The Speech Obama Should Give in Cairo

[Warrior-Mentor]

June 2, 2009
Spencer: The Speech Obama Should Give in Cairo
In The American Thinker today I offer the President a speech:

As Barack Obama prepares to give his long-anticipated major address to the Islamic world from Cairo, as a public service I here offer the speech he should give:

Dear friends,

I have said that in this speech I would offer my personal commitment to engagement with the Islamic world, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. Establishing peace between the forces of the global jihad and America and her ally Israel is something that I would very much love to do. The first thing I must acknowledge, however, is that much as I would love to see this peace dawning over the world, it is not within my power to achieve this.

That may surprise many of you. You have grown accustomed to thinking that the tensions between Muslims and the United States - tensions that boiled over on September 11, 2001 and on the occasions of many other acts of jihad terrorism as well - are entirely the fault of the United States. Americans have been told that we are hated because of our support for Israel, and because of our attempts to bring freedom and stability to the overwhelmingly Muslim people of Iraq and Afghanistan. We are hated because we have spent American treasure to try to secure a better life for Muslims the world over, spending billions of dollars in aid for Egypt, Pakistan, and other Muslim countries.

I must speak honestly with you. It puzzles and pains Americans to see ourselves vilified and hated for trying to help others. Now, unlike the Islamic Republic of Iran and other Islamic entities, we seek no apologies, no restitution. We do not ask for a word of thanks for our numerous attempts to help Muslim societies become safe, prosperous places to live for all their citizens. We do not ask for your approval. But at this point we are going to cease efforts to build bridges of understanding with the Islamic world that have turned out to be fruitless, and even self-defeating.
We have showered billions on Pakistan to enable the Pakistani government to fight the Islamic jihadists, only to see a great deal of that money being funneled to those same jihadists, who are now stronger than ever.

We have tried to establish democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to see non-Muslim minorities treated worse than ever, such that they have been streaming out of Iraq in unprecedented numbers, while the few that remain in Afghanistan are subject to increasingly violent persecution.

We have brokered peace treaty after peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians - from Camp David to Oslo to the Road Map for Peace - only to see the Palestinian side again and again trample upon its commitments to recognize and respect Israel's basic right to exist.

I have offered you America's outstretched hand. In doing so I have followed a path blazed by my predecessors. But that gesture of conciliation has never been reciprocated. And so now, even as my good will is still extended to you, I must act more realistically.

Pakistan and other Muslim countries will not receive another penny of American aid unless and until they demonstrate - in a transparent and inspectable fashion - that they are working against, not abetting, the forces of the global jihad. This will include instituting comprehensive nationwide programs to teach against the jihad doctrine of Islamic supremacism, teaching that Muslims and non-Muslims must live together as equal citizens on an indefinite basis, without any attempts by Muslims to subjugate non-Muslims as inferiors under the rule of Islamic law.

I trust you will understand that we cannot continue to fund the cutting of our own throat.

Afghanistan and Iraq must immediately guarantee the equality of rights of women and non-Muslims, or American arms will no longer devote themselves to keeping regimes in power that do not guarantee those rights.

I will call upon Israel to make no further territorial concessions. The withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 demonstrated only that such concessions whet, rather than sate, the appetites of Islamic jihadists for more concessions. The assumption that territorial concessions will bring peace ignores not only recent history, but also the stated goal of the jihadist movements arrayed against Israel: the destruction of the Jewish state.

That state is an American ally - a more reliable one than any Islamic state has ever been. And we will do whatever is necessary to preserve and defend that ally.

Our hand is outstretched, but we are not unrealistic about the nature of the world. The animus between us is as much, if not more, the result of the doctrines of jihad and Islamic supremacism as it is a result of American policy. I am telling you today that we understand this, and will be acting accordingly. Ultimately a policy based on realism will be much better for both of us than policies based on the fantasies and half-truths that have hitherto prevailed.

Thank you, and may God bless you.


http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...ld_give_i.html

[Box]

I am sure he will work in some kind of apology for the way we treat Egyptians...

[swpa19]

I am sure he will work in some kind of apology for the way we treat Egyptians...

Billy: Not to worry, the "Boy King", will hold court with HIS middle eastern allies, and assure them that they have a muslim friend in the white house.

He will decry the state of Isreal as a passing thorn, and assure the Muslim states that he is on their side. Did he not after all invite all of them to 4th of July BBQs. Wonder if Baby Back Ribs and Pulled Pork are on the BBQ menu?

[Sigaba]

Source is here.

Al-Qaeda trying to distract from Obama speech: White House
Jun 3 01:00 PM US/Eastern

The White House said Wednesday that Al-Qaeda was trying to distract the Muslim world from President Barack Obama's "historic" outreach effort, with the release of a new Osama bin Laden tape.

It is troubling that the White House sees Al-Qaeda efforts merely as a distraction. The president browbeat his way to his party's nomination, parlayed those same practices into a change of residence, and now he and his team thinks that a tired rhetorical flourish is going to stop the wolf at the door.

[ZooKeeper]

Well, he brainwashed a lot of our citizens with a beautiful marketing plan, maybe he can brainwash the Middle East (if he is on our side of course). Or give more apologies for being American...

[Bordercop]

Check the picture:


http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

[Sigaba]

Drudge is saying that the president's speech was 6,000 words. At 250 words / page and two minutes a page, that means the guy was talking for about 48 minutes.*

Yet, according to the source for Drudge's statistic (here):

The White House said Obama's speech contained no new policy proposals on the Middle East.

Do you think those listeners who did not tune the guy out resorted to playing office bingo <<LINK>>?

__________________________________________________ __________
* FWIW, this formula is how academics calculate the length of papers they present at conferences.

[KClapp]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

Drudge is saying that the president's speech was 6,000 words.

5,848 if you cut and paste from here into MS Word. I read it. I saw nothing new or enlightening. It is a tedious read.

[greenberetTFS]

I wouldn't be surprised if he during his private meeting with them didn't give them the war plans we have to support Isreal as a gesture of good faith and trust for each other and they gave him in return a bag of "magic beans"..................... You know, I really don't like this guy! ........

GB TFS

[Pete S]

Originally Posted by KClapp

5,848 if you cut and paste from here into MS Word. I read it. I saw nothing new or enlightening. It is a tedious read.

Yeah, really repetitious and over elaborate.

All of what he was trying to convey could have been taken down to around one thousand words, or submited as a letter.

I didn't like one thing in that speach.
God help us all.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Pete S

I didn't like one thing in that speech.

While there are parts of his speech that have me banging my head against the wall, I don't agree that his comments had no value what so ever.

The president said...

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

Additionally...

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered.

Also...

I am convinced that our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons. (Applause.) Our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity -- men and women -- to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. And that is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams. (Applause.)

[frostfire]

“And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch.”

Muslim Nobel Prizes:

Literature: Najib Mahfooz (1988, Egypt);

Peace: Anwar El-Sadat (1978, Egypt), Yasser Arafat (1978, Palestine),
Shirin Ebadi (2003, Iran)

Chemistry: Ahmed Zewail (1999, Egypt)

Physics: Abdus Salam (1979, Pakistan) (actually he was a member of the Ahmadiyya sect and thus
not recognized as a Muslim in Pakistan itself!!!)

Total: 6 . And not a single American Muslim...

[Sigaba]

Frostfire--

I think it is very bad form for you to use facts to gainsay the president's flowery rhetoric.

You're going to make Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, and the folks at Moveon.org weep into their whole grain nut-flakes.