Obama's Speech -- But on the other had ......

"Platitudes and naivete" [Andy McCarthy]

That's Robert Spencer's read on the president's Cairo speech at Jihad Watch — and he grounds it in lots of analysis.


Obama Abandons Democracy [Michael Rubin]

Obama studiously avoids the word democracy. Instead, he declared, "That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people." Dictators of the world, relax: Stage a spontaneous demonstration to demonstrate popular adulation; don't worry about those pesky votes.

Obama's Lexicon [Michael Rubin]

So Obama studiously avoids the word terrorism.
Madeleine Albright erased rogue regimes; they became states of concern.
More recently, we abandoned the global war on terrorism; it became overseas contingency operations.
Alas, if we change the term, the world does not become a better place. Diplomats may want to change the lexicon, but the problem is not the words, it is the phenomenon.

Jarring to Hear [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
POTUS refer to an "occupation" when talking about the lives of Palestinians.

Of Obama and Strawmen [Michael Rubin]

America is not and has never been at war with Islam. So says Barack Obama. Indeed. Bush never said we were at war with Islam. As Bush stated on September 20, 2001 before a Joint Session of Congress:

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.

The only ones who said we were at war with Islam were some irresponsible politicians and pundits, engaged in a strawman argument for domestic political reasons, completely oblivious to the cost of misrepresenting the president in terms of prestige, blood, and treasure.

Dueling Legacies [Michael Rubin]

Again, watching CNN, a few times the panelists juxtaposed Obama's standing ovation with the shoe thrown at Bush in Baghdad (forgetting to mention, the journalist was a Baathist and not representative of Iraqis let alone Arabs).

So let's juxtapose the legacy: Obama gave a rousing speech and got a standing ovation, but abandonned key U.S. principles and moral clarity. Bush gave a so-so speech but liberated 50 million people. Who should history favor?

The Good and Bad in Obama's Cairo Address [Marc Thiessen]

Let’s give President Obama credit for the good things he said in Cairo. He declared he would “relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security . . . . And it is my first duty as president to protect the American people.” He took on the conspiracy theories about 9/11, declaring “these are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.” And he pointed out that al-Qaeda has “killed people of different faiths — more than any other, they have killed Muslims.” All these are important points.But much of the rest of what the president said was damaging, wrong, and at times simply shameful.
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Obama's Speech [Rich Lowry]

I have to go back and read it carefully, so I reserve the right to extend and revise my remarks. But on the whole I thought it was pretty good and I basically agree with Max Boot's take here. Yes, there were many things about which to cavil, there were missed opportunities, and he betrayed the disturbing weakness of his policy in certain key areas, Iran foremost among them. But the speech was an act of diplomacy and as such, it inevitably was going to skate over some inconvenient truths and tilt its presentation in a way to try to make it more persuasive to its target audience. Fundamentally, Obama's goal was to tell the Muslim world, "We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don't hate us and murder us in return." Bush tried to deliver the same message over and over again. The difference with Obama is that people might actually be willing to listen.


Flashback [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

President George W. Bush, Dec. 2008, to NR:

You can get short-term popularity if you want to in the Middle East by blaming all problems on Israel. That'll make you popular. …It would have made me wrong, however. And ultimately, you earn people's respect by articulating a set of principles and standing by them. You know, popularity comes and goes…but principles are enduring.

Obama and Israel [Aron Raskas]

President Obama went to Cairo University today to pay homage to Muslim “history” and “tradition,” and to stake his support for a Palestinian state. In his zeal to appease his Muslim audience, he deftly disregarded, and thus disparaged, the deeply rooted Jewish legacy in the Holy Land. There is no nation with firmer roots in a land than the Jewish people in the greater land of Israel. Obama-administration officials would undoubtedly recoil in disdain were any Israeli official to refer to the West Bank as the territories of “Judea” and “Samaria,” dismissing that as propaganda invented by extremist “settlers” for political ends. Yet, those names, reflecting the Jewish roots in the land, long predated any Palestinian Arab presence. Maps, photographs, travel guides, and other books have throughout history described these territories by those time-honored names. Indeed, the Obama faithful might be disturbed to know, even United Nations resolutions — including, notably, the 1947 Partition resolution — utilized those terms.
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Re: The Good and Bad . . . [Rich Lowry]

I agree with Marc on a few of his points, but not on others. I too didn't like the passage he cites on Iran (although the nuclear passage was much worse). The "on the other hand" after the Holocaust discussion was very unfortunate, although I don't think it means that Obama believes there's moral equivalence between the plight of the Palestinians and the Nazi murder of the Jews. On the Hamas reference, Marc leaves out the second half: "Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist." I think the democracy language was pretty good all things considered, and Obama can't be expected to seriously pressure the Egyptians on human rights when even Bush didn't do it and democracy promotion was at the center of Bush's foreign policy. On Iraq, yes, Obama was stinting, but he opposed the war, so I don't know how much you can reasonably expect him to praise it. And on interrogation and Gitmo, Obama's polices are either partly (interrogation) or wholly (Gitmo) acts of international PR, so it would be bizarre not to mention them in such a speech.

I don't want to make exalted claims for the speech. It was a mixed bag and there are limits to the effect any one speech can have. But I think some in the conservative blogosphere are pronouncing it a scandal because they leave out all the good things. Consider: He extolled America as "one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known"; pledged we will "relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our country"; condemned Holocaust denial as "baseless, ignorant, and hateful"; said "it is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus"; insisted that "the Arab-Israel conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems"; and called for more democracy, religious freedom, and women's rights in the Muslim world. And he got a standing ovation.

That should count for something. My standard is not whether Obama gave a speech I'd totally agree with (not going to happen), or whether it was strictly accurate as a matter of history of Koranic exegesis (irrelevant), but whether the speech will, on balance, help isolate Islamic extremists intellectually and politically, or not. Since I think it will, I consider it a success.

The End of America’s Strategic Alliance with Israel? [Caroline Glick]

From an Israeli perspective, Pres. Barack Obama’s speech today in Cairo was deeply disturbing. Both rhetorically and programmatically, Obama’s speech was a renunciation of America’s strategic alliance with Israel.Rhetorically, Obama’s sugar coated the pathologies of the Islamic world — from the tyranny that characterizes its regimes, to the misogyny, xenophobia, Jew hatred, and general intolerance that characterizes its societies. In so doing he made clear that his idea of pressing the restart button with the Islamic world involves erasing the moral distinctions between the Islamic world and the free world.In contrast, Obama’s perverse characterization of Israel — of the sources of its legitimacy and of its behavior — made clear that he shares the Arab world’s view that there is something basically illegitimate about the Jewish state.
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