Obama's Cairo Speech

Now that it's been four days we can take a look at President Obama's speech to the Muslim world with a bit of distance from some of the partisan and sound bite hoopla. If you read the entire speech one thing that jumps out at you is his willingness to deal directly with a multiplicity of very thorny issues. You can read the entire text in the New York Times here. Because of his background he can talk to foreign Muslims in a way and with a credibility no previous American leader could.

It's clear the president was trying to accomplish several objectives in the address. The first was to drive a wedge between most Muslims and violent extremists. The second was to identify the United States with Muslim aspirations. The third was to sketch the outlines of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. He touched on other issues too--democracy, women's rights, economic development, Iran's nuclear program, pernicious stereotypes--showing that in the international arena, as at home, he doesn't shy from going after big issues in all their complexity. In doing all this, Obama gave the Islamic world a number of assurances or promises by which they can measure him in the months and years ahead.

"So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace." Obama opened with a call for Muslims to reject the message of brutality espoused by "violent extremists." He refers to them as a "small but potent minority" and frequently quoted the Koran to try to place most of his listeners outside their circle. Churchill once said, "If you desire a quality in a person, impute it to him." Obama followed this maxim extensively, as in saying, "Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality." Good Muslims, he says, do not behave like these extremists, killing innocent people. To consider the import of his saying such things, can you imagine any other U.S. President being given a hearing to tell good Muslims how they were expected to behave? Such is the international opportunity of having Barack Obama as the American leader.

Obama's second main point was to win friends for the United States. He made a definitive statement: "America is not--and never will be--at war with Islam." He went back into history to cite Morocco as the first nation to recognize the United States and quoted John Adams as desiring friendly relations with Muslim countries. He made sure to mention the seven million American Muslims and said there were 1,200 mosques in the United States. Obama said, "I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. But that same principle must also apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known....We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: out of many, one."

In his section on Israeli-Palestinian peace, Obama was perhaps tougher on Israel than any previous American president. He emphasized the U.S. special relationship with Israel, saying, "America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based on cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied." Yet he also emphasized, "It is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland." He strongly called for a two-state settlement, with separate and sovereign Jewish and Palestinian states existing side by side. "I intend personally to pursue this outcome," he said. "Palestinians must abandon violence," and "recognize Israel's right to exist", but also, "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements...It is time for these settlements to stop." Obama signals he may lean on Israel harder than it is used to from American leadership.

The president spoke strongly for American values and confronting murderous extremists, but also built trust by admitting some mistakes and offering promises. Unlike U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, which he justified on grounds of self defense, he referred to Iraq as a "war of choice" where he promised to withdraw U.S. combat forces from the cities by July, from the entire country in 2010, and "to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012." In both countries, he assured, "we pursue no bases and no claim on their territory or resources." He stated, "I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year."

So with a combination of words, deeds, and promises open to evaluation, the new American president began his task of repairing America's image in the Muslim world, extricating the country safely from its military involvements in the region and taking his shot at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Like most everything else Barack Obama does, it is a straightforward effort to tackle seemingly intractable problems head on, giving due to the importance of factors that have made things so hard but pointing to a shared interest in putting the past in the past in order to make a better future.

After 60 years of frustration in the Middle East I don't think anyone is making rosy predictions of imminent breakthroughs, but the way Obama is approaching things is unquestionably the right way to go. The U.S. and the region will be better off for this speech and the new American stance, and just maybe we will begin to see some real progress. Inspiring a little hope is, after all, one of this president's strong suits.