*Image courtesy of AP Images.
There should be little doubt that President Obama's Cairo Speech marks a deeply troubling and disturbingly arrogant break from historical Middle East policy for the United States. It was a woefully foolish attempt at the appeasement of terrorists--both in Hamas and in the highest echelons of Iranian government--that demonstrates a reticence on the part of the Commander-in-Chief and his cabinet to discern the motivations belonging to two very differently motivated groups of people. And it is also the most cowardly way for our leader to dodge the demanding and critical obligations we owe to our partner in freedom, Israel. Furthermore, the painfully soft approach presented to Iran's catastrophic pursuit of nuclear arms was nothing short of appalling.
While reasonable observers may debate the wisdom of pushing settlements further out into land vociferously contested by Arab nations, asserting that natural home building in already existing settlements is an irresponsible action is insulting. Netanyahu is right to oppose this demand as noted in the linked article above.
Furthermore, seeking cooperation from Hamas--that bloody terrorist organization that has vowed to destroy Israel while at the same time preaching the disingenuous victimization of its own people and teaching innocent children to destroy their own neighbors--is astonishingly wrong and even outrageous. At what point does Hamas consider enough Israeli blood shed? As President Obama well knows, the price will be the last drop if Hamas has its way.
Let it be clearly said that the vast majority of Americans support Israel, stand by those citizens who peacefully and rightfully make that land their home, and absolutely reject the bloody acts of terror meant to deny this people their right to not only existence, but also freedom from molestation--and this is a far cry from the President's crude and ineffective suggestion that Muslims must simply acknowledge that "Israel will not go away." The truth is that Americans maintain strong ties to Jews of every conceivable background and experience, as these are our neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens in this great republic. With them, the majority of us share a hatred of tyranny and terrorism while also expressing profound gratitude for what is often viewed as an overlapping religious tradition. How, then, could we simply point to Israel as an annoyance to the Middle East?
Surely it is time that many of the Jewish population in America--identifying itself at the very least through a common culture and in many cases an ancient, shared religion--begin to test their relatively unquestioned ties to political liberalism. Today that political doctrine has failed Jews both in America and in Israel, perhaps for generations to come.
What is also clear is that freedom cannot and will not be maintained in either Israel or America by such a whimpering and apologetic strategy as that demonstrated so shamefully today. As always, this most precious of gifts can only persist in the best and highest sense if America continues with grim determination to confront the bloody, evil, and designing nations aligned against our friends abroad. That much, at the very least, should be unbreakable.
UPDATE: Wow. The fallout over the speech has been tremendous--in fact, there are far too many editorials to cite here, though one or two will demonstrate just how transparently one-sided Obama's effort at wholesale appeasement really was.
One article posits that this may be another push by Rahm Emanuel to install a left-leaning and more sympathetic Kadima government in Israel. Others simply decried his pandering mea culpa, along with his very troubling and inaccurate makeover of Islamic history. Still another noted Obama's apparent "culture war with Christianity"--and one might also be correct in asserting traditional values are included here, as well--while nearly pleading the notion that America is not at war with Islam.
What this all seems to add up to--and again, coverage has been very skewed, with most liberal voices gushing about how well the President spoke and how considerate he was of Muslim sentiments--is a Middle East policy grossly unfair and downright dangerous to Israel while at the same time being disturbingly sympathetic to Islamic terrorism and philosophical extremism. Very troubling, indeed.
A brief video clip of the speech can be found here.
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