Althouse: Let's parse Obama's Cairo speech.

June 4, 2009

Let's parse Obama's Cairo speech.

Full text.

I'm on the road. Somewhere in Indiana. Obama's with the Egyptians, and I'm with the Hoosiers. Start the parsing without me.

187 comments:

Anonymous said...: Allah liked it.; 6/4/09, 9:58 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Not one word of apology. Or can someone point to it?; 6/4/09, 10:05 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: Not that apologies are a bad thing.; 6/4/09, 10:05 AM
Palladian said...: "Obama's with the Egyptians, and I'm with the Hoosiers."

I think I'd rather be with the Hoosiers.; 6/4/09, 10:06 AM
John Althouse Cohen said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/4/09, 10:10 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: I think I'd rather be with the Hoosiers..

Me too.; 6/4/09, 10:10 AM
John Althouse Cohen said...: Not one word of apology. Or can someone point to it?

Muted, balanced criticism of the decision to invade Iraq:

"Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: 'I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.'

"Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq's sovereignty is its own. That is why I ordered the removal of our combat brigades by next August. That is why we will honor our agreement with Iraq's democratically-elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, and to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012. We will help Iraq train its Security Forces and develop its economy. But we will support a secure and united Iraq as a partner, and never as a patron."; 6/4/09, 10:11 AM
Ken Pidcock said...: I though the speech was imperial, as it was meant to be.; 6/4/09, 10:13 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Not that apologies are a bad thing..

No they aren't. It would be nice for the Muslim world to actually apologize for their intolerance, mysoginy, suicide bombing, and Jew hatred.; 6/4/09, 10:13 AM
john said...: "Unlike Afganistan, Iraq was a war of choice"? WTF? Did Afganistan attack us on 9/11? Invading both countries were of our "choice". Otherwise we should have invaded Saudi Arabia.

"I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year." I can't figure out whether coupling these two is just disingenuous bullshit, sucking up to his home base, or if he is threatening the middle east countries that he will release their scum back to their lands. If so, good for him.

I agree with JAC, rather balanced on the whole.

Finally, as always, too many "I"'s, not enough "we"'s.; 6/4/09, 10:13 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. .

Indeed because it has worked so well in other spots like North Korea, Iran, Darfur, the Congo.; 6/4/09, 10:15 AM
garage mahal said...: I want 1 billion apology letters from Muslims sent directly to me. Then we'll talk.; 6/4/09, 10:18 AM
jayne_cobb said...: Hoosier,

But talking shows you care.

And ultimately isn't that what it's all about?; 6/4/09, 10:19 AM
john said...: garage - it's always about you, isn't it.; 6/4/09, 10:19 AM
garage mahal said...: Who else is there?; 6/4/09, 10:20 AM
traditionalguy said...: The hope for Peace, Peace in our time, and Peace forevermore is a fantasy being peddled to realists who now despise him. Good fences/boundaries make good neighbors, but Obama says we only need love and his leadership...just trust Him.; 6/4/09, 10:21 AM
Anonymous said...: The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.; 6/4/09, 10:22 AM
john said...: Well, there's your hand, for one.; 6/4/09, 10:22 AM
Cedarford said...: It wasn't a bad speech. Pretty balanced.

That seemed to be the Muslim reaction, too. Along with gratitude for ending the Neocon, "democracy at gunpoint", "do as Israel demands". period of American policy.

Now they wait to see if Obama can actually defy AIPAC, is honest about correcting the globalization trend that has wrecked many 3rd world economies...or is just making nice-nice and mouthing good feelings and platitudes..; 6/4/09, 10:24 AM
Tank said...: I too want one billion muslim apologies sent to garage. In fact, everyone should want that. How great would that be if he had, what, 100 billion muslim apologies.

Make a nice bonfire.; 6/4/09, 10:29 AM
Jeremy said...: John Althouse Cohen - Where in either statement you provide is there an "apology?"

And why do so many here think diplomacy is a waste of time?

Are you saying Reagan, Nixon and Bush Sr. along with literally every other previous President were all fools?

It's just the same ridiculous and childish criticism of anything President Obama says or does you hear every day from the local wingnuts.

It's un-American and it makes you look small.; 6/4/09, 10:31 AM
veni vidi vici said...: "I want 1 billion apology letters from Muslims sent directly to me. Then we'll talk."

Is that a quote from the speech? The way Barry overuses "I" when representing the nation in his official capacity, it wouldn't surprise me.; 6/4/09, 10:31 AM
Jeremy said...: veni vidi vici - The man's name is Barack Obama and he's the President of the United States.; 6/4/09, 10:34 AM
veni vidi vici said...: Well, he sure can speechify.

Now, Barry, tell us something we don't already know. Better yet, do something other than the presidential equivalent of "voting present" or turfing to Nancy, Harry and the cadre of "czarz". It's your paygrade now, buddy.; 6/4/09, 10:35 AM
veni vidi vici said...: Hooray, the poo-flinging monkey appears to have arrived onthread.; 6/4/09, 10:36 AM
veni vidi vici said...: ...time to get back to watching my toenails grow, since he'll quickly turn this thread into another noise-filled unreadable pile of dung.; 6/4/09, 10:37 AM
Jeremy said...: Here's how President Obama closes out the speech. Somebody tell me where he's wrong:

"All these things must be done in partnership. Americans are ready to join with citizens and governments; community organizations, religious leaders, and businesses in Muslim communities around the world to help our people pursue a better life.

The issues that I have described will not be easy to address. But we have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world we seek - a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God's children are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only achieve it together.

I know there are many - Muslim and non-Muslim - who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn't worth the effort - that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There is so much fear, so much mistrust. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country - you, more than anyone, have the ability to remake this world.

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort - a sustained effort - to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples - a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you."; 6/4/09, 10:39 AM
Jeremy said...: veni vidi vici said..."...time to get back to watching my toenails grow..."

And if only you had opposable thumbs you could cut them.; 6/4/09, 10:41 AM
goesh said...: - I wouldn't be surprised if there was considerable nose picking going on during his speech and some present were dreaming of the ransom this would-be king could fetch - they are after all a practical people over there and I got a crisp $50 says he has tried to bribe Mubarak into accepting some of the lads from Gitmo...; 6/4/09, 10:54 AM
Palladian said...: "Finally, as always, too many "I"'s, not enough "we"'s."

To Obama, there is only "I".; 6/4/09, 10:56 AM
American Liberal Elite said...: Garage: "I want 1 billion apology letters from Muslims sent directly to me."

Right after you round up the billion letters from Christians, apologizing for the Crusades; 6/4/09, 10:57 AM
garage mahal said...: Wonder if Egypt asked to see his birth certificate upon entering their country. Just to be sure.; 6/4/09, 10:58 AM
Palladian said...: "veni vidi vici - The man's name is Barack Obama and he's the President of the United States."

The man's name is Gene Olson and he's a psychology teacher at Santa Monica College.

There's absolutely no reason to pay any heed, nor any deference, to either of them.; 6/4/09, 10:58 AM
garage mahal said...: Garage: "I want 1 billion apology letters from Muslims sent directly to me."

Right after you round up the billion letters from Christians, apologizing for the Crusades.

My apology letter request was full metal snark directed at Hoosier by the way. We're good like that.; 6/4/09, 11:01 AM
Palladian said...: "I want 1 billion apology letters from Muslims sent directly to me."

I'd check them for anthrax and letter bombs if I were you...; 6/4/09, 11:17 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: And why do so many here think diplomacy is a waste of time?

It isn't. The question is when do you draw the line and pull the trigger. There are those on the left who would likely suggest that President Bush (43) moved too fast into Iraq. And, maybe that we haven't tried hard enough with Iran and North Korea.

But if you left the decisions to Foggy Bottom, things would sometimes just mull around for generations, and never get resolved. Stiff letters are fine, but the ultimate bargaining tool is brute force, and there are those in the world who will play us as fools, if we don't show a willingness to use the power we have at some point.

One could argue that part of the cause of 9/11 was a preference for stiff notes over use of military power. And, we have seen little, if any, effect of diplomacy with either North Korea or Iran, esp. when it comes to their nuclear aspirations. Indeed, the former seems determined to spit into our eyes, by picking our national holidays for their nuclear and missile tests.; 6/4/09, 11:17 AM
gbarto said...: Quoted at Instapundit: IT WAS ISLAM… that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra...

I was flipping through the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam the other day, and for once I read the bio. He was one of those folks who kept Greek learning alive and did some pretty jazzy stuff with algebra too. He was also an atheist, or darn close to it, and hated by Orthodox Muslims and Sufis alike.

I don't know that Islam "carried the light of learning." In Khayyam's case, at least, its virtue was in (however grudgingly) allowing a freethinker the space to think. There's a lesson in there, I think, for purists of all creeds.; 6/4/09, 11:22 AM
JAL said...: 10:57 Right after you round up the billion letters from Christians, apologizing for the Crusades

Didn't something happen before the Crusades ...? Or is that when history started?

Refresh my memory.; 6/4/09, 11:36 AM
traditionalguy said...: Peace is better than war as long as your recognized boundaries are still being guarded from the ever present human propensity to steal when ever possible and kill to facilitate their stealing. When people quit that behavior, then Armies, Lawyers, and Police and every leader other than the One can be eliminated.In the mean time, we do well to remember that the Mohammedans are dedicated to theft and murder everywhere they find a weakness. It's in their Prophet's Book. The USA now occupies land discovered by the King of Spain's Admiral, who ruled terrotory that had recently been conquered back from Mohammed's boys. The claim of Muslims to return and rule in the Spain and its discovered lands is as strong as their claim of Palestinians to return and rule in the City of David and in Jerusalem. Happy Battle of Midway Day, which stopped our conquest by the highly civilized Japanese just 67 years ago.; 6/4/09, 11:36 AM
Paddy O said...: "Right after you round up the billion letters from Christians, apologizing for the Crusades"

Right after you round up the billion letters from Muslims apologizing for invading North Africa and Western Asia and well into Europe. All those earliest churches didn't convert by choice, after all.

