by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n President Obama has a much-publicized upcoming talk in Cairo that is rather pretentiously packaged as an address to the \u201cMuslim world.\u201d It is likely that, unlike the Bush speeches about the shared innate desire for freedom, and hope that the Arab autocracies would liberalize, this address will be a little more PC-ish, no doubt evoking his own fides of having a Muslim father, growing up for a bit in Indonesia, being other than a conventional president (you know the rest, fill in the blanks.) \u2014 as if he can separate himself from U.S. policy, as he not long ago outlined in his initial\u00a0Al-Arabiya<\/em>\u00a0interview.<\/p>\n Two or three considerations: First, the initial apology tour did not harvest any results \u2014 the euros did not and will not send more troops to Afghanistan. They were not sympathetic about the financial meltdown or the need for massive trans-Atlantic stimulus. Neither Ortega, Castro, nor Ch\u00e1vez has shown any sign of moderation or greater tolerance of dissidents. Putin & Co. seem singularly unimpressed as they call for the end of the U.S. dollar\u2019s primacy. No need to mention North Korea and Iran; their recent behavior speaks for itself.<\/p>\n Hopefully, Obama realizes that apologies in place A, have repercussions in place B, and new adventurism by North Korea or Iran may be predicated on perceptions that the U.S. \u2014 guilt-ridden and eager to join the world in condemning Bush\u2019s old America \u2014 is now somewhat understanding of the brave new multilateral world when nations seek to flex their muscles.<\/p>\n Second, Obama should remember that the U.S. has given well over $70 billion in aggregate aid to the Palestinians, Jordanians, and Egyptians. We have tried to save the Afghans from Russian communism and again are pouring money into the country. Kuwait now exists thanks to the U.S. We alone chided the Russians on its flattening of Grozny, and bombed a Christian European country to save Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia when others could not or would not. We tried to save starving Muslims in Somalia, and the record goes on \u2014 including the sacrifice made on behalf of Iraqi democracy \u2014 and is sterling in comparison to the very unapologetic way China, India, or Russia has dealt with Muslims at home and abroad. No need, then, for yet another apology or \u201cI was only three months old\u201d distancing \u2014 or so we hope.<\/p>\n Between the upcoming June Cairo speech and the past\u00a0mea culpas<\/em>, there has been a new muscularity abroad of those ill-intended to the conventional interests of the United States, and Obama might consider that there is just possibly a connection \u2014 and that a president\u2019s apology for the sins of his country apart from his own is already now a well-worn trope.<\/p>\n So let us hope that we hear something new-new, rather than the now-old-new. Otherwise, in about six months or so, we are going to see a frantic Jimmy-Carter-circa-1979 scramble to restore deterrence after Afghanistan, Iran, Central America, etc., that followed three years of moralistic, ego-driven, and self-righteous global sermonizing.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner President Obama has a much-publicized upcoming talk in Cairo that is rather pretentiously packaged as an address to the \u201cMuslim world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[715],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Ho","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1509,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/it-cannot-be-that-nasa-has-nothing-better-to-do\/","url_meta":{"origin":2690,"position":0},"title":"It Cannot Be That NASA Has Nothing Better To Do","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner NASA chief Charles Bolden, an impressive former Marine Corps major general and astronaut, recently waxed eloquent about his tripartite mission at the space agency he was entrusted with by President Obama. 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Yet, as\u00a0Jimmy Carter\u00a0recently put it: \"I don't have any problem with that [an \"Islamist victory\" in Egypt], and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":945,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-son-of-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":2690,"position":3},"title":"Obama, ‘Son of Islam’?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Stonegate Institute Many in the media are indignant with Reverend Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. 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