Quick thing about Obama's speech--

(Here's a pretty good--if abruptly terminated, edit of the high points of the speech:)



No one speech can fully set the wheels of a new beginning in motion, or say everything there is to say, but I will say that Obama has said what needs to be said both to open up a dialogue, by trying to find a common ground, and a challenge, by discussing the difficulties of a new way forward with the Islamic world and by stating what commitments his government will not turn its back on--these are the things that were necessary to say.

As luck would have it, because of my 9-to-5 job (8:30 to 4:30, actually) I had to opportunity to visit blogs and see commentary of the speech before actually checking the whole thing out. I was fascinated by people looking for things they did not find in this speech.

First--this speech wasn't about apologies, so those assholes (Mitt!) who say it was can go stuff themselves. The unilateralism of the previous administration may be disavowed by the current administration, and of course, as one might say, dryly, of course, "mistakes were made". A failure to acknowledge mistakes while professing to do right is what even lay folk would recognize as "hypocrisy." One might also note that we are still making certain mistakes. (As in, have still not resolved Guantanamo, and still have not sorted out why our policy of air strikes in the Af-Pak region are potentially destabilizing and might better be replaced with, yeah, a policy of humanitarian aid and partnership with both nations in directly dealing with extremists--not that the White House asked me--or would. Oh, and blowback aside--resolving the torture issue with openness and prosecutions on the table wouldn't be a bad thing for our reputation. Apologize? In my book, we haven't started.)

Second--yeah, I suppose it was a bit thin on using the word "terrorism" or any of its various permutations. Is "violent extremism" as a regular mention good enough for you, though? After all, violence means "acts of terrorism" and "extremism" addresses that the people involved aren't mainstream Muslims. As word choice goes, I think I might give him points for that.

And finally, yes, I suppose the human rights and particularly feminist issues, which are serious, deep, sustained, and I could go on at length about them myself and so on, are only scantly mentioned--and yet, I'm not sure where scolding a culture is a good entree to the dialogue the White House wants, and also, as I picked up from the speech, he did point out that women have helmed the ship of majority-Muslim states--and yet there has been no woman as president of our nation. If he means to appreciate the unique respect found in Islamic countries for particular women, and leave for later the discussion of the more general problems regarding freedom vs. oppression of women generally (maybe leaving these to be more ably expressed by our quite capable Secretary of State?) then I won't necessarily fault him for that.

I think that Obama "gets it" as far as understanding that foreign policy is about addressing multiple interests. It is a pragmatic viewpoint, and one I share. I think he did pretty well.