'Americans are not your enemy,' Obama tells Muslims.

He says, "Americans are not your enemy", but then his Secretary of State just said that Israel has a right to attack Palestinians, killing hundreds of civilians, to "defend itself". The entire world is sharply critical of this "defensive" measure, and America gives Israel it's tacit approval.

Obama's words are just that -- words. It remains to be seen how different his foreign policy with respect to the Middle East and the Arab world really turns out to be.

 

Here is a very short interview with the guy who did the interview which was posted to Jeffery Goldberg's blog at The Atlantic. To me some of it (the change he is discussing) sounds like hokum, but alot of it doesn't. Specifically the part about Bush starting off saying the right things and then not wanting to or being able to follow through was interesting. I do remember that Bush recieved lots of praise immediately after 9/11 from Muslim American sources for his response. That, of course, went south quick.

[rquoter]
Hisham Melhem On His Big Scoop, and Big Changes Coming

My brother Hisham Melhem of al-Arabiya television scored an important interview with Barack Obama yesterday, so I called him to say Mazel Tov and to ask him if he thinks the interview signals a shift in rhetoric or a shift in substance. Here's what he had to say:

Jeffrey Goldberg: What have you been hearing so far about the interview?

Hisham Melhem: I think many people in the Muslim world, ordinary people, were, judging by our website, sensed a different tone, that Obama was trying to reach out to them.

JG: George W. Bush called Islam a "religion of peace" in a mosque right after 9/11, though.

HM: What George Bush did initially was great. He went to a mosque, he listened to Brent Scowcroft, but later on, with his inability to make distinctions between groups like al-Qaeda on the one hand and Hamas and Hezbollah on the other, with many other things, the tone changed. Let's be clear: A president named Barack Hussein Obama sees the world differently from a president named George W. Bush, in part because of his biography, in part because of intellect. He senses that maybe America is less Western-centric than it used to be. The world is no longer Europe and North America.

JG: Did you sense any important shift in the way he thinks about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute?

HM: He talked about Israelis making sacrifices and that Israelis and Palestinians endure pain the same way. I'm not willing to say there is a shift in substance, but there is a shift in approach on the tone vis-à-vis Palestinian suffering. He showed that he understands the need for dignity and a place to call their own. And there will be a different approach, in the sense that sending George Mitchell is an important thing. He has talked both about Palestinian violence and Israeli settlement.

JG: But come back to substance: He's not abandoning Israel, he's maintaining a hard line on Pakistan --

HM: Look, in the long run, he is telling the Muslim world that it's going to have a difficult time demonizing him. He's saying, "I'm willing to disagree with the people of the Muslim world respectfully." He was miffed and angry by Zawahiri and Bin Laden, the way they speak of him. And he jumped on it and dealt with it. There's a subtle shift here on how he looks at the war on al-Qaeda and the groups that collaborate with it. He doesn't put Hamas and Hezbollah in the same category as al-Qaeda. Is there going to be disappointment later? We're bound to have disappointments, but the main message is that a new wind is blowing. He's closing down Guantanamo, sending Mitchell, pulling out of Iraq, and maybe I'm dreaming but I hope he would show Palestinians and Israelis tough love, both of them. Do you want to tell me that Bin Laden and all these nuts are not going to be nervous about him?

[/rquoter]

But ultimately, if you thought change meant America now referring to Israel as 'The Zionist Entity', putting its officials on the terrorist watch list, and crafting a proposal to give Hamas Permanent Member Seat on the UN Security Council, you are inevitably going to be disappointed.

 

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DD

 

Nope, but I hoping his administration would actually give a flip about joining the international consensus on a vital issue, and demanding allies and foes alike abide by international law. It was merely a hope, though. I never seriously expected Obama to bring about such a dramatic turn in US foreign policy.

 

http://www.revision-notes.co.uk/revision/980.html

 

i just hear that another press conference is scheduled to announce that "water is wet".

 

Dixie 'Tweens?

