Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 17:55:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Gilbert Lawrence <[email protected]>
President Obama's speech in Cairo. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-cairo-speech-video_n_211210.html Mario adds: In my opinion Obama had good intentions but this was mostly wasted by Obama's obsequious and appeasing attitude and seething, subliminal hostility towards much of what has made America great on behalf of itself and the rest of the world. I predict the radical Muslims will read this as a sign of weakness and be emboldened. We have already seen this from Iran and N. Korea in recent months, who have enhanced their nuclear ambitions now that Bush has retired. For example, Obama never mentioned terror, terrorists or terrorism, even once, but insisted that some members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist group, be invited to his speech. Then, he keeps building a straw man and calling it torture, whereas the physician assisted enhanced interrogations conducted on captured terrorists did not come anywhere close to what real torture means to most people, while saving tens of thousands of innocent lives. The alleged "torture victims" are all hale and hearty and getting fat and sassy at US taxpayer expense while they live in luxury - for them - in a tropical resort while plotting how to kill more Americans. The speech also missed an opportunity to emphasize all the time, treasure and lives that America has voluntarily expended to help and defend tens of millions of innocent Muslims around the world from Christian and Muslim tyrants as well as Mother Nature. For example, in Bosnia and Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, Indonesia after the tsunami and even Iran after their earthquakes. To me, the most offensive parts of Obama's speech were the false moral equivalence he makes a) between Israel and the Palestinians, and b) on women's rights when he says, "Now let me be clear: issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world." How anyone, especially an American president, can compare the hostility of the radical Palestinians for 62 years and their objective of eliminating Israel with the defensive posture the Israelis have been forced to assume, or the cultural brutality against and repression of women in most of the Islamic world with "women's equality...in many aspects of American life" is simply shocking. One of the most influential columnists in America, Charles Krauthammer, calls Obama's speech in Cairo "Abstract, vapid and self-absorbed" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM1QigkSH8E
