Barack Obama's 10 Mistakes In Cairo

by Toby Harnden - June 4th, 2009 - London Telegraph

Barack Obama's speech in Cairo was quite a moment. I say moment, but it lasted some 56 minutes and contained more than 6,000 words. Too long. Yes, he said a lot, ensuring to some extent that it could be all things to all people - almost everyone can take something away from it to feel good about.

That doesn't mean, however, that it was an effective speech. It was, of course, very well-delivered and contained many fine phrases. But we know that Obama can do this and he's subject to the law of diminishing returns. The more I think about it, the more potentially problematic I find the speech. Here, for starters, are 10 mistakes he made:

This is an extremely good synopsis of the speech. I suspect if you read the speech you will, as I, feel great discomfort at almost everything in it. It is, as usual for Obama, a speech that uses trite and inaccurate straw men to allow him to make his points. This article by Toby Harnden exposes the weakness of argument after argument which leads to discomfort for most of us. I highly recommend you click here to read his 10 points.

Some other thoughts about the speech were provided in the David Warren article called the Cairo Disaster.

It is the failure to acknowledge hard realities that makes Obama dangerous. As a wise Texan of my acquaintance put it, “he is attempting to model himself on Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. But, it’s with a twist. He sees himself as the Great Mediator — the One who will step into every conflict around the globe, bring to bear his superior intelligence and teleprompted eloquence, and leave the parties in a warm embrace.”

Another old friend, the errant “neocon” David Frum, explained what is shocking in that Cairo speech: to find an American president no longer mediating domestic American conflicts, but rather, those between his own country and some of her deadliest enemies. This may be presented as “reaching out” but, in practice, it leaves his own side unchampioned, unrepresented, and in the end, undefended.

That was amazingly intelligent and it made some things so much clearer for me. It sums up much of my frustration about Obama. He does not see himself as the champion of America, but our mediator with the world. That is why Obama was just as willing to criticize America for anything that he sees as a shortcoming as he is to criticize the Islamo-fascists who attacked us.

He is above it all and smarter than everyone. He can apologize for America and mediate a compromise with our enemies at the same time. I believe his narcissistic arrogance and his failure to understand his obligations to our nation makes him unfit to be our President. He does not see himself as bound by our Constitutional limits on the President. Because he is above America. He represents the world, not just America. He can sneeringly condescend to us because he is better than us.

If you doubt it just ask him.