This points out the flaws in the Obama / Hillary "policy" / worldview ...
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33855_Krauthammer-_Obamas_Settlements_Canard
Krauthammer: Obama's Settlements Canard
Opinion Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 10:06:35 am PDT
Charles Krauthammer’s column today is about Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, and his call for Israel to cease settlement growth: Barack Obama’s Israeli Settlements Canard.
This first paragraph is the truly important point, and it’s the reality that most diplomats and politicians are constitutionally unable to acknowledge:
In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders built no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, none of the fundamental state institutions that would relieve their people’s suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.
Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.
Blaming Israel and picking a fight over “natural growth” may curry favor with the Muslim “street.” But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.
My only difference with Krauthammer is that these myths are not unique to Barack Obama; the Bush administration said the same things about settlements, and so has every US president for the past 20 years.
It’s a phenomenon that psychologists call “displacement” — the real problem (Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist) is so difficult and unworkable that blame is displaced to an easier target (the settlements).
But the fact is that even if the settlements were to vanish completely, the underlying problem of rejectionism would remain. There can never be any real progress toward peace until the US and the world overcomes this obsessive denial of reality.
-----------------------
I disagree w/ Charles Johnson of LGF in that Obama and Hillary have gone much farther in their criticism of Israeli settlements. Bush admin, and even Bubba Clinton, recognized Israel would incorporate major settlement blocs around Jerusalem in any final settlement.
Fact is, the problem remains Palestinian hatred and racism, not "occupation and humiliation". The Palestinians brought the majority of their problems on themselves.
Diplomacy of Wishful ThinkingObama in Cairo.
By Mona Charen
In Cairo, President Obama told (was it for the 100th time?) the story of his African father and American mother. This story has worked well for him in the American context, and he seems to believe that it will beguile the rest of the world as well. We shall see whether this experiment with autobiography as foreign policy has purchase.
But while some of his appeal to Muslims for common ground was certainly benign, there were aspects of the speech that may create more problems than they solve.
Obama has signaled to the Arab world that his administration is willing to pressure Israel about settlements in the West Bank. Asked before his Middle East trip about relations with Israel, President Obama told National Public Radio, “Part of being a good friend is being honest. And I think there have been times where we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory, in the region is profoundly negative . . . ” (Whenever someone starts a sentence by advising that “good friends tell each other the truth,” duck.) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spelled out the president’s policy bluntly: “He wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions.”
President Obama presumably wants Israel to uproot the 300,000 Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank to make way for a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. This is the “solution” to the Palestinian question that has been endorsed, formally and informally, by the last three presidents and most of the foreign ministries in the world. It has even been endorsed by many Israelis, including former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, who offered 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza to Yasser Arafat.
The idea of handing over the West Bank to the Palestinians has lost favor in Israel after Gaza was evacuated (at considerable pain) in 2005, because the area became a launching pad for missiles aimed at the Israeli heartland. But President Obama has a solution to that. It’s nothing much — just the wholesale reversal of Palestinian political culture.
“Palestinians must abandon violence,” the president instructed. “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. . . . Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people.”
Is that all? If Mahmoud Abbas were like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Palestinians were like African Americans at Selma and Birmingham, things would be very different. In fact, if the Palestinians were not wedded to terrorism and violence; did not celebrate as heroes and martyrs those who blow themselves up in shopping malls and restaurants; were not beset with corruption, steeped in anti-Semitism, and drunk on maximal claims, there would be no conflict. Israel would have long since given up huge portions of the West Bank, as it gave all of Sinai back to the Egyptians.
And then there is the small matter of Hamas. One of Hamas’s leaders proclaimed as recently as January that his organization “will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity.” Hamas’s charter is explicit that “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” The charter also looks forward to the day when “The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Hamas controls Gaza, and, were it not for the presence of the Israel Defense Forces, would control the West Bank as well.
