Posted by Tina
After the president’s speech today I thought it was time to break out a support ribbon for America. This man seems hell bent on making our country the root of all evil in the world. It’s not that he didn’t have a lot of good things to say…it’s the way he chooses to frame his words that bothers me. While attempting to list the mistakes of all sides he always manages to excuse others at the expense of his own country.
Well if nothing else the speech inspired a lot of conversation today. I figure we might as well join in the fun. Here are a few excerpts and quotes to get us started:
** Whatever the eventual impact of President Obama’s address at Cairo University yesterday, no other American leader could have so artfully blended his personal story with his country’s power and the Middle East’s tragedy. *** The harshest question of all, however, is for the Middle East itself: does this region have the capacity for rational dialogue? Has fundamentalist Islam so corrupted the Muslim world that large numbers will never…shake off their prejudices towards the West? – Telegraph (UK) **
Obama’s Age of Moral Equivalence,” by Jonathan Tobin
** Speaking of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he (Obama) says: “If we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth.” *** But there is more than one type of blindness. The search for the truth is not merely an exercise in which all grievances are considered the same. To assert the truth of the Holocaust is appropriate — if unfortunately necessary when addressing an Arab audience — as is calling on the Palestinians to “abandon violence” and to cease “shooting rockets at sleeping children” or blowing up old women on buses. *** But the problem with this conflict is not that both sides won’t listen to each other or give peace a chance. That might have been a good point to make prior to the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993 when Israel recognized the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations and began the process of handing over large portions of the area reserved by the League of Nations for the creation of a Jewish National Home for the creation of a Palestinian equivalent. But Israel offered these same Palestinians a state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza as well as part of Jerusalem in 2000 and again in negotiations conducted by the government of Ehud Olmert just last year. So, the problem is not that the Israelis don’t want the two state solution that Obama endorsed in Cairo. Rather, it is, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in Washington only a week ago, that the Palestinians aren’t interested in negotiating with Israel. **
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DUBAI – Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden told Muslims to prepare for a long war against “infidels and their agents.” “We either live under the light of Islam or we die with dignity … *** …he accused U.S. President Barack Obama of planting the seeds of hatred towards the United States among Muslims. – Reuters
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“Muslim Lawmakers Praise Obamas Speech GOP Critical” by Molly K. Hooper and J. Taylor Rushing
** Cantor, the only Jewish House Republican, said Obama placed too great an emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian effort to resolve their differences, instead of focusing more on the trouble that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the Middle East. “What we’ve got to do when the president returns is to again make sure that it is not the Palestinian-Israeli dispute [that] comes first and then we deal with Iran … instead, it is the other way around,” Cantor told The Hill. *** The two Muslim House members, Democrats Andre Carson (Ind.) and Keith Ellison (Minn.), lauded Obama. “I was happy that he was firm on them recognizing Israel’s right to exist — Israel has an absolute right to exist; we have to protect their right; but we also have to work toward a two-state solution,” Carson told The Hill. * Ellison also thought the president’s remarks were spot-on. He echoed Carson’s remarks that Obama was firm with both the Israelis and Palestinians. The Minnesota Democrat also appreciated Obama’s indirect reference to him. “I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s story,” Obama said. “When the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Quran that one of our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson — kept in his personal library.” **
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“The Not So Golden Mean,” by Peter Wehner
** Among the problems with Obama’s speech is that in order to make his narrative fit, he must manipulate history, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, sometimes by what he omits and sometimes by what he states. Let’s take things in order. *** In his discussion of the West and the Muslim world, President Obama fails to mention how, in the past two decades, the United States has shed blood and treasure in Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq — all Muslim-dominated countries — in an effort to aid tens of millions of people who were threatened by or living under ruthless dictatorships. The impulse to help these countries was not in every instance simply humanitarian; but in every instance humanitarianism was a factor, and in some instances it was the dominant one. Today, more than 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq are liberated from two of the most sadistic regimes we have ever witnessed. It might be nice for President Obama — and frankly those in the Arab world — to say that, even just once. *** Nor does Obama mention other efforts to help Muslims — for example, the extraordinary humanitarian efforts by Americans to aid Indonesia in the aftermath of the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. *** In addition, Obama’s account of the resentment that exists, and in some instances dominates, the Islamic world today is shallow and misleading. For example, he does not connect the political and economic repression in the Arab world to the rise of jihadism. Arab intellectuals themselves have recognized these failures, calling on Arab governments to address the “freedom gap” and push for internal reform, greater politics participation, and economic openness. And to imply that the West has been a key accelerator when it comes to radical Islam is simply wrong. I realize Obama has no obligation to devote a speech to problems plaguing the Arab and Islamic worlds; but he does have an obligation to provide a fair account of things if he chooses to raise the topic. **
** 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. ** Corner, National Review
(All bold emphasis mine)