by Eric Martin
Matthew Kaminski stubs his toe on a tautology and cries out Eureka! His purported epiphany is that Barack Obama will not, by virtue of his election and tenure as President, eradicate anti-Americanism. Kaminski’s penetrating insight also uncovers the little known fact that anti-Americanism existed before President Bush, and will persist after President Obama. Remarkable.
The banality of this thesis has not limited its frequent use across a number of subject areas by the usual Bush administration apologists. Anne Applebaum offered one such example, and a similarly constructed argument has been used to describe the persistence of terrorism and extremism. While the basic premises underlying each of these painfully obvious observations (that Bush did not create these problems, nor can Obama eradicate them) doesn’t really warrant mention, there is a method to this intellectual drabness.
The pundits that use this simplistic formulation are usually doing so in order to shield unwise and flawed foreign policy choices from criticism. The recognition of the durability of some level of anti-Americanism/extremism/terrorism quickly morphs into a fatalistic call to inaction. "Why change our foreign policy when nothing is going to completely extinguish anti-Americanism, extremism or terrorism everywhere?" As if complete eradication is the only viable goal, and as if the intensity of the anti-Americanism that exists in the world – and whether or not it leads to radicalization or cooperation with radicals – is irrelevant.
Many purveyors of this faux-wisdom go even further than bemoaning the lack of total solutions by attempting to altogether de-link the anti-Americanism/extremism/terrorism from any past, present or future actions on our part. Instead, these the source of these phenomena is attributed to some vague combination of jealousy, envy and the inevitable hostility directed at the lone superpower.
While there undoubtedly is, and always will be, some of this baseless animosity toward America, attributing the lion’s share of anti-Americanism to these caprices is wrongheaded – though it has its uses when seeking to dismiss legitimate concerns of blowback from present or future foreign policy endeavors (such as, say, military confrontation with Iran). If they hate us for our freedoms, what does it matter if we bomb another Muslim country? Kaminski put it this way:
[O]ur earnest assertion of our superior ontological uniqueness–not to mention its reality in and of itself–is exactly what always grated on the unfriendlies grouped together under the banner of anti-Americanism.
Anne Applebaum describes it this way:
[H]atred for what [America] was believed to stand for – capitalism, globalisation, militarism, Zionism, Hollywood or McDonald’s, depending on your point of view…
While she at least alludes to the interplay of foreign policy decisions and anti-American sentiment ("militarism, Zionism"), these elements are dismissed as illusory or, at least, inconsequential grievances. This highly sanitized and romanticized view of America’s history (and present policies) is a pernicious myth that deprives its adherents of the perspective necessary to appreciate some (not all!) of the sources of hostility. It’s this type of myopia that confounds the many pundits that argue that, rather than hurl insults (and shoes) at President Bush, the ungrateful Iraqi people should thank him. For some useful history, why not peruse the CIA’s Greatest Assassinations Coups Dirty Wars Hits, or review American imperialism in the Western Hemisphere. For starters.
At the risk of stating my own tautology, this "all or nothing/blameless" view is not conducive to crafting good policy. While some level of anti-Americanism/extremism/terrorism will exist no matter what policies US Presidents (past, present and future) adopt, that does not mean that our policies cannot have a positive impact on the degrees of each and that we should not consider this outcome in our decision making process. Even small adjustments in the intensity and pervasiveness of anti-Americanism/extremism can be meaningful.
While counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine is all the rage in military circles these days, its broader lessons are mostly ignored by the crowd that counsels against paying attention to foreign hearts and minds. Francis Fukuyama, to his credit, pointed out the obvious back in 2004:
But the [al-Qaeda] radicals swim in a much larger sea of Muslims-1.2 billion of them, more or less-who are not yet implacable enemies of the United States. If one has any doubts about this, one has only to look at the first of the United Nations Development Program’s two Arab Human Development reports, which contained a poll asking whether respondents would like to emigrate to the United States if they had the opportunity. In virtually every Arab country, a majority of respondents said yes. On the other hand, recent Pew surveys of global public opinion show that positive feelings about the United States in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and other supposedly friendly Muslim countries has sunk to disastrously low levels. What these data taken as a whole suggest is that for the broad mass of public opinion in Muslim countries, we are disliked or hated not for what we are, but rather for what we do. What they do not like is a familiar list of complaints about our foreign policy that we somehow continue to fail to take seriously: our lack of concern for the plight of the Palestinians, our hypocritical support for dictators in Muslim countries, and now our occupation of Iraq.
