Ledeen: Obama’s World
I had feared worse. Much worse. To be sure, parts of it lived up to my fears and expectations, but there’s a lot that I like. So that while this is certainly not a speech I would deliver, it is a lot better than the one I feared, and I can promise you that leading Muslims are very upset with several parts of it.
President Obama’s most explosive words were about women. He called for equal rights, stressing education, and promising American support for such programs. There is no theme in the Middle East that is more threatening to the misogynist political and religious leaders. If there is any real hope for freedom and democracy in the region, it will be accomplished by the women and their supporters, and the current leaders dread it. I wonder if Obama knows it. If so, full marks to him. But even if he doesn’t, even if he thinks he was simply reciting an intuitively obvious commonplace, he sent chills up and down the spines of the region’s rulers.
He wasn’t eager to embrace Bush’s call for democracy, but he got there anyway, albeit grudgingly. He trotted out one of his favorite multiculti themes (“no system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other”), but he reminded his listeners of the enormous success of America and Americans, and of our revolutionary heritage: “The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire.” And, using words that any neocon must applaud, he promised American support for freedom…everywhere.
[More]
No comments:
Post a Comment