Which, of course, is only right after someone rounds up a billion letters from the Italians apologizing for invading the land and sacking the Jewish nation.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

I want apologies all around!; 6/4/09, 11:36 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Obama’s is once again up to his now familiar 'I'm not part of this', third person rhetoric trick.

He did the same thing with the race speech in Philadelphia.

Nobody else gets away with that kind of hubris.; 6/4/09, 11:39 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: And why do so many here think diplomacy is a waste of time?

Because there needs to be diplomacy on both sides. When just one side practices diplomacy and the other is laughing behind their hands at our weakness while continuing on with terrorism, building nuclear bombs and threatening their neighbors, it is a waste of time.

There needs to be a good faith effort on both sides to come to agreements. Since there is not, why bother with diplomacy? I say just skip to the end game and win.; 6/4/09, 11:40 AM
Jeremy said...: Dust Bunny Queen said..."Because there needs to be diplomacy on both sides."

So Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. were wrong to pursue diplomatic solutions?

You act as if a President were to pursue diplomacy, and he is not immediately rewarded with a positive reaction, he should abandon such efforts.

That's not the with acquainted with the history of American and world politics knows this.

You're just whining because it's Obama who is involved.; 6/4/09, 11:45 AM
Jeremy said...: Bruce Hayden said..."It isn't. The question is when do you draw the line and pull the trigger."

What "trigger?"

And who exactly are you implying we should pull this trigger on?; 6/4/09, 11:47 AM
Jeremy said...: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Whining and bitching, whining and bitching, whining and bitching.

Like little children.

As usual.; 6/4/09, 11:49 AM
CarmelaMotto said...: Poor Jeremy needs validation.; 6/4/09, 11:51 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Jeremy is so far up Obama’s ass not even the Hubble can challenge his penetrating knowledge of the Obama universe.; 6/4/09, 11:53 AM
DADvocate said...: But talking shows you care.

Many of the best talkers are con men.

gbarto - I looked up some of that stuff. Barry overstates his case. Is he flattering or does he really believe that stuff? He did go to a Muslim school.

American Liberal Elite - I'm sure the Crusades are the reason for today's terrorism and an apology would end it all. Oh wait, the Pope did apologize. Why are Muslims still so upset?; 6/4/09, 11:54 AM
Almost Ali said...: Let us pray:

"Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them. Seize them. Beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them" -
(Qur'an, Surah 9:5)

Just a reminder, this is the Koran Muslims live and breathe.; 6/4/09, 11:54 AM
The Dude said...: Summary of speech "Muslims good, America bad."

Thank you for your time.; 6/4/09, 11:54 AM
Jeremy said...: Lem said..."Obama’s is once again up to his now familiar 'I'm not part of this', third person rhetoric trick."

veni vidi vici said..."The way Barry overuses "I" when representing the nation in his official capacity, it wouldn't surprise me."

So Obama is employing the unusual "third party" method of speech when he "overuses "I" when representing the nation."

Hmmmmmmmmmmm....interesting.; 6/4/09, 11:55 AM
Michael Haz said...: Where's my falafel? he didn't mention falafel. Diplomacy starts with a plate of falafel. And some hummus.; 6/4/09, 11:58 AM
holdfast said...: "I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. ."

Look, it is perfectly reasonable to say that the US should not have invaded Iraq and should have left it to fester under the crumbling sanctions regime. Given the cost of the war (mostly in lives, but also treasure), I can see the appeal, though I supported the war. But to imagine that an extra dollop of magic diplomacy would have brought Iraq around is pure fantasy. Iraq, Iran, the Norks and others have figured out that "diplomacy" is what the west does when it does not want to take action - and they know how to play us, to play for time and to make us look stupid, because they are willing to take risks and look bad, whereas we are forever worried about "world opinion" and the "Arab Street". Diplomacy should be a vital part of a coherent, strategic international policy, backed of course by a full armory of coercive tools including cultural, economic and military measures - but our opponents know that it really means hot air ("just words" in the words of dear leader) to avoid having to make hard decisions, until we are presented with another fait accompli, like Nork Nukes (thanks Bill, Jimmy, Colin and George!).; 6/4/09, 12:00 PM
$9,000,000,000 Write Off said...: Bah, without oil, they're all Defoe's Turks:

The Turks, who are Enemies to Trade, and who discourage Industry and Improvement, ‘tis plain they dispeople the World, rather than improve and cultivate it: View their Condition; they are miserably poor! Distressedly poor! They are idle, indolent and starving, their Government have some Wealth, because they are Tyrannical, and take what they please from the poor People, throughout a vast Extent of Dominion; so that if it be but a little in a Place, it a-mounts to a very great Sum in the whole, to them, being so many, but those People and Nations are poor and wretched to the last Degree, and all for Want of Trade.

As to Trade, excepting what the Europeans and the Jews drive among them, it is so little, that it hardly deserves the Name of Commerce, they have neither Produce of the Land, or Labour of the People, neither Merchandise or Art, nothing is encouraged among them; ignorance boasts of the rich Return we bring from the them, such as Drugs, Hair, Silk etc. but we know it is not of Turky, or the Growth of Turky, but is either the Product of Armenia and Georgia, the Provinces of Guilan and Indostan, Part of Persia on the Shoar of the Caspian Sea, quite out of the Turk’s Dominions, and even there they are the Product of the old Christian Labour, the original inhabitants of those Provinces; the Mahometans, have little or no Hand it; they abhor Business and Labour and despise Industry, and the starve accordingly…Now see the Consequence; as the Mahometans I say have little Trade, so they have little Wealth, the Produce of their Lands yields little, and that little sells for such little Value that one would pity so vast a Body of People labouring, as it were, for nothing.

Sir Archy probably knew or saw Defoe, lucky ghost.; 6/4/09, 12:00 PM
save_the_rustbelt said...: Was there any discussion of the repression of Christians or the oppression of women?

Doubt it.

Oh Barry, Rock star president.; 6/4/09, 12:00 PM
holdfast said...: Jeremy - don't be dense, with Barry H O it is always "I will do this for you" and "They [Americans] did that awful thing in the past" - that sort of crap works in domestic politics when you can and are supposed to distance yourself from other politicians (from whichever party) and put your own stamp on your policies. It does not work in international affairs where the President represents the entire US - Republican and Democrat, past and present - Obama acts like "his" America started on Jan 20, 2009 - the rest was some other guys.; 6/4/09, 12:03 PM
Almost Ali said...: The wisdom of Isalm:

"O' ye that believe, take not Jews and Christians as your friends and protectors" - Qur'an, Surah 5:54

From the quatrain of the sitting duck.; 6/4/09, 12:07 PM
Almost Ali said...: Which reminds me, Obama speaks only for himself and his devoted followers; the weak, the naive, the foolish.; 6/4/09, 12:20 PM
Fred4Pres said...: Rush had a pretty good takedown of the President's Cairo speech today:

IT WAS ISLAM… that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.”
Obama in Cairo.

That statement by President Obama is not correct and could better be described as pandering. Now let me say this, the West did obtain many lost Western classics from Islamic libraries and scholars. Islamic scholars did make contributions. But Islam did not invent albebra, or the compass, or disease theory, or printing. And while I enjoy the architecture of old Arab Cairo as much as the next buyer of carpets, gold and hammered brass goods does, Islam did not invent the arch. But it gets worse...

Where the President really messed up was speaking of the Holocaust (which is good he refuted Arab Holocaust deniers) but then linking the Holocaust to the current plight of Palestinians. I am sorry, but these events are not comparable. Not in the least. While the Palestinian plight is terrible, it is mostly self inflicted and neighboring Arab countries have far more to answer for it than Israeli Jews do.; 6/4/09, 12:21 PM
Joaquin said...: The speech was a political speech, a policy speech, designed to begin the cure of a political problem.
The problem is not political, it's religious.; 6/4/09, 12:21 PM
former law student said...: It would be nice for the Muslim world to actually apologize for their intolerance, mysoginy, suicide bombing, and Jew hatred.

Fundamentalist believers of all three of the great Middle Eastern religions are equally intolerant and misogynistic -- it goes with the territory.

The current Jew hatred comes from displacement. I wouldn't expect American Indians to love the white man, nor did Zulus love Boers.

Suicide bombing comes from a lack of better alternatives. Give the Palestinians tanks and aircraft, and we'll see an end to suicide bombing.; 6/4/09, 12:21 PM
former law student said...: Islam did not invent albebra

Arabs brought algebra to the West -- that's why we use the Arabic words for it. At the time, most Arabs were Muslim, as most Muslims were Arab.; 6/4/09, 12:24 PM
Jason said...: Garbage. I parse it on Countercolumn here:

http://iraqnow.blogspot.com/2009/06/top-djimmi-cooks.html

Just once I'd like to see him praise America more than Islam.; 6/4/09, 12:30 PM
Almost Ali said...: Rather than debate false history, ask yourself what Islam has done for you lately.

You know, other than slaughtering hundreds of school children in Beslan.; 6/4/09, 12:34 PM
former law student said...: Where the President really messed up was speaking of the Holocaust (which is good he refuted Arab Holocaust deniers) but then linking the Holocaust to the current plight of Palestinians.

Something to think about: If there were no Hitler, no Nazis, and no Holocaust, would the Jewish state of Israel exist today? I think shock and revulsion from the destruction of some 90% of Europe's Jewry motivated most of the world's support for carving a Jewish state out of Britain's Arab colonies.

(Even such benign-seeming countries as France, Holland, and Italy willingly turned over their Jews to the Nazis.)

There would still be Zionists, but would they have their Zion?; 6/4/09, 12:35 PM
Sofa King said...: The current Jew hatred comes from displacement. I wouldn't expect American Indians to love the white man, nor did Zulus love Boers.

That might be analagous if the entire non-native U.S. population was confined to, say, Illinois.; 6/4/09, 12:35 PM
former law student said...: Rather than debate false history, ask yourself what Islam has done for you lately.

Obama is a salesman. Praise must come before fault-finding, and identifying common ground must come first of all.

