The Scene In Cairo

Thanks for setting the scene sop vividly!

"He got engaged in this at a very early point and has basically provided all of the vision for what should be in the speech and a lot of the content," said Ben Rhodes, one of Obama's senior speechwriters on Wednesday in Riyadh. "For the last week he's really just been frequently holed up with his draft and editing it very heavily."
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I find that extremely encouraging. There is of course no way to predict how another culture will accept Obama's ideas and mannerisms, not to mention what might get lost in translation (is it too much to hope for a small passage in Egyptian Arabic? Probably, but I can dream!) but if the spirit is this enthusiastic, this just might go over very well.

Wasn't that a fine speech. Utterly open and honest and clear about what must be done to move forward and solve problems.
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Makes me proud to be an American to have that good man represent the best in us.

wvng Says:
Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 7:08 am
"Wasn't that a fine speech. Utterly open and honest and clear about what must be done to move forward and solve problems".
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Yes, Obama is very naive and is placing our future on very simplified dreams that a militant, extremist muslim faction of Islam will buy into his rhetoric. One may call his ideas "honest and clear". Others I believe will call them dangerous and appeasing.
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As is the case in this country, the majority are complacent, ill-informed and apathetic. Hopefully the majority in the middle east are tired of the car bombs, the threats of nuclear holocaust and other various sorts of terrorism within their own countries. Hopefully in the new world order the radical Islamics will be shunned and driven out of the seats of power within these countries. However, I am not that naive to believe this to be a possibility.
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Thank you President Obama for spending more millions on a cause that started with Jimmy Carter many years ago, which still remains totally unsuccessful. Thank you for spending millions on a trip to set a backstage for your continued speeches which to date have resulted in absolutely nothing. Thank you for not concentrating on our own problems here at home and as we speak the unemployment rate is higher now than in the past 26 years. Thank you for spending millions of hard earned tax dollars on your middle east pipe dream.

And thank you rusty, for proving yutsano's point from a previous thread: It's not even worth parodying them anymore. There needs to be some element of unpredictability in order for mockery to have its zest, and they just ain't got it any more. It's almost Pavlovian their reactions to anything Obama does anymore. It's starting to lose its funness.

Rusty,
Do you ever think that your ability to read Muslim Minds ("They all want to kill us") and your absolute pessimism toward the prospect of Peace may be related?
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As you note, there are people everywhere who are indeed tired of living in fear and who might be amenable to new thinking. There is also as we see here in the USA a tendency for young people to want to forge their own way and not necessarily accept their parents worldview without examination.
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We might try to forge a more peaceful future and fail but that is certainly preferable over throwing up our hands and failing to try.

Here is what most wingnuts don't understand. The speech President Obama gave today isn't just about Muslim leaders. What he is doing is reaching out to the citizens of Muslim countries, the people who actually vote people in and vote people out. He is also reaching out to non Muslim countries that have traditionally been our allies but are estranged because of our adventure into Iraq. The reason why the members of our military are in so much danger in both Iraq and Afghanistan is becasue Bush and Cheney phucked up our relationships just to try to get into Iraq that many of the allies who normally would be helping us carry the load in an armed conflict are not willing to put their troops in the line of fire. Now when they see our President talking about giving everyone a fairshake and ending this neoconic bellicosity towards each and every country that makes even the slightest threat against us whether they have the capacity to carry it out or not, the more likely they are to actually put some skin in the game and help us in the armed conflicts we are still engaged in. Only the dumbest of dumb ass es don't get that President Obama isn't trying to solve every problem with words. Hell lets see what he said at the beginning of the speech.
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"No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point."
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So if you are coming with that ignorant cannard you ruin any credibility you might otherwise enjoy. Only an idiot would tihnk a speech would change everything and similarly only an idiot would claim it a failure when the speech doesn't change everything. This speech as will all other diplomatic moves Pres Obama has made since taking office is about sowing seeds that can grow over time that will eventually improve our national security whether by other nation's citizens rejecting their current leadership or traditional allies coming back to the table to help us around the world.

wvng - agree with you thoroughly at 3. Could not have asked for more from a speech given with the purpose of a new beginning.
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I couldn't help thinking how many in the Middle East might greet this speech with more optimism and be more inspired than so many with shriveled reactive minds in this country.

"We might try to forge a more peaceful future and fail but that is certainly preferable over throwing up our hands and failing to try."
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I would agree that "a more peaceful future" is much more appealing to sane and rational folks than the current "death to the United States" mentality we see in most all Arab countries.
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I am simply pointing out that those in power now in most of the Arab countries and especially within Palestine and Iran are Islamic fascist extremists. The more "sane and rational" people in those countries were replaced after what, 20? 30? years of "diplomacy"? Carter started in 1976 with a "new world order" for the Middle East. His legacy is very clear. It was a total failure. Today we have the most hard-core Islamic regimes that hold power and control. We have spent billions upon billions of dollars to achieve peace, with no success what-so-ever. Now Obama is asking the American taxpayer to continue these failed foreign policies. I say no more. No more military lives lost, no more tax dollars to support our enemy, and no more talks. Arafat made a career and set his family up with millions of American dollars to live the life of luxury in France. And, he was considered in today's world a “moderate”. Do we appease these people? Hell no. Do we defend and protect America? Absolutely. No nuclear options should be afforded these people. None. Obama is playing with the end of the world as we know it. Not only is he destroying America with his domestic stupidity, he is now on course to destroy the entire planet. He is simply NUTS.

[...] This page will provide all relevant links regarding the President’s Trip. LATEST HUFFPO REPORT WITH VIDEO SETTING THE CAIRO SCENE FROM SWAMPLAND [...]