President Obama, who seems to live in a realm where wishing makes it so, waved his magic wand in Hamas’s direction too. “Hamas does have support among some Palestinians,” he said, “but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”Good luck with that. In the meantime, Palestinian hopes for American pressure on Israel have been ignited — with what conflagrations to come we do not yet know.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Sotomayor updates ......
Sotomayor’s Public Cheerleading for Obama [Ed Whelan]
In a speech that she delivered to the Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American Law Alumni Assocation on April 17, 2009—two weeks before news of the Souter vacancy broke—Judge Sotomayor made a number of references to President Obama that seem surprisingly and disturbingly partisan coming from a sitting federal judge:
“The power of working together was, this past November, resoundingly proven.” (p. 6)
“The wide coalition of groups that joined forces to elect America’s first Afro-American President was awe inspiring in both the passion the members of the coalition exhibited in their efforts and the discipline they showed in the execution of their goals.” (p. 7)
“On November 4, we saw past our ethnic, religious and gender differences.” (p. 10)
“What is our challenge today: Our challenge as lawyers and court related professionals and staff, as citizens of the world is to keep the spirit of the common joy we shared on November 4 alive in our everyday existence.” (p. 11)
“It is the message of service that President Obama is trying to trumpet and it is a clarion call we are obligated to heed.” (p. 13)
Canon 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides that a judge “should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Sotomayor’s public cheerleading for Obama seems clearly to violate that ethical obligation.
Sotomayor’s “Affirmative Action Plan for Puerto Rico” [Ed Whelan]
The apparent answer to history professor K. C. Johnson’s question (see “Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court”) about “when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence”: By the time she was in law school and was instead advocating what law professor Roger Alford (on the Opinio Juris blog) calls an “affirmative action plan for Puerto Rico” statehood. Excerpts from Alford’s post about Sotomayor’s law-review piece:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s student note in the 1979 Yale Law Journal is a piece of work. It makes an extravagant case for Puerto Rican statehood based on terms of accession that are more favorable to Puerto Rico than any other state in the Union. Her proposal is a sort of affirmative action plan for what she describes as a “small, economically poor dependency” acquired as a result of the “American experience with colonialism.”
While her legal arguments are complex, her economic and political conclusions are simple: Puerto Rico should become a state and accede to the Union in a manner that grants her ownership rights over the offshore oil, gas and mineral deposits within a two-hundred mile radius of Puerto Rico. It should do so despite the fact that no other state enjoys similar rights and despite over two centuries of federal practice that provide for states to enter the Union “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.” …
In short, in proposing preferential treatment for Puerto Rican statehood, Sotomayor manages to provide justifiable grounds to (1) upset environmentalists; (2) upset those sensitive to the equality of states; (3) upset those opposed to affirmative action and preferential treatment; and (4) upset those who do not take kindly to assertions that the United States is a colonial power. I would think almost every United States Senator falls into at least one of those four categories.
In a speech that she delivered to the Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American Law Alumni Assocation on April 17, 2009—two weeks before news of the Souter vacancy broke—Judge Sotomayor made a number of references to President Obama that seem surprisingly and disturbingly partisan coming from a sitting federal judge:
“The power of working together was, this past November, resoundingly proven.” (p. 6)
“The wide coalition of groups that joined forces to elect America’s first Afro-American President was awe inspiring in both the passion the members of the coalition exhibited in their efforts and the discipline they showed in the execution of their goals.” (p. 7)
“On November 4, we saw past our ethnic, religious and gender differences.” (p. 10)
“What is our challenge today: Our challenge as lawyers and court related professionals and staff, as citizens of the world is to keep the spirit of the common joy we shared on November 4 alive in our everyday existence.” (p. 11)
“It is the message of service that President Obama is trying to trumpet and it is a clarion call we are obligated to heed.” (p. 13)
Canon 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides that a judge “should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Sotomayor’s public cheerleading for Obama seems clearly to violate that ethical obligation.