Obama's no Jeremiah Wright, excoriating the sins of an entire people.; 6/4/09, 12:38 PM
Jason said...: I was particularly aghast at his mention of Indonesia as an example of a tolerant society where Christians could worship freely in a Muslim country, given the recent rash of beheadings of Christian schoolgirls there.

Geez.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4387604.stm

I'm sure the predominantly Roman Catholic East Timor will be happy to learn about Indonesian tolerance. Except that somewhere between 60,000 and 200,000 of them were killed under the brutal Indonesian occupation. This was between 1974 and 1999, so it isn't exactly ancient history.

The Obama presidency is looking like more of a train wreck every day.

I wonder if they translated his speech into Austrian?; 6/4/09, 12:40 PM
AlphaLiberal said...: Something to think about: If there were no Hitler, no Nazis, and no Holocaust, would the Jewish state of Israel exist today? .

I really don't think so. Which is interesting how historical acts echo decades later.

Kind of like, if Bush hadn't stolen the Presidency in 2000, BHO would not be President today.; 6/4/09, 12:42 PM
Kirk Parker said...: "Somebody tell me where he's wrong:

'All these things must be done in partnership. Americans are ready to join with citizens and governments...' "

What's wrong is we're already doing that. This is just stupid, Clinton-style, "no administration has ever done/been X before now" stuff. Annoying but trivial when kept at home; grieviously offensive when used abroad.; 6/4/09, 12:44 PM
Jason said...: Kinda hard to "steal" an election when you keep winding up ahead in the vote count.; 6/4/09, 12:45 PM
AlphaLiberal said...: I'm really glad he called for an end to the settlements. These are expansionist, belligerent and undermine peace.

And, there are probably as many Ds as Rs on the wrong side of that issue. Here's one D being a horse's ass:
Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House foreign affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, said focusing on settlement activity “detracts” from top U.S. goals in the region. However, he added: “I do not support a settlement freeze that calls on Israeli families not to grow, get married, or forces them to throw away their grandparents. Telling people not to have children is unthinkable and inhumane.”

What a liar. Obama said nothing of the sort and they don't need settlements and land grabs to procreate.

There is freer discussion of Israeli policies inside Israel than here.; 6/4/09, 12:46 PM
James H said...: It seems a lot like the Buish 2008 Egypt Speech but I think that will be rarely noted; 6/4/09, 12:49 PM
john said...: Alpha - Now if Gore had succeeded in stealing the 2000 election, who would we have today? McCain? Doubt it.

I think one of the Bush family would be in the WH now.; 6/4/09, 12:49 PM
Jason said...: He should have gotten something in return for calling for an end to settlements.

What did he get?

Nothing.

His foreign policy thus far has been a disaster. A laughing stock of unforced errors and ineptitude.

Maybe he got the President of Egypt a nice Chia-pet, though.; 6/4/09, 12:49 PM
Almost Ali said...: PSA: Appeasement Preparations; things you'll need:

Gas mask (one for each family member).

Hermetically sealed bomb shelter.

Six month supply of dried food and water.

One canary (to test the air before you come out).

Dog-eared copy of the Koran.

Prayer rug (threadbare about the knees).

Compass (perpetually pointing toward Mecca).

One white flag.; 6/4/09, 12:49 PM
former law student said...: his mention of Indonesia as an example of a tolerant society where Christians could worship freely in a Muslim country

This was true in the 60s, when Obama was a boy. A world-wide wave of Muslim fundamentalism in the 80s changed things.; 6/4/09, 12:50 PM
hombre said...: FLS: Fundamentalist believers of all three of the great Middle Eastern religions are equally intolerant and misogynistic....

The current Jew hatred comes from displacement....

Suicide bombing comes from a lack of better alternatives. Give the Palestinians tanks and aircraft....

Surely, you must have something better to do than make stupid, utterly indefensible assertions.; 6/4/09, 12:54 PM
Anonymous said...: My little 81 year old mother said, "my, he is a very accomplished speaker, isn't he?"; 6/4/09, 12:56 PM
Anonymous said...: I wouldn't expect American Indians to love the white man, nor did Zulus love Boers.

I'm part Cherokee, Scotch-Irish, with African and German blood as well.

God I hate myself.; 6/4/09, 12:57 PM
Anonymous said...: Suicide bombing comes from a lack of better alternatives.

Suicide bombing comes from evil. Just like apologism for suicide bombing.; 6/4/09, 12:58 PM
Almost Ali said...: Let us not conflate modernity with history:

"The last hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them" - Mishkat (un-redacted), page 147; 6/4/09, 12:59 PM
Methadras said...: "AlphaLiberal said...

I'm really glad he called for an end to the settlements. These are expansionist, belligerent and undermine peace."

So when Israelis where forced by their own government out of Gaza and Hamas moved in and started over 7000 rocket attacks, how did that that contribute to peace? I must have missed that memo.; 6/4/09, 1:01 PM
Anonymous said...: P.S. Give the Palestinians tanks and aircraft, and we'll see more tanks and aircraft on the arms market-- and more money in the Palestinian leaders' Swiss bank accounts.; 6/4/09, 1:02 PM
Jason said...: This was true in the 60s, when Obama was a boy. A world-wide wave of Muslim fundamentalism in the 80s changed things.

Oh for crying out loud.

Maybe his Prompterness should have run for President of the 1960s, then. That would put him up there with the Mayor of the Conch Republic of Key West.

Unfortunately, here in the reality-based community, rest of the world is stuck in 2009.

He really should try to keep up.

But your STILL an idiot, because between 500,000 and a million people were killed by violence in Indonesia in the late 1960s.

Good god, are you and Obama just that clueless?; 6/4/09, 1:03 PM
Anonymous said...: If Bill Ayers' bombings don't count because Obama was only a kid at the time, perhaps the Crusades shouldn't count either.; 6/4/09, 1:10 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: My apology letter request was full metal snark directed at Hoosier by the way. We're good like that..

Speak for yourself.; 6/4/09, 1:14 PM
Unknown said...: FLS:
The current Jew hatred comes from displacement. I wouldn't expect American Indians to love the white man, nor did Zulus love Boers.
If the 'current' bit was right, you might have a point. But it isn't and you don't. People hate Jews for any number of reasons, and displacement is the least of them. Displacement of Palestinians hardly explains hatred on the other side of the peninsula, let alone Iran. Malicious government and religious leader propaganda probably goes part of the way,though, and the natural tendency of uneducated populations to racism the rest.

Suicide bombing comes from a lack of better alternatives. Give the Palestinians tanks and aircraft, and we'll see an end to suicide bombing.
Well, there is a negotiate in good faith alternative. Oh, no, you are right - since that is beyond them, back to suicide bombing they go. I don't mind this argument if it applies equally to justifying Israel's effective imprisonment of Palestinians in Gaza.

Otherwise, the Palestinians largely made their own bed of denial, bad faith, rejectionism and the cult of the martyr. I hope it is comfortable.
~ ~ ~

As for Indonesia and Timor Leste, this is nothing to do with Islam. The autocratic Indonesian government that repressed East Timorese Christians (and animists) felt no compunction in crushing any seeds of Islamist power as well.

The current Indonesia is far from perfect, but nonetheless a pretty good example of an open and largely free secular country with a massive muslim population.; 6/4/09, 1:15 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Right after you round up the billion letters from Christians, apologizing for the Crusades.

That's really funny. I mean seriously funny. Nothing like holding a grudge for a millenia eh?; 6/4/09, 1:15 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: So Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. were wrong to pursue diplomatic solutions?.

Not at all. The communists were at least sane.; 6/4/09, 1:16 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Suicide bombing comes from a lack of better alternatives. Give the Palestinians tanks and aircraft, and we'll see an end to suicide bombing..

That's funny too because the Syrians, Jordanians and Egyptians had tanks and planes and still managed to get the shit kicked out of them by the Jooos.

Tanks and planes cost money but moronic Islamofascists willing to self detonate seem abundant.; 6/4/09, 1:20 PM
Jason said...: More on Indonesian "tolerance."

In the first five days of the new millennium alone, violence between Christian and Muslim villagers in Maluccu took, by official estimates, more than 2,000 lives. Most were killed in well-coordinated massacres carried out by armed militias.

http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol3No1/east_timor.htm

Yep. A model society, alright. (rolling eyes)

Then there's Bali.; 6/4/09, 1:20 PM
Sofa King said...: True, the Soviets had poor ideology but they - for the most part - negotiated in good faith and could be counted on to respect the most important international norms. It also helped that they really did want to avoid world war, perhaps from having experienced its effects first hand.; 6/4/09, 1:21 PM
former law student said...: Surely, you must have something better to do than make stupid, utterly indefensible assertions.

Let's see:

Palestinians and Israelis are at war; the weapons the Palestinians can get hold of are inferior.

So that seems right.

While Arabs were not crazy about Jews up into the 20th Century, real Jew hatred didn't exist before Israel's war of independence.

So, that seems right.

Self-proclaimed Christians who post here are intolerant of Muslims. Truly Orthodox Jews can't even drink milk, unless an observant Jew has squeezed the cow's teats. Men and women are separated in an Orthodox synagogue the same as in a mosque. Fundamentalist priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams, are all male. Orthodox Jewish women must cover their hair, as do fundamentalist Muslim women.

So that seems right, as well.; 6/4/09, 1:21 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: True, the Soviets had poor ideology but they - for the most part - negotiated in good faith and could be counted on to respect the most important international norms..

God I miss the Cold War.; 6/4/09, 1:27 PM
garage mahal said...: Speak for yourself..

Intolerant.; 6/4/09, 1:27 PM
veni vidi vici said...: "Here's how President Obama closes out the speech. Somebody tell me where he's wrong:"

He's not wrong, Jeremy/Gene. He's just saying the same thing that presidents have been saying for decades, to no avail. For the "new hope" guy that he's supposed to be, according to his own rhetoric and salesmanship, his approach is pretty much a retread, so far.

To boot, this idea of seeing the "Muslim world" as an ideological/political monolith is pretty ignorant, as well as definitely being counter to the national interests of the United States, which he was after all elected to represent and advance. That's his paygrade, no?

