Yet other mistakes of Obama's "Muslim speech" and the Obama Doctrine

Judith Miller pre-emptively suggested that Obama not do what he did: Don’t talk about the “Muslim world.” Having grown up partly in Indonesia, President Obama of all people should know that you can no more talk about a “Muslim world” or even an “Arab world” than of “the African world” or what Asians, Christians, or women want. Yes, Islam provides the vocabulary of everyday life in many countries with Muslim majorities. And since the most recent resurgence and proliferation of extremist Islamic groups, Islam has been reshaping not only the language of politics but long-standing national traditions. Yet in 1996 as part of my initial effort to understand the militant Islamic movements — “God Has Ninety-Nine Names” — I made only one prediction: Despite Islamic militants’ use of a common Islamic jargon, imagery, and slogans, there would not be a single, unified Islamic “umma,” or community, even if Islamic radicals toppled every quasi-secular government in the region. That view has not changed. A careful politician and highly intelligent man, Obama must sense the danger in overstating the role of Islam in political and public life. ... Surely he knows that most Egyptians tend to be Egyptians first, and Muslims second, or not Muslim at all, as in the case of the country’s traumatized Coptic Christian minority....Americans, who favor the separation of church and state, should not kowtow to those who seek to define their citizens by their religion. J. Scott Carpenter, a former State Department official in the Bush administration now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also warns that the phrase plays into the “narrative of al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups that aim to unite the Muslim world in a new Caliphate under sharia (Islamic law).” Another commentator pointed out that so addressing the Muslim world, one might consider the sense of a Japanese addressing a message to "Christendom."///
http://tinyurl.com/qardhv President Obama's Cairo speech proves he's experiencing a moral muddle by Michael Goodwin, Daily News, 6/7/09
The outlines of an Obama Doctrine are taking shape. Our President's world view can be summarized as "Everybody is a little bit guilty, especially Israel." His demand in Cairo that Israel make major concessions before Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist was a pander of the rankest sort . What a difference a year and the audience make. Exactly a year before his Cairo speech, on June 4, 2008, candidate Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee he would "never force Israel to the negotiating table" or to make "concessions." He cited Iran's vow to eliminate Israel and said, "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything." In Cairo, he was vague at best and inviting at worst on the nuke issue, saying, "... No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons."... the Obama Doctrine holds that all guilt is morally equal and the solution is to split the difference and call it even. Take women's rights, where he interchangeably indicted a debate in Europe about women wearing head coverings in school and the Taliban's whipping of women for going to school.... the jarring sense he is equally offended. "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," he said. As if to show absolute even-handedness, he allowed that while some Islamic countries have had women as national leaders, "the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."...The moral muddle is a shame because the spectacle of this charismatic President on the global stage is stirring. It is always a point of pride for Americans when our President is admired abroad and there is no greater advertisement for our unrivaled openness than Obama's "Hussein" middle name and mixed-race parentage. But the Obama Doctrine subverts the outcomes he envisions and the detachment from facts is striking for a man so highly educated. Unmolested by experience, he obliterates the truth of history in his desire to assign equal blame for it. Again, Israel proves the point. He was brilliant in saying that denying the Holocaust "is baseless, it is ignorant and it is hateful." Then with a glib "On the other hand," he jumped from the 6 million Jewish dead to the lack of a Palestinian state. "For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of dislocation," he said. ****N.B. This harks back to the very establishment of Israel, not the 1967 War. This was the TWO-STATE solution, one ARAB and one JEWISH that Israel accepted and the Arab states did not. ****"Many wait in refugee camps...."But whose fault is that? Arab states refuse to absorb Palestinians (Egypt blockades Gaza, just as Israel does) and keep them caged up as a weapon against Israel. Meanwhile, Palestinian leaders fumble every chance for a state, their corruption and violence the biggest obstacles to peace and land.Obama acknowledged most of that, but minimized its impact and even suggested the Palestinian plight is akin to slavery in America and apartheid in South Africa. Shades of Jimmy Carter there....A more fitting line is "those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it."