Sotomayor’s “Affirmative Action Plan for Puerto Rico” [Ed Whelan]
The apparent answer to history professor K. C. Johnson’s question (see “Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court”) about “when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence”: By the time she was in law school and was instead advocating what law professor Roger Alford (on the Opinio Juris blog) calls an “affirmative action plan for Puerto Rico” statehood. Excerpts from Alford’s post about Sotomayor’s law-review piece:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s student note in the 1979 Yale Law Journal is a piece of work. It makes an extravagant case for Puerto Rican statehood based on terms of accession that are more favorable to Puerto Rico than any other state in the Union. Her proposal is a sort of affirmative action plan for what she describes as a “small, economically poor dependency” acquired as a result of the “American experience with colonialism.”
While her legal arguments are complex, her economic and political conclusions are simple: Puerto Rico should become a state and accede to the Union in a manner that grants her ownership rights over the offshore oil, gas and mineral deposits within a two-hundred mile radius of Puerto Rico. It should do so despite the fact that no other state enjoys similar rights and despite over two centuries of federal practice that provide for states to enter the Union “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.” …
In short, in proposing preferential treatment for Puerto Rican statehood, Sotomayor manages to provide justifiable grounds to (1) upset environmentalists; (2) upset those sensitive to the equality of states; (3) upset those opposed to affirmative action and preferential treatment; and (4) upset those who do not take kindly to assertions that the United States is a colonial power. I would think almost every United States Senator falls into at least one of those four categories.
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.
Keep reading this post . .
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.
Keep reading this post . . .
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.
Keep reading this post . . .
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.
Keep reading this post . .
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.
Keep reading this post . . .
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.
Keep reading this post . . .
Obama's Speech -- not bad; it could have been worse ....
I did not watch and have not read it, but have read some excerpts and news reports.
I am surprisingly pleased with his comments re: 9/11 and anti-semitism .... like I said above, it could have been worse ....
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33847_Obamas_Speech_to_the_Islamic_World
Obama's Speech to the Islamic World
World Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:17:19 am PDT
Andrew Malcolm has posted the full text of Barack Obama’s speech this morning: What Barack Hussein Obama told Muslims in Egypt.
I was struck by this quote, a straightforward rebuke of the conspiracy theories that are so prevalent in the Arab world (especially in Egypt):
The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America’s goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
And this part, in a country that is rife with Holocaust denial:
Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
Overall, this was a pretty good speech, with the usual boilerplate statements of support for a two-state solution in the Middle East, but also a clear acknowledgment of the Palestinian culture of violence:
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
Read the whole thing. It’s doubtful that this one speech is going to lead to a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” but it’s certainly going to give the Muslim world a lot to talk about. It will be interesting to watch their reactions.
UPDATE at 6/4/09 9:29:19 am:
I agree with Max Boot’s summation:
Not bad. It could have been better. But it also could have been a lot worse.
UPDATE at 6/4/09 9:35:17 am:
One of my biggest criticisms is the very weak statement Obama made about women’s rights; I think this is one of the most critical issues the Islamic world needs to address in order to effect real change, but Obama spent only three paragraphs on it, and didn’t say much other than to note that women need the right to education:
I know there is debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.
There’s much more to the overwhelming misogyny of the Islamic world than simply a lack of education, and this is a much larger problem than Obama’s speech seems to recognize.
I am surprisingly pleased with his comments re: 9/11 and anti-semitism .... like I said above, it could have been worse ....
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33847_Obamas_Speech_to_the_Islamic_World
Obama's Speech to the Islamic World
World Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 9:17:19 am PDT
Andrew Malcolm has posted the full text of Barack Obama’s speech this morning: What Barack Hussein Obama told Muslims in Egypt.