The War on Terror is, in other words, a classic counter-insurgency war, except that it is one being played out on a global scale. There are genuine bad guys out there who are much more bitter ideological enemies than the Soviets ever were, but their success depends on the attitudes of the broader populations around them who can be alternatively supportive, hostile or indifferent-depending on how we play our cards.
The Iraq adventure fueled a precipitous decline in America’s image abroad, and Bush’s pugnacious style during his first term and his tin ear for foreign opinion made a bad situation worse. This is more than just a public-relations problem. National prestige is diplomatic capital; the more unpopular America becomes, the higher the price of foreign support. Mark Malloch Brown, the UN’s deputy secretary-general, recently said that suspicion of the United States has grown to the point where “many otherwise quite moderate countries” are inclined to oppose anything we favor.
As James Fallows notes, Osama bin Laden is certainly paying attention to the impact our policies have on anti-Americanism and relations with allies and neutral states:
The final destructive response helping al-Qaeda has been America’s estrangement from its allies and diminution of its traditionally vast "soft power" [ed: or "influence" as the kool kids are calling it these days] "America’s cause is doomed unless it regains the moral high ground," Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of Britain’s secret intelligence agency, MI-6, told me. He pointed out that by the end of the Cold War there was no dispute worldwide about which side held the moral high ground—and that this made his work as a spymaster far easier. "Potential recruits would come to us because they believed in the cause," he said. A senior army officer from a country whose forces are fighting alongside America’s in Iraq similarly told me that America "simply has to recapture its moral authority."
As referenced above, it is a widely documented fact that anti-Americanism has surged worldwide under the tenure of George Bush (from Europe and South American to the Middle East and Asia), as have the number of terrorist incidents. Bush’s policies are not the sole impetus for those spikes, but they are a major contributing factor. Such heightened levels of anti-Americanism hinder our ability to achieve a wide range of objectives, and reduce our security at home and abroad.
While undoing the damage done under Bush is a worthy goal, merely rolling back anti-Americanism/extremism/terrorism to the levels that existed the day that Bush entered office is not sufficient. There is room for progress beyond merely repairing the legacy of Bush (pushing for meaningful progress in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for example). Beyond that, we need to rethink our role in the world, and the privileges of power that we have oft abused.
[O]ur earnest assertion of our superior ontological uniqueness–not to mention its reality in and of itself–is exactly what always grated on the unfriendlies grouped together under the banner of anti-Americanism.
Yes, that and our insufferable pretentious vocabulary.
Thanks –
As if complete eradication is the only viable goal, and as if the intensity of the anti-Americanism that exists in the world – and whether or not it leads to radicalization or cooperation with radicals – is irrelevant.
In the words of Wayne Booth, it’s like arguing that since it’s impossible to create a perfectly aseptic environment, you might as well perform surgery in a sewer.
Updating the rhetorics from its late 19th/ early 20th style* to a less exalted level may indeed help (not necessarily as boring as the current style over here but that’s another story). While we are at it: Get rid of that anthem also (difficult to sing, annoying…, there are better choices) 😉
*what I might call the ‘Wilhelm II. goes folksy’ way of speechifying
Or that since the single-issue antiabortion and antigay Christians will never vote for a Democrat it makes no sense to reach out to Christian voters in the middle.
[O]ur earnest assertion of our superior ontological uniqueness–not to mention its reality in and of itself–is exactly what always grated on the unfriendlies grouped together under the banner of anti-Americanism.
Translated back into the adolescent speak from which this came, this is: ‘You don’t like us because we keep on saying we’re better than you, but we are, so there.’ Why is there such a whiny streak in so much of US reactions to the outside world? If the country is so superior, why not just show it rather than tell it?
The banality of this thesis has not limited its frequent use across a number of subject areas by the usual Bush administration apologists.
It wasn’t Bush apologists assuring us for the last year that the simple act of electing Obama was going to begin restoring America’s standing in the world.