Until they adopt the separation of powers, the separation of Church and State, and other liberal principles we won't be in perfect harmony with those opposed to Western ideals. However, it doesn't cost much to give a speech and gently promote your values. Bribery is cheaper than war as well.

President Obama was clear on seven points - perhaps the outline of the emerging Obama Doctrine. In any case - he has set the tone for future debate. ............

http://thefiresidepost.com/2009/06/04/the-seven-points-of-obamas-cairo-speech/

the mentality we see.
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So how do you manage to 'see mentalities' in other countries? That's quite a feat.
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If I didn't know any better I'd say that you had absolutely no firsthand knowlege of what your talking about and are only allowing your own fearful imagination and storytelling ability to guide your thinking.
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What if everybody did that? .......... Oh wait!

"Obama is playing with the end of the world as we know it. Not only is he destroying America with his domestic stupidity, he is now on course to destroy the entire planet. He is simply NUTS."
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I am so happy I do not live in your frightened little world. Talk about nuts....
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Look...behind you! It's Ahmadinejad standing with a mini-nuke ready to fire it up your arse!
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You can go change your diaper now. Get a grip, dude.

sgwhite is right: Obama wasn't speaking to only the Arab leaders, but also (perhaps mostly) to the 90%+ of the Muslim population worldwide that DOESN'T want to blow anyone up, DOESN'T want a continued lesser jihad against non-Muslims, and DOESN'T buy into the latest bin Laden BS. If that majority feels that the U.S. is open to their LEGITIMATE concerns, things can (and will) change. Just like the KKK all but disappeared once they were no longer acceptable to the vast majority of the U.S. population . . .
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See, Rusty? Making friends is fun AND helpful!

Here you go Dirks, since it seems you do not comprehend English. I have a definition for you.
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men·tal·i·ty (mn-tl-t)
n. pl. men·tal·i·ties
1. Cast or turn of mind: a vindictive mentality.
2. The sum of a person's intellectual capabilities or endowment.
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I hope that helps ya out there "buddy"!
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And, to oglib. As usual, the swine that follows Obama have the "mentality" that even a blind pig can find an acorn too.
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You enjoy your new Obama world as well.

Keep in mind the warnings of one of our senior, and perhaps most successful, interrogators in Iraq:
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I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.
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Insurgency and terrorism will never be defeated by warfare; warfare will only fuel radicalism. Violence begets violence. You “defeat” terrorists by taking away their reason to fight. Respect, honesty, fairness and altruism can lead to peace. Some of the finest national security analysts in the world at the non-partisan Rand Corp. suggest that our interests are best served by “a light U.S. military footprint or none at all” in the region.
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Hopefully President Obama has the courage and determination to follow-through on this excellent speech.

As I said before, that rational was tried and tested over 30 years ago by Jimmy Carter. Obama is just pursuing those same failed policies, vastwasteland. You are no further ahead today or in the future, as people were in the late 70's. The only difference is Obama is proposing to allow them to have nukes. Here is another word to describe the Obama foreign policy.
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A-S-S-I-N-I-N-E
assinine
1. Extremely stupid/foolish.
2. Of or relating to the ass.
Stop bending over, it's assinine!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=assinine
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Oh I didn't get to see the meeting with the King of Saudi Arabia. Did Obama bend over yet again?

@vast,
That's why I often object to refering to countries as if they are individuals. If we say "Iran" did this and "Israel" did that then we are automatically failing to think about the fact that those places are composed of millions of unique individuals each of whom is capable of having an individual opinion.
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Using the convenient shorthand of treating Countries as a unit may make conversation easier but it encourages false thinking and at its worst has resulted in thousands of unecessary deaths.
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Of course taking the opposite tack is how we convinced ourselves that if we attacked Iraq, the population would suddenly and magically join us against Saddam. We all remember how that worked out, right?

@rustyreturn,
Obama just gave an address in Egypt. Thanks to Jimmy Carter, he is able to do so. You may recall that Egypt was once at war with Israel.
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How soon they forget......

I forgot. Rusty is bigot of the "they all look alike" variety.

Yes yes, "bigot" and "racist". The typical democrat / far left liberal LOON defense for arguments. You are simply not worth the time to debate.

I thought it was a good speech. Given the obvious wide-range of topics he needed to touch on, President Obama clearly hit many key points and attempted to mark a clear line between past actions and hopeful future.
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He's also smart enough to know that one speech isn't a cure-all, and publically stated so. Indeed, to realize his vision, will take work, and serious self-reflection on by all parties.
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But I don't think he's either naive, or a fool, to believe that the Arab and Muslim world will fall over themselves to line up behind one speech. Or maybe they will. But, as Tom Friedman pointed out yesterday in the NY Times, it will take real leadership, and a real willingness on the part of Arabs and Muslims to change their outlook if things are going to improve.

Carter brokered peace between Isreal and Egypt (who were in the midst of a 30 year war) that still exists today. He was determined to develop fuel alternatives and end our dependancy on foreign oil. Reagan decided to persue "sweetheart" deals for oil with Saudi Arabia and to support the mujahdeen in Afghanistan (and young "freedom fighter" Osama bin Laden).
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Who exactly was pusuing failed policies?

Rusty,
I agree with you. Why retry Carter's failed policies, when George Bush provided us with a whole NEW set of failed policies to ape! Hooray!
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Exactly how many Muslims do you know, Rusty? And do they all want to kill you? And if so, have you ever questioned whether that is a result of their religion or just the fact that you're a douche?