 

I agree with Tocqueville's view on democracy and the "tyranny of the majority". My views on this issue may very well be a minority opinion in this country, but I'm not going to just concede what the majority says. Similarly, I don't think the US should join the international consensus merely because that's majority opinion. They should do so because the international consensus on the Israel-Palestine conflict happens to be more consistent with agreed to, established norms of international relations and human rights than our position has been.

I also think you have to understand Tocqueville's commentary within the context of a democratic society. In a democracy, people should be allowed to express dissenting views. A variety of opinions and debates should be encouraged, not stifled. There should be a free "market place of ideas". And the direction taken by the collective should be based on which ideas win out. That's simply not how the world, as a whole, is set up. The UN Security Council is inherently undemocratic. It's like if there was a King who wanted to go to war, and all his subjects were against it. Would it make any sense for the King to invoke Tocqueville as a defense for going against his subject's wishes? Not really. So I'm not sure how applicable that theory is when talking about international relations, and at least given how international institutions are set up.

 

For the record, I don't think ramping things up in Afghanistan was Bush's plan. Bush came to that long after Obama had been talking about it.

 

It should be? Most of the terrorist acts against the U.S. these days come from people claiming to be Muslims. The more Muslims don't see the U.S. as the enemy the fewer there will be that would be willing to commit terrorist acts against the U.S.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that playing a positive roll will get you attacked than playing a negative one.

Putting that as lowest priority doesn't seem very sound to me.

 

This is all technically true, but it actually worked the opposite. Obama was talking about a 16-month withdrawal timeline, which Bush then adopted in the summer. Obama was talking about ramping up in Afghanistan, which Bush then adopted in the fall. Obama was talking making strikes within Pakistan, which Bush then adopted in the spring/summer.

So all of these are actually Obama policies and significant changes in the last 6 months of the Bush administration.

 

the only reason you wouldn't think its a parody is because you would be an idiot, and i know you aren't so I don't know how you think its legit.

10 secs I found posts by farahkoon, and kunte kinte, and a pool on what he obama drinks with choices of malt liquor and thunderbird. yeah that seems legit

 

the frightening thing is you seem to actually believe this.

 

I didn't go to the site and read threads. why would I? I am not that big of an Obama fan.

They had a Gun Controm forum there so it got passed around gun forums.

I just thought it was serious and it could move some of this Obama fandom out of here. I thought you would fit in there.

 

meaningless words! people in moslem world are not dumb they wont take any american official at his word

back it up with action and there will be an outpouring of support from the rest of the world not just islamic people

 

Afghanistan seems to be popular right now because idiots are saying "why are't we in Afghanistan" when they get pissed about all the people we are losing in Iraq.

They do not really support the war in Afghanistan they just use it to show how dumb the Iraq war is. Afghanistan would be a way bigger crap pile if we moved more trrops in there. It is a special forces and CIA war.

 

The hilarious thing is that despite the facts, you don't believe it.

 

rimrocker brought this up, and as usual you ducked the opportunity for debate or discussion, but it bears repeating.

Why did you credit Obama's words to George W. Bush?

What was the purpose?

 

At least that's what Special Forces wonks tell the media over and over.

In fact, they rampage through Afghanistan like bulls in a china shop. They operate exactly like the Taliban; show up in some little hamlet, blow up a bunch of crap and move on never to be seen again. Donald Rumsfeld turned all special forces into SEALS, basically. They no longer do the hearts and minds stuff that the Green Berets used to do. And even worse, they are totally 'off the leash' from the rest of the Army as they were reshuffled to be outside traditional command structure. They often do things that actively counteract what the regular army is trying to accomplish.

If you listen, the Special Forces guys tell you that they are what is required to win in Afghanistan. They will also tell you that they singlehandedly won the war in Iraq. What's more, through some massive blend of arrogance, stupidity and narcissism they almost undoubtedly believe it.

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One of the major failures involving Iraq was that we moved a ton of intelligence resources and assets from Afghanistan to Iraq to search for Saddam, and then to track those infamous WMD's, and then to deal with the new insurgency we created. It's not just troops that got taken out of play in Afghanistan - it's special forces, satellite coverage, etc.