I was struck by this quote, a straightforward rebuke of the conspiracy theories that are so prevalent in the Arab world (especially in Egypt):
The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America’s goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
And this part, in a country that is rife with Holocaust denial:
Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
Overall, this was a pretty good speech, with the usual boilerplate statements of support for a two-state solution in the Middle East, but also a clear acknowledgment of the Palestinian culture of violence:
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
Read the whole thing. It’s doubtful that this one speech is going to lead to a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” but it’s certainly going to give the Muslim world a lot to talk about. It will be interesting to watch their reactions.
UPDATE at 6/4/09 9:29:19 am:
I agree with Max Boot’s summation:
Not bad. It could have been better. But it also could have been a lot worse.
UPDATE at 6/4/09 9:35:17 am:
One of my biggest criticisms is the very weak statement Obama made about women’s rights; I think this is one of the most critical issues the Islamic world needs to address in order to effect real change, but Obama spent only three paragraphs on it, and didn’t say much other than to note that women need the right to education:
I know there is debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.
There’s much more to the overwhelming misogyny of the Islamic world than simply a lack of education, and this is a much larger problem than Obama’s speech seems to recognize.
Obama "Suck Up" Tour in full swing
What should one make of the stark contrast with how Obama treats America's allies - such as the British; and especially the Israeli's; versus how he is dealing with our "friends" the Saudis.
From today's newspaper:
"I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began to seek his Majesty's counsel ..."
BHO was struck by Abdullah's "wisdom and his graciousness".
"I consider the king's friendship a great blessing ...".
Surely, America's friends and allies are watching this lovefest and shaking their heads.
And surely, the Israeli's are seething. The contrast of how dismissive Obama has been so far with the Israeli leadership is truly disturbing.
From today's newspaper:
"I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began to seek his Majesty's counsel ..."
BHO was struck by Abdullah's "wisdom and his graciousness".
"I consider the king's friendship a great blessing ...".
Surely, America's friends and allies are watching this lovefest and shaking their heads.
And surely, the Israeli's are seething. The contrast of how dismissive Obama has been so far with the Israeli leadership is truly disturbing.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Obama's Speech to "Muslim World"
I thought this piece made some good points:
Asia Times: Obama’s speech to the “Muslim world” will merely help the Islamic extremists [Tom Gross]
An editorial column in yesterday’s Asia Times warns President Barack Obama that his much hyped “address to the Muslim world” to be delivered at Cairo University tomorrow will do more harm than good.
The writer argues that since there is no such thing as a “Muslim world” – any more than there is some kind of unified “Christian world” – Obama is merely helping to boost the Muslim extremist position by pretending there is. And by choosing Cairo for such an “address to the Muslim world,” Obama is compounding his mistake, the writer explains.
(Above: A Palestinian shopkeeper sells lots of Obama mugs yesterday in “impoverished” Gaza City)
Below I have pulled out some extracts from this lengthy piece:
Why should the president of the United States address the “Muslim world,” as Barack Obama will do in Egypt this Thursday? What would happen if the leader of a big country addressed the “Christian world”? Half the world would giggle and the other half would sulk.
There is no such thing as a Christian world, of course; there hasn’t been since the Great Schism of 1054, even less so since the Reformation. Europe’s nations agreed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to subordinate the confessional to political sovereignty.
America, the new model of a nation, kept church separate from state. To utter the words “Christian world” would persuade the Muslim world that a foul conspiracy was afoot, perhaps a new Crusade…What does it mean to address the “Muslim world”? As a matter of practice, the Muslim world is just as fractured as the Christian world, even more so in the absence of any religious authority like the Catholic Church, which claims doctrinal authority over a billion people…To speak to the “Muslim world” is to speak not to a fact, but rather to an aspiration, and that is the aspiration that Islam shall be a global state religion as its founders intended. To address this aspiration is to breathe life into it…
Obama, the White House press office told reporters last week, will address among other issues the Arab-Israeli issue. What does it imply to raise this issue in a speech to the “Muslim world”? Nearly 700 million of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, countries which share no linguistic or cultural affinities with the Arabs, and have only religion in common. They have no strategic interest whatever in the outcome of war or peace in the Levant. Their only possible interest is religious. Does the United States really believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is religious in origin? …
It is quite possible for the state of Israel to live in peace with nation-states whose population is mainly Muslim, to be sure. Israel has done so since 1975 with Egypt and Jordan, and has until recently maintained excellent relations with Turkey. Until the Ruhollah Khomeini revolution of 1979, Israel was an ally and arms supplier of Iran. As a matter of national interest, many Muslim-majority countries may seek peaceful and even friendly relations with the Jewish state, irrespective of what the dictates of Islamic theology might be. Rather than addressing nations with national interest, though, Obama is addressing Muslims, over the heads as it were of majority-Muslim nation states.