Incidentally, Gene/Jeremy, me and Lem are two different people. Your comment on Lem and my two different comments is thus a nonstarter. If you must be an insulting douchebag (which you weren't in the comment I quoted above, btw), then at least try to be coherent about it.; 6/4/09, 1:29 PM
ricpic said...: I thought blacks invented civilization. Now it's muslims. Education never ends.; 6/4/09, 1:29 PM
Jason said...: While Arabs were not crazy about Jews up into the 20th Century, real Jew hatred didn't exist before Israel's war of independence.

So, that seems right.

Wrong.

For example, on November 23, 1937, Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud told British Colonel H.R.P. Dickson: "Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet." He added "that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty."3

Link: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf15.html#3

With much more.; 6/4/09, 1:30 PM
John Althouse Cohen said...: John Althouse Cohen - Where in either statement you provide is there an "apology?"

If you read between the lines, he's criticizing the decision to invade Iraq. As I said -- "muted."; 6/4/09, 1:35 PM
former law student said...: While Arabs were not crazy about Jews up into the 20th Century, real Jew hatred didn't exist before Israel's war of independence.

So, that seems right.

Wrong.

Forgive me. I have gone to the source document. Let me correct my assertion:

While Arabs were not crazy about Jews up into the 20th Century, real Jew hatred didn't exist before the late 30's surge of Jewish immigration that led after WW II to Israel's war of independence.; 6/4/09, 1:40 PM
Paddy O said...: "Self-proclaimed Christians who post here are intolerant of Muslims."

I'm not intolerant of Muslims. I think Obama made a great speech, and made great points. The muslim world has the same problems a lot of the world has--utterly corrupt leadership who abuse their own people, taking advantage of them and riling them up to avoid dealing with the real issues of society.

I think the Palestinian people are hated by everyone, especially other Muslims, who are willing to continually sacrifice them, their future, for the sake of some vague Muslim pride. I think the Muslim nations are in the middle of what could be their true golden age of development, with oil money providing billions and trillions of dollars that could be used for building profound infrastructure in education and industry.

Everyone hates the poor, and it's the people who use the poor while keeping them poor who hate them the most.

I think the Middle Eastern nations have the potential, and the people, to be truly great and productive, but their corrupt leaders keep them enraged and petty in order to pocket the billions, and leave the region perpetually impoverished once the oil boom ends.

I think Obama made a great speech, a true speech, but what no one seems to get is that it's the Middle Eastern leaders who hate their own people the most. Israel loves the Jewish people, and made a productive society out of the ashes of constant oppression.

Any one, any one of the Muslim nations could do the exact same for their own people. Poverty is not inherent to their faith, or their potential. It's just inherent to the corruption in these countries and distraction of always blaming someone else.; 6/4/09, 1:42 PM
ricpic said...: Paddy O, I hate to break it to you but turning a society based on cousin marriage, in other words a clan based society, into a productive high trust first world society, is a next to impossible thing to do. The distrust between clans is too high. And that's what all Arab societies are -- clan based.; 6/4/09, 1:52 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Paddy O;

You made some very thoughtful observations.

If corruption does lead to poverty, then the USA is surely headed there.; 6/4/09, 2:02 PM
hombre said...: FLS wrote (1:21): ...So that seems right. ...So that seems right. ...So that seems right.

Gee, I'm not sure that simply rephrasing your latter two assertions counts as offering a defense for the indefensible.

Jason has already offered one of hundreds of examples, including some from the Koran, demonstrating Arab hatred of Jews predating the "displacement." Try reading some history.

As for your comment about the fundamentalists of the religions "being equally intolerant and misogynistic, did you just come out of hibernation?

Fundamentalist Christians aren't stoning homosexuals, forcing their women to wear burkhas and denying them educations. They are not advocating the outlawing of other religions or, alternatively, pressing for dhimmitude.

Oh, and do you remember the wars of 1948 and 1967 when several Arab nations fought Israel with modern weaponry. Remind me. How did that turn out for them?

The Palestinians are smarter than you are. They understand the difference between fighting with tanks and fighting with suicide bombs.; 6/4/09, 2:09 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: The Palestinians are smarter than you are. They understand the difference between fighting with tanks and fighting with suicide bombs. .

Not the archers. Arrows cost money. Send in the Irish, the dead cost nothing..

King Edward I, Braveheart; 6/4/09, 2:13 PM
Anonymous said...: "Paddy O, I hate to break it to you but turning a society based on cousin marriage, in other words a clan based society, into a productive high trust first world society, is a next to impossible thing to do. The distrust between clans is too high. And that's what all Arab societies are -- clan based."

And this produces the following mentality:
Me against my brother.
My brother and I against the family.
My family against the clan.
My clan against the tribe.
My tribe against the nation.
My nation against the world.
Arab sociology in a nutshell.; 6/4/09, 2:20 PM
Paddy O said...: "If corruption does lead to poverty, then the USA is surely headed there."

That's why I'm disgusted with both Republicans and Democrats who look the other way, only bringing it up when it's done by the opposition. I think our laws and tradition that has kept corruption to a minimum is the source of our power, and if this is gone, we're gone.

"I hate to break it to you..."

Ricpic, I'm not saying it is, so you're not breaking it to me. I think it's immensely difficult, maybe impossible. But, my point is that the problems there aren't really about the Jews, or about America at all. This isn't the 19th century after all. They've more money than can be conceived to fix every single problem and give everyone a new home and a shiny new car.

I'm just saying that I'm not intolerant about Muslims at all. I'm intolerant about corruption. It's the exact same thing we see in South America (a Christian continent) for the last many hundred years. Tribalism is difficult but can be addressed. As it was in Italy and Ireland and all throughout Europe. That took significant amount of time and significant amount of real sacrificial leadership.

It's absolutely possible. Just almost inhumanly hard.

And that we have a bit of progress in this nation, a coming together of so many different tribes, is not without its problems, but thank God for how it can work.; 6/4/09, 2:20 PM
mariner said...: AJ Lynch:
If corruption does lead to poverty, then the USA is surely headed there.

Yes we are, and rather more quickly than we were just a year ago.; 6/4/09, 2:22 PM
Your Correspondent said...: Obama's idea of promising prosperity and so forth is very American but outdated. A nation such as Iran would use their new abilities to wage war, to wage Jihad. Some places should not be enriched, but should probably be impoverished. It hurts even to think that. But I think it's factual.

Also, Obama's assertion that blacks gained freedom without violence flies in the face of the Civil War. Which was extremely violent. Yes, the ML King movement was based on nonviolence; But that wouldn't have worked if Dr. King had still been a slave. And this example was meant for Hamas: To persuade them to pacify!; 6/4/09, 2:24 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: It's the exact same thing we see in South America (a Christian continent) for the last many hundred years. .

Well every country has corruption to one extent or another. I'd actually question whether Muslim governments are any more corrupt than your worst African or Central/S. American nation. Combine that with a fanatical devotion to a religion that views non-believers as infidels and you have a pretty nasty group of folks.

Christianity had it's reformation just shy off 500 years ago. Be nice if Islam could try and catch up and do the same.; 6/4/09, 2:29 PM
hombre said...: FLS wrote: Let me correct my assertion: While Arabs were not crazy about Jews up into the 20th Century, real Jew hatred didn't exist before the late 30's....

Good lord. You just don't get it, do you? Jason spelled it out for you. Here is his quote again. I suggest you actually read it before posting another ineffectual response:

... on November 23, 1937, Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud told British Colonel H.R.P. Dickson: "Our hatred for the Jews
dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet."

You don't really think that "condemnation" took place in the 1930s, do you?

Take a shot at moving beyond jew-hating liberal dogma to doing some thinking.

Look at a map of the Middle East. Is the controversy really about the flyspeck that is Israel?; 6/4/09, 2:30 PM
holdfast said...: "If corruption does lead to poverty, then the USA is surely headed there."

Agreed, we are also less of a 1st world, trust-based society every day, since instead of just accepting legal immigrants, the US has decided to allow the immigration, legal and illegal, of entire cultures. I don't hate Mexico - it's a nice place and all - but I do not think that is a good thing to replicate Mexico (with its ethics, mores and values) in SoCal and other places. If you want Mexico, go to Mexico. Of course, once the US becomes a fully corrupt, 3rd world, low trust system, illegal immigration will solve itself, since nobody will want to come here - though it will still take a while to burn through all the inherited social capital.; 6/4/09, 2:37 PM
DADvocate said...: I wish I had just half the knowledge, erudition, insight and conceit of former law student.; 6/4/09, 2:39 PM
former law student said...: ... on November 23, 1937, Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud told British Colonel H.R.P. Dickson: "Our hatred for the Jews
dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet."

Yeah, and the Jews' hatred of Italy goes back to Masada. Does that mean Romans shouldn't vacation in Israel? That a Gentile ordering Carciofi alla Giudia in Rome risks poisoning?

Jews have no particular reason to hate Romans at the moment, no matter how ancient their hatred is. Just as Arabs had no particular reason to hate Jews until they became sufficiently numerous in Palestine to take the place over.

Try to go beyond taking some King's rationalization at face value.

But the King was prescient. Here's a paragraph from Dickson's notes:

'It were far preferable form every point of view if Great Britain were to make Palestine a British Possession and rule it for the next 100 years, rather than to partition it in the way they propose: such partition cannot possibly solve the difficulty but must only perpetuate it and lead to war and misery. Some people seem to think that I, Bin Sa'ud, have an eye on Palestine myself, and would like to benefit by the disturbed state of affairs existing there, to step in and offer to take it over myself. That certainly would be a solution, but God forbid that this should happen, for I have enough and to spare as it is.'; 6/4/09, 2:57 PM
Gina said...: I have to point out, after seeing that Althouse posted on Instapundit without comment the snippet from Obama's speech about all the things the Muslim world supposedly invented, that this must have come from the same fact-checkers as the "one of the largest Muslim nations in the world" comment.

