Barry Rubin weighs in on The Speech. Unfortunately, I don't think Obama was lying in his flattery to the Muslim world (neither does Rubin). He really is that ignorant. Key summation:
"This isn’t how the Middle East works. If you say you’re to blame, it tells the other side that its cause is right and it is entitled to everything it wants. If you apologize, you’re weak."
SPEAKING FLATTERY TO POWER
By Barry Rubin
Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo is one of the most bizarre orations ever made by a U.S. president, not a foreign policy statement but rather something invented by Obama, an international campaign speech, as if his main goal was to obtain votes in the next Egyptian presidential primary.
That approach defined Obama’s basic themes: Islam’s great. America is good. We’re sorry. Be moderate (not that you haven’t always been that way. Let’s be friends.
Obama followed a simple rule that does work in social situations: if you want someone to like you agree with almost everything they say. He gave, albeit with some minor variations, the speech that the leader of a Third World Muslim country might give, justifying it in advance by claiming America is a big Muslim country, after all.
Of course, the speech had tremendous—though temporary—appeal combined with its counterproductive strategic impact. It will make him more popular. It may well make America less unpopular. But whether it will have a good or bad effect on Middle East issues and U.S. interests is another matter entirely.
The best thing that one can say about Obama’s speech is that it was in the mold of President John Kennedy’s phrase, “Come, let us reason together.” To his credit, he did talk about reform, democracy, and equal rights for women.
But if Obama, as it appears, is running to be the region’s favorite non-Muslim politician, he’ll find he—not to mention America’s allies--has to give up many more things to win that dubious honor.
A lot of the damage will come because Obama chose not to make the same points in a balanced way: you’ve made mistakes; we’ve made mistakes. You’ve done things to us; we’ve done things to you. And having established that I respect you, let me tell you how Americans feel and what’s needed.
But that’s not how he chose to do it. So afraid was Obama of giving offense—and thus not fulfilling his popularity-at-all –costs mission—he did the political equivalent of scoring an own-goal. President Bill Clinton said, “I feel your pain.” In effect, Obama declared, “We’re your pain.”
The first problem is that Obama said many things factually quite untrue, some ridiculously so. Pages would be required to list all these inaccuracies. The interesting question is whether Obama consciously lied or really believes it. I’d prefer him to be lying, because if he’s that ignorant then America and the world is in very deep trouble.
If he really believes Islam’s social role is so perfect, radical Islamists are a tiny minority, Palestinians have suffered hugely through no fault of their own, and so on, then he’s living in a fantasy world. Unfortunately, we are not. The collision between reality and dream is going to be a terrible one.
The second problem is the speech’s unnecessarily extreme one-sidedness. Obama portrays the West as the guilty party. Despite a reference to September 11—even that presented as an American misdeed, unfair dislike of Islam resulting—he gave not a single example of Islamist or Muslim responsibility for anything wrong in the world. Israel’s only grievance is that of past persecution of Jews by Europeans, not 60 years of rejectionism and terrorism, now augmented by daily antisemitism from such institutions as al-Azhar university, which sponsored the talk.
When he cited examples of oppression, he listed only Bosnia (where he didn’t even mention the U.S. role in helping Muslims), along with Israel, and also the Muslim on Muslim violence in Darfur. He didn’t mention terrorist attacks and mistreatment or terrorist violence by Muslims against non-Muslims in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Sudan, the Gaza Strip, against Israel, Europe or even within Egypt itself.
So if Muslims are always the innocent victims, isn't Usama bin Ladin and others correct in saying that all the violence and terrorism to date has been just a "defensive Jihad?" Why should anything change simply because Obama has "admitted" this and asked to start over again?
This is a hallmark of the kind of thinking dominating much contemporary Western thought where high levels of self-criticism, apology, and unilateral concessions really can lead to the other side forgiving and compromising.
This isn’t how the Middle East works. If you say you’re to blame, it tells the other side that its cause is right and it is entitled to everything it wants. If you apologize, you’re weak. Sure, some relatively Westernized urban liberals will take what Obama said that way, I doubt whether radical states and political forces, as well as the masses in the street, will do so.
The main ingredient in the Obama speech was flattery. But since most Middle Eastern Muslims believe their religion is superior and their society is better, they will lap up the praise and run with it. There is an intense irony here. Obama brags about his roots in the Third World and Islam—playing word games to get around the fact that at one time he lived the life of a Muslim himself—he seems startlingly naïve about how those societies work. Perhaps it is the very over-confidence arising from his presumed familiarity that leads him into that error.
There is a bumper sticker that says: Don’t apologize. Your friends don’t need to hear it and your enemies don’t care.
Obama’s situation is a bit different and might be described as: Don’t grovel. It scares the hell out of your friends and convinces your enemies you owe them big time.
As a result, mainstream radicals and anti-Americans saying, “You see, we were right all the time. Obama admitted it!” While the even more extreme radicals say, “You see, we’ve won and America’s surrendering.”
Third, Obama undermined the existing states. Does he have any idea of the damage he did, accepting the Islamist argument that Muslim identity is what’s important and loyalty to a state is outdated?
True, it was quite positive that Obama did talk about the need for reform and democracy. Yet the speech suggests to listeners is: democracy plus Islam equals solution. If Islam is so perfect and has such a great record—except for a tiny minority of extremists—why shouldn’t it rule? And since the extremists are presumably al-Qaida, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarians in the audience must have found a lot to applaud. How do you think all this plays with the rulers Obama wants as allies?
Finally, Obama played into the stereotype that Israel is the central political issue in the region. Others, of course, are happy to find the usual scapegoat. An Associated Press story was headlined, “Obama’s Islam Success Depends on Israel.” That’s right, folks, the entire “Muslim World” is just waiting for Israel to stop building a few thousand apartment units a year before deciding that America is great, reform is needed, and moderation wise.
While Obama’s phrases were carefully crafted, Middle Eastern ears don’t hear them the same way as Washington policymakers intend. The hope is that Washington will just force Israel to give them what they want without them having to do much. When it doesn’t, anger will set in, intensified by the fact that the president “said” the Palestinians are in the right and should have a state right away.
Everything concerning Israel’s specific needs and demands--an end to incitement, security for Israel, end of terrorism, resettlement of refugees in Palestine—weren’t there. While Israel was specifically said to violate previous agreements on the construction within settlements issue—an assertion that’s flat-out wrong—there was no hint that the Palestinians had done so.
I can’t shake the image of Obama as the new kid in school, just moved into the neighborhood, fearful of bullies, who says anything to ingratiate himself and is ready to turn over his lunch money.
There’s a famous line in “Citizen Kane” where one characters says that it’s very easy to make a lot of money….If all you want to do is make a lot of money. It’s also easy to make a lot of popularity, if that’s all one wants to do.
An American president has to do more, a lot more.
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