Open Discussion: What does Obama's speech mean for reconnecting with the Middle East?

Depends on what you mean by "Middle East"?

The general populace? Ahmadinejad? Bin Laden? The nuckleheads in AQ? Hammas? Hezbollah? Isreal?

When the Arab states recognize Isreal and it's right to exist, that would be a first step.

I've said this many times before and I'll say it again.

"Can Islam live peacefully in a world with personal and economic freedoms?"

We live in a world with personal and economic freedoms. Those freedoms have made us the most properous country in the world. A secular governement that allows it's citizens to practice or not practice any religion they want. With the restrictions within Sharia law regarding courts and money, will Islamic countries ever truly prosper, or will they always be mad at us for their lack of economic opportunity?

As I'm listening, I'm following along with the transcript.

Anyone else have any burning comments? It's such a hot-button issue, I know you all must have something to add. Knowing that the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East is very complex and has been since its redefinition as such in the 1940s, do you believe the speech today was a step in the right direction? Will it begin to heal the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world? What are the necessary next steps?

I'm proud to be an American again. I just found myself nodding yes, yes, yes as I heard our president speak to this complex issue. I used to cringe when our previous president got up to speak....

Other Gather discussions seem to wonder if his words will have any effect. Ishbel R. hopes his words will have some effect. Christopher B. wonders if anyone was really listening. What do you think?

With respect to your post's question, it means "there's a new sheriff in town."   (At some level that's a western/Islamic pun but don't go there.)

Obama is saying these are the problems.  If we don't solve them together we all suffer from that failure.  If we do solve them together we all have a chance to benefit.

Now the Islamic nations of the middle east have heard such things from westerners before.  The history of the last 200 years has been filled with deception, exploitation, abuse, oppression, and deceit.  Since the West had the power, most of the abuses came from the West.  (It would probably have been just the reverse had the shoe been on the other foot.  People are only human and yield far too often to temptation.)  So with that history the people of the middle east will be suspicious of the rich young man with the nice smile.  THey have been fooled before and don't want to let it happen again.

Remember that we are the rich and powerful ones with the big army, navy, and nuclear weapons.  We can afford to take chances which would be really stupid for them to take.  We can risk trusting them but do they dare to risk trusting us.  And even if they can trust Obama, Obama is "only" the President.  He does not control Congress and will have a hard time prevent ing the corporate interests of the West in general or even of the U.S. specifically from attempting to exploit the Islamic nations of the middle east.

So, in general, the middle east probably likes what he is saying but will be counting their change and making sure the camel doesn't get its nose into the tent.

They will wait and see what Obama actually does before extending too much trust.  For the radicals, Obama is a disaster.  They would prefer that he present himself as an emeny of Islam.  They very much preferred Bush.  Bush made the west easy to hate and was a great recruiting poster for jihad.  So we can expect lots of abuse of Obama and the U.S. from the radicals.  But moderates (both Christian and Muslim) find Obama to be a breath of fresh air coming before the gentle rains that end the drought.

What he speaks of is admirable, but once again his speech lacks real solution. 

I think he was able to articulate what we all want.... peace, the ability to agree-to-disagree with respect for the other's religion/culture, etc. but his speech falls short on how to achieve this dream.

The Middle East has been at war with itself for far longer that the United States has existed.  It's naive to believe that resolve of the Middle East differences will be within the reach of the seated President to accomplish.  Unfortuneately, that peace will need to happen before all sides see the United States as more than "the ally of their enemy". 

The right of women to own property, the idea that women should be able to go to school.

Sharia law doesn't allow banking as the rest of the world does or have a court system that the rest of the world trusts a legitimate. Thus it makes countries run by Muslim theocracies harder to compete in the real world.

I still wonder why they are mad at us? They make tons of money on oil but fail to diversify their economies to provide jobs for their people. Why isn't the average guy in Iran mad at his own government.

WHy doesn't Islam allow girls to be educated? Is it Islam or the power of the Mullahs?

Just think, by not educating women, all the talent that is lost, your labor force is cut in half.

Yeah Winston, I guess we just didn't realize this in the 80's when it benefitted us to bait the Russians into Afghanistan by helping the fundamentalists who didn't want the Russian supported Afghan government to teach little girls to read.

Winston, remember that the slave owners of the U.S. South did not allow their slaves to be educated either and for exactly the same reasons.  You can't allow inferiors to demonstrate that they are as good as or better than you are.

Naturally this cost the slave owners lots of money since their slaves were less productive as a consequence and this cost the South after the War (the several wars of the 19th and 20th centuries) when their populations were not as productive and thus poorer than other regions.

It's stupid but insecure, uncertain people who lack confidence in themselves are always wanting to hold down other people.  (Lots of examples in our own nation and faiths so we shouldn't feel superior.)

