An address by the US president at Cairo University attempted to undo the legacy of bitterness left by his predecessor, says Anayat Durrani "For so many of us, president Bush was a constant embarrassment: his ignorance of the world, his provincialism, his lack of curiosity, his failure to inspire trust and so on, made many of us acutely ashamed of the face of our country presented to the world," religious studies professor Ivan Strenski of the University of California, Riverside told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Obama, on the other hand, represents a 180-degree turn in the attitude of our government, and I think the majority of our country." Obama sought a "new beginning" with the Muslim world, addressing issues ranging from human rights to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. He spoke poignantly about his Kenyan Muslim father, his experience living in Indonesia and hearing the Muslim call to prayer, and quoted the Quran several times throughout his speech. The Council on American-Islamic Relations praised his speech as "comprehensive, balanced and forthright" and said it may "serve as a turning point" in US- Muslim relations. Professor Steven Weber, a specialist in international relations at UC Berkeley, told the Weekly Obama's speech was "eloquent, lyrical, both intensely intelligent and emotionally moving" as expected from someone with exceptional oratorical skills. He said he hopes it was received in the Muslim world the same way it was received in the US, as a "de facto peace offering". He described Obama's speech as an acknowledgement of some of the mistakes of the Bush administration with efforts to reverse those mistakes in the future. "Obama did a great job of marking out some of the deep philosophical, religious, and simply human bases for common ground," said Weber. "But it was only a speech." Weber said what happens next remains to be seen. On the subject of Iran, Weber said he believed Obama "fudged the most critical question" when he said the US was willing to move forward "without preconditions" but also stated that the nuclear weapons issue has reached a "decisive point". "What, then, is the looming decision, and how does that relate to the question of preconditions? Did President Obama imply he would be willing to accept a nuclear Iran? He has explicitly said elsewhere that he would not do so," explained Weber. "So we have a problem, unless the Iranians have something they want in exchange for giving up their nuclear programme. If they don't want such a bargain, no speech is going to stop a nearly inevitable conflict." Weber said the traditional American defence of the non- proliferation treaty where the US seeks a world where no nations hold nuclear weapons rings false. "It's simply not true in a practical sense, and everyone knows it. This is not to say that Obama could have said something different. He had to say these things. But what will he do as Iran moves forward towards nuclear capability?" Professor Jon Mandaville of the History/Middle East Studies Centre at Portland State University said Obama recognised that Iran, as other signatories of the Non- Proliferation Treaty, "has a right to the peaceful development of nuclear energy, and hoped that nuclear disarmament -- his goal -- would be shared as a goal by 'all countries in the region', a very gentle back-handed reference to Israel, who is not an NPT signatory." Mandaville said Obama's speech clearly demonstrated that all of Israel's efforts to persuade the US to take a hard line with Iran have been for naught. "This is not the Bush administration," added Mandaville. After the predictable paean to Israel, Obama stressed the 60 years of "dislocation" and suffering of the Palestinians in "pursuit of a homeland" and even used the word "occupation", though he failed to mention that the occupiers were the Israelis and that they were fresh from killing more than 1,400 Palestinians during their recent invasion of Gaza. "His views on Palestine did not alter the major dominant American paradigm: he treated Israeli lives and Palestinian lives differently," political science professor Asad Abu Khalil of California State University, Stanislaus told the Weekly. "He blamed the Palestinians for Israeli deaths while he sounded as if he was blaming natural disasters for Palestinian suffering." Abu Khalil noted that all of Obama's words on Islam and on Palestine "were uttered before, almost verbatim, by George W Bush." Mandaville was not surprised, considering "American domestic politics and AIPAC being what it is." Mandaville noted the use of the mantra that Palestinians must give up violence, and Israelis must stop the settlements. "As if the Palestinians know nothing except violence. But for three years beginning in 1987 they tried non-violent resistance in the first Intifada. It got them nothing but death and impoverishment." Mandaville noted, in the beginning of his administration Bush said the same things Obama did but then folded. He is concerned that his efforts "will cost him too much in Congress, with his critical economic and health reforms hanging." The pro-Zionist Anti-Defamation League surprisingly called Obama's speech "groundbreaking and honest", but said the president "missed an opportunity" to place the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in "proper historical perspective". "It should have been made clear that Israel's right to statehood is not a result of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. We are disappointed that the president found the need to balance the suffering of the Jewish people in a genocide to the suffering of the Palestinian people resulting from Arab wars." Obama's clarion call for a new partnership rings false to Mandaville in light of the continued bias towards Israel, however tempered in comparison to Bush. Not only to Palestinians under constant threat from an aggressive Israel and Iraqis "living under American occupation. A Pakistani seeing nothing but armaments from America, an Afghani seeing nothing but bombs from unmanned aircraft. They have to wonder. Is this a real partnership he's offering, or benign dominion in disguise?"
