Obama didn't change the world with one speech.
Over at the Washington Examiner, I have a piece on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, which raises several questions about the ramifications of President Obama's Cairo speech in 2009:
As wise observers know, oftentimes the choices made within the context of Americaâ??s engagement in the Middle East are limited to a decision between supporting clearly repressive regimes and allowing the vilest enemies of democracy and freedom to triumph â?? a choice in which the good is absent, and you are left with the bad and the ugly. Such is the situation in Egypt today. The recent election doesnâ??t pass the smell test â?? as Stephen McInerney, director of advocacy for the Project on Middle East Democracy, told the Weekly Standard, the Mubarak regime wasnâ??t â??even making an effort to look good.â?Yet this repressive situation is not without justification â?? namely, the likelihood that a truly free election would elevate the power base of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were effectively pushed from parliament, left with just a single elected candidate.
[. . .]
This is exactly the kind of thorny foreign policy situation that demands a president with a coherent vision, one that amounts to more than just blandishments about respect and tolerance. If only America had one.
Pejman Yousefzadeh makes an apt point in response:
Of course, no one blames the President for an inability to change the Middle East with one speech. But what continually disappoints is the propensity of the Obama Administration to promise more than they can deliver, simply because both the President and the rest of his Administration appear to be so dazzled by the Presidentâ??s star power and charisma, that they fail to consider cold hard facts that are impervious to Barack Obamaâ??s personal charm and eloquence. This is an Administration that continues to believe press clippings from 2008, even though itâ??s 2011, and the press clippings themselves have changed.
This is, of course, not the first administration to fall prey to the trap of thinking that "a speech will solve a problem" with any permanence. But that doesn't make the fact any prettier.