Muslims did not invent those things. Their great learning came from their captured dhimmi nations, i.e. from Jews, Christians, and the assorted mystical sects. It is true that the Muslim world served as one bridge whereby classical learning passed to Europe, but that is because they had subjugated those lands and stolen their riches. If Obama had visited a Coptic church as well as a mosque while in Cairo, any janitor or grandma in it could have explained this to him.; 6/4/09, 2:58 PM
Almost Ali said...: Today's POTUS affirmation:

"The United States will have no peace until every sinner (Infidel) leaves Israel" - Osama bin Laden; 6/4/09, 2:58 PM
Anonymous said...: Fundamentalist believers of all three of the great Middle Eastern religions are equally intolerant and misogynistic -- it goes with the territory.

Just as Arabs had no particular reason to hate Jews until they became sufficiently numerous in Palestine to take the place over.

Sorta lost track of your story somewhere along the way there, didn't you?; 6/4/09, 3:07 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Just as Arabs had no particular reason to hate Jews until they became sufficiently numerous in Palestine to take the place over..

Because everyone knows all the Jews are originally from New York and not Palestine.; 6/4/09, 3:13 PM
former law student said...: Fundamentalist Christians aren't stoning homosexuals, forcing their women to wear burkhas and denying them educations. They are not advocating the outlawing of other religions or, alternatively, pressing for dhimmitude.

I get it, thank you. Tolerance means stopping short of stoning gays. Telling gays that their sexual orientation is "a lifestyle" of which they can be "cured" defines tolerance.

Here are some Christian equivalents of the burqa. Hair coverings are optional

http://www.modestapparelusa.com/women/modest-dresses.html

Girls are educated in every Islamic country. The Taliban ban on female education has no basis in Islam.

Christian groups, such as the one behind "truthformuslims.com" don't work to outlaw Islam, they merely demonize Islam, and work to convert Muslims to "Biblical Christianity."

Oh, and do you remember the wars of 1948 and 1967 when several Arab nations fought Israel with modern weaponry.

No suicide bombers back then, right?; 6/4/09, 3:33 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Yes, I agree the loss of trust and honest behavior among average Americans, even if based on a mere handshake or conservation, is leading to more and more corruption. That breeds dishonest behavior,

Is it fair to say our politicians are leading the way? They are the best at making campaign promises but not keeping them. And we put up with it over and over.; 6/4/09, 3:37 PM
traditionalguy said...: There is one and only one problem to giving up the Jewish Nation State to Arab Thugs and Murderers. Those pesky Jews have been fighting back since 1947. They don't seem to understand their role has always been to suffer and die to assist the rest of the world in its self destructive insanity. Maybe when the dust clears this time, the world can really re-think the true value of the Jews.; 6/4/09, 3:42 PM
hombre said...: FLS wrote: "Yeah, and the Jews' hatred of Italy goes back to Masada. Does that mean Romans shouldn't vacation in Israel?"

And: "Try to go beyond taking some King's [sic.] rationalization at face value."

The Jews hate Italy? Back to Masada?

The King of Saudi Arabia in 1937 is "some king" in the context of this discussion? We're supposed to accept your "rationalization" about the history of Muslims hating Jews and reject his?

Wow! That's just pathetic!

P.S. You'll just have to excuse me from responding to your 3:33 post. I am so dazzled by your logic and erudition -- not to mention your moral equivalence -- that I just can't manage it. LOL; 6/4/09, 3:42 PM
Jeremy said...: Hoosier Daddy said; relative to my asking whether Reagan/Nixon/Bush Sr. were also wrong to initiate diplomacy:

"Not at all. The communists were at least sane."

So now, in an attempt at continuing to criticize Obama for trying to open the doors to diplomacy, we have a wingnut...referring to the evil empire...as being "sane."

Can you hear that spinning sound?

That's Ronnie spinning in his grave.; 6/4/09, 3:54 PM
Daryl said...: Nothing for women's lib, nothing for the gays, and he wants to make it easier for Muslim Americans to donate money to terrorists via shady "charities."

He says the Holocaust was bad, but what the Palestinians are facing every day is the same thing.

In other words, the most shockingly anti-libertarian, anti-American, un-American douchebag ever to sit in the Oval Office.

Good job voting for him, Althouse!; 6/4/09, 4:00 PM
Michael McNeil said...: former law student says:
Islam did not invent albebra
Arabs brought algebra to the West — that's why we use the Arabic words for it.

While the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta (7th century AD) made4 some important advances in algebra, it was the Greek Diophantus (lived around the 3rd century AD) who is known as the “father of algebra” in modern mathematics.

Diophantus produced a book The Arithmetica which is devoted to the solution of difficult issues in determinate and indeterminate analysis (one of his problems became the inspiration for Fermat's famous “last theorem”). Diophantus also pioneered a syncopated notation for expressing equations which is an ancestor of the symbolic algebraic notation used today.

The Arabic mathematician Al-Khwarizmi (9th century AD) contrariwise wrote a book Al-jabr which has become the source of our English word “algebra” (as well as his name being the origin of the word “algorithm”), but his work dealt with the solution of much simpler problems than Diophantus addressed. Al-Khwarizmi also avoided any kind of syncopated notation, writing out all his problems, including numbers, in words.; 6/4/09, 4:02 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: So now, in an attempt at continuing to criticize Obama for trying to open the doors to diplomacy, we have a wingnut...referring to the evil empire...as being "sane.".

Please refer to me as Mr. Wingnut.

Yes they were an evil empire. Evil isn't synonomous with insane. Try picking up a dictionary sometime.; 6/4/09, 4:11 PM
former law student said...: Muslims did not invent those things.

Actually, Obama did not claim they did. He uses words very carefully, at least when not speaking off the cuff.

He didn't claim Muslims did anything, just that innovation took place in Muslim communities. Minority Jews or Christians could have likewise been the innovators.

Further, this innovation did not necessarily produce breakthroughs.
This innovation merely developed the order of algebra; developed our magnetic compass; developed tools of navigation; increased our mastery of pens and printing; increased our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. The tiniest incremental improvements make his statement true.

The next statement makes no claim to innovation: "Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation."; 6/4/09, 4:13 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Girls are educated in every Islamic country..

Of course they are. Only an idiot would think they weren't allowed to go to school. Don't you remember those Muslim schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia who the police allowed to be burned to death because they weren't allowed to leave the burning schoolhouse without their headcovers?; 6/4/09, 4:17 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: The next statement makes no claim to innovation: "Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.".

I guess the cynic in me say's that's nice but what have they done for us lately. Lately as in say, the last half a millenium?; 6/4/09, 4:20 PM
former law student said...: the Greek Diophantus (lived around the 3rd century AD) who is known as the “father of algebra” in modern mathematics.

Diophantus was a father without any children. Soon after his death, Europe slid into what used to be call the "Dark Ages," through which only arithmetic and geometry survived. In contrast, Arabs had preserved the old knowledge, and even created new knowledge.; 6/4/09, 4:26 PM
Unknown said...: I think the speech was fine. Not that I don't have issues with it, but that's inevitable. The real test comes in the actions to follow, not in the speech itself.; 6/4/09, 4:30 PM
Paddy O said...: Wait a second, I thought it was the Irish who saved civilization?; 6/4/09, 4:36 PM
veni vidi vici said...: mcg,
that's the rub. Thus far, this administration can best be characterized as many finely scripted words with few supporting actions. Unfortunately, on the record to date, the effectiveness of the actions taken (big spending and the like), controversial as they have been, remains to be seen.; 6/4/09, 4:43 PM
former law student said...: Wait a second, I thought it was the Irish who saved civilization?

Not the math part of civilization. Let's go to amazon.com:

How the Irish Saved Civilization

Search inside this book

0 results for algebra
0 results for geometry

but in their own prehistoric mathematics and their own most ancient evidence of the human spirit -- the megalithic tombs of the Boyne Valley.; 6/4/09, 4:45 PM
The Dude said...: The Irish contribution to history is staggering.; 6/4/09, 4:47 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Thank you for the text. Now I don't have to watch. Bless you, you're a saint.

But the text of Obama's speech implies a one-way communication and we know that not to be the case. Ideas were exchanged on this important trip to Egypt that will have profound effects on our own national composition, as you we plainly see from the first photographs released by the White House, which I might have possibly made up.; 6/4/09, 4:48 PM
JAL said...: "Not at all. The communists were at least sane."

So now, in an attempt at continuing to criticize Obama for trying to open the doors to diplomacy, we have a wingnut...referring to the evil empire...as being "sane."

Can you hear that spinning sound?

That's Ronnie spinning in his grave.

I believe that the Mutual Assured Destruction theory during the Cold War is might be what the "sane" reference is here.

It worked at that time and Reagan's stuff "worked" because the Communists had an interest in not destroying themselves, unlike the Islamic terrorists and others whose salvation is elevated by murdering others.

To wipe Israel and the rest of the Jews off the face of the earth is the not covert desire of a significant vocal group of Muslims. (Note I do not say ALL.) I am pretty sure they don't give a fig about the cost.

Mutual Assured Destruction seemed to be a good deterent when you had someone who cared about whether they were on either end of the destruction.

That's probably what is meant by "sane."; 6/4/09, 4:49 PM
Synova said...: "Girls are educated in every Islamic country. The Taliban ban on female education has no basis in Islam."

Yes, I know. And female circumcision has no basis in Islam either.

And I'll start giving Islam credit for not supporting these things when the Taliban stands on Islamic principles and insists on the education of girls and women and when Muslims in Africa start telling their people to stop female circumcision because it's against Islam.

Until then, what virtue does Islam hold for allowing those cultural practices to continue?; 6/4/09, 4:52 PM
traditionalguy said...: The Irish contributed Guiness and beautiful red headed celtic women. The Muslims contributed a 1200 year Prohibition on alcohol and women you cannot see inside burquas. No contest there.; 6/4/09, 4:54 PM
Richard Dolan said...: I think most have learned by now that Obama doesn't necessarily mean what he says. (Ann has another post up about how he's not done what he said he would do for gays, for example.) For O, rhetoric is its own reality at times, and today's speech seemed to be one of them.