‘When he raises his hand on inauguration day, at that very moment we will lift the spirits of our nation and begin to restore America’s standing in the world,’ Kennedy said.
And that’s one of the tamer ones. Shoot, we were promised that he could turn back the rising oceans. All would be sweetness and light as soon as he was sworn in. Why do you think the right took to mocking him as “The One” and noting the cult-like behavior of some of his supporters?
As a country we were in fact promised that Barack Obama will, by virtue of his election and tenure as President, eradicate anti-Americanism.
When a candidate oversells himself that badly (when his supporters do) this line of mockery is wide open. And that’s what I think it mostly is. It’s nothing as serious and well thought out as shielding “unwise and flawed foreign policy choices from criticism” – most of what I have seen along this line is straight up mockery. And well deserved IMO.
OCSteve, did you miss the word “begin”?
A parable: What colour is the sky?
—
Conservative: Blue.
Liberal: Well, if the weather’s clear, it’s blue during the day; At night black with white spots. Cloudy weather can give it patches of white or grey, or make it grey all over. When visible, the moon is white/grey, the sun is yellow..ish, and between night and day the sky can shade through an amazing array of colours.
Conservative: Here we go. More wishy-washy hand-wringing liberal BS! What are you trying to avoid? The sky’s blue, plain as day!
And I voted for him – so I want my unicorn dammit!
Kennedy: Getting that guy with the ax out of the operating room and getting a real surgeon in will begin to improve the patient’s chances.
OCSteve: So you’re saying that as soon as the new doctor steps in, the patient will be fully recovered and ready to go home?
magistra: Why is there such a whiny streak in so much of US reactions to the outside world?
Spoiled child syndrome. The discovery that there are adults who do not regard this child as the centre of their universe will make many a spoiled/sheltered small child whiny. Handled properly, they get over it quite fast.
Many Americans really seem to have difficulty comprehending that the outside world does not actually want to put US interests ahead of the interests of their own country, or regard the welfare and comfort of Americans as more important than their own welfare…
As a country we were in fact promised that Barack Obama will, by virtue of his election and tenure as President, eradicate anti-Americanism
Jeez OCSteve, you’re not really going to compare election year speechifying with someone actually arguing a thesis, are you?
And not even Kennedy said “eradicate.”
Beginning to restore our image is nowhere near the same as eradicating anti-Americanism.
And Kennedy didn’t mean just because of his presence. What he’s saying is that Barack’s policies implemented by Barack will begin the process.
And you know what: Kennedy was right!
Electing Barack has begun the process because it signifies to the world a new direction.
But if Barack just continues Bush’s policies (and those failed policies of Bush’s predecessors) than he will not be able to follow through on the restoration (mind you, even a full restoration is not an eradication as even at America’s apex there was still plenty of anti-Americanism around).
Am I to gather from the first several comments that the opinion is the right tends more to absolutism than the left?
Dave, which side is it that ridicules the other about “nuance”?
KCinDC, Eric: I said that the Kennedy quote was “one of the tamer ones”.
Come on, you guys lived through the same election I did. We, America, absolutely were promised day in and day out – just elect Obama and it’s all going to be cool. His transition team has been “resetting expectations” since Nov. 5.
And a “thesis”? No. I’m saying that as a general meme, the overselling that went on deserves the mockery it has been getting.
Totally expected – the day of/after the Mumbai attack, all over the right side of the blogosphere: Huh. What do you know. We elected Obama but there was still a terrorist attack. How could that happen?
None of them were serious BTW.
Don’t be telling me now you’re fresh out of unicorns. 😉
You don’t like us because we keep on saying we’re better than you, but we are, so there.
Yes, and not due to anything we do, say, or believe, but better deep in the essence of our very being.
We are, therefore we are better. Who could take offense at that?
‘When he raises his hand on inauguration day, at that very moment we will lift the spirits of our nation and begin to restore America’s standing in the world,’ Kennedy said.
Not to take anything away from Obama, but in the context of Bush as the sitting President, Kennedy could have said the same thing if Ronald McDonald had been elected.
And I voted for him – so I want my unicorn dammit!
Take a number.
