scapegoat Israel and blame your problems on the presence of Jews–albeit on a fraction of 1% of the territory inhabited by the Arab world–but Israel is not responsible for poverty, illiteracy, torture, trafficking, slavery and oppression rampant across your countries.” But he did not.