Other than the rhetoric and despite the hype, the speech was mostly bromides, small bore proposals and the now-routine slap at Bush. Even that was toned down. Take, for example, O's statement that Iran's pursuit of a nuke was unacceptable. OK. Now how does that get translated into a policy that might achieve the result, or are we just dealing with words that will have no follow through? (I suspect the latter.) Or the bit about Israel and Palestine. How does that play out, when there's no one in place to speak for and bind the Palestinians? In contrast, it's easy to see how the part aimed at Israel might play out.

As for the more general discussion of relations between the US and the Muslim countries, he had some fairly modest proposals -- $2 billion to fight polio, for example, and expanded educational exchange programs. Does anyone think that O's discussion of women's rights in Muslim countries will have any follow-through or impact? How about religious tolerance? That's a non-starter in many Muslim countries. On those and many other points, O says that the US can't impose its system or values.

So forget the speech. Just watch what he does.; 6/4/09, 4:58 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Diophantus was a father without any children. Soon after his death, Europe slid into what used to be call the "Dark Ages," through which only arithmetic and geometry survived. In contrast, Arabs had preserved the old knowledge, and even created new knowledge..

I'll repeat the question. What have they done lately?; 6/4/09, 4:59 PM
Michael McNeil said...: former law student:
Diophantus was a father without any children. Soon after his death, Europe slid into what used to be call the "Dark Ages," through which only arithmetic and geometry survived.

The so-called dark ages in Western Europe didn't begin for more than three centuries after Diophantus. Maybe you count such an interval as “soon,” but it's almost twice the length of time the United States of America has existed.

In contrast, Arabs had preserved the old knowledge, and even created new knowledge.

Ever hear of Constantinople? The East Roman Empire survived all through the Middle Ages, thriving for much of that period, and never forgot the classical age. Indeed, it was Constantinople that preserved Archimedes' work on his Method, revealing that he had made it almost all the way to the calculus.

Meanwhile, Arabic mathematics was basically dead after Omar Khayyam passed from the scene in 1123 (with the exception of a couple of mathematicians, Al-Tusi and Al-Kashi, writing far from the centers of Arabic civilization under the aegis of Mongol rulers in northwestern Iran [in the former case] and the distant Central Asian city of Samarkand [in the latter] during the 1200's and early 1400's).; 6/4/09, 5:02 PM
The Scythian said...: Former Law Student wrote:

"Arabs brought algebra to the West -- that's why we use the Arabic words for it. At the time, most Arabs were Muslim, as most Muslims were Arab."

While it's true that most Arabs in the medieval world were Muslims, it doesn't necessarily follow that most Muslims were Arabs.

Algebra, as we know it today, was codified and developed by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. He was a Muslim, but not an Arab -- he was a Persian of Uzbek descent. And when a copy was acquired and translated in the West, it was acquired in Al-Andalus (modern day Spain), which was conquered and governed by Muslims who were Berbers -- not Arabs.

The Arabs didn't 'bring' Algebra to the West, Western scholars went into the Muslim world and *brought* it back. In the case of Robert of Chester, who translated Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, it was in an attempt to understand the Muslim Berbers so that they could be driven off of the Iberian peninsula entirely. (The Berbers, known then to the West as the Moors, had the annoying habit of trying to conquer the rest of Europe and sending raiding parties as far as Ireland to gather slaves.)

The reason that we use a corruption of an Arabic word for the discipline of 'algebra' isn't because Arabs brought it to the West, it's because the Arabic language was the language used across the Arab world because, in theory, all scholars had to read the Qur'an in the original Arabic.

Since the birth of pan-Arab nationalism in the aftermath of World War II, there has been a conscious attempt by Arabs, especially those teaching in the West, to conflate 'Islamic' and 'Arabic' into one category to serve various political ends.

As a result, ignorant Westerners make silly and uninformed statements like the ones you've made.

This being the internet, I fully expect you to hit up Wikipedia and nitpick ad nauseum to draw attention away from the fact that you don't know enough about the subject at hand to speak meaningfully about it. Alternatively, you'll resort to name calling or call my post long-winded or something.

Have fun with that.; 6/4/09, 5:09 PM
g2loq said...: Overall a rather balanced speech!
Nice to have "balance"!
I feeeel"balanced"!

Elsewhere:
Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is seeking a second term in office, reiterated on Wednesday his anti-Israel stance by calling the Holocaust a "big deception"....
http://tinyurl.com/pxnbuj; 6/4/09, 5:17 PM
Jason said...: Former law student,

Your ignorance has been bitch-slapped so hard here on Althouse your children will be born bruised.

Run along now, kid. Adults are talking here.; 6/4/09, 5:26 PM
TitusisHornyFromWatchingLandscaper said...: I bet there was quite a bit of hot muzzie hog in there.

Muzzie men can be very hot.

Did I mention Naziz?; 6/4/09, 5:33 PM
TitusisHornyFromWatchingLandscaper said...: I bet you could smell the uncut smelly hog in that hall.; 6/4/09, 5:35 PM
TitusisHornyFromWatchingLandscaper said...: I bet there was some good pussy under those burkas too.; 6/4/09, 5:36 PM
Michael McNeil said...: traditionalguy:
The Irish contributed Guiness and beautiful red headed celtic women. The Muslims contributed a 1200 year Prohibition on alcohol and women you cannot see inside burquas. No contest there.

The Irish did far more than that. During the early Middle Ages (the “Dark Ages”), recently converted by St. Patrick, the autonomous Celtic Church was vigorous and — retaining the Old Irish's respect for learning — assembled great libraries of Greek and Latin texts, thence passing the light of scholarship on to still-barbarous Anglo-Saxon England and Frankish-ruled Western Europe.

Irish learning was later extinguished by the Viking invasions starting in the 800's, but by then their job was done. Former law student already mentioned the book from a few years back How the Irish Saved Civlization recounting this saga — whose title may be a bit over the top, but only a little. (FLS is right that the Irish of the time weren't mathematically minded, but that doesn't detract from the supreme value of their contribution to the history of civilization.); 6/4/09, 5:36 PM
TitusisHornyFromWatchingLandscaper said...: Do you think there was any bathroom action after the speech on the downlow, natch?; 6/4/09, 5:41 PM
ZZMike said...: There's one key point about war and peace (Besides Tolstoy, of course). That is, it takes two to make peace, but only one to make war.

The pages of history are littered with the bodies of countries that were not as strong or as prepared as their neighbors.

There's diplomacy, and then there's diplomacy. It really depends on an exchange of ideas and values between equals. I hope there's no-one here who does not know the story of an English diplomat, Neville Chamberlain, who came back one day not too long ago from a meeting with Adolf Hitler, and told the English people that they had secured "peace in our time".

Let's look at a definition: "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and compromise, thereby avoiding the resort to an armed conflict which would be expensive, bloody, and possibly dangerous."

What's that policy called? Does any of it match what Obama said in Egypt?

Now let's look at what that policy is called: Appeasement (go look it up on wikipedia).

Somebody brought up the Crusades. Here's the thing: we gave up on them a long time ago. The last Crusade was about 800 years ago. When will Islam give up its world-wide, neverending crusade against the "infidel"?

I'll still give Muslim scholars (back in the old days when scholars were allowed in Islam) credit for algebra. The word comes from "Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala" ("The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing"), and we get our word "algorithm" from Muhammad ibn Musa Khwarizmi.

Note that both those people were Persian - like Omar Khayyam.

The Arabs may have copied many manuscripts from the old Greeks, but they studiously threw out anything that wasn't immediately useful. You'll find no histories, no plays, no philosophy - that's why so few Greek plays survive.

"... our mastery of pens and printing ..." Egypt was the source of most of the papyrus in the world. When the Muslims found out about it, they cornered the market so that nobody else would be able to commit blasphemy to paper.

"... our magnetic compass and tools of navigation ..."

The magnetic compass was known in China since abut 200 BC. I'll give them navigation - almost all the star names we have are Arabic (Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, ...).

"Give the Palestinians tanks and aircraft, and we'll see an end to suicide bombing."

Too true. As the saying goes, if the Arabs had no guns, there'd be no war; if the Israelis had no guns, there'd be no Israel".

Alpha Liberal (a well-chosen name): Did you read Israel's response to Obama's "demand" that Israel "stop expanding Jewish communities"? Here it is - short and sweet:

“I have to admire the residents of
Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine
where Jews should live in Jerusalem.”

FLS ("While Arabs were not crazy about Jews up into the 20th Century, real Jew hatred didn't exist before Israel's war of independence.") Evindently you didn't get a chance to read Jason's comment ("For example, on November 23, 1937, Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud told British Colonel H.R.P. Dickson: "Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet.")

Checkmate.

As for your incredible riposte ("Jews' hatred of Italy"...): I must have missed the news accounts of Jewish suicide bombers running amok in the Vatican, blowing up themselves along with a few Cardinals.

Richard Dolan sums it up perfectly: "So forget the speech. Just watch what he does." There's an old saying: "What you do speaks so loudly that I can't hear what you're saying".

One final addition to what Hoosier Daddy and Michael Macneil said: How many books are published in Arab countries each year? How many from other countries are translated into Arabic? (I really don't know - I just have a pretty good idea that the answers are "few" and "fewer".); 6/4/09, 5:54 PM
Michael McNeil said...: Somebody brought up the Crusades. Here's the thing: we gave up on them a long time ago. The last Crusade was about 800 years ago. When will Islam give up its world-wide, neverending crusade against the “infidel”?

The (Western) Crusades were actually caused by Islam's “neverending crusade against the ‘infidel.’”; 6/4/09, 6:05 PM
Fen said...: Obama: I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.

14 UN resolutions over 12 years. Oil for Food Scandal.

We used diplomacy and it failed us.

Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: 'I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.'

For your Wisdom to grow, you must first learn from your mistakes. Are you going to give Iran 14 harshly worded condmenations before they destroy Israel?; 6/4/09, 6:09 PM
Fen said...: The man's name is Gene Olson and he's a psychology teacher at Santa Monica College.