Thanks –
Electing Barack has begun the process because it signifies to the world a new direction.
Well, not necessarily. As we’ve discussed to death on that other thread. 😉
What is certain is that at least he’ll be making smarter decisions that George W. Bush: the chimp and his handler will be gone from the White House, and this really is a positively good thing – even if there’s no new direction, no “change we can believe in”, at least the administrative branch will be run by adults who care about what they’re doing, not monomaniacal morons with a political agenda to push regardless of the cost in human life.
Apparently we didn’t live through the same election, or maybe it’s just that conservative black-or-white vision filtering things. I and the people I’ve been listening to have certainly been saying for years that it’s going to take years, if not decades, to undo the Bush damage, if it ever can be undone.
My view of an ideal end state would be a sort of isolationism where the USA isn’t projecting itself all over the world trying to influence things. If american individuals and companies want to deal in other countries then let them do it without trying to wield american diplomatic and military muscle. America should go about with the attitude that it is as dominant as Bolivia or New Zealand even if it’s economic profile is enormous. But alas, it will never happen.
I think one of the reasons it will never happen is that a giant defense/foreign engagement apparatus already exists. The temptation, when an international issue comes up, is to try to tweak things if you can. As we saw with Bush “i’ve got this giant military capability so i’m going to use it.”
We should spend the next 20 years gradually disengaging.
OCSteve, the unicorn is a mythical beast.
Would you settle for a pony?
My view of an ideal end state would be a sort of isolationism where the USA isn’t projecting itself all over the world trying to influence things. If american individuals and companies want to deal in other countries then let them do it without trying to wield american diplomatic and military muscle. America should go about with the attitude that it is as dominant as Bolivia or New Zealand even if it’s economic profile is enormous. But alas, it will never happen.
I think one of the reasons it will never happen is that a giant defense/foreign engagement apparatus already exists. The temptation, when an international issue comes up, is to try to tweak things if you can. As we saw with Bush “i’ve got this giant military capability so i’m going to use it.”
We should spend the next 20 years gradually disengaging.
sorry for the double post.
Many Americans really seem to have difficulty comprehending that the outside world does not actually want to put US interests ahead of the interests of their own country, or regard the welfare and comfort of Americans as more important than their own welfare…
Just as a healthy reminder that Americans are not the first to exhibit these oh so human tendencies, only the most recent, check out Britannus in Caesar and Cleopatra, the Elderly Gentleman in Back to Methuselah, and any number of other characters George Bernard Shaw used to poke fun at the self-regarding citizens of the empire on which the world never set.
Would you settle for a pony?
Sold! I know when to cut my losses.
Besides, I can’t play anymore tonight. I have an early business trip in the morning so I have to shut down this laptop to vacuum dinner out of the keyboard. (OK, a few dinners.)
Here you go.
[sorry, I can’t get it to skip the commercial, just ignore the first 30 seconds. Or, click “Making Fiends” in the upper right, then scroll down to the last episode. Enjoy.]
on which the world never set
So much for typing comments when half-asleep.
world -> sun
on which the world never set
So much for typing comments when half-asleep.
world -> sun
OCSteve, the only people, and I truly mean only people, saying the things you alleded to were right wing hacks stating that that was what the left was saying. (Even though the left wasn’t saying those things, nor was Obama.)
There may have been a couple people who actually viewed Obama as “the One” but they were few and far between.
dave – Absolutely. and it’s distressingly easy to go from “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” to “America should do something!”, (although I’m more concerned my Australia pulls its weight than whatever you lot are up to).
The term “isolationism” gives me twitches, though. America seems to swing between extremes in foreign policy. It’d be nice if the US remained involved without trying/having to carry everything. New Zealand is quite active and engaged internationally, in fact. Perhaps they would be a good model.
OCSteve: As a country we were in fact promised that Barack Obama will, by virtue of his election and tenure as President, eradicate anti-Americanism.
We were promised nothing of the kind, and particularly not by the Obama campaign itself (“overselling himself”).
This kind of overstatement, particularly on the subject of Obama, has become a recurring feature of your comments lately. Buyer’s remorse before the car’s even hit the road? Trying to regain right-wing cred? What?
