U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama made his second keynote speech about the Muslim world. The first one, in 2009 in Cairo, was a disaster. Obama barely mentioned freedom at all, and said that however Arab dictatorships wanted to interpret democracy was fine by him.
That didn’t work. Iran is more belligerent than ever, Arabia is on fire. Dictators from Syria to Libya are slaughtering their own people. In Egypt, it’s not freedom-loving democrats on the march but the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood.
Hostility in the Arab world towards the U.S. has increased under Obama’s watch.
So Obama tried again last week. To his credit, he was less mealy-mouthed about freedom and democracy. He actually discovered the concept of right and wrong, and said bullies like Syria and Libya were wrong.
There were glaring omissions, though. Obama didn’t mention Saudi Arabia — a fascist state where political protest is illegal and whose oil-rich sheiks are the leading financiers of terrorism.
The speech could have been a great moment, if Obama had pledged his support to democrats and freedom-fighters — just as Ronald Reagan helped freedom-fighters in the Soviet bloc. Obama pledged support alright. To Egypt.
Yes, Egypt, a country on a rampage against its Coptic Christian minority.
Obama is borrowing billions of dollars from China, and giving it to Egypt.
As usual, with Obama, it’s mainly about him. Take this classic line: “Two years ago in Cairo, I began to broaden our engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.”
Yes. Before the great one descended from on high, America was disrespectful.
Obama did get tough on one file. He looked around the Middle East and decided there was one little country that he could boss around: Israel.
But Israel is a democracy. For Arabs, too — Arabs can vote, Arabs sit in the Israeli Parliament. There’s an Arab on the Israeli supreme court.
Israel is the problem that Obama feels he can tackle.
So he announced that he wants Israel to go back to its 1967 borders with “mutually agreed swaps” and give the rest of their land to the terrorist PLO.
The 1967 borders were the borders before the Six Day War, one of Israel’s many wars of survival when it was attacked by half a dozen Arab countries.
The Arab dictators lost that war. But Obama wants to give them a win retroactively.
Israel has agreed to give most of that land back anyway, if the Palestinians just stop waging war against it. But there are some parts they can’t give up — like the strategic Golan Heights on the Syrian border.
From a military point of view, if Israel were to go back to the borders demanded by Obama, it would be just nine kilometres wide at its narrowest point.
And neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, with thousands of Jewish citizens in them, are now beyond the 1967 borders. But Jerusalem isn’t a negotiating chip. It’s Israel’s capital.
Why would Obama make this demand of Israel now?
“The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome,” he said.
Apparently the high-priced diplomats and bureaucrats are the United Nations are impatient.
Obama is a danger. He is a Manchurian candidate — a radical, undermining America from within and endangering America’s allies, too.
