Things right and wrong with Obama's speech in Cairo

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The Good and Bad in Obama's Cairo Address [Marc Thiessen]Good things: few; bad things: many....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.”...took on the conspiracy theories about 9/11, declaring “these are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.” ...he pointed out that al-Qaeda has “killed people of different faiths — more than any other, they have killed Muslims.”...much of the rest of what the president said was damaging, wrong, and at times simply shameful.
His speech was rife with moral equivalence. The Iranian Revolution was bad, but so was the U.S. overthrow of Mossadeq in 1953. The Holocaust was bad, but “on the other hand” so is the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The events are not comparable.
Also little noticed was the fact that Obama announced a major shift in U.S. policy in the Holy Land. In 2002, President Bush declared in his Rose Garden address that America would only engage “Palestinian leaders not compromised by terror.” In Cairo today, Obama reversed this policy, declaring that Hamas has “to play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people.” This is naïve and dangerous.
Obama’s talk about democracy was all platitudes, and no specifics — as if he had to check a box so they he would not be criticized for ignoring the subject. But he made no mention of freedom or democracy in Egypt...no call for greater openness in the country where he was speaking...no mention of democracy in discussing Afghanistan. He made no mention of democracy in discussing Iraq. He made no mention of the advance of freedom in the Middle East ...or any commitment to continue it....he said Iraq was a “war of choice” but then said a moment later that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein. Well, was it a good choice then? He even invoked Thomas Jefferson to make his point that diplomacy is preferable to war — I didn’t know Jefferson opposed the war in Iraq.****ALSO, Jefferson initiated and won a war against the Barbary pirates.****...said he is committed to helping Iraqis stand on their own. But he failed to mention that they have that opportunity because of the blood spilled by American troops who sacrificed to give them their freedom. He failed to mention that from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Kuwait, over the past two decades our military has done more to free Muslims from oppression than any power in history. In fact, there was not one word of praise for our troops and what they have done for the people of the Middle East in the entire address...he threw the men and women of our military and our intelligence community under the bus when he declared, in front of a Muslim audience, that the attacks of 9/11 “led us to act contrary to our ideals.” On foreign soil, he accused our intelligence professionals who stopped the next 9/11 of committing torture — validating years of al-Qaeda propaganda....If he was going to discuss these topics in the Middle East, he at least owed it to our troops and intelligence professionals to say what dozens of investigations have proven: that there was no systematic abuse of detainees at GTMO or anywhere else. Instead, Obama echoed al-Qaeda’s calumnies against them — and did so in a foreign land. This is unprecedented. It is shameful. And they deserve better.///////http://tinyurl.com/r6nzlt
Rich Lowry: Cairo speech a success
... story of his rise highlighted the openness of American society; his personal connection to Islam set him up as a powerful spokesman to a part of the world that bedevils and threatens us; and as a decisive break from the hated George W. Bush, he represented a fresh start when the world yearned for one....in his flawed, but still worthy, Cairo address. Consider these extraordinary facts: In a rapturously received speech in the heart of the Arab world, Obama 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-Israeli 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....For most Americans, they are commonplaces, and Bush must have said them dozens of times. But for the Muslim world, they constitute hard truths. When they are coming from Obama, there's a chance that the key target audience...will consider them more seriously than before.
...Obama did his share of pandering, ...left the impression that it was a departure for an American president to declare Islam a religion of peace, even though Bush did it repeatedly. He ignored America's military actions ...to alleviate Muslim suffering. He shaded history to suit his purposes, ripping John Adams out of context to make the 18th-century president's grappling with the Barbary pirates sound like an inspiring act of multicultural understanding....Shockingly, he at times defined the extremes as his own country and its enemies. On the one hand, America played a role in the overthrow of an Iranian government in the 1950s; on the other, the Iranian government has killed Americans for decades. So we're all to blame -- can't we just get along?...rhetorical Rorschach tests. When Obama exhorted Palestinians to heed the example of peaceful protesters around the world, was it a lyrical yet pointed condemnation of decades-long Palestinian terrorism? Or was the comparison of their plight to that of blacks in segregationist America and in apartheid-era South Africa a profoundly delegitimizing slap at Israel? Obama was at his worst on Iran. The Arabs fear both the Iranian weapons program and American weakness in confronting it. Standing in an Arab capital, Obama still couldn't bring himself to declare forthrightly that Iran must abandon its program. Instead, he reiterated his call for a world without nuclear weapons that puts U.S. -- and Israeli -- nukes on the same moral plane as Iran's prospective weapon....Obama puts too much (faith) in the power of interconnectedness, "our common humanity." The traditional Arab expression of interconnectedness isn't so warm and fuzzy, but has shown enduring appeal: "Me against my brother; me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother and my cousin against the world."...whether it worked as public diplomacy. On balance, will it make the intellectual and political isolation of Islamic extremists more or less likely?..