Having read further in the comments, I see OCSteve won’t be responding soon. Have a good trip, guy.
So I’m chalking up the recent tendency to hyperbole to anxiety produced by unknown quantities of foodstuffs lurking beneath the keyboard…
I don’t understand. If Obama’s election has ended racism, why can’t he end anti-Americanism too?
More on ending racism, Mike.
OCSteve (when you get back): Personally, I don’t want to defend the idea that just by electing Obama, we have made everyone everywhere love us. I don’t recall anyone saying that, but if they did, I disagree.
That said, I do think that above and beyond the fact that he’ll have much smarter policies than Bush, the mere fact of his election will make a difference. (Make a difference — not solve all problems at a single stroke.) I base this not just on reading stuff, but on my discussions with people in Pakistan. They were interested in US politics, and so would ask me about it. Best I can remember, no one to whom I said that I thought Obama would win the nomination, and then later that he’d win the Presidency, was anything other than startled and inclined to disbelief. ‘Inclined’ since they were all not just polite, but prepared to grant my views on this topic some deference, since we were talking about US politics, and I’m from the US and they aren’t. But that and politeness seemed to be the only things standing between many of them and incredulity.
Because, of course, a black man couldn’t win. Not here. Not against Hillary Clinton — there, the fix had to be in. Not in general. Not with our history.
Bear in mind that in Pakistan, if there were some analog of blacks, they wouldn’t win. And if some analog of Hillary had been running, the fix would have been in. They weren’t being anti-American; they were extrapolating from experience. To the extent that views specific to the US came in at all, they had, I think, mostly to do with a sense that every single nice story they had ever been told about us had, over the past eight years (and before), been exposed as a total lie. We want democracy, except not, um, in Pakistan: there we support military dictators. We want toleration, but not of Islam. We are supposed to be beneficent, but look at Iraq. Etc.
And here I was, telling them (implicitly) that at least one of those nice stories, the one that said that an African-American could actually be President, that that wasn’t some totally fictional legal possibility, but something that might, you know, happen — that that story was true. They were surprised. I suspect that a few of them thought I was being naive.
I haven’t been back since the election. But I suspect it will have made a difference in the way they see the US. Again: a difference, not a wholesale transformation. But that was never going to happen, and I think that expecting it is like thinking, when you’re a kid, that apologizing really does make everything all better, when in fact it’s just the first step.
// above and beyond the fact that he’ll have much smarter policies than Bush//
The fact. It’s a fact already, not just an opinion?
Yes, it’s a fact.
This has been another in our series of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.
The question is just, how far he will pursue them in reality. But I am extremly confident that whatever he does he will do smarter than Dubya.
One of the underlying problems is the ineradicable human need for a big, fat metanarrative. Obviously this doesn’t only apply to how people view the US and how the US views itself, but currently that’s the most obvious manifestation of it.
If we could only try to let go of such insipid narratives and instead focus on the actual actions instead, and how these correspond or are in contradiction to our ethical intuitions and frameworks, much would be gained already.
“As a country we were in fact promised that Barack Obama will, by virtue of his election and tenure as President, eradicate anti-Americanism.”
Could we have a cite on that, please?
Me, I know many people talked about his election lessening anti-Americanism, and I think that’s clearly been the case.
But I’d like to cite for your claim, Steve, or I’m inclined to consider it pure straw. A cite from someone authoritatively speaking for the campaign would clear this up, though. Thanks!
“Am I to gather from the first several comments that the opinion is the right tends more to absolutism than the left?”
Whose opinion are you asking about?
I’ll point out for the bazillionth time that I, for one, am unaware of a homogenous view on most any issue by “the right” or “the left,” and I rarely understand why people think writing in such absolutist generalities is of any usefulness in other than generating heat, rather than light.
Or maybe I just keep missing the memos.
“We, America, absolutely were promised day in and day out”
Passive voice: who made the promise? When and where? Cite, please.
“‘When he raises his hand on inauguration day, at that very moment we will lift the spirits of our nation and begin to restore America’s standing in the world,'”
Where’s the untruth in that? It’s not remotely support for this claim of yours: “As a country we were in fact promised that Barack Obama will, by virtue of his election and tenure as President, eradicate anti-Americanism.”
