Obama, heroes, and goats

November 9, 2010

"Of course, democracy is messy. Not everyone likes the results of every election. You go through ups and downs."   President Obama, in remarks at the University of Indonesia today

          Obama left Jakarta this afternoon after a highly anticipated whirlwind visit to his former home of four years. Much to the chagrin of Indonesians, he had cancelled two previous visits, the first to focus on getting the health care bill passed, and the second because there was suddenly an extraordinarily large uncontrolled oil leak filling up the Gulf of Mexico. These seem, from an American perspective, perhaps legitimate reasons for cancelling, but Indonesians were nonetheless offended (health care? As my grandmother used to say, “Oh, plap.”)  There was some discussion that Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yuhoyono, known here as SBY (fondly, I should add, unlike those who use BHO in America) didn’t attend the ASEAN summit in New York last month because he was offended by the dual slight. So by the time Obama showed up here, enthusiasm was slightly decreased, and they were disappointed the visit was so brief. (And one, of course, a very conservative Muslim, disappointed that in shaking hands with Michelle Obama he made physical contact with a woman not related to him.)

            The Jakarta Post, a very strange English language newspaper here, has been packed with Obama stories for the last two weeks. Will this improve relations? (Maybe.) Will he visit his old school? (No.) Does he like India better than Indonesia? (Consensus: yes, because India can do more to contain China.) Will he remember how to speak Indonesian? (Sedikit, a little, at least the food he ate at the banquet last night – but he was wearing a headset, presumably for translation. One can forgive this, given that he was 10 when he left and probably not fluent in diplomatic vocabulary.) Why isn’t he bringing his daughters? (I don’t know.) Will he be chastened after his electoral setback? (Who knows?) Will he come back soon? (Probably not.) Will he say nice things about Muslims? (Yes.) Will the American right wing go into deep apoplexis because he visited the largest mosque in Indonesia. (I’ll let you field that one.)   Here less than 24 hours, Obama did seem, in his remarks today at the University of Indonesia, to be pensive and nostalgic about his time here.

            He spent some time in the speech recounting Indonesia’s truly extraordinary history over the last several decades since he left, a period that has seen Indonesia come out of a brutal and tight-fisted dictatorship into a clumsy democracy, that has seen it recovering from a terrible economic crisis in the 90s. He nicely left out the part about how amazingly corrupt the government remains – stories of the bribes, and murders, and favor-currying of politicians are 2-3 pages of the Jakarta Post every day.

            Today is “Heroes Day” in Indonesia, not celebrated with time off from school or anything like that, but acknowledged anyway. (Maybe it’s not a national holiday because there is another one, next week, feast of the sacrifice, celebrating the wonderful loyalty in Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son as commanded by god. We can expect, apparently, a lot of dead goats.) It commemorates a battle in the East Java city of Surabaya, in 1945, against the British (who found themselves, after World War II was over, for 13 unfortunate months trying to “help” Indonesia transition out of 3 ½ years of misery under the Japanese and back into 350 years of misery under the Dutch.) This was the first fight against foreign occupiers after the August 17, 1945 Declaration of Indonesian Independence. Obama praised Indonesia’s history, comparing the staggering ethnic and religious diversity here to that in the United States, commenting on the similarity of e pluribus unum to Indonesia’s national slogan, bhinneka tunggal ika, unity through diversity. It’s the thing Indonesians seem most proud of, and most troubled by too – in that we share another commonality.

            I wasn’t invited to any of the events, though I waited expectantly for the gilded invitation. I did get invited to a special Thanksgiving Day dinner at the American Consulate in Surabaya for all the Senior Scholars, but then found out that only I, and none of my family, was invited, in the true spirit of Thanksgiving. I was ready to go just for a glass of wine, which is extremely hard to come by here, and then absurdly expensive and not very good when you do come by it. Ah well.  I’ll just stay home and sacrifice a goat next week instead, in lieu of putting one of my kids on chopping block. Happy Heroes’ Day.

            Obama’s gone now, flying onto wherever. There was no terrorist attack against the “Great Infidel,” as called for during his visit by the Imam in prison for the Bali bombings, and everyone seemed to have dug the speech, at least as reported so far. Perhaps under Obama Indonesia will become more than a blip on America’s radar, all it was for me until a few months ago.