Obama's genius is to say what we all know

Obama's genius is to say what we all know
The American president’s Cairo speech is the obvious blueprint for peace in the Middle East region


Obama visiting the Sphinx last week. His message to the Muslim world was one of respect and realism

Andrew Sullivan



It is sometimes easy to forget the sheer bizarreness of what happened in Cairo and Riyadh last week. Then the White House transcript of an international press interview brings it home. An Indonesian journalist, after asking why the president didn’t make his speech in that vast Muslim south Asian country, followed up with this:



How many previous American presidents addressing the masses in the developing world have been able to say that? The last presidents to break through in this global fashion — Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy — represented American glamour and style and otherness. Barack Obama does, too — but he combines it with a unique developing-world biography. It’s this tension that many of us believed was a huge asset for the West in defusing the clash of civilisations with Islam.

It’s that biography that made a speech that echoed some of George W Bush’s themes reach a critical mass of credibility. But in many respects this was not a speech, as traditionally understood. It was an intervention.

The Middle East is addicted to its past; Obama spoke of the need to move into the future. The Middle East is fixated on conflict and identity; Obama emphasised quotidian common interests. The Middle East loves quibbles; Obama landed slap-bang in the middle of most of them and refused to budge. And driving all of it was a critical question of tone — a measured, careful and stern message of respect and realism.

The obvious critique that this was just a set of words seems to me to miss the point. An intervention begins with words because it requires the actions of others. You don’t get an addict to go into recovery by cuffing him and throwing him into an ambulance. You talk to him and his family and speak calmly about what everyone in the room knows to be true but no one will face. So, for me, the core sentence of the speech was obvious: “It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.”

more...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6446495.ece

:patriot:

all.

is actually stating the patently obvious.

and then taking credit.

for instance, "the sun will rise in the east."

is actually stating the patently obvious.

and then taking credit.

for instance, "the sun will rise in the east."

is that it seems to be accepted that words can bring about and be responsible for the actions of others.

I hope this is noted by all those who claim that O'Reilly and Christian preachers do not bear a great deal of responsibility for Dr. Tiller's assassination.

"Yes, see, when I was there it was all dirt, so when the rains came it would all be mud. And all the cars would get stuck."

That's living conditions most Americans have to stretch our brains to even understand.

"There are a lot of constantly shifting balls in play — the Iranian electorate, the Syrian elite, the US Congress, the Iraqi military, the Israeli governing coalition. Each one could derail everything on its own. Yet this young president presses forward with the kind of self-confidence and assurance not seen in the region in decades. He knows, I sense, that even if he fails, the message of Cairo will endure in the minds of many young Muslims for much of their lives. Mere words? So were Reagan’s and Kennedy's.

Perhaps the fruit of those words — of that respect and engagement — won’t be felt for another generation or so. That merely underlines why they matter and how vast Obama’s ambition truly is."

I remember the growing horror at FR as they began to figure out Obama was for real: "He's the anti-Reagan!" He certainly has Reagan's confidence and ambition.

it to Andrew Sullivan to get to the heart of the matter. I think he had a Cosmic intervention of his own at one point.

<more snips from your article>> Which is facinating..

When you see how many delicate balancing acts are required to pull the grand bargain off in the region, scepticism is entirely justified. But I don’t believe Obama is naive about the difficulty of the task. He knows that unless a real attempt is made to avert peacefully a catastrophic nuclear arms race in the region, to save the Israelis and Palestinians from themselves and to reconstitute the image of America in the psyches of a vast young generation of Muslims, we face a darkness that could spread very fast globally and engulf us all.

There are a lot of constantly shifting balls in play — the Iranian electorate, the Syrian elite, the US Congress, the Iraqi military, the Israeli governing coalition. Each one could derail everything on its own. Yet this young president presses forward with the kind of self-confidence and assurance not seen in the region in decades. He knows, I sense, that even if he fails, the message of Cairo will endure in the minds of many young Muslims for much of their lives. Mere words? So were Reagan’s and Kennedy's."

I love this pic of Prez Obama and The Sphinx.

unfortunately the cutting down of the forrests in Indonesia is causing tremendous problems with mud and mud slides, sometimes wiping uot entire villages.