Obama’s message: I have a dream for Islam

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

On Thursday Barack Obama will address the Muslim world from Cairo University. And no one quite knows what he is going to say.

There is speculation, of course. Last week the Arab press was a-twitter over Obama’s last-minute decision to visit Saudi Arabia en route to Egypt. Was this a swipe at Egypt? Did it signal an endorsement of the Arab peace initiative? Or was it the usual American brown-nosing of the royal autocrats who have all that oil?

Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, fuelled the chatter by insisting on the freezing of West Bank settlements.

...

The Israeli press, meanwhile, has seemed close to panic. David Horovitz, editor of The Jerusalem Post, argued that “in the briefing rooms of the American Israel public affairs committee conference [in Washington], as in the corridors of power back home in Israel, the contours were discernible not merely of a crack . . . but of a veritable abyss between Israel and America – a rupture that goes far beyond rhetorical gaps and conflicting emphases”.

...

This conflict will not, one senses, be the point of Obama’s speech. What he wants is a new foundation for America’s relationship with the Muslim world.

...

I suspect his speech will be less liberal than Bush’s famous address on the need for democracy in the Arab world, which he saw as the cure for Islamism. What Obama brings, that neither of the Bushes could, is his middle name, his skin colour and his biography. His father was an African who lived under imperial rule and Obama spent part of his childhood in a Muslim country – Indonesia – and has Muslim relatives.

...

The speech will be a historic paean to Islam and to Muslim culture. He will appeal to Muslim pride; simply by showing up he will demonstrate that he is trying to defuse and unwind the misunderstandings and enmities that riddle the region.

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Obama will be emphatically positive, knowing that a defence of Islam by an American president in Cairo is the one clear statement he can make that will resonate widely.

So here we have the usual Obama paradox: a mass emotional appeal joined to a cool, governing realism. He is trying to do in international affairs what he has done domestically: appeal to the masses in order to apply subtle pressure and leverage on the elites.

If he can make the region’s leaders less able to wield antiAmericanism to cover up their own errors, and if he can shift even to a minor degree the suspicion that young Muslim men feel towards the West, then he could undermine the appeal of Islamism. He could weaken the environment in which terror gathers speed. And he could also make it easier for some Arab autocracies to stay in America’s good graces and cooperate in its fight against terrorism.

Obama will surely fail in the short run. If there is any region that manages to buoy the cynic, it is the Middle East. But he is a patient man and patient in his radicalism. He is attempting to get the forces in that region to respond to him and, by responding to him, to show their cards.

Then, having laid the groundwork on a mass and elite level, he will deal with the problems methodically and sometimes ruthlessly.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/c...icle6395032.ece

[justashooter 430]

yeah, right.

[Ban Hammer 13,345]

On Thursday Barack Obama will address the Muslim world from Cairo University. And no one quite knows what he is going to say.

There is speculation, of course. Last week the Arab press was a-twitter over Obama’s last-minute decision to visit Saudi Arabia en route to Egypt. Was this a swipe at Egypt? Did it signal an endorsement of the Arab peace initiative? Or was it the usual American brown-nosing of the royal autocrats who have all that oil?

or just maybe, obama wants to go bow before his master some more.

[alienlovechild 75]

If he can make the region’s leaders less able to wield antiAmericanism to cover up their own errors, and if he can shift even to a minor degree the suspicion that young Muslim men feel towards the West, then he could undermine the appeal of Islamism. He could weaken the environment in which terror gathers speed. And he could also make it easier for some Arab autocracies to stay in America’s good graces and cooperate in its fight against terrorism.

Finally some acknowledgement that the region's rulers are responsible for their nations and use the blame America as an excuse to channel hate and deflect their own mismanagement. It's also a fact that nations cooperate with the U.S. and even Israel behind the scenes to combat threats to their own governments.

[jundp 191]

I wonder if Olivia will go hear him speak?!

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Whatever he says or does, everybody's gonna love him coz that's the kinda guy he is.

[~PalmTreeGurl~ 154]

I thought they were going to clean up the streets in Cairo so they all can get ready to throw shoes at him