Thats pretty sad. I thought we were dealing with a teenager.

Jeremy is a teacher? Explains alot.; 6/4/09, 6:12 PM
TitusisHornyFromWatchingLandscaper said...: How long and big do you think the biggest and longest hog was in that hall?; 6/4/09, 6:14 PM
Moose said...: Isn't it interesting that the peace *after* a war is always better than more prosperous than the peace *before* a war?

Why is that do you think?; 6/4/09, 6:18 PM
TitusisHornyFromWatchingLandscaper said...: I wish he would of mentioned that our men would like their women to take off their beekeeper suits so we can get a gander at their coochs.; 6/4/09, 6:19 PM
Jason said...: Well, at least there's hope for a teenager.

Psychology is a mickey mouse field, and Jeremy teaches the most mickey mouse field possible in a mickey mouse college, in a town where people are very unlikely to challenge his beliefs and force him to develop better arguments.

I can't believe I was born in that libtard cesspool.

One thing I like about Santa Monica: Irish traditional music sessions at Finn MacCool's!; 6/4/09, 6:32 PM
Synova said...: Talking about diplomacy as if it's something fundamentally different and separate from war is naive.

Diplomacy is force, war by another name. It's a continuum without clear distinction between one and the other. I believe that a whole lot of error occurs when the unified purposes of diplomacy and war are not understood.

In either case it's getting the other side to do what they would rather not do. It's an application of force and really not very nice either way. After all... countries will do what they want to do and what they feel is in their best interest if someone uses diplomacy or not. Nice, happy words, flattering words, may be diplomacy if they serve to force the other side, even if just to save face, to comply in some way to what the "diplomat" needs from them.

Force is force, and just because it's diplomacy doesn't mean that the other side is happy with you or *likes* you because you're using carrots instead of sticks. It's still all about getting them to go where they really *don't* want to go. One is manipulation and the other is swords. The losing side doesn't like either and won't like us just because we make noises about not using swords. It doesn't cease to be *bullying* just because manipulation is used or because the happy words are delivered in a pleasant voice.

Someone pointed out that Obama's speech is little different from the one Bush gave to the same audience. If so, I'm not at all surprised. Those are the speeches that leaders are expected to give. And I don't expect Obama to get up in front of representatives of another nation and "school" them on how to properly behave. Not in that sort of venue. And I've cringed when he's given speeches that sound like "we're going to show you children how to do this" which sub-text is apparent now and then.

It might be words, but it's not "diplomatic."; 6/4/09, 6:36 PM
Anonymous said...: this reminds me of a short video i made with a cube post it pad and the song:

On a magic carpet ride
You don't know what we can see
Why don't you tell your dreams to me

While we are riding please turn these abstract semiconnected statements into a knot:

Knot theory was given its first impetus when Lord Kelvin.

There is no general algorithm to determine if a tangled curve is a knot or if two given knots are interlocked. Haken (1961) and Hemion (1979) have given algorithms for rigorously determining if two knots are equivalent, but they are too complex to apply even in simple cases (Hoste et al. 1998).

“If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.”

a stitch is a knot in time.

Finally the truest of mathematicians offers the finest explanation of love: from the persian:

http://www.amazon.com/Rubaiyat-Omar-Khayyam/dp/0312695276

the tent makers!; 6/4/09, 6:38 PM
Michael McNeil said...: former law student sez:
While Arabs were not crazy about Jews up into the 20th Century, real Jew hatred didn't exist before Israel's war of independence.

Others have already answered FLS with earlier instances of Muslim Jew hatred from the 20th century as well as a quote from the Koran, but let's look at another instance from the Golden Age of Islamic civilization.

The barrage of criticism of Spain hardly ever ebbs these days over its forced expulsion at the end of the Middle Ages/beginning of the modern era — in a fit of Catholic fanaticism — of both Jews and Muslims following Spain's conquest of the last Islamic state on the Iberian peninsula, Granada, in 1492.

However, one hardly ever hears of the fact that, for centuries prior to that, Christian parts of the peninsula had welcomed many thousands of Jews expelled — on pain of death or forced conversion — from Muslim Spain as a result of Islamic extremism.

The great Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides, for instance, had been forced to escape his family's home Cordova in 1159 — and later (in 1165) flee again again from Fez, Morocco (and meanwhile disguise his Jewish identity) — due to just such Muslim fanaticism.; 6/4/09, 6:40 PM
traditionalguy said...: Mike Mcneil: the author Thomas Cahil also wrote about the Greeks and the Hebrews. He has a good point of view. You are right about the Irish Church until those raiders from Norway stole their treasures and killed off the Monks. Now a days we cannot even get anyone from Norway to have an opinion on anything except Jimmy Carter's Nobel Prize for screwing up the chances for true peace everywhere he goes.; 6/4/09, 6:48 PM
Eli Blake said...: I had the 'pleasure' of listening to Sean Hannity parse the speech, and what he said Obama should have said, are all the things that George W. Bush said for year (i.e. 'you should thank the United States freeing muslims in Kuwait and Iraq from Saddam' and similar ravings.)

However, I'd only point out that even in Iraq, the guy who threw shoes at George W. Bush's head when he last visited is a national hero.

More important than the substance of Obama's speech is the simple fact that Obama could give a speech like this and ordinary people (not government officials who are obligated to be there and clap politely) actually listened to him and care what he had to say. Which is refreshing in and of itself.; 6/4/09, 7:30 PM
Saint Croix said...: Very good speech. Possibly historic. Polite, respectful, doesn't hide anything, puts all our complaints out there, says lots of nice things. I thought it showed a lack of class to knock the previous administration. My one quibble.

Really nice speech.; 6/4/09, 7:34 PM
Revenant said...: While Arabs were not crazy about Jews up into the 20th Century, real Jew hatred didn't exist before Israel's war of independence.

I suppose one could believe that, if one ignored the frequent collaboration between Nazis and Arabs -- and the specifically Jew-hating characteristics of that collaboration.; 6/4/09, 7:43 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: However, I'd only point out that even in Iraq, the guy who threw shoes at George W. Bush's head when he last visited is a national hero. .

And if that is the case then that only reinforces my already low opinion of the Iraqis in that they deserved Saddam Hussein.

Shake hands and be friendly with an Arab despot and you're hated because 'you support' them.

Remove an Arab despot and you get shoes thrown at you by the very people he was feeding into industrial shredders and set up rape rooms for his kids.

If there was only a way we could ignore that segment of the world.; 6/4/09, 7:48 PM
Sofa King said...: If there was only a way we could ignore that segment of the world.

But there is. It begins with "nuclear" and ends with "reactors."; 6/4/09, 7:58 PM
former law student said...: christopher and michael mcneil: If ethnic precision is important to you, I hope in future you refer to Jews as Arabs practicing Judaism -- assuming you call Palestinians Arabs and I hope you do.

Diophantus was a father without any children

The so-called dark ages in Western Europe didn't begin for more than three centuries after Diophantus

What would you call the time when Western learning stopped, stagnated, and was forgotten, but the Dark Ages? The time between Diophantus and Fibonacci; between Galen and Vesalius?

Arabic mathematics was basically dead after Omar Khayyam passed from the scene in 1123

At which point the Dark Ages were over and the Renaissance had begun. (NB: Not the much later "High" Renaissance)

The Arabs didn't 'bring' Algebra to the West, Western scholars went into the Muslim world and *brought* it back

My goodness, a scholarly Brit went all the way to Spain! That would never happen nowadays. I'm not quite sure how an Arab could do more in the way of bringing Algebra to the West, unless, by definition, if Arabs move there, it's no longer the West.

The reason that we use a corruption of an Arabic word for the discipline of 'algebra' isn't because Arabs brought it to the West, it's because the Arabic language was the language used across the Arab world because, in theory, all scholars had to read the Qur'an in the original Arabic.

The reason we use a combination of two Arabic words for 'algebra' is that we forgot all about Diophantus during the Dark Ages. Had we not had the Dark Ages, we would have used a Greek word for algebra, or a Latin word for algebra, or perhaps even an English word for algebra, etc. etc.

ZZMike -- The point is that ancient hatreds are irrelevant unless you have a current grievance.

The great Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides, for instance, had been forced to escape his family's home Cordova in 1159 — and later (in 1165) flee again again from Fez, Morocco (and meanwhile disguise his Jewish identity) — due to just such Muslim fanaticism.

Jews had flourished in Moorish Spain for centuries before the fanatic Muslims took over.; 6/4/09, 8:48 PM
DADvocate said...: Which is refreshing in and of itself.

There's nothing refreshing about political speeches. Refreshing is jumping in a mountain stream in May.; 6/4/09, 9:02 PM
Cedarford said...: Revenent - I suppose one could believe that, if one ignored the frequent collaboration between Nazis and Arabs -- and the specifically Jew-hating characteristics of that collaboration..

Like it or not, the idea that Jews were the common enemy of Germany and the Arabs...or their manifestations of Jewish Bolshevikism and Zionism drive them to be viewed as common enemies - was accepted as fact by the British. And by the mid 30s the Brits wrote they had made horrific mistakes in WWI and it's aftermath that they strove mightily to defuse - recognizing that their whole Empire was threatened - but failed to do.

1. They made conflicting promises to Arabs whose blood and bravery drove the Turk out, and Jews whose money kept the Brit war effort going and whose efforts to destabilize the German home Front in 1917-18 worked. The Jews got Balfour, the Arabs promised independence got a British and French knife in the back.
2. Weakened, the democratic Western Powers were unable to stop Jewish-Russian Bolshevik revolution following WWI...and that gave birth to Fascist movements in Spain, Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, Austria, China.
3. Every Arab land under the Brit or French yoke then developed proto-fascist movements to limit communist inroads, drive the colonial powers that supplanted the Turk out, and drive out the Jews Britain was trying to "implant" like they did Scot Protestants in Ireland..

