More Opportunity Lost

HT to Bill Shaw's Pappy at Philthy-Delphia:

OBAMA CONCEDED TOO MUCH

by Eric Trager and published in the Philadelphia Inquirer June 9, 2009

President Obama's speech at Cairo University last week constituted the most direct public diplomatic outreach to the Muslim world in U.S. history. As such, Obama should have focused squarely on the one issue that Muslim publics most directly control: the widespread acceptance, if not embrace, of violent extremism.

In this respect, the president failed tremendously. To be sure, Obama spoke in no uncertain terms about the evils of violence, calling it contrary to Quranic teachings that decry the killing of innocents. But he stopped there.

In an act of clear concession to Islamists, Obama declined to call these acts by their proper, morally descriptive name: terrorism. Incredibly, that word appeared nowhere in his speech.

Moreover, when it came to addressing the specific issues that contribute to public support for terrorism in the Muslim world, the president overwhelmingly conceded to the Islamists' version of history.

First, Obama placed the blame for U.S.-Muslim tensions squarely on the West. He declared that this standoff "has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims" - an argument Islamists have used to justify their anti-Western ideology since the late 19th century.


Second, in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama drew heavily from the standard Islamist dictionary. He referred to the Palestinians' pursuit of statehood as "resistance," which will be translated in Arabic as muqawama - a politically loaded word that Islamist terrorists frequently employ to defend violence. (The M in Hamas stands for muqawama, and Hezbollah's military branch is called al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya.)

Third, Obama echoed some of the key arguments that Islamists have employed to justify violence against the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. In declaring he had "unequivocally prohibited the use of torture," Obama implicitly accused the previous administration of criminal activity, corroborating terrorist claims.

Sadly, rather than making the case for American leadership and the global fight against terrorism, Obama apologized for it. It was the kind of display that would have befitted the Dixie Chicks, not the president of the United States.


Article available on The Philadelphia Inquirer website here.