“I think one of the reasons it will never happen is that a giant defense/foreign engagement apparatus already exists.”
A guy named “Ike” spoke to this a while back.
John: OCSteve, the only people, and I truly mean only people, saying the things you alleded to were right wing hacks stating that that was what the left was saying. (Even though the left wasn’t saying those things, nor was Obama.)
Nell: We were promised nothing of the kind, and particularly not by the Obama campaign itself (“overselling himself”).
Hilzoy: I don’t recall anyone saying that, but if they did, I disagree.
Gary: Cite, please
I truly feel like we lived through different elections.
Google “obama messiah”: 2.83 million hits. I’m not going to check all (almost) 3 million links, but I doubt they are all right wing hacks. OK, maybe 2.8 million are right wing hacks mocking Obama supporters… But again, there was something there to mock.
From his own mouth…
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
Qualified again with “began” and “if”, but come on. If… then: he is “absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment”… Just winning the primary was enough to put the world back on the right track.
The halo pictures? The magazine covers? Women swooning at his campaign stops? A proposed national holiday just because he won?
You don’t think that Obama supporters may have oversold just a tiny bit?
Qualified again with “began” and “if”, but come on. If… then: he is “absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment”… Just winning the primary was enough to put the world back on the right track.
I think that’s a pretty ungenerous reading of those words. It’s clearly written in a fairly lyrical mode, so it looks pretty weird if you take it too literally, but the meaning is clear if you don’t. In general, Obama’s speeches certainly didn’t soft sell the amount of hard work it was all going to take…
The halo pictures? The magazine covers? Women swooning at his campaign stops? A proposed national holiday just because he won?
You don’t think that Obama supporters may have oversold just a tiny bit?
I don’t really see any problem with any of the links. I mean, dramatic photos on magazine covers? Inconceivable! And the “messiah blog” looks to be simultaneously ironic and admiring. I doubt they or anyone else actually think he has magic powers…
People were enthusiastic, no question. Some may even have whipped themselves up enough that they’re bound to be disappointed.
But I doubt even the most starry eyed ever viewed the outcome as anything but finally having someone to really fight on their side. That’s very different from thinking that everything would be instantly better – there’s still a fight ahead.
You’ll notice any current disappointment from those quarters is really about how hard Obama might actually be planning to fight on certain issues, NOT bafflement that the sick aren’t all magically cured now, or that our enemies aren’t simply laying down their arms.
So you’re still a long way away from justifying your claim that we were promised “all would be sweetness and light as soon as he was sworn in,” or that “Barack Obama will, by virtue of his election and tenure as President, eradicate anti-Americanism.” (My emphasis.)
Really? You think anyone significant used “messiah” other than as a way of mocking Obama? (No, Louis Farrakhan is not a member of the campaign or a spokesman for the Democratic Party — or sane, for that matter.)
“I’m not going to check all (almost) 3 million links, but I doubt they are all right wing hacks.”
Well, I don’t. I’ve never seen anyone call Obama the “messiah,” or anything like that, except for crazy right wingers. So if you could please support your claim that “As a country we were in fact promised that Barack Obama will, by virtue of his election and tenure as President, eradicate anti-Americanism” by citing anyone remotely connected to the campaign who said this, that would be very nice. Heck, just find, say, 3 prominent Democrats who said it. Shouldn’t be hard, should it?
“Qualified again with ‘began’ and ‘if’, but come on.”
This isn’t anything like your claim. You made a very specific claim, which I’ve just quoted again; if you’d like to instead withdraw it as an over-statement, that’s fine. That might really be your best course of action, if that’s not too bold of me to suggest.
Digressively, on your unrelated quote, “Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it” are inspirational words; dismissing them from the rest of your quote completely changes the meaning of the statement; there’s nothing whatever wrong with an inspirational statement such as I’ve just quoted: those are all things we should do. We should all fight to began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless, etc.
Just winning the primary was enough to put the world back on the right track.
No. It was the moment when the long fight to put the world back on the right track began through much hard work and dedication.
His words actually undermine your point. He nowhere states that his winning alone will be sufficient, but rather that his winning will be sufficient to begin the process if people continue to work hard, fight and believe.