It began in 1916 with the Sykes-Picot Agreement with the Brits and French & Belgium doing what they did best back then... drawing magic marker lines on a map of the world. After WWI they divided the Arab speaking world into the thieving & tyrannical countries of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq and the resulting poverty and lack of development, coupled with the UN mandated creation of Israel, that turned Muslims in these Arab countries against the West. The story of screwing Germany into the ground fertilizing the soil for the rise of Hitler is another story, but typical of the Euros.
But that made the Arabs and Nazis natural revanchists, and natural allies of each other.
Add in the Jewish-Russian led Soviet Union (half the Soviet Central Party & Politburo were Jewish origin in 1925) engaged in mass democide, declared the Germans and Muslims enemies of progressivism...And further fed a sense of a common front between Arab and German against Bolshevikism and Jewish Transnational machinations, their attempts at bloody Jewish-led communist revolutions in other countries, as well as Zionist land grabs.
Add in the post-WWI screwing of Japan at US-Brit leadership to limit their Navy, and the colonial powers to block Japan from also becoming a colonial ruler...made Japan a natural revanchist power as well.

The rest, they say is history, and an explaination to why Israel is presently seen as a vestage, the last one, of the big screwing done to Arabs after the Turk was driven out. And why Jews are considered today, true to the Prophet's word, as treacherous foes of Muslims..; 6/4/09, 9:17 PM
Cedarford said...: FLS - Jews had flourished in Moorish Spain for centuries before the fanatic Muslims took over..

The initial Berber-Arab Muslim armies invading Iberia was how large masses of Jews arrived in Iberia in the 1st place. They were camp-followers of the Muslims - the ones who supplied the Muslims with goods, made and repaired things for Muslims, became the tax collectors and lawyers and palace bureaucracy for the Muslims in conquered lands.
And the initial invasion of Arabs, Berbers, and Jews that was stopped at Tours was not that of moderates, but butchering fanatics. The "moderate phase of Andalusia" came later.
As did the practice of Jews trying to thread the needle and backstab the Muslims that brought them in for better deals with the Christians, then betray and go back to serving the Arabs if circumstances merited betrayal.

In the end, Jews were not trusted as loyal by either the Muslims or Christians. When the Christians prevailed...they wanted Jewish merchants, money-lenders, tax collectors to remain...but not as treacherous collaborators. They figured the only way the collaborators to the Muslims could ever be trusted was if the Jews converted to Christianity (hence the Inquisition's establishment).

Otherwise, for the safety of the Two Kingdoms, the Jews that refused an opportunity to convert had to be expelled alongside the Muslim conquerers they had come in with, and served for centuries.; 6/4/09, 9:32 PM
Daryl said...: Europe slid into what used to be call the "Dark Ages," through which only arithmetic and geometry survived. In contrast, Arabs had preserved the old knowledge, and even created new knowledge.

So Europeans invented algebra, but an Arab "created or saved" it.; 6/4/09, 10:09 PM
Synova said...: Eli, I'd like to know on what basis you state that the "shoe throwing guy" is a hero in Iraq? I don't doubt that he's a hero to some, but you made a fairly sweeping statement there. Is he a hero to the Shia? Is he a hero to the Kurds? Or is he a bit of a hero to a few Sunni who resent not being in control any longer?

You also make the sweeping statement that Obama's speech was received well by regular people in the middle east. How do you reach that conclusion? Because you think it ought? Because our press reported it? Because some Arabs followed a cultural tradition of saying the nice things someone else wants to hear?

Essentially, I'd like to know on what basis do you conclude that people in the Middle East are all of one opinion or another rather than holding various and often contradictory opinions?; 6/4/09, 10:39 PM
Synova said...: fls, next time something happens and you want to claim that conservatives don't understand the cultural and ethnic intricacies of the middle east, we'll remember that you felt it unnecessary to bother.; 6/4/09, 10:54 PM
Michael McNeil said...: former law student:
Jews had flourished in Moorish Spain for centuries before the fanatic Muslims took over.

And Jews flourished in Christian Catholic Spain for additional centuries before a turn to a more fanatic Catholicism took place.

Cedarford starts off saying much the same thing as FLS (you two make great allies!), but then as usual goes off the deep end:

In the end, Jews were not trusted as loyal by either the Muslims or Christians. When the Christians prevailed… they wanted Jewish merchants, money-lenders, tax collectors to remain… but not as treacherous collaborators. They figured the only way the collaborators to the Muslims could ever be trusted was if the Jews converted to Christianity (hence the Inquisition's establishment).

Cederford goes out of his way to slander the Jews (how unusual for him!), then arm-waves away many centuries of time. Contrariwise to his supposed points, from the 1100's well into the 1400's (a very long time) sizable Jewish communities lived in what was otherwise Christian Spain (actually the Christian portions of the Iberian peninsula, as “Spain” as such didn't yet exist) — where they lived peacefully, prosperously, without being particularly oppressed by their Christian neighbors, often rising to high positions in the Catholic kingdoms of the peninsula.; 6/5/09, 12:00 AM
Michael McNeil said...: former law student sez:
christopher and michael mcneil: If ethnic precision is important to you, I hope in future you refer to Jews as Arabs practicing Judaism — assuming you call Palestinians Arabs and I hope you do.

Wrong. Before the Arab irruption out of Arabia under the banners of Mohammed in the 7th century, the Jewish and Christian inhabitants of Palestine (along with Jews in general) were not “Arabs.” Nor did they magically transform into ethnic “Arabs” afterwards (though after the Arab conquest the dominant language used in the Palestinian region and elsewhere gradually changed to being principally Arabic) — any more than they were “Greeks” before that, even though the dominant language was then Greek.; 6/5/09, 12:15 AM
JAL said...: fls @ 8:48 My goodness, a scholarly Brit went all the way to Spain! That would never happen nowadays. I'm not quite sure how an Arab could do more in the way of bringing Algebra to the West, unless, by definition, if Arabs move there, it's no longer the West.

My goodness! And just how did all those Arabs get to Spain?!!

Hint:
"In April 711, the Arab governor of Tangiers, Tariq ibn-Ziyad, crossed the strait between what are now Morocco and Spain with an army of nine or ten thousand Berbers (the place where they landed was soon to have a new name, the rock of Tariq, Jabal Tariq — Gibraltar). Goth King Roderick hastily took an army south, but Táreq and his Berber troops defeated it in a battle near the River Guadalete, and the king himself was never seen again except in legend. Tariq ordered that a group of prisoners be cut into pieces and their flesh boiled in cauldrons, then released the rest, telling them to spread the word about Moorish practices....The invasion had been ordered by Musa, the governor of Ifriquiyya (North Africa), and the following year, General Musa himself landed with another Berber army of 18,000, which this time included a large number of Arab officers...."

http://spainforvisitors.com/archive/features/
moorishinvasion.htm; 6/5/09, 12:32 AM
JAL said...: And WHY did all those Muslims go to Spain?

Because Allah told them to.; 6/5/09, 12:33 AM
Deb said...: "Those pesky Jews have been fighting back since 1947. They don't seem to understand their role has always been to suffer and die to assist the rest of the world in its self destructive insanity."

Jewish history in a nutshell:

They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat.

L'Chayim!; 6/5/09, 4:58 AM
A.W. said...: I haven't read the whole thing, but the part where he claimed that democracy can't be forced on anyone...

i wanted to throw something at him, shouting "try telling that to Germany and Japan."

And in the same paragraph he says that even if different countries are not democracies, all of these governments reflects the will of the people.

Um, that is complete and utter crap. Spoken 20 years since the massacres of protesters in China, no less. i won't say there is no case where the people of a nation don't prefer a thugocracy. i mean look at Venezuala. But as a rule of thumb, they are imposed on the people, rather than being consented to.; 6/5/09, 7:43 AM
Jeremy said...: PRESIDENT OBAMA, in his speech to the Muslim world.

"I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire."; 6/5/09, 10:44 AM
raf said...: So in the same sense that the Muslims "brought" mathematics to the Western world, would it now be appropriate for the West to "bring" modern civilization to the Arab world?; 6/5/09, 11:20 AM
Deb said...: From Allah Pundit: "... he did instruct the audience about Israel’s right to exist" but
implied that that reason was the Holocaust: "...and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied." (Obama)

He did not dare mention (or was he too cowardly given the setting) that:

"Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. " -- Charles Krauthammer

The Jews' ties and claim on Israel are much more ancient history than the Holocaust. Many may believe that was the catalyst, that and the world's collective guilt at standing by and doing nothing while Jews (and others) were slaughtered throughout Europe. But it is not the only, nor the primary reason for Israel's existance, nor for the Jews' close ties with Eretz Yisrael.

"By ignoring three thousand years of Jewish history, by neglecting to even mention the unbreakable link, started long before the advent of Islam, between the Jewish people and Eretz Yisrael, Obama totally failed to deliver what should have been one of his most important messages to the Arab world."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244035002248&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull; 6/5/09, 12:03 PM
Jeremy said...: Deb, I appreciate your sentiments, but do you really think a new President, in that setting, in his first speech before the Arab world...should confront them over a situation that has existed for centuries and may well continue for centuries to come?

Can you name ANY President who has done so in such a setting?

I think, based on the situation and circumstances, he did a commendable job of starting a dialogue.

Let's hope for the best.; 6/5/09, 12:50 PM
Deb said...: Jeremy,
As you know, there is some feeling that European guilt over the Holocaust led to the formation of the state of Israel and therefore the "displacement" of the Palestinians, a sentiment with which I obviously take issue, but that is another topic. It would have been courageous for him to do so, yes; and perhaps he considered it and decided against it for the reasons you mention. To leave out 3000 years of Jewish history was at least misleading. The whole world was listening to that speech, not just the Arab world. I felt, and others, that he should have alluded to the fact that the Jews' ties to Eretz Yisrael going back more than, say, 100 years or so.
Thanks,
Deb.; 6/5/09, 4:28 PM
Deb said...: "Can you name ANY President who has done so in such a setting?"

No, I cannot. Not Carter, not Clinton, Not Reagan, not Bush I, not Bush II, not Obama - not one has has the BALLS to say anything close to that to the Arabs to their faces. On that we agree.; 6/5/09, 4:52 PM