Help The Middle ClassNews and Information For The Heart Of America
Op-Ed Columnist/Maureen Dowd: A Year After Cario Speech, Obama Now Seems Ineffectual To the Muslim World (New York Times)
With two little words, Barack Hussein Obama thrilled the Muslim world.
“Salaam aleikum,” he said, offering the traditional Arabic greeting “Peace be upon you” at the start of his Cairo speech last year.
The address of the first American president with Muslim roots was a bravura attempt to leech out the poison between the Islamic and Western worlds, and revive the moribund Middle East peace talks. But now, many disillusioned Muslims are echoing the all-talk, no-action refrain first popularized by the woman who became secretary of state.
“He said all the right words in his speech,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. “But the implementation took traditional roads.”
Privately, other highly placed princes in the family oil business groused louder. “Things are worse now than before,” asserted one, “because our hopes were so high after Cairo.”
Actually, the president didn’t say all the right words in his speech. He created an obstacle for himself by demanding that Israel stop expanding settlements when it was not going to do so — even though it should — and when that wasn’t the most important condition to Arabs.
TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES.
