Robert Dreyfuss: Three Tests for Obama After "The Speech"

[laststeamtrain]

Three Tests for Obama After "The Speech"
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 06/05/2009 @ 06:29am

<snip>

But I want emphasize one thing today: that by not mentioning "terror" or "terrorism" in his 55-minute address, Obama has formally turned the corner on the post-9/11 nightmare conjured by by President Bush and his ilk. If Obama sustains this, it has enormous potential not only to improve US relations with the Muslim world. It will utterly alter the discourse inside the United States, which for nearly eight long years has been distorted by the fear-mongering, Muslim-bashing, Osama-inflating, homeland security-worrying neoconservatives and their political allies.

<snip>

The third test, of course, involves Hamas itself. Rather than treat Hamas like it was carrying swine flu, Obama should encourage Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- the two countries he just visited -- to help put the Palestinian Humpty Dumpty back together in a new Fatah-Hamas unity government in advance of scheduled January elections. Announcing, as Bush did, that the United States will have no contact with such a coalition effectively undermines its very creation, since Hamas has no incentive to join one. Obama should gesture, ever more overtly, in support of exactly such a coalition. Yes, the Israeli right will go bananas.

But the neocons and the right, including the Republicans, are already denouncing Obama for undermining Israel, abandoning the holy democracy mission, and ending the Global War on Terror (GWOT). (My favorite quote is from the always entertainingly stupid Michael Rubin, of the American Enterprise Institute, who foamed at the mouth over Obama's de-emphasis of Project Impose Democracy. "Bush can look in the mirror and know that he liberated fifty million people," wrote Rubin, neglecting to mention that Bush killed about a million of them in the process. "Obama will look in the mirror and admire how handsome he is."

Well. Perhaps the pudgy Rubin can't do the same when he gazes into his bathroom mirror. But the emerging apoplexy on Planet Neocon is a sign that Obama did something right in Cairo. Interesting, isn't it, that with Hamas praising Obama, the only criticism of the Cairo speech is coming from (1) the neocons and their allies, and (2) Osama bin Laden, who is clearly panicking about Obama's play for mainstream and conservative Muslim opinion. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

<more>

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/441248/three_tests_for_obama_after_the_speech

[lapfog_1]

1. "the only criticism of the Cairo speech is coming from"

"(1) the neocons and their allies, and (2) Osama bin Laden, who is clearly panicking about Obama's play for mainstream and conservative Muslim opinion. Strange bedfellows, indeed."

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Why would one suppose so?

[OneGrassRoot]

2. Yep. Interesting, eh? n/t

[rosesaylavee]

3. Planet Neocon and Osama have much in common

I can think of a few, maybe others can add to the list:

*They don't care for the welfare of those who follow their beliefs.

*They are in it for the glory for themselves.

*They are not adverse to killing to get their policies in place.

*They both evolved out of US policies introduced in the 80's starting in the Reagan admin.

*They are media-challenged and their video productions are either unclear, full of misspellings, fear-based or all of the above.

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Anyone else?