Even though the Koran mentions Jerusalem not once (against 832 times in the Hebrew Bible and 161 times in the New Testament), later Muslim tradition makes Jerusalem a Muslim holy place. No Muslim religious authority in Asia or Africa can or will rule that Islam can tolerate a Jewish state in Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem. There are a few Muslim voices in Europe and the US favorably disposed to co-existence with the Jewish state, but they are whispers against the roar of an ocean…
By addressing the “Islamic world” from Cairo, Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and on religious terms – in contradistinction to nationalists such as Mubarak. Rather than buttress a loyal ally, Obama’s speech undermines him on his home ground. That is a lose-lose proposition…
For more comment on Obama’s “Speech to the Muslim world,” please see here.
Asia Times: Obama’s speech to the “Muslim world” will merely help the Islamic extremists [Tom Gross]
An editorial column in yesterday’s Asia Times warns President Barack Obama that his much hyped “address to the Muslim world” to be delivered at Cairo University tomorrow will do more harm than good.
The writer argues that since there is no such thing as a “Muslim world” – any more than there is some kind of unified “Christian world” – Obama is merely helping to boost the Muslim extremist position by pretending there is. And by choosing Cairo for such an “address to the Muslim world,” Obama is compounding his mistake, the writer explains.
(Above: A Palestinian shopkeeper sells lots of Obama mugs yesterday in “impoverished” Gaza City)
Below I have pulled out some extracts from this lengthy piece:
Why should the president of the United States address the “Muslim world,” as Barack Obama will do in Egypt this Thursday? What would happen if the leader of a big country addressed the “Christian world”? Half the world would giggle and the other half would sulk.
There is no such thing as a Christian world, of course; there hasn’t been since the Great Schism of 1054, even less so since the Reformation. Europe’s nations agreed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to subordinate the confessional to political sovereignty.
America, the new model of a nation, kept church separate from state. To utter the words “Christian world” would persuade the Muslim world that a foul conspiracy was afoot, perhaps a new Crusade…What does it mean to address the “Muslim world”? As a matter of practice, the Muslim world is just as fractured as the Christian world, even more so in the absence of any religious authority like the Catholic Church, which claims doctrinal authority over a billion people…To speak to the “Muslim world” is to speak not to a fact, but rather to an aspiration, and that is the aspiration that Islam shall be a global state religion as its founders intended. To address this aspiration is to breathe life into it…
Obama, the White House press office told reporters last week, will address among other issues the Arab-Israeli issue. What does it imply to raise this issue in a speech to the “Muslim world”? Nearly 700 million of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, countries which share no linguistic or cultural affinities with the Arabs, and have only religion in common. They have no strategic interest whatever in the outcome of war or peace in the Levant. Their only possible interest is religious. Does the United States really believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is religious in origin? …
It is quite possible for the state of Israel to live in peace with nation-states whose population is mainly Muslim, to be sure. Israel has done so since 1975 with Egypt and Jordan, and has until recently maintained excellent relations with Turkey. Until the Ruhollah Khomeini revolution of 1979, Israel was an ally and arms supplier of Iran. As a matter of national interest, many Muslim-majority countries may seek peaceful and even friendly relations with the Jewish state, irrespective of what the dictates of Islamic theology might be. Rather than addressing nations with national interest, though, Obama is addressing Muslims, over the heads as it were of majority-Muslim nation states.