President Obama >>>>"Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam." <<<<

As they heard this in the middle east, they're laughing and grimacing at the same time. They're thinking that rather than globalization and modernity  ...the west (US) has demonstrated hostility in ways like: Replacing a democratically elected president in Iran with a dictator whose secret police terrorized the people for 25 years, and of course there are all of the other dictators we supported in the middle east - including Egypt and Saudi and all our other "friends" in the region, while we talked hypocritically about "spreading democracy," in the region as excuse to invade Iraq. They're probably remembering how we played both sides in the Iraq/Iran war - you know the one in which we didn't mind Saddam invading a neighboring country (unlike Kuwait, where we minded). That was when we sold WMD to Saddam and helped him (funding and logistic support) use them against his Islamic neighbors. And who could forget our bombing of Iraqi water purification facilities at the end of Gulf War 1 and our enforcement of embargo of equipment to repair those facilities which led to 350,000 deaths of Iraqi children. And, of course there's the common middle east perception of an American funded Israel perpetually attacking a weak Palestinian people with American weaponry. And of course our invasion and occupation of Iraq (they're wondering why we're still there six years after the WMD issue died), and our bombing of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and all of the depleted uranium we've left there to cause cancer and birth defects for the next several hundred thousand years... and on and on...

There thinking ... "uh, no President Obama, 'globalization' and 'modernization' weren't the reasons we came to think of you as hostile."

So do we give Pakistan money and support?

I've commented on several of these "Obama Middle East Speech" posts, and I'm pretty much commented out.  So I think I'll just copy them over here"

"I've read every word.  That's an EXCELLENT speech... one might say the perfect speech for the time and place.  Sean Hannity will try to smother it in his insanity about speaking with the "Holocaust Denyer" (as if that were all that defined the President of Iran), without demanding an apology first.  Nothing like setting up an impenetrable roadblock to diplomacy.  And The Bloviating Blowhard of EIB will pontificate about the need to support Israel in WHATEVER they do.  And Faux NEWS will opine that Mr. Obama has demonstrated his true (sh-h-h-h... don't ay it aloud - Muslim) colors.

But it's all nonsense, and anyone who has enough brains to walk and breathe at the same time knows it.  What's needed in this world today is diplomacy, not bombast.  And this speech was, in my (never humble) opinion, the best groundwork ever laid for diplomacy."

Having read the primarily Muslim backhands in a thread comprising primarily comments from Middle eastern "persons of note," I have to say, diplomacy in this case is gonna be  WORK!

It was a great start, but it is important to keep it in perspective.

1. The "Middle east" is not monolithic, any more than the "USA" is monolithic. Obama's openness and honesty were appreciated by some open minded persons, and sneered at by Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, & Co, who have no interest in anything coming from the USA other than if were to all commit suicide.

2.  The islamic world looks at words, but also at actions. Many of them liked the words, but will also be looking to see if the Predator missile strikes in Pakistan continue to sometimes kill civilians, to see if Guantanamo will ever actually be closed, and will also be watching to see how Obama deals with a very intransigent Benjamin Netanyahu on the subject of the continuing efforts of Israel to maginalize and emasculate the Palestinians by slicing up the West Bank into Israeli housing developments. We are not any different, are we? What means more to us, when Putin says nice things or when Putin invades the Republic of Georgia? It's the second one.

Chris,

Hezbollah, Al Aaeda, & Co. would hate it if the USA were to committ suicide because they would lose the enemy that makes them important in their own eyes and in the eyes of those who give them money.  Our disappearance would destroy them.  That's why it helps them for us to act like an enemy.

That's an excellent point Larry, and one that's rarely imagined, let alone said. These groups like a lot of others (including us) think they're in a heroic battle of good vs. evil against their adversaries.

And how do they act this out? With force. And that force is almost universally met with resistance or opposing force. And the world keeps spinning with a lot of people made miserable by it.

If people the world over would drop patriotism, nationalism and allegiance to groups and think for themselves, beyond the slogans and simplistic concepts of that good vs. evil scenario that we all get dragged into we'd all be so much better off.

yes Larry, that's true- they would celebrate for ten minutes then look around and whimper, we just lost our reason for existing.

Chris is right too. For human beings, unless we think for ourselves and recognize our inherent self worth, drive and self-esteem comes from associating ourselves with a grand cause. The bigger the better - like I said above, good vs. evil. No matter who "we" are it has to be we are the righteous smiting the unrighteous, but the problem is the other side thinks its the other way around. In all wars there are at least two sides and both thinks they're righteous and virtuous. Most of them, if not all, are wrong.

please consider that among the WORST responses to Obama's speech are the ones made by Al Qaeda, and the one made by Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) who said: "I just don't know whose side he's on."

He's on the side of the future of the human race, Inhofe, unlike yourself, you longtime member of the climate change denial squad.

I was waiting for Obama to appologize to the French about invading Normandy.

Kinda wonder why the First Lady didn't go to the Middle East? Would she have wore a burkah?

Why didn't the First Family go have dinner at Sarkozsy's house? They were only a mile away from it? Isn't that what you do when you go to an ally's country?

If Sarkozsy would have snubbed Bush or Bush snubbed Sarkozsy, it would have been news! But then the media's "leg is still tingling" over Obama.

I wouldn't go to the middle eastern countries where women's rights are not recognized, either.

I thought the first family WAS slated to dine at the Sarkozsy's home. Did I hear something wrong? Now I'll have to look it up.

Hmmm. I guess I DID hear something wrong... I can find no reference to what I heard.

Middle Eastern countries are also not very friendly to homosexuals. Why such intollerance?