Saturday 15 October 2016

The Roots of America’s Mideast Delusion - WSJ

Just after his election, and on taking office in 2009...
Mr. Obama did almost everything liberal critics of the policies of George W. Bush wished him to do. And he failed. Or rather, he found that the Arab world was afflicted with pathologies that placed it beyond the reach of his words and deeds.
I still remember his Cairo Speech on June 4, 2009. The media loved it. I was appalled. 
It was a shocking surrender to multi- culti moral relativism and everything was the fault of the United States. The MSM loved the speech. The blogosphere I follow, the counter/jihadi blogosphere, skewered it. And guess who was right? That horridly Islamophobic blogosphere, of course. 
As the article below shows, America can never be in the right side of Arab opinion. No matter what it does it'll be wrong. So better it follow hard headed self interest, which includes, or should, the self interest of the west. 
James Traub writing below in the WSJ, concludes that the United States should not "trust appealing strangers", should not "try to be too clever", and should "lower expectations". 
Now, read on....