Even though the Koran mentions Jerusalem not once (against 832 times in the Hebrew Bible and 161 times in the New Testament), later Muslim tradition makes Jerusalem a Muslim holy place. No Muslim religious authority in Asia or Africa can or will rule that Islam can tolerate a Jewish state in Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem. There are a few Muslim voices in Europe and the US favorably disposed to co-existence with the Jewish state, but they are whispers against the roar of an ocean…
By addressing the “Islamic world” from Cairo, Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and on religious terms – in contradistinction to nationalists such as Mubarak. Rather than buttress a loyal ally, Obama’s speech undermines him on his home ground. That is a lose-lose proposition…
For more comment on Obama’s “Speech to the Muslim world,” please see here.
Sotomayor -- Puerto Rican Nationalist ?
Now I like Puerto Rico (great weather, hotels) and Puerto Ricans, but if this stuff is true, it seems disqualifying ..... then again, we do have Hillary and Holder, those pardoners of P.R. terrorists.....
Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court [Ed Whelan]
On National Journal’s new “Ninth Justice” blog, Stuart Taylor passes along history professor K. C. Johnson’s very favorable assessment of Sonia Sotomayor’s senior thesis at Princeton, as well as the “few jarring elements” that Johnson finds, including:
First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence — as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position. . . .
Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre — in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.
We've Waived the Right to Press Sotomayor on Being a Puerto Rican Separatist Who Couldn't Bring Herself to Say "United States"? [Andy McCarthy]
Besides Ed's important post below, his separate Bench Memos post is a must read. In it, he notes what is likely to become the Left's mantra on this: namely, that if Sonia Sotomayor's meanderings on Puerto Rican separatism — and her allusion to "North American Congress" and "mainland Congress" because she couldn't bring herself to utter "United States" — were such a big deal, why did Republicans fail to object when she was nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997?
This "waiver" argument is laughable. Judge Bork, of course, was defeated as a Supreme Court nominee after breezing to confirmation for the D.C. Circuit. I'd also note the following:
Justice Alito: confirmed by only 58-42 for the Supreme Court after being unanimously in 1990 for the 3rd Circuit.
Chief Justice Roberts: confirmed by 78-22 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 2003 on a voice vote.
Justice Thomas: confirmed by only 52-48 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 1989 on a voice vote.
The failure to raise issues in lower court confirmation hearings has never been a bar to raising them for the far more consequential seats on the Supreme Court.
Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court [Ed Whelan]
On National Journal’s new “Ninth Justice” blog, Stuart Taylor passes along history professor K. C. Johnson’s very favorable assessment of Sonia Sotomayor’s senior thesis at Princeton, as well as the “few jarring elements” that Johnson finds, including:
First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence — as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position. . . .
Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre — in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.
We've Waived the Right to Press Sotomayor on Being a Puerto Rican Separatist Who Couldn't Bring Herself to Say "United States"? [Andy McCarthy]
Besides Ed's important post below, his separate Bench Memos post is a must read. In it, he notes what is likely to become the Left's mantra on this: namely, that if Sonia Sotomayor's meanderings on Puerto Rican separatism — and her allusion to "North American Congress" and "mainland Congress" because she couldn't bring herself to utter "United States" — were such a big deal, why did Republicans fail to object when she was nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997?
This "waiver" argument is laughable. Judge Bork, of course, was defeated as a Supreme Court nominee after breezing to confirmation for the D.C. Circuit. I'd also note the following:
Justice Alito: confirmed by only 58-42 for the Supreme Court after being unanimously in 1990 for the 3rd Circuit.
Chief Justice Roberts: confirmed by 78-22 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 2003 on a voice vote.
Justice Thomas: confirmed by only 52-48 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 1989 on a voice vote.
The failure to raise issues in lower court confirmation hearings has never been a bar to raising them for the far more consequential seats on the Supreme Court.
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