President Barack Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East where he gave a speech in Cairo, Egypt was a triumph in his attempt to change the opinions of over 1.2 billion Muslims about the character of the United States.
President Barack Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East where he gave a speech in Cairo, Egypt was a triumph in his attempt to change the opinions of over 1.2 billion Muslims about the character of the United States. It was a bold and audacious attempt that was conceived to place America, probably for the first time in the eyes of Muslims, as an honest broker for peace and not so Israeli-centric that negotiations were over before they began.
I agree with Chris Matthews of MSNBC this time, who said that the people we have to worry about that will create terrorism against the United States are now youths, many of whom are aggrieved at the killing and maiming of their parents, the destruction of their homes by Israel or the United States and their lack of life options. But there is also the potential for a massive well of cooperation with the United States from other youths, based on the power of American popular culture, the pull of higher education and the engine of economic growth. Which young Muslim will determine the nature of future alliances between the U.S. and the Middle East?
Barack Obama went to Cairo to answer this question by saying in effect that the U.S. must hold out its hand in peace, and if the fist of Muslims is unclenched, there is a chance. But he also had to admit, like Bill Clinton did on his trip to Africa as President, that the U.S. had not always been on the right side of history. Then, as now, right wing radicals have called the President an apologist. In fact, here we have a president who has captured the attention of the entire Islamic world, whose speech has been translated into 12 languages and who is roundly accepted on the Muslim street as a positive force. But we find the reluctance to accept this triumph of public diplomacy in his own country.
In the U.S., many media analysts, instead of acknowledging a historic feat, have derided his receipt of a medal by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (I have never seen pictures of medals given to American presidents before); he has been criticized by not using the word “terrorism” in his speech; some said the speech did not have one new policy proposal; and he has even been called an “apostate” (someone was a Muslim but who has backslid). Most of this has come from neocons, like Daniel Pipes who during the campaign tried to say that Obama is still a Muslim, or Edward Luttwak who authored the “apostate” charge in an op-ed piece in the New York Times. Why would the Times publish